The Hurricane by William Carlos Williams
Poem in October -- by Dylan Thomas
Writing: Howard Nemerov
Sonnet #5: Shakespeare
Latin Lessons by Floyd Skloot
After Apple Picking by Robert Frost
I can't remember now why I chose these poems... Was it to contrast music, form, old and new... indeed, those are things which interest me, and the discussion today came back to Frost's essay "The Figure a Poem Makes" which talks about music and meaning and that sense of wildness we want pure. But in the end we need ideas or else all poems sound alike. I also trust a group will find meaning in a collection of poems no matter what poems come to mind.
We started with the Hurricane, well, of course, because we had Sandy which opened up many questions... just like the poem. I asked several people to read, and then to silently think about how each person would read it, and what to make of it.
How often do we lend attention to a poem this way? What do you make of the "it" in the last line: "it said, go to it." Is it the tree? the hurricane? How many ways can you say, "go to it"? is "it" Heaven, or part of the idiom, "get started". What fun to romp through two sentences and five lines and realize the game could last a long time. But, we do want to pin it down. Pin our human associations to the tree,
imagine ourselves as the "you" as easily felled as the tree, be grateful that our haven of a home was perhaps safe, and only the garage damaged, or... or...
The Dylan Thomas published in Poetry magazine in February 1945 is so filled with music and image, no matter if you prefer one to the other, there is no rivalry here.
David mentioned the form as pindaric ode and a very wordsworthian celebration of childhood...and some commented on how the music is very nice, but what's the point-- a certain impatience that is satisfied by the penultimate stanza.
Marcie pointed out that descriptions of the present (the poet's 30th birthday) are in rain, whereas his past is remembered in sun.
Whatever reason we loved this poem, we marveled at the intensity. Rich brought up whether it would be a dated poem, too rhapsodic for now-a-days -- and a musical parallel comes to mind. Why do some pieces of music never age -- maybe interpreted slightly differently in different ages, but still strike the heart?
Nemerov: David came up with the perfect sentence: This poem is about how we trace ourselves, trace our thoughts. Look at the hard C's, that reproduce the sound of the skates.
World and spirit... physical and cerebral are connected like our bones linked to nets of stars—our tiny efforts of creating symbols to something much more vast! Through writing, like the bat, we can figure out
just what our thoughts are; figure out how to communicate something larger than ourselves. What is the “point of style” – the stylus point; the reason for... and what is character – the physical form of a symbol
or temperment. How beautifully put that each of us try to understand the world, but can only understand
what we can reproduce through out hand, our thinking. Miraculous, repeated, this time to think of the world as a great writing. And with all this powerful presence and creation, we know it cannot last.
Wow! I love this poem. It is not disheartening, but an almost tender way of reminding us, for all our efforts, all our pen scratching, we will not be able to preserve a record of human presence, let alone start
to scratch the surface of understanding the large universe in which we live. And yet... this tool of writing,
this writing that writes us, this writing which leads us on journeys, is a key to something much more.
Such beautiful skill!
Shakespeare: Sonnet #5
what a sonnet! Who would have thought that "unfair" is a verb? And what about "Leese" in the final couplet? Much can be written about this early sonnet with no personal pronouns. Although we did not discuss the structure, (3 quatrains that end with a colon), the repetition of the same thing first objectively, then emotionally,
we appreciated the role of memory -- that the savoring of love is best before we forget.
Show cannot be preserved, but substance can.
Floyd Skloot: Latin Lessons -- a tour de force, where it is not clear it is an elegy at first and what leaves a mark on us.
Frost: After apple picking.
Delightful -- with unexpected surprises in line length, meter, rhyme, and how Frost can take an ordinary detail and make it apply to a larger meaning. We talked of the natural rhythms, of sleep, dream, and the fatigue of a life spent, where, even with all that red-cheeked possibility of apple, enough is enough, and next year... humbly, we accept, there will be new apples, but we understand "what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is."
As ever, I am so grateful for so many shared understandings of these poems.
PS. David shared the differences of the Frost poem with the final version:
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight /I cannot rub the strangeness
a that was "the" and Magnified apples appear and reappear, / ... and disappear
It could be an earlier version... poems are process, metamorphosis, like apples...
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Poems for October 29
A fire drill cut short our discussion of poems for October 22.
So... trying again.
The Courtesy of the Blind -- by Wislawa Szymborska
The Short Answer –John Ashbery
excerpt from an interview with John Ashbery that tells about Frank O’Hara and Auden
Why I am not a Painter – Frank O’Hara
5 i poems
**
We read again "The Courtesy of the Blind" and the discussion embraced both the poem, references to blindness ranging from Corinthians "for now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face..." and Acts, "and immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales", Amazing grace to general considerations about "the blind".
