Why does Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII last, and what prediction do you have of Howard Moss' poem?
We all chuckled at the "compressed reader" -- how all the fragments of various readers could be "condensed", just like the poem's. What makes for good poetry? What drives it? What wonders come out of the tyranny of form? Are poets working hard enough these days? Does clever vernacular compare to the musicality of well-turned verse?
These are fair questions in an age of mushrooming ezines, and young editors hard-pressed to rival the reading background and experience of the still active octogenarians.
Rachel Kadish, in the Sept/Oct. issue of Poets and Writers, mentions in her rallying cry for writers, (p. 32) the example of the man in Warsaw who told her, "Don't you know parents in this country hope their children will grow up to be poets?"
What does "poet" mean in America, , that our culture seems to consider a poet/artist irrelevant, morally dangerous, or crazy? Does this mean, witty conversational pieces are all that are required? Something that makes language feel less soul-deadened in a politically correct, newspeaking society?
As readers, we do want to experience what John Gardner calls "the vivid and continuous dream" created by good writing.
Given Howard Moss' biography as New Yorker editor, patron launcher of such poets as James Dickey, Galway Kinnell, James Scully, Theodore Roethke, L. E. Sissman, Anne Sexton, Richard Wilbur, Sylvia Plath, and Mark Strand, one can argue, that his summer's day is a piece perfectly aware of Shakespeare's conceit. "Partly as a consequence of [his role at the New Yorker] his own talent has been underrated," observed David Ray in Contemporary Poets. "Yet he has with consistent productivity ... turned out volume after volume and has dutifully and with impressive scholarship written criticism. He is, in short, an American man-of-letters in a sense largely missing from our literary culture."
Let us read on!
**
XJ Kennedy is a favorite of mine -- particularly his fun volume, "Nude Descending a Staircase" and his children's books.
The poem selected by Garrison Keilor last week, "Death of a Window Washer" struck me as one worth not just reading a few times, but reading outloud, and analyzing.
the 3 syllable words (obstinate, forgotten, copying, barricades) lead up to the 4 syllable "coincidence" and then the 3 syllabled (Uttering, Tedious, Legacy) -- The end rhymes made me look for an equivalent for "sash". Perhaps it is an "H" that has been passed over -- in shhhhh
where "His legacy is mute". By "coincidence" I stumbled on a Giacometti painting, Figure, 1951, who just like the window washer, would be a nameless man, unless some accident framed him... (Uncanny how these things happen...)
You can check out the figure at this site: http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/documents/18_Giacometti_Figure.pdf
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
postcard festival -- August 2010
http://changeorder.typepad.com/weblog/2010/08/sending-postcards-to-strangers.html
Posted by David Sherwin on August 19, 201
Forwarded by Paul Nelson, one of the organizers.
My thoughts this morning : 8/24.
I love the question: What is a satisfactory work of art -- along with considerations on the definition of "satisfactory" and "work of art". The constraint of finding something authentic (hence, worthwhile to ones deepest layer) on the back of a postcard and sending it to a stranger is akin to taking words that have been written in free-style, and trying on different types of jackets of form. How would this idea look in a sonnet? a pantoum?
Indeed, many of the images, words received, prodded my thinking to levels I would not have known existed in the big tent of my mind.
I shared with a friend some of the process -- and how the postcard nutshell often kept my writing honest -- how often that "first fresh" was a lifeline to hold while navigating the "big dig" of the well of the subconscious.
I am grateful for the thoughts and images received, for the connection.
Here are some:
To Jaala: An alabaster perfume vase representing two kingdoms (Cairo Museum, Egypt)
Alabaster Perfume vessel : 18th dynasty: Tutankhamun 1347-1337 BC
(Alabaster – a labaste for Bast, the lioness)
To see through the Smoke : per-fumare
**
One vase, two lines
one balm, two wings
and a small spider climbing up
wheeling out the story of papyrus,
sliding down the story of lotus
living heat in the offering
still life spinning.
To Deborah Theresa: Postcard of the Erie Canal
“An unimaginative person can be neither reverent nor kind.” – John Ruskin
This is why my ears insist on hearing the mule’s footsteps, the creak of the rope, the idea of goods feeding something instinctively good.
**
To Andy King: George Eastman House :
Full Capacity Living
as if catastrophe caps a city so filled with people,
that art has fled from smart. Snap!
