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.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
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.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
poems for October 1
Celebration by Denise Levertov- (October 24, 1923 – December 20, 1997)
Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain by Louis Simpson (1923-2012)
The President Flies Over by Patricia Smith (b. 1955- )
Enuresis by Cid Corman (June 29, 1924 – March 12, 2004)
Fado by Jane Hirshfield (b. 1953 --) (Fado: A type of popular Portuguese song, usually with a melancholy theme and accompanied by mandolins or guitars.)
Big Game -- by Brenda Shaughnessy (b. 1970- )
A sampler of poems that echo Dickinson's formal "ecstasy" and Whitman's exhuberance from last week; a glance at modernist technique...
I couldn’t help smiling at Levertov’s brilliance – the musical images – the “exceptional”expressed as youthful (green, young virtuoso, prodigy), how the wind provides an oceanic chant,
and all is light, song and sacred, with a touch of Wales providing a backdrop contrast of “reasonable gloom”... It tickles the heart with a gladness of being! Enviable writing! We’re just entering the energetic days of Fall – where the “sh” of shadows contrasts the sound of the other “sh”words (sharpest/oceanic/shine/impatient) which are far from any hush – rather, part of the bright, brassy song such brilliance plays. A great poem to read to snap one’s thoughts to gratitude for living! David pointed out the form as an inverted sonnet -- the volta arriving in the split line after the sestet, where on the 8th line one arrives at "blessing" and the festive rite. A poem evoking "how Green was my Valley" -- the excitement of a Welsh "Breakout" when everything stops, to celebrate the sudden arrival of sun.
Simpson's poem seems a reverse celebration, contrasting Whitman's statue, and memory of Walt's exuberance with the parts of America we might prefer to ignore -- "used car lots", and fatigue of "light sick to death"and our fate, just like Greece and Rome,
is the future in ruins. The two exclamation points, after "cancelled" and ruins,
scissor in an extra shadow of irony, and turn to the final stanza where we can imagine red. We discussed these lines at length as well as "the housewife who knows she's dumb". Dumb, as mute? as the "advertisement" of the myth of the ideal blond,
just as Walt did not "prophesise" but "advertise" ? Note how Simpson speaks for all poets, through Walt, happy at being found out, -- comfortable with the image of
"a crocodile in wrinkled metal" -- loafing -- as if to equate the role of the poet
to be the sly and dangerous animal lying in wait for the red of revolution --
is Italy, the country in the shape of the boot, dancing on Greece? the angel at the gate, perhaps ready to cast out Adam and Eve, imagines red, as Nancy pointed out, a stronger red than that actually painted, a red that has not happened yet -- leaving the reader to imagine what that might be.
David Michael offered a reference to Robinson Jeffers: we’re really ruining things – it will be OK if we get rid of people. Martin offered the optimism of seeing nature blossoming again in Chernobyl...
The Patricia Smith poem is one of a collection about hurricane Katrina, in her book, "Blood Dazzler" but the beauty of her poem is that it could be any President "flying over" -- passing by, one of
"My flyboys memorize flip and soar.
They’ll never swoop real enough
to resurrect that other country,
won’t ever get close enough to give name
to tonight’s dreams darkening the water.
**
It isn't only the president.. but all of us are at risk for memorizing "flip and soar"... how to turn away from the "other" and soar towards what looks to be "heaven". The discussion revolved around the 1% who are gaining by an astronomical
600%, leaving others behind... the hurricane is like a huge water balloon/elephant,
the last line in the poem " I understand that somewhere it has rained."
equivalent to reporting on a second hand report of the elephant, without ever naming it from trunk to tail. How do we respond to catastrophe? Do we reduce it to a report of rain? a rhetorical turn?
Cid Corman's Enuresis captures a different response to this being human
that of a child fearing punishment, and witnessing the "I am" in the terrible "slam" of the parents fighting. It made us grateful that we didn't have such catastrophe.
Jane Hirschfield's Fado, takes an approach, that embraces the magic of possibility with the hardship of reality. The prestidigitator (quick fingered magician) produces a dove from the quarter behind the girl's ear, and such amazement (comparing the two) then moves to another "half-stopped moment" to a woman in Portugal singing a Fado that balances, like copper bowls, the living with the song. Seamless mastery!
We read the Shaughnessy, but will discuss it next week!
Carmin sent me this afterwards: it reflected our discussion!
"There were a few references in today's poems of finding beauty where you are - a coal-dusty village, singing woman in wheelchair in Portugal, Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain angel in the gate, flowering plum, dances etc.