As ever, it is helpful to sort through subjective associations by close examination of the poem. Is the tone the same in the title and the penultimate stanza where it is repeated? Is there a note of irony, perhaps a comment not about the blind, but a comment about a poet who is reading to a public of blind people, and suddenly aware
of images provided in poetry -- two careful quatrains, and then an enumeration of details he'd like to skip -- but does not in two stanzas of five, much longer lines.
We don't have the original Polish, but it would be probable that the last two stanzas would resonate in the original as they do in English -- the penultimate stanza is formal as opposed to conversational (one wouldn't say" hey, great is the courtesy of the blind" and in the final stanza, we are left with the mystery of the "unseen autograph". Each participant brought a different angle which reflected a slant sense of autobiography on how each individual understood the poem --was it presumption on the part of the speaker that "blind people don't get what they can't know by sight", or enthusiastic hyperbole, or perhaps a way of looking at poetry, which is a way to bring music to language when read out loud, a way to bring an emotional connection which is beyond the "meaning" or content of images.
Just as the line "the naked stranger standing in the half-shut door" in the Szymborska poem elicited some laughter, so did many lines in the Ashbery poem for instance:
Because if it's boring //
in a different way, that'll be interesting too.
That's what I say.
In both cases, I wonder if the source of the laughter was more like having a sneak, surprise view that allows the poem to mirror a part of ourselves we might not have considered recently. Last week, after reading the Ashbery, Marcie offered the comparison of walking through a cocktail party and overhearing pieces of conversation
which gives a sense of disjointed and out of context flow. It reminded Sandra of dealing with people stricken by Alzheimers. Whether surrealistic tomfoolery, or a dream viewing reality (or it that our reality IS the dream?) there were spaces in the poem where people could hang on to a sense of understanding something. Marcie called on the quote from the Ashbery interview in the Paris Review, "I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you're not going to alienate and hurt him".
Ashbery is mindful of how he plays with us. The big question, "how do you know what is" brought forth many fine points from physicists-- "why does it appear that there is something..." "objects are just cast from other ends of the universe, the shadow is the reality"; Don referred to Freeman Dyson "What can you really know" NY Rev of
Books (11/8/12) p.18 -- a review of Jim Holt's "Why does the world
exist?: an existential detective story." John suggested that the first sentence is the short answer to the question... what is consciousness.
Perhaps to get to the "point" of the short answer, one needs to write a poem like this, which will allow meanings to mushroom, until the lightbulb goes off.
..
The next poem by O'Hara, "why I am not a painter" brought up a multitude of examples from current art and literature. Emily brought up the example from a book she is reading, and sharing a quote on how the author wrote with an artist, who said -- that's it! It is not about having a fixed idea of what you are about to create,
but shaping words and paint as they arrive. O'Hara compares this process in the poem. John brought up rage as one of the building blocks of art, to get beyond a varnished presentation of something presentable... yet aside from "terrible oranges..." the poem had little rage. Martin brought up the distinction between rage and the energy and motivation that comes with it. The poem is an art of assertion... work responds to the idea... Carmin cited the experimental GeVa where the work in progress eliminated one character. Just as the painting denied the essence of Sardines (which Mary said, she at that point had a real hankering for!)by using just giant letters... Martin: all humans have rage... not the motivation... energy... Emily ( I believe) brought up the first person who told us NO.
More on O'Hara triggers: NY School film: Painters Painting. Tom Wolfe: The Painted Word. New Art City... Untitled (movie)
(1971)
We ended by reading the 5 i poems. And what if they weren't called "i poems" --
would that change how we read them? I asked each person to pick their favorite.
So... trying again.
The Courtesy of the Blind -- by Wislawa Szymborska
The Short Answer –John Ashbery
excerpt from an interview with John Ashbery that tells about Frank O’Hara and Auden
Why I am not a Painter – Frank O’Hara
5 i poems
**
We read again "The Courtesy of the Blind" and the discussion embraced both the poem, references to blindness ranging from Corinthians "for now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face..." and Acts, "and immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales", Amazing grace to general considerations about "the blind".
As ever, it is helpful to sort through subjective associations by close examination of the poem. Is the tone the same in the title and the penultimate stanza where it is repeated? Is there a note of irony, perhaps a comment not about the blind, but a comment about a poet who is reading to a public of blind people, and suddenly aware
of images provided in poetry -- two careful quatrains, and then an enumeration of details he'd like to skip -- but does not in two stanzas of five, much longer lines.
We don't have the original Polish, but it would be probable that the last two stanzas would resonate in the original as they do in English -- the penultimate stanza is formal as opposed to conversational (one wouldn't say" hey, great is the courtesy of the blind" and in the final stanza, we are left with the mystery of the "unseen autograph". Each participant brought a different angle which reflected a slant sense of autobiography on how each individual understood the poem --was it presumption on the part of the speaker that "blind people don't get what they can't know by sight", or enthusiastic hyperbole, or perhaps a way of looking at poetry, which is a way to bring music to language when read out loud, a way to bring an emotional connection which is beyond the "meaning" or content of images.