Wake up! Each of us a finger shaking
in a hand.
**
To Carol:
On postcard of The Ross Fountains at the Butchart Gardens.
The water jets reach to a height of 80 feet.
Serenity
The fountain knows
wind sweep, season,
surprise of new direction,
change as cause to be different,
to transform "wanes" to a swan’s gain
fountain to rain, magic rein.
**
To Yvonne : Postcard of Butchart Gardens
(Retentia “Pray to Retentia”, John Barrett
for each muse aids
in their measure
and the task is to know
the mix of the muses gifts
in their lines…
**
“Retentia” and he plays his talking tie
scissor, scepter, cutting, prow” – Ed Sanders
**
Who would have believed a quarry
could turn into a flourishing garden?
Inception, a calm sea,
collage of Matisse dancers,
scissored, sceptered, cutting, prow.
**
Marty Williams : Brantwood, John Ruskin’s residence from 1872-1900.
“All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.”
New cloaks and swords shield our eyes from the steady,
intent, attentive, look –
we are busy spokes of a creaking cart
pretending our words are new.
Let u s low
down and find amazement.
**
Nancy Wakeman. (I wrote a letter to her after the postcard...)
The Begonia Bower
“It could be illusion but we might as well try.”
Scarlet Begonias
A lifetime burning in each begonia
each beckoned moment suspected.
Note: Michel Bégon, (1667-1747)
French Governor of Haiti for whom this flower named.
Can he see what has happened?
Can we try differently?
**
Lacey N. Duham: Postcard of NY Farm in Autumn
World as color
pressed into frame,
hills as line
curved into space,
clouds wind-buffed
like bell-wethered sheep
echoes of a whinny,
the horse’s mouth
motoring delight of an apple!
**
TO: YVONNE: (response to her card and image on my card to her.)
Inside the Church the Old
Breath as need to breathe
curls inside, dies
cleft desiring cleave
light shadows, spies
What curls inside, dies
weft and woof in tight weave
tight shadows, spies
darting, unable to grieve.
(They need white lipstick? something foxy?)
**
Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan; Hans Holbein
Perhaps today,
sounds light in towards each other
the way an apostrophe shifts
summer corn’s talking
to cornstalking sky,
storm knocking but it is winter
scorn, and she is warm in her velvet wrap
Her shadow slights the wall,
as she wrings something lifeless in her hands.
**
To Brett: Picture of Vermont covered Bridge.
Inside the covered bridge
what’s socked in darkness
what gapes
waits for someone
squeezes like the iris
focus on what lies on the other-
wised side. Where are the pupils?
Do they spread
between the boards?
**
To Tanya: postcard by Bellini : Doge Leonardo Lordano
Outside RSS
Real
Sentences from
Several millions of sources
Real sentences avoid I’m
(wondering)
Simple ideas eschew X
(without)
Syndicates.
Really
Should be
Simple.
But there’s too much
and not enough space.
re: so much
said
space for so ...
**
Postcard to Deborah: She sent me: Dangling Metaphor on a bunch of white words scripted on green background. 3 muses ? graces;
I sent her the family mansion of Dunsmuir Family : Craigdarroch Castle
The word “one” is bound in the middle of lonely. In “all one” alone finds its companion.
3 graces each contemplating an apple have leaped out of a painting to rescue their sisters in marble. Look in the turret on the other side. Can you imagine?
**
Postcard to Jaala in response to hers.
(Sherman Alexie: “The Elders knew the spiders/carried stories in their stomachs” – from “The Summer of Black Widows”)
MY CARD: sent National Gallery : a woman; Robert Campin 1378
Story for/from the 14th c. woman
Her story is pinned under the folds of her headdress
hides in the cuff of her sleeve
aches in each shy finger
Will she allow a tear to slide a story
out from her glistened eye?
Purse a story in her prayers?
Does she say
a story
the story
my story
our story
history
Which story does she tell?
**
To Jody:
Sent Motif #1 : Rockport, MA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_Number_1
stubborn isn’t it, an idea that won’t go away, whatever it is about a red (wheelbarrow) fish shack that pains to preserve, reconstruct, keep alive. So much depends on it.
**
To Kimberley: Postcard of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan; by Holbein
In fall, the maple turns red,
the last slight bee’s thrumbing
no longer lighting,
to find wing-strummed work:
echo
of the bell’s wing
swung.