Though Luis Albert Urrea's books often are in a setting of poverty, displaced people, discrimination, with sometimes vulgar and ugly settings, he seems to find beauty in the people and places. One of my bookclub friends didn't like INTO THE BEAUTIFUL NORTH - "too many smells, too many fluids", she said. While this is true, lots of smells and fluids, how can it be otherwise with the people and locations he writes about?"
The following is from DOMPE DAYS, a short story in the book, BY THE LAKE OF SLEEPING CHILDREN.
Imagine this: a muscular storm came in during the last days, and as we drove into the Tijuana dump, we were greeted by an apocalyptic scene. Let me try to describe it. The dump, as you know, is cheek by jowl with the rangy home-built cemetery. In fact, many of the graves are partially covered by trash. The garbage used to be in the canyon about 150 feet deep; it is now a hill about 40 feet high. Above this hill is a seething crown of 10,000 gulls, crows, pigeons. But mostly gulls. Imagine, further, mud. Running yellow mud; brown, reddish, black wastewater mixed with dust, ashes and clay. The few graves with cement slabs over them glisten with the rain. The mud is a gray so dark it verges on black. The sky is raging. Knots of clouds speed east, far above the gulls, and the gulls rise so high that they seem an optical illusion; from the huge birds to nearly invisible specks in the sky, they seem to hang on wires, a mad museum display, held in place by the violent wind.
Now we drive in, and the muddy graves are pale blue and pale green and pale brown as their wooden crosses fade; the cement headstones are all white or streaked rainy gray. And from the hill of trash, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of plastic bags -- tan bags, blue bags, white supermarket bags, black trash bags, yellow bread wrappers and video store bags -- book paper, newspapers open like wings, ribbons of toilet paper, tissues like dancing moths, even half-dead balloons, are caught in the backdraft and are rising and falling in vast slow waves behind the hill, slow motion, a ballet in the air of the parti-colored landscape, looking like special effects, like some art department's million-dollar creation, Lucifer's lava lamp, silent ghostly, stately, for half a mile, turning in the air, rolling, looping.
And up top, exposed to the elements, the garbage is flying like a snowstorm.
........about 40 pages later he writes: There was nothing left here. Not a voice. I felt watched by shadows as I climbed out, hurried away from the traces of sorrow downwind of the city.
She concluded, "The phrases "optical illusion", "mad museum display", "some art department's million-dollar creation", "Lucifer's lava lamp" fit so well with the scene. I guess this is a pretty eerie beauty but maybe better than seeing only the dump."
I agree.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
poems for Sept. 24
A Supermarket in California – Allen Ginsberg
Whitman at Armory Square -- by M.C. Allan (published by Linebreak, Sept. 17)
a few lines from Whitman, Song of Myself
I taste a liquor never brewed -- Emily Dickinson
Spring and Fall – Gerard Manley Hopkins
Cello - by Dorianne Laux
Porch Swing in September by Ted Kooser
Inspired by the Filreis Modern Contemporary Poetry, a quick look at our American modernist stage-setters: how are they still alive? Does rhyme stop us from singing "all truths (that) wait in things" -- what makes a poem "successful" for you? Do you have expectations or come with an empty mind? When you make associations, are there judgements involved? Just as representational painting shows us something we might see and recognize, words paint both physical (sensory) and emotional experience.
How do such diverse poets do this-- and what contexts and philosophy do they reveal in so doing?
**
The first two poems reflect the ever-reaching influences of Whitman. As I shared with those present on 9/24, I am enjoying thoroughly the free on-line course offered by Al Filreis, U Penn, and faculty advisor of the Kelly center, called “Mod-Po” or Modern Contemporary American Poetry. (To see the endless FREE courses on-line: Re: https://www.coursera.org/courses
To see the Mod-Poetry course: https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpoetry
Whitman’s exhuberance can feel arrogant, until you consider his “democratic” understanding that we all have access to “truth” which waits in things. “In all people I see myself – none more and not one barleycorn and the fool less, and the good or bad, I say of myself, I say of them.” (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass). He identifies with a collective self, becomes the voice-piece of America in this role,
singing the vitality of a new nation. His enumerations, capturing the “blab of the pave”, his almost overwhelming celebration of the sensory and sensual self, opened a door for poetry, loosened from strict meter and rhyme, and nourished by experience, not thoughts.
Ginsberg captures the spirit – starting with the nourishment of supermarket, which spills into his own “blab of the pave” including Lorca by the watermelons. Almost a century later, Whitman is called “a lonely old grubber” which is a sharp contrast from what one called Whitman’s “playful lechery”. “Which way does your beard point tonight” in the penultimate stanza has a “we” which could be Ginsberg and Walt, or a larger we. The role of pronouns in Ginsberg’s poem allow an open-ness, characteristic of modern poetry to be more than one thing: “we” as reference to gay men/ gay people or a larger collective, including the reader...