Just as the line "the naked stranger standing in the half-shut door" in the Szymborska poem elicited some laughter, so did many lines in the Ashbery poem for instance:
Because if it's boring //
in a different way, that'll be interesting too.
That's what I say.
In both cases, I wonder if the source of the laughter was more like having a sneak, surprise view that allows the poem to mirror a part of ourselves we might not have considered recently. Last week, after reading the Ashbery, Marcie offered the comparison of walking through a cocktail party and overhearing pieces of conversation
which gives a sense of disjointed and out of context flow. It reminded Sandra of dealing with people stricken by Alzheimers. Whether surrealistic tomfoolery, or a dream viewing reality (or it that our reality IS the dream?) there were spaces in the poem where people could hang on to a sense of understanding something. Marcie called on the quote from the Ashbery interview in the Paris Review, "I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you're not going to alienate and hurt him".
Ashbery is mindful of how he plays with us. The big question, "how do you know what is" brought forth many fine points from physicists-- "why does it appear that there is something..." "objects are just cast from other ends of the universe, the shadow is the reality"; Don referred to Freeman Dyson "What can you really know" NY Rev of
Books (11/8/12) p.18 -- a review of Jim Holt's "Why does the world
exist?: an existential detective story." John suggested that the first sentence is the short answer to the question... what is consciousness.
Perhaps to get to the "point" of the short answer, one needs to write a poem like this, which will allow meanings to mushroom, until the lightbulb goes off.
..
The next poem by O'Hara, "why I am not a painter" brought up a multitude of examples from current art and literature. Emily brought up the example from a book she is reading, and sharing a quote on how the author wrote with an artist, who said -- that's it! It is not about having a fixed idea of what you are about to create,
but shaping words and paint as they arrive. O'Hara compares this process in the poem. John brought up rage as one of the building blocks of art, to get beyond a varnished presentation of something presentable... yet aside from "terrible oranges..." the poem had little rage. Martin brought up the distinction between rage and the energy and motivation that comes with it. The poem is an art of assertion... work responds to the idea... Carmin cited the experimental GeVa where the work in progress eliminated one character. Just as the painting denied the essence of Sardines (which Mary said, she at that point had a real hankering for!)by using just giant letters... Martin: all humans have rage... not the motivation... energy... Emily ( I believe) brought up the first person who told us NO.
More on O'Hara triggers: NY School film: Painters Painting. Tom Wolfe: The Painted Word. New Art City... Untitled (movie)
(1971)
We ended by reading the 5 i poems. And what if they weren't called "i poems" --
would that change how we read them? I asked each person to pick their favorite.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Poems for October 22
Poems for October 22
In the October 2012 issue of Poetry, Wiman shares his task of “reading a century” and selecting poems from the last 100 years. What makes a poem memorable – and what helps it “last”? What helps the reader to navigate a poem, enjoy the puzzles, or conversely, give up in desparation? Below is a selection of poems to test, some relatively new, reflecting new experimentation, some relatively familiar in form, although perhaps novel in scope... Read what gives you pleasure and I look forward to hearing from you!
Without a Word – Richard Wakefield
Two Translitics of Louise Labé (16th C. French love sonnet #8: translitic – an experimental form of translation)
The Courtesy of the Blind -- by Wislawa Szymborska
The Short Answer –John Ashbery
excerpt from an interview with John Ashbery that tells about Frank O’Hara and Auden
Why I am not a Painter – Frank O’Hara
5 i poems
**
The discussion was disrupted after we read the Sibyl James.
People enjoyed the Wakefield, who unlike the Washington author of the Coyote poem last week offers THE way to pronounce it, albeit with a large dose of humor. What do we put in our "lexicon" and why? What is food, what is foe? What does an animal understand about us? We discussed how do we organize reality by words but not scent and the force of syntax moving through rhyme with no commas.
A little Robert Frost imitation cum humor in the last 7 lines: "If coyotes shrug away an unconcern/he did, and took up his unhurried gait./A hundred yards away I saw him turn/his head to give a last, dismissive look,/then glide without a sound the way he came,/begrudging me the little time he took/ to find that I was nothing he need name.
The idea of translitics takes translation into a different direction. What happens to 16th century Louise Labe's sonnets in a contemporary voice. The first imitated an imitative reference, keeping the sonnet form; the second, from the book "The White Junk of Love Again" by Sibyl James concentrates on the voice of the original poet, not the form, and somewhat regarding the theme, but certainly capturing a sensual unconventionality. An example:
So don’t ask me how I am,
just hand that ragged girl in the gutter
roses, and watch her salt smile,
laughing like all that red must hurt.
the speaker's "salt smile" is a new way of saying "smile through tears";contrast of red: ragged and roses and rhyme girl/hurt.
There's a blues song feel to lines like "Love loves changes, leads me/on a leash. Some days so choked/I get beyond this ache like breathing.
the sun turns to "that hand/pulling my face close, that old heartbreak/unfolding like a creased schedule of trains.".