Do you see it there, that shadow
behind her right shoulder?
**
Postcard of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
and St. John the Baptist: Leonardo da Vinci
Zingiber, zingiber!
A mosaic of jotted Italian, Dutch sea,
sails racing like a pair of angel wings
made of invisible garden gloves finge-
ring feathers to dig
deeper.
Posted by David Sherwin on August 19, 201
Forwarded by Paul Nelson, one of the organizers.
My thoughts this morning : 8/24.
I love the question: What is a satisfactory work of art -- along with considerations on the definition of "satisfactory" and "work of art". The constraint of finding something authentic (hence, worthwhile to ones deepest layer) on the back of a postcard and sending it to a stranger is akin to taking words that have been written in free-style, and trying on different types of jackets of form. How would this idea look in a sonnet? a pantoum?
Indeed, many of the images, words received, prodded my thinking to levels I would not have known existed in the big tent of my mind.
I shared with a friend some of the process -- and how the postcard nutshell often kept my writing honest -- how often that "first fresh" was a lifeline to hold while navigating the "big dig" of the well of the subconscious.
I am grateful for the thoughts and images received, for the connection.
Here are some:
To Jaala: An alabaster perfume vase representing two kingdoms (Cairo Museum, Egypt)
Alabaster Perfume vessel : 18th dynasty: Tutankhamun 1347-1337 BC
(Alabaster – a labaste for Bast, the lioness)
To see through the Smoke : per-fumare
**
One vase, two lines
one balm, two wings
and a small spider climbing up
wheeling out the story of papyrus,
sliding down the story of lotus
living heat in the offering
still life spinning.
To Deborah Theresa: Postcard of the Erie Canal
“An unimaginative person can be neither reverent nor kind.” – John Ruskin
This is why my ears insist on hearing the mule’s footsteps, the creak of the rope, the idea of goods feeding something instinctively good.
**
To Andy King: George Eastman House :
Full Capacity Living
as if catastrophe caps a city so filled with people,
that art has fled from smart. Snap!
Wake up! Each of us a finger shaking
in a hand.
**
To Carol:
On postcard of The Ross Fountains at the Butchart Gardens.
The water jets reach to a height of 80 feet.
Serenity
The fountain knows
wind sweep, season,
surprise of new direction,
change as cause to be different,
to transform "wanes" to a swan’s gain
fountain to rain, magic rein.
**
To Yvonne : Postcard of Butchart Gardens
(Retentia “Pray to Retentia”, John Barrett
for each muse aids
in their measure
and the task is to know
the mix of the muses gifts
in their lines…
**
“Retentia” and he plays his talking tie
scissor, scepter, cutting, prow” – Ed Sanders
**
Who would have believed a quarry
could turn into a flourishing garden?
Inception, a calm sea,
collage of Matisse dancers,
scissored, sceptered, cutting, prow.
**
Marty Williams : Brantwood, John Ruskin’s residence from 1872-1900.
“All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.”
New cloaks and swords shield our eyes from the steady,
intent, attentive, look –
we are busy spokes of a creaking cart
pretending our words are new.
Let u s low
down and find amazement.
**
Nancy Wakeman. (I wrote a letter to her after the postcard...)
The Begonia Bower
“It could be illusion but we might as well try.”
Scarlet Begonias
A lifetime burning in each begonia
each beckoned moment suspected.
Note: Michel Bégon, (1667-1747)
French Governor of Haiti for whom this flower named.
Can he see what has happened?
Can we try differently?
**
Lacey N. Duham: Postcard of NY Farm in Autumn
World as color
pressed into frame,
hills as line
curved into space,
clouds wind-buffed
like bell-wethered sheep
echoes of a whinny,
the horse’s mouth
motoring delight of an apple!
**
TO: YVONNE: (response to her card and image on my card to her.)
Inside the Church the Old
Breath as need to breathe
curls inside, dies
cleft desiring cleave
light shadows, spies
What curls inside, dies
weft and woof in tight weave
tight shadows, spies
darting, unable to grieve.
(They need white lipstick? something foxy?)
**
Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan; Hans Holbein
Perhaps today,
sounds light in towards each other
the way an apostrophe shifts
summer corn’s talking
to cornstalking sky,
storm knocking but it is winter
scorn, and she is warm in her velvet wrap
Her shadow slights the wall,
as she wrings something lifeless in her hands.