The final image gives due homage to Whitman as “courage-teacher”, and leaves us with the finality of death... our own, and that of our country Whitman had once sung with such celebration. Which bank is smoking? The one of the living or the dead? And we are reminded of the river of forgetfulness, the final word, “Lethe”.
Certainly questions remain: what meanings does Ginsberg ascribe to the lost America of love? And you, the reader?
The next poem by M.C. Allen we read with Elaine reading the regular type, and the rest of us reading the italics as a chorus. The form of the poem could be a collage of two poems, the regular type as one, the italics as another, drawing on Whitman’s “The Wound Dresser”, although not quite. Chilling reminder of the Civil war, but also of the need for healing. Because the poem is a collage, open-ness of interpretation is not limited to a sexualizing of Whitman, but a more general call on his long-lined, confident poetry which can uplift the spirit, and a celebration of writing. Perhaps the threading of what was this way, is a reminder of what continues in the voice of the wounded.
The Dickinson poem uses an economy of meter, rhyme, a breathlessness of dashes which hint at what is not spoken, shifting metaphor, to fully embrace an earthly experience which transports the spirit. We discussed the capitalization of certain nouns, as one does in German, and the hymn-like rhyhms, where the beats alternate from 8 syllables to 6, except for the “tippled” penultimate line. Informed by Emerson, Emily’s introspection brings her to imagine a world of possibilities which leaves the reader to discover. Marcie summed it up as the “Omigod – sex with the air” on one of those days one feel exhilarated by the energy of a beautiful day. Emily spoke of a program in which experts have determined that Emily was quite the lush and “hit the bars of Amherst” at night.
There’s so much more to know about a person – such as the “meaning” of dashes rising up, or slanting down – all we can trust is the poem itself and the clues it provides.
On a personal note, I thoroughly enjoyed writing an essay on this charming poem, and reading other students’ essays as part of the Filreis course.
The Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring and Fall” was missing the final line:
“It is Margaret you mourn for” and some of the accent marks.
We agreed that wanwood would be “pale” wood and thought of the physical fall,
(Goldengrove, leafmeal, colder) juxtaposed with the fresh innocence of Margaret—
can one grieve loss in such a state? Perhaps the greatest loss, David suggested implied in the word “blight” is Man’s fall from grace, symbolized by being cast out of the Garden of Eden. We do not grieve that as much as watching a Margaret change from child to suffering adult.
Dorianne’s poem, Cello is a true chef-d’oeuvre. Three sentences, 2 ½ lines , 5 ½ lines, 7 ½ lines long. The lengthening of the lines of the repeated adjectives in “ish”, the accumulative sounds of the “dead music” juxtaposed with the “rosined bow sound of the living”. Like Hopkins’ “heart heard... ghost guessed”, it is up to us to shoulder our losses and departed loved ones.
Kooser’s sonnet, “Porch Swing in September” allows us to admire the detail of a spider’s work in the fulcrum of man-made swing and seasons, wind. The intricacy of each “world” is caught with sounds of wood, “soft vibrations of moths/the wasp tapping....”
I can’t think of a spider at work in morning on her dew-jeweled web without imagining
“time for the cool dewdrops to brush from her work” – each one reflecting both itself, the worlds we don’t usually see, and the web. Perfect imagery without any artifice that captures the sense of the ephemeral without hounding the reader about change.
Whitman at Armory Square -- by M.C. Allan (published by Linebreak, Sept. 17)
a few lines from Whitman, Song of Myself
I taste a liquor never brewed -- Emily Dickinson
Spring and Fall – Gerard Manley Hopkins
Cello - by Dorianne Laux
Porch Swing in September by Ted Kooser
Inspired by the Filreis Modern Contemporary Poetry, a quick look at our American modernist stage-setters: how are they still alive? Does rhyme stop us from singing "all truths (that) wait in things" -- what makes a poem "successful" for you? Do you have expectations or come with an empty mind? When you make associations, are there judgements involved? Just as representational painting shows us something we might see and recognize, words paint both physical (sensory) and emotional experience.
How do such diverse poets do this-- and what contexts and philosophy do they reveal in so doing?