Interspersed in the translitics are poems which are totally original based on the overall character of the poem sequence, the Labe persona and interplay of James/Labe voices. They grow out of wanting to speak out on other side of her life than love.
But do they? For instance 05.
If I owned it, I could burn this house.
I'd tie firehoses into knots
so the water wouldn't come, let the flames
lick up like State Farm money. They'd buy
a ticket somewhere, rent any room
in any interchangeable hotel.
I'm sick of this suburban, off-the-hub-of life.
I'll rent a flat in Paris, talk literary in cafes.
I'll make my heart a map and change direction
easy as a weather-vane in love with wind.
Sunrise will bring strong London tea, half cream,
and set behind the mariachis in my plaza.
I'll love the one with dark eyes.
I'll throw camellias from my window.
I hear Beijing, Oaxaca, names
like night trains in my head,
that hard sweet rhythm like good-bye.
In the October 2012 issue of Poetry, Wiman shares his task of “reading a century” and selecting poems from the last 100 years. What makes a poem memorable – and what helps it “last”? What helps the reader to navigate a poem, enjoy the puzzles, or conversely, give up in desparation? Below is a selection of poems to test, some relatively new, reflecting new experimentation, some relatively familiar in form, although perhaps novel in scope... Read what gives you pleasure and I look forward to hearing from you!
Without a Word – Richard Wakefield
Two Translitics of Louise Labé (16th C. French love sonnet #8: translitic – an experimental form of translation)
The Courtesy of the Blind -- by Wislawa Szymborska
The Short Answer –John Ashbery
excerpt from an interview with John Ashbery that tells about Frank O’Hara and Auden
Why I am not a Painter – Frank O’Hara
5 i poems
**
The discussion was disrupted after we read the Sibyl James.
People enjoyed the Wakefield, who unlike the Washington author of the Coyote poem last week offers THE way to pronounce it, albeit with a large dose of humor. What do we put in our "lexicon" and why? What is food, what is foe? What does an animal understand about us? We discussed how do we organize reality by words but not scent and the force of syntax moving through rhyme with no commas.
A little Robert Frost imitation cum humor in the last 7 lines: "If coyotes shrug away an unconcern/he did, and took up his unhurried gait./A hundred yards away I saw him turn/his head to give a last, dismissive look,/then glide without a sound the way he came,/begrudging me the little time he took/ to find that I was nothing he need name.
The idea of translitics takes translation into a different direction. What happens to 16th century Louise Labe's sonnets in a contemporary voice. The first imitated an imitative reference, keeping the sonnet form; the second, from the book "The White Junk of Love Again" by Sibyl James concentrates on the voice of the original poet, not the form, and somewhat regarding the theme, but certainly capturing a sensual unconventionality. An example:
So don’t ask me how I am,
just hand that ragged girl in the gutter
roses, and watch her salt smile,
laughing like all that red must hurt.
the speaker's "salt smile" is a new way of saying "smile through tears";contrast of red: ragged and roses and rhyme girl/hurt.
There's a blues song feel to lines like "Love loves changes, leads me/on a leash. Some days so choked/I get beyond this ache like breathing.
the sun turns to "that hand/pulling my face close, that old heartbreak/unfolding like a creased schedule of trains.".
Interspersed in the translitics are poems which are totally original based on the overall character of the poem sequence, the Labe persona and interplay of James/Labe voices. They grow out of wanting to speak out on other side of her life than love.
But do they? For instance 05.
If I owned it, I could burn this house.
I'd tie firehoses into knots
so the water wouldn't come, let the flames
lick up like State Farm money. They'd buy
a ticket somewhere, rent any room
in any interchangeable hotel.
I'm sick of this suburban, off-the-hub-of life.
I'll rent a flat in Paris, talk literary in cafes.
I'll make my heart a map and change direction
easy as a weather-vane in love with wind.
Sunrise will bring strong London tea, half cream,
and set behind the mariachis in my plaza.
I'll love the one with dark eyes.
I'll throw camellias from my window.
I hear Beijing, Oaxaca, names
like night trains in my head,
that hard sweet rhythm like good-bye.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Poems for October 15
In the poem "Song of Myself," Walt Whitman wrote of a writer's need to embrace apparently irreconcilable points of view: "Do I contradict myself?" wrote Whitman. "Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes)."
Is this a good measuring stick for a poem? We'll discuss:
Big Game -- by Brenda Shaughnessy
Coyote – by Kathleen Flennikan
Constantly Risking Absurdity -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
When Ecstasy is Inconvenient by Lorine Niedecker
two poems by Rebecca Hoogs: Self-Portrait as San Carlito
Pseudomorph
In an interview posted by Poets.org this year, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23132
Brenda Shaughnessy states that she sees the role of the
poet as someone “whose role it is to push back against anti-intellectualism, anti-activism, and passivity in general. The purpose of this pushing back is to show that there are always infinite sides to a story, amazing unimagined perspectives on any narrative, and no limit to how weird and wild and unexpected our language and its meanings can get.”