**
To Brett: Picture of Vermont covered Bridge.
Inside the covered bridge
what’s socked in darkness
what gapes
waits for someone
squeezes like the iris
focus on what lies on the other-
wised side. Where are the pupils?
Do they spread
between the boards?
**
To Tanya: postcard by Bellini : Doge Leonardo Lordano
Outside RSS
Real
Sentences from
Several millions of sources
Real sentences avoid I’m
(wondering)
Simple ideas eschew X
(without)
Syndicates.
Really
Should be
Simple.
But there’s too much
and not enough space.
re: so much
said
space for so ...
**
Postcard to Deborah: She sent me: Dangling Metaphor on a bunch of white words scripted on green background. 3 muses ? graces;
I sent her the family mansion of Dunsmuir Family : Craigdarroch Castle
The word “one” is bound in the middle of lonely. In “all one” alone finds its companion.
3 graces each contemplating an apple have leaped out of a painting to rescue their sisters in marble. Look in the turret on the other side. Can you imagine?
**
Postcard to Jaala in response to hers.
(Sherman Alexie: “The Elders knew the spiders/carried stories in their stomachs” – from “The Summer of Black Widows”)
MY CARD: sent National Gallery : a woman; Robert Campin 1378
Story for/from the 14th c. woman
Her story is pinned under the folds of her headdress
hides in the cuff of her sleeve
aches in each shy finger
Will she allow a tear to slide a story
out from her glistened eye?
Purse a story in her prayers?
Does she say
a story
the story
my story
our story
history
Which story does she tell?
**
To Jody:
Sent Motif #1 : Rockport, MA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_Number_1
stubborn isn’t it, an idea that won’t go away, whatever it is about a red (wheelbarrow) fish shack that pains to preserve, reconstruct, keep alive. So much depends on it.
**
To Kimberley: Postcard of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan; by Holbein
In fall, the maple turns red,
the last slight bee’s thrumbing
no longer lighting,
to find wing-strummed work:
echo
of the bell’s wing
swung.
Do you see it there, that shadow
behind her right shoulder?
**
Postcard of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
and St. John the Baptist: Leonardo da Vinci
Zingiber, zingiber!
A mosaic of jotted Italian, Dutch sea,
sails racing like a pair of angel wings
made of invisible garden gloves finge-
ring feathers to dig
deeper.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Poems shared at Highlands -- July 20
The simple act of asking another human being, "What are you going through" is also a perfect starting point for appreciating poetry as a great conversation. I love listened to different responses to a poem, whether they concern analysis of pattern, admiring universal themes, or capture the magic of sound playing sense.
Thank you Claire, Anne, Gloria, Martha, David, Gerry, Pat, Evelyn, Ann D., Betty, Aline for sharing your insights and voices.
Euclid Alone: Edna St. Vincent Millay (poem from The Harp Weaver, 1923)
Note how many times she uses the word "Beauty"; the embraced rhyme; The long second sentence ending on the 8th line. The embraced rhyme in the Octave; eff; eef; in the last six lines; the enjambments cease/to ponder on themselves
they stare/at nothing
nowhere/in shapes of shifting lineage;
let geese/gabble
seek release/from dusty bondage
how those who prate are not the Fortunate...
**
Can you imagine: Mary Oliver
Have you ever asked what trees do, when we're not looking?
In seventeen lines, Oliver dares us to imagine... and provides a compelling sketch of what it is to embrace acceptance.
"Surely you can't imagine/
they don't dance, from the root up wishing/
to travel a little"
What perfect balance of a double negative and line break -- a real kick to wake up our imagination, re-examine wishes, wants, (more sun, or just as avidly/more shade) and then
"surely you can't imagine they just /
stand there loving every/
minute of it"
"Just" is repeated -- with the clout of its double function -- an implied justice (trees are JUST, (adj.) and are not complicated: they just stand, want just as avidly -- with adverbial emphasis -- the paradoxical desire for shade and sun.
Used colloquially, "just" is either unnecessarily redundant, or adds a flavor. Here, Oliver
establishes a spotlight on desire, and the motionless "being" -- a zen-like acceptance which allows love of everything (and nothing different) the birds, the emptiness, the soundless years thickening into dark rings. The patience and happiness to deal with the capricious wind.
