There is No Word by Tony Hoagland.
Last week, we discussed Hoagland's poem, published in 2012, The Word. It is interesting to compare the above poem, published a year later. Certainly, the same signature style is operative, the same skillful enjambments, the seemingly innocent threading in this case, of the function of a plastic sack, and a word, only to move on to larger considerations of how we treat friendship and language.
Judith provided us with this: Hottentotenpotentatentantentintenattentat or the aunt of a Hottentot potentate ink attack She explains she was brought up on Saki and this story of a stationery store proprietor and Prioress involving the hurling of an ink bottle and just this one word. She also included in her note to me, "the inimitable Clovis who remarked on the death of the fellow who taught Tobermory the cat— he was slain by irate elephant at the Dresden Zoological Gardens-- "if he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast, he deserved what he got."
How do we hold the weight of painful situations? Well... humor is one way. Hoagland goes beyond a certain wry irony as he describes in 3 tercets the stretching of a single plastic bag, replete with enjambed suspension between them. That comprises the first of only two sentences. The remaining 8 tercets and final couplet of the second sentence demonstrate a different "elastic capacity", first with the rhyme between the single "plastic" sack, and the fact there is no "single, unimpeachable word" in the next 2 tercets; 3 tercets about the friend, the awareness he has become an acquaintance, and a sense of relief they have reached "the end of pretense", and "to tell the truth" what he is really thinking about is gratitude for language.
What does language allow us to "hold"? When we say of a feeling "there are no words for it", indeed, there cannot be just one word. No word by itself can be part of a bigger connection, and can only plod the circumference of its island. Two bags would have held that milk. As for "it", how language moves, gives back hours, days, love, faith, misunderstandings, secrets... and that brilliant touch, all poured into it.
How to Hold the Heavy Weight of Now by Dana Levin: We don't know who "she" is, and perhaps the specifics don't matter, but without "the other" the transformation would not have happened. Poems that require a second reading, because something intrigues us, make us want to spend time with them to go beyond surface meaning. Indeed, the carrying leads us to let go, which contradicts the title's promise to show how to "hold the heavy weight of now". Some imagined the theatrical gestures, perhaps like yoga poses. The four em-dashes (first three stanzas and final line) resemble both lift-off platforms and landing places.
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour by Wallace Stevens: The title sounds pompous, and indeed, the poem has a dense and ponderous way of making pronouncement. What is it really about? Who might an "Interior Paramour" be? How do we blend interior and exterior, body/soul, become one whether individually or collectively? What brings light? Indeed Light opens the poem, repeats as a power, miraculous influence. Judith pinned down the nouns: room, shawl, candle, dwelling. Alone (single thing, single shawl) we are poor. If knowledge arranged the rendez-vous with light, there is still the fact that the highest candle is so high, as it lights the dark.
For me, I am intrigued, as I am sometimes with a modernist painting, where the pondering, questing, wondering is indeed a sense of a powerful imagination at work. I love the complexity of the title… and in this crazy world we live in, indeed… the idea of “inamorata” (being in love…) with goodness, with light,
Park Benches with Teeth by Mohammed El-Kurd: We sensed a carefully worked form for discordant and troubling times and brutalizing circumstances in Palestine. What transforms an anguished howl, into a powerful polished, honed poem ? The anaphors "I live by"... the repeated "not a... "; the imagery, the hiss underneath "tessellated under bridges and into performative priorities/ with hooded identities; the slice, scar, leash of wrists;
The poem seems to be making a plea for those so cruelly treated, for people in pain. Hopefully we feel like the daughter who heard this poem and said to her mother, "I feel sorry for their families". We agreed, whether abuser or abused, when there is abusive behavior everyone suffers.
At Rundel, Mike shared his poem, "Orb", just published in Rundelania. It fits perfectly-- how things come together because of gravity to make spheres.
Orbs
by Michael Yaworsky
Is it because there are three dimensions and gravity that there are spheres…. or is it because there are spheres we say that there are three dimensions and there must be gravity?
Link is here: www.rundelania.com If you go to Verse, you will see Mike Yaworski’s poem “Orb” (it does not repeat, only 2 stanzas as printed above) and five of mine. I invite writers to consider submitting for the next issue! https://rundelania.com/about/
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