Certainly, Big Game, (—after Richard Brautigan's "A Candlelion Poem) captures a multi-versed world involving images of fire, memories of childhood, a nesting of images and containment. Whether fire as ideas, life, family hearth, spirit, there is something about “turning a candle inside out” that makes no sense in “real time” and yet, (not yet dead, yet dead) the image of getting to the heart of the candle, the wick of things seems clear. The clichés and rhyming, the small aside of the ripped paper bags provided momentary distraction, but the ending line points out how we do “live in our heads”, not necessarily aware of what plays at the edge of shadows.
Coyote, by contrast, was a very accessible poem, although not simple. How are we defined? by linguistics, pronunciation, region, our reputation? What is that part of ourselves we cannot name – and if unnameable, what is our relation to it? The use of “I” and “you” is open enough to allow several interpretations – “you” as name, in one place,
and name in another – who is “you”? “You live outside language or memory” is followed by “changing your name” and “interchangeable homes” laced by the strong words: abandon, betrayal. At the end, “ I am become you” supports “change”. Crafting delights include the enjambment of “gaze” after the sibilant of ‘silver, slope-shouldered form” which support images cast upon the coyote as outcast, not trusted. And yet, who has betrayed what in terms of building cities?
Because we enjoyed Ferlinghetti’s “Dog” last week so much, another from “Coney Island of the Mind”, “Constantly Risking Absurdity” mimics in form, the balancing act involved
with the creative process. What better description of poet than acrobat in these lines:
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
the double p’s, t’s, st’s, d’s balance the actions of the “supposed advance” (starts and ends with “s” sounds) towards Beauty (doubling the “ty” with gravity) who also embraces risk – and there is no guarantee the poet will catch her.
Although the risk taking is told in a clownish way and reminded people of "Send in the Clowns" (song by Stephen Sondheim from the 1973 musical A Little Night Music, an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer ...) the subject itself is far from playful.
“When Ecstasy is Inconvenient” by Lorine Niedecker is an equally intriguing title, followed by three rather enigmatic stanzas which cause a long pause whistling “so...”
until one remembers that Niedecker in the poem last week was explaining her work of “condensing”. Given the “wildfire” of ecstasy, we thought of both Shaughnessy and the Ferlighetti, which could be reduced to “metapoems” – that inspiration, like madness
sketched by the only adverb in the poem, “amazedly” must be contained, held in. David noted it contrasted well with Emily Dickinson’s inebriation in “I taste a liquor never brewed”. I brought up Viktor Frankl (author of Man’s Search for Meaning) who stated that it is in the pause between the stimulus and our response that we make our choice.
In the last stanza, it is the poet who chooses to embrace the madness, where “keep” it
has a double entendre: both safeguarded, but also contained as if within a castle keep.
The Linda Pastan poem allows a long pause between the question in the title
and what we called “the zapper” or the restatement of the title, where the understanding of “dark” is equated with sadness, arrived at only by considering the moon, the white and black of creation, crows, ebony. Our discussion remarked on the patient dialogue with the title, with associations with the gibbous moon where you can see the dark part, and Elaine’s memory of seeing the moon, (as witness in the poem) as
a wide-mouthed face looking aghast.
The two Rebecca Hoogs poems were delightful, and seemed to explore the process of writing, the fear of not having anything meaningful to say. Do you know where San Carlito is? Is that where writers go when they feel writer’s block? Or is it simply Self-Portrait as ...a sacred place? Like Ray Bradbury’s electronic bees in “Fahrenheit 451” the repetition of “um” the summons and refutation of being summed up, create “seashell-ear-thimbles” with homonyms, slant rhyme.
The second poem by Hoogs, Pseudomorph, seems to be also a self-portrait, like the second wife of the mysterious Rebecca in du Maurier’s mystery novel. Marvellous plays on language, with the b’s of beak, bubble, blurry, so-so-blurb on the back of a book,
which wrap like octopus arms on the “thin skin” of wearing a name and being in the thankless position of ink-tank without a think.
We left, feeling the gratitude resulting from good discussion, which allows a closer read,
and appreciation for the complexity of the poems.
Is this a good measuring stick for a poem? We'll discuss:
Big Game -- by Brenda Shaughnessy
Coyote – by Kathleen Flennikan
Constantly Risking Absurdity -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
When Ecstasy is Inconvenient by Lorine Niedecker
two poems by Rebecca Hoogs: Self-Portrait as San Carlito
Pseudomorph
In an interview posted by Poets.org this year, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23132
Brenda Shaughnessy states that she sees the role of the
poet as someone “whose role it is to push back against anti-intellectualism, anti-activism, and passivity in general. The purpose of this pushing back is to show that there are always infinite sides to a story, amazing unimagined perspectives on any narrative, and no limit to how weird and wild and unexpected our language and its meanings can get.”