And the reader has a chance to re-imagine himself as tree in storm, in seasons,
a Pascalian spirit of "roseau pensant" bending with the wind.
**
Other poems discussed:
Her Kind by Anne Sexton (self-portrait with fairy tale quality)
How it is: Maxine Kumin (elegy for Sexton)
Parents' Pantoum: Carolyn Kizer (poem for Kumin)
The inter-relatedness of poems and poets carrying the conversation.
The last poem was Dorianne Laux's "Timing", which appeared in APR, Vol. 39, No. 4
Helene Cixous provided the epigraph for a book called "Cries of the Spirit" ed. by Marilyn Sewell, 1991 which collects poems by women and organizes them into themes.
"When I write, it's everything we don't know we can be that is written out of me, without exclusions without stipulation, and everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one nother we will never be lacking."
I think of Wilbur, "Love calls us to the things of this world".
Thank you Claire, Anne, Gloria, Martha, David, Gerry, Pat, Evelyn, Ann D., Betty, Aline for sharing your insights and voices.
Euclid Alone: Edna St. Vincent Millay (poem from The Harp Weaver, 1923)
Note how many times she uses the word "Beauty"; the embraced rhyme; The long second sentence ending on the 8th line. The embraced rhyme in the Octave; eff; eef; in the last six lines; the enjambments cease/to ponder on themselves
they stare/at nothing
nowhere/in shapes of shifting lineage;
let geese/gabble
seek release/from dusty bondage
how those who prate are not the Fortunate...
**
Can you imagine: Mary Oliver
Have you ever asked what trees do, when we're not looking?
In seventeen lines, Oliver dares us to imagine... and provides a compelling sketch of what it is to embrace acceptance.
"Surely you can't imagine/
they don't dance, from the root up wishing/
to travel a little"
What perfect balance of a double negative and line break -- a real kick to wake up our imagination, re-examine wishes, wants, (more sun, or just as avidly/more shade) and then
"surely you can't imagine they just /
stand there loving every/
minute of it"
"Just" is repeated -- with the clout of its double function -- an implied justice (trees are JUST, (adj.) and are not complicated: they just stand, want just as avidly -- with adverbial emphasis -- the paradoxical desire for shade and sun.
Used colloquially, "just" is either unnecessarily redundant, or adds a flavor. Here, Oliver
establishes a spotlight on desire, and the motionless "being" -- a zen-like acceptance which allows love of everything (and nothing different) the birds, the emptiness, the soundless years thickening into dark rings. The patience and happiness to deal with the capricious wind.
And the reader has a chance to re-imagine himself as tree in storm, in seasons,
a Pascalian spirit of "roseau pensant" bending with the wind.
**
Other poems discussed:
Her Kind by Anne Sexton (self-portrait with fairy tale quality)
How it is: Maxine Kumin (elegy for Sexton)
Parents' Pantoum: Carolyn Kizer (poem for Kumin)
The inter-relatedness of poems and poets carrying the conversation.
The last poem was Dorianne Laux's "Timing", which appeared in APR, Vol. 39, No. 4
Helene Cixous provided the epigraph for a book called "Cries of the Spirit" ed. by Marilyn Sewell, 1991 which collects poems by women and organizes them into themes.
"When I write, it's everything we don't know we can be that is written out of me, without exclusions without stipulation, and everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one nother we will never be lacking."
I think of Wilbur, "Love calls us to the things of this world".
Friday, August 6, 2010
summer poem
Summer Playing Peace Pipes
Pairs of new green horse chestnuts
hang high
peer down
as they ripen before fall
spiny as urchins
(street urchins, sea urchins)
Inside, their invisible silk
pockets a red-brown core
swelling
(chested blood)
Lime-spined in the breeze,
smell of pine dyes, phlox,
supine, verbed to mean amatum
(to be about to be loved).
Everything waits for your gaze to face up.
Pairs of new green horse chestnuts
hang high
peer down
as they ripen before fall
spiny as urchins
(street urchins, sea urchins)
Inside, their invisible silk
pockets a red-brown core
swelling
(chested blood)
Lime-spined in the breeze,
smell of pine dyes, phlox,
supine, verbed to mean amatum
(to be about to be loved).
Everything waits for your gaze to face up.
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