**
The first two poems reflect the ever-reaching influences of Whitman. As I shared with those present on 9/24, I am enjoying thoroughly the free on-line course offered by Al Filreis, U Penn, and faculty advisor of the Kelly center, called “Mod-Po” or Modern Contemporary American Poetry. (To see the endless FREE courses on-line: Re: https://www.coursera.org/courses
To see the Mod-Poetry course: https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpoetry
Whitman’s exhuberance can feel arrogant, until you consider his “democratic” understanding that we all have access to “truth” which waits in things. “In all people I see myself – none more and not one barleycorn and the fool less, and the good or bad, I say of myself, I say of them.” (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass). He identifies with a collective self, becomes the voice-piece of America in this role,
singing the vitality of a new nation. His enumerations, capturing the “blab of the pave”, his almost overwhelming celebration of the sensory and sensual self, opened a door for poetry, loosened from strict meter and rhyme, and nourished by experience, not thoughts.
Ginsberg captures the spirit – starting with the nourishment of supermarket, which spills into his own “blab of the pave” including Lorca by the watermelons. Almost a century later, Whitman is called “a lonely old grubber” which is a sharp contrast from what one called Whitman’s “playful lechery”. “Which way does your beard point tonight” in the penultimate stanza has a “we” which could be Ginsberg and Walt, or a larger we. The role of pronouns in Ginsberg’s poem allow an open-ness, characteristic of modern poetry to be more than one thing: “we” as reference to gay men/ gay people or a larger collective, including the reader...
The final image gives due homage to Whitman as “courage-teacher”, and leaves us with the finality of death... our own, and that of our country Whitman had once sung with such celebration. Which bank is smoking? The one of the living or the dead? And we are reminded of the river of forgetfulness, the final word, “Lethe”.
Certainly questions remain: what meanings does Ginsberg ascribe to the lost America of love? And you, the reader?
The next poem by M.C. Allen we read with Elaine reading the regular type, and the rest of us reading the italics as a chorus. The form of the poem could be a collage of two poems, the regular type as one, the italics as another, drawing on Whitman’s “The Wound Dresser”, although not quite. Chilling reminder of the Civil war, but also of the need for healing. Because the poem is a collage, open-ness of interpretation is not limited to a sexualizing of Whitman, but a more general call on his long-lined, confident poetry which can uplift the spirit, and a celebration of writing. Perhaps the threading of what was this way, is a reminder of what continues in the voice of the wounded.
The Dickinson poem uses an economy of meter, rhyme, a breathlessness of dashes which hint at what is not spoken, shifting metaphor, to fully embrace an earthly experience which transports the spirit. We discussed the capitalization of certain nouns, as one does in German, and the hymn-like rhyhms, where the beats alternate from 8 syllables to 6, except for the “tippled” penultimate line. Informed by Emerson, Emily’s introspection brings her to imagine a world of possibilities which leaves the reader to discover. Marcie summed it up as the “Omigod – sex with the air” on one of those days one feel exhilarated by the energy of a beautiful day. Emily spoke of a program in which experts have determined that Emily was quite the lush and “hit the bars of Amherst” at night.
There’s so much more to know about a person – such as the “meaning” of dashes rising up, or slanting down – all we can trust is the poem itself and the clues it provides.
On a personal note, I thoroughly enjoyed writing an essay on this charming poem, and reading other students’ essays as part of the Filreis course.
The Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring and Fall” was missing the final line:
“It is Margaret you mourn for” and some of the accent marks.
We agreed that wanwood would be “pale” wood and thought of the physical fall,
(Goldengrove, leafmeal, colder) juxtaposed with the fresh innocence of Margaret—
can one grieve loss in such a state? Perhaps the greatest loss, David suggested implied in the word “blight” is Man’s fall from grace, symbolized by being cast out of the Garden of Eden. We do not grieve that as much as watching a Margaret change from child to suffering adult.
Dorianne’s poem, Cello is a true chef-d’oeuvre. Three sentences, 2 ½ lines , 5 ½ lines, 7 ½ lines long. The lengthening of the lines of the repeated adjectives in “ish”, the accumulative sounds of the “dead music” juxtaposed with the “rosined bow sound of the living”. Like Hopkins’ “heart heard... ghost guessed”, it is up to us to shoulder our losses and departed loved ones.
Kooser’s sonnet, “Porch Swing in September” allows us to admire the detail of a spider’s work in the fulcrum of man-made swing and seasons, wind. The intricacy of each “world” is caught with sounds of wood, “soft vibrations of moths/the wasp tapping....”
I can’t think of a spider at work in morning on her dew-jeweled web without imagining
“time for the cool dewdrops to brush from her work” – each one reflecting both itself, the worlds we don’t usually see, and the web. Perfect imagery without any artifice that captures the sense of the ephemeral without hounding the reader about change.
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