Certainly, Big Game, (—after Richard Brautigan's "A Candlelion Poem) captures a multi-versed world involving images of fire, memories of childhood, a nesting of images and containment. Whether fire as ideas, life, family hearth, spirit, there is something about “turning a candle inside out” that makes no sense in “real time” and yet, (not yet dead, yet dead) the image of getting to the heart of the candle, the wick of things seems clear. The clichés and rhyming, the small aside of the ripped paper bags provided momentary distraction, but the ending line points out how we do “live in our heads”, not necessarily aware of what plays at the edge of shadows.
Coyote, by contrast, was a very accessible poem, although not simple. How are we defined? by linguistics, pronunciation, region, our reputation? What is that part of ourselves we cannot name – and if unnameable, what is our relation to it? The use of “I” and “you” is open enough to allow several interpretations – “you” as name, in one place,
and name in another – who is “you”? “You live outside language or memory” is followed by “changing your name” and “interchangeable homes” laced by the strong words: abandon, betrayal. At the end, “ I am become you” supports “change”. Crafting delights include the enjambment of “gaze” after the sibilant of ‘silver, slope-shouldered form” which support images cast upon the coyote as outcast, not trusted. And yet, who has betrayed what in terms of building cities?
Because we enjoyed Ferlinghetti’s “Dog” last week so much, another from “Coney Island of the Mind”, “Constantly Risking Absurdity” mimics in form, the balancing act involved
with the creative process. What better description of poet than acrobat in these lines:
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
the double p’s, t’s, st’s, d’s balance the actions of the “supposed advance” (starts and ends with “s” sounds) towards Beauty (doubling the “ty” with gravity) who also embraces risk – and there is no guarantee the poet will catch her.
Although the risk taking is told in a clownish way and reminded people of "Send in the Clowns" (song by Stephen Sondheim from the 1973 musical A Little Night Music, an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer ...) the subject itself is far from playful.
“When Ecstasy is Inconvenient” by Lorine Niedecker is an equally intriguing title, followed by three rather enigmatic stanzas which cause a long pause whistling “so...”
until one remembers that Niedecker in the poem last week was explaining her work of “condensing”. Given the “wildfire” of ecstasy, we thought of both Shaughnessy and the Ferlighetti, which could be reduced to “metapoems” – that inspiration, like madness
sketched by the only adverb in the poem, “amazedly” must be contained, held in. David noted it contrasted well with Emily Dickinson’s inebriation in “I taste a liquor never brewed”. I brought up Viktor Frankl (author of Man’s Search for Meaning) who stated that it is in the pause between the stimulus and our response that we make our choice.
In the last stanza, it is the poet who chooses to embrace the madness, where “keep” it
has a double entendre: both safeguarded, but also contained as if within a castle keep.
The Linda Pastan poem allows a long pause between the question in the title
and what we called “the zapper” or the restatement of the title, where the understanding of “dark” is equated with sadness, arrived at only by considering the moon, the white and black of creation, crows, ebony. Our discussion remarked on the patient dialogue with the title, with associations with the gibbous moon where you can see the dark part, and Elaine’s memory of seeing the moon, (as witness in the poem) as
a wide-mouthed face looking aghast.
The two Rebecca Hoogs poems were delightful, and seemed to explore the process of writing, the fear of not having anything meaningful to say. Do you know where San Carlito is? Is that where writers go when they feel writer’s block? Or is it simply Self-Portrait as ...a sacred place? Like Ray Bradbury’s electronic bees in “Fahrenheit 451” the repetition of “um” the summons and refutation of being summed up, create “seashell-ear-thimbles” with homonyms, slant rhyme.
The second poem by Hoogs, Pseudomorph, seems to be also a self-portrait, like the second wife of the mysterious Rebecca in du Maurier’s mystery novel. Marvellous plays on language, with the b’s of beak, bubble, blurry, so-so-blurb on the back of a book,
which wrap like octopus arms on the “thin skin” of wearing a name and being in the thankless position of ink-tank without a think.
We left, feeling the gratitude resulting from good discussion, which allows a closer read,
and appreciation for the complexity of the poems.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Imagism
Poetry based on description (image) rather than theme... worked with condensing image to capture the energy behind an ordinary object, a scene, or how we see a scene, or meta-poem opened up new ways of writing.
I'm enjoying Al Filreis' course, and today shared what I learned about the imagists.
At the same time, writing a highly personal poem filled with emotion, perhaps spiced by vernacular speech has a ring of truth that the "cerebral" mind-set of imagism discards for a spare, hard and clear language.
Emily Dickinson would say, self is nomadic, each poem containing several selves,
but what is this self?
And how does one bring a personal experience to a universal level?
