Birthdays of Poets

Book Review by Joy Leftow: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer

2012-01-27T13:23:00.001-05:00

Book Review: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer

Reviewed by Joy Leftow

I first saw April Bulmer’s poem, “Mai Po,” on another poet’s website while browsing online looking through websites of other writers who had other commented on my work or glanced through my blog. The poem, “Mai Po,” touched me and brought together universal qualities of longing, sadness, the passing of time and personal search. I immediately googled April Bulmer, located her and told her I wanted to review her book, The Weight of Wings. Ms. Bulmer kindly forwarded a copy of this small but packed-with-valuables collection to editor Brad Eubanks and myself since he too was enthralled with her writing. The Weight of Wings is a mixture between a novel and a spiritual journey, written in poetic verse. First I read the book to myself, stopping and browsing along the journey. I paused to engage with the spiritual theme and read the small-but mighty book through to its end. To absorb more of the work and to examine how it sounded when read aloud I read it to a poetry co-conspirator. After reading several pages, I asked if he was bored. “No,” he said, he appreciated my reading and would I continue. Thus I completed my second reading.

Later I sat and examined the fine papyrus paper purposely frayed and roughened at the edges of this sixty-page manuscript, running my fingers across it. The feel and look of the paper made it feel sacred. I opened the book. I measured it as though its measurements would reveal its meaning. The frayed cover measured 5 ¼ x 5 ¾ inches and the pages within were 5 x 5 inches. It was typeset with Cochin, “a font named for a family of 17^th and 18^th century Parisian engravers.” [1] This made me feel the weight of time while experiencing a journey of verse.

Lulled into the rhythm and pace of the words I discovered a range of characters. I decided to list and outline each character to define where they fit in the text. Next, I realized there are over twenty characters and some reappear. The voices follow themselves or a member of their community.

It was there I stopped counting. I began concentrating on the threads that run through the prose. What connects all the characters is a personal relationship to their savior, “Most blessed of Women is Rosie, earthen vessel in whom Jesus now grows.”[2] Each character struggles to maintain their faith and purity while simultaneously trying to survive in a sometimes harsh, unforgiving environment where loss, pain and loneliness