**
I enjoyed meeting with Borderliners today, all 10 of us present to share poems and I had offered to give a 10 minute presentation on Imagism based on what I have learned from Filreis and using some of his examples:
Sea Rose by H.D.
The Encounter by Ezra Pound
Grandfather (advised me) by Lorine Niedecker
Imagine now, the shared 10 minutes,
4.5 minutes: H.D.: people read "Sea Rose". I presented semantics of sound, as in "stint of petals"
or "drip such acrid fragrance"; the multiple correspondences; the way the rose is not a cliche in multiple, overused bathrobes, but an autobiography of style; motion vs. stasis, a spotlight on negative adjectives, the anaphor coupled with passive verbs:
you are caught; you are flung; you are lifted...with a cubist effect. Concrete image with invigorated language... energized. How the form condenses in the final stanza.
2.5 minutes: Ezra Pound: people read "The Encounter". Showed me the handshake and shared how it feels. a five line story, I, incapable of doing; She daring. Irony of "new" morality and "talking the talk" which is as empty as the "old".
3 minutes: Lorinne Niedecker: people read. pointed out syllable count of each line, how no line exceeds 4 syllables, so the pigden English 2nd stanza line 2 cannot have an article, possessive or even "this". How the layout of the poem is not condensed, but filled with white space and no period at the end -- a lifework of the creative process, so different from the stacked 3 syllable sound of Grandfather's advice. Lorine's 3 syllable work "and condense" is what she continues to learn.
Phew!
I made up a little quiz on Ezra Pound: shared Filreis' comments on "In a station of the Metro"
there is no cause and effect but the immediacy of pink spots of beauty on black.
Do check out this Modern Contemporary Poetry course! I've enjoyed immensely the two writing assignments so far, the quizzes, the sense of participating in the videos.
30,000 people are involved, which is staggering, and yet not.
https://class.coursera.org/modernpoetry/wiki/view?page=syllabus
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
poems for Oct. 8
We will start out discussion with Big Game -- by Brenda Shaughnessy
—after Richard Brautigan's "A Candlelion Poem" ( I copy it below)
(*http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelevin/3884546393/
(Turn a candle inside out
and you’ve got the smallest
portion of a lion standing
there at the edge of the
Shadows)
1. Cid Corman: 5 short poems (about a minute in length TOTAL! )
We aren’t even lost
Assistant
The Coming of Age
It isn’t for want
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Corman.php : Look for the titles under A separate set features six more of Corman's poems:
2. Lorine Niedecker: Grandfather advised me
3. Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
4. Gray Room by Wallace Stevens
5. Young Woman at a Window, William Carlos Williams
A look at imagism, thanks to Al Filreis' course on Modern Contemporary Poetry.
What imagist principles do these poems share? Listening to Cid Corman, you can HEAR the importance of the voice choosing how to accent words, but in general, sonics are not the concern of the Imagists. Rather, the structure of the form mirrors the ideas in the imagist manifesto: exact words, not decorative; new cadences; emphasis on particulars, and hard, clean vocabulary and condensation, freedom for choice of subject...
**
Cid Corman: Small poems = lengthy conversations! We wondered if the five poems (we listened to Enuresis as well) were not rather one poem, each one continuing a snapshot thought. Eunuresis: John had the idea of parents as "twin towers" provoking a terrorist reaction... or perhaps the image of the Tower of Babel -- something we seek to build to reach beyond our selves... which could fit a responses of wondering what parts we show. What is puzzling is the opening statement, "we aren't even lost" juxtaposed with the impossibility of being found. Carmin commented that "found/ down" stabilizes idea that tree is calm, but we aren’t.. Where are we? Who are we compared to visible trees rooted in one place? From there, we sprang into a discussion including the idea of humans as souls, lost sheep, and Auden's view that a poem is not about ending on one resulting meaning.
Not having seen the poems, the line breaks on all of them could be after 5 syllables.
In the case of the first one, it would be 5 lines of 5. The next one, "turn the page" picks up the idea of "retrieving the leaf". Jim helped us remember that syllable counts will be different in the South -- if you say "then" (I realized then -- line 4 of "Coming of Age" ) you have 2 + syllables in "then"... re-e-al-i-e-z'd has 6... The almost zen-like message of "be here, be in the now" is not about living in the past, winning/losing but what we stand to lose if we aren't in touch with who we ARE. "It isn't for want" addresses both desire, or need, as well as addressing the words we say, the important words, the words WE think are important for the OTHER, expressed by "You" (and who is you?), and the poem hinges on the BUT.
What is this relationship we want to hang on to -- and what is the difference between stressing YOU vs. ARE... the more you think about it, the richer it gets, and the harder it is to find the words to express it. For Cid, the urgency is not about the form or the content, or self-expression. What’s important is connection and response back "I can only be here, if you are here.
Niedecker on the other hand makes her point -- the looping endlessness of form, to talk about her work of condensing. Grandfather's regularity in 3 syllable lines; the response "I learned" in 2 syllables, implying a larger complement of what "it" is; the missing article in "to sit at desk". Mention was made how in British English one can say "in hospital"... many of us enjoyed her humor-- for instance -- for the trade she’s learning – no lay off.
Dog, by Ferlinghetti is a delightful demonstration of how a poem can start off in a regular pace with a lined up starting place each line, like a dog on a leash, which eventually disintegrates into fragmented lines describing the "real live / barking / democratic dog!
A connection with Bob Dylan in 1970, perhaps? http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/if-dogs-run-free; if you don't understand me, am I talking to myself? and how bees depend on each other as a social unit to survive.
The Gray Room is a Stevens gem with a killer last lines, whose telling line is not characteristic of him. The poem works like an elegant still life and the power of stillness; one imagines an oriental fan, and John brought up Yasunari Kawagata
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasunari_Kawabata, the Japanese 1968 Nobel Prize writer.
We will start next week with the Shaughnessy as not everyone had the copy with them.
—after Richard Brautigan's "A Candlelion Poem" ( I copy it below)
(*http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelevin/3884546393/
(Turn a candle inside out
and you’ve got the smallest
portion of a lion standing
there at the edge of the
Shadows)
1. Cid Corman: 5 short poems (about a minute in length TOTAL! )
We aren’t even lost
Assistant
The Coming of Age
It isn’t for want
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Corman.php : Look for the titles under A separate set features six more of Corman's poems:
2. Lorine Niedecker: Grandfather advised me
3. Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
4. Gray Room by Wallace Stevens
5. Young Woman at a Window, William Carlos Williams
A look at imagism, thanks to Al Filreis' course on Modern Contemporary Poetry.
What imagist principles do these poems share? Listening to Cid Corman, you can HEAR the importance of the voice choosing how to accent words, but in general, sonics are not the concern of the Imagists. Rather, the structure of the form mirrors the ideas in the imagist manifesto: exact words, not decorative; new cadences; emphasis on particulars, and hard, clean vocabulary and condensation, freedom for choice of subject...
**
Cid Corman: Small poems = lengthy conversations! We wondered if the five poems (we listened to Enuresis as well) were not rather one poem, each one continuing a snapshot thought. Eunuresis: John had the idea of parents as "twin towers" provoking a terrorist reaction... or perhaps the image of the Tower of Babel -- something we seek to build to reach beyond our selves... which could fit a responses of wondering what parts we show. What is puzzling is the opening statement, "we aren't even lost" juxtaposed with the impossibility of being found. Carmin commented that "found/ down" stabilizes idea that tree is calm, but we aren’t.. Where are we? Who are we compared to visible trees rooted in one place? From there, we sprang into a discussion including the idea of humans as souls, lost sheep, and Auden's view that a poem is not about ending on one resulting meaning.
Not having seen the poems, the line breaks on all of them could be after 5 syllables.
In the case of the first one, it would be 5 lines of 5. The next one, "turn the page" picks up the idea of "retrieving the leaf". Jim helped us remember that syllable counts will be different in the South -- if you say "then" (I realized then -- line 4 of "Coming of Age" ) you have 2 + syllables in "then"... re-e-al-i-e-z'd has 6... The almost zen-like message of "be here, be in the now" is not about living in the past, winning/losing but what we stand to lose if we aren't in touch with who we ARE. "It isn't for want" addresses both desire, or need, as well as addressing the words we say, the important words, the words WE think are important for the OTHER, expressed by "You" (and who is you?), and the poem hinges on the BUT.
What is this relationship we want to hang on to -- and what is the difference between stressing YOU vs. ARE... the more you think about it, the richer it gets, and the harder it is to find the words to express it. For Cid, the urgency is not about the form or the content, or self-expression. What’s important is connection and response back "I can only be here, if you are here.
Niedecker on the other hand makes her point -- the looping endlessness of form, to talk about her work of condensing. Grandfather's regularity in 3 syllable lines; the response "I learned" in 2 syllables, implying a larger complement of what "it" is; the missing article in "to sit at desk". Mention was made how in British English one can say "in hospital"... many of us enjoyed her humor-- for instance -- for the trade she’s learning – no lay off.
Dog, by Ferlinghetti is a delightful demonstration of how a poem can start off in a regular pace with a lined up starting place each line, like a dog on a leash, which eventually disintegrates into fragmented lines describing the "real live / barking / democratic dog!
A connection with Bob Dylan in 1970, perhaps? http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/if-dogs-run-free; if you don't understand me, am I talking to myself? and how bees depend on each other as a social unit to survive.
The Gray Room is a Stevens gem with a killer last lines, whose telling line is not characteristic of him. The poem works like an elegant still life and the power of stillness; one imagines an oriental fan, and John brought up Yasunari Kawagata
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasunari_Kawabata, the Japanese 1968 Nobel Prize writer.
We will start next week with the Shaughnessy as not everyone had the copy with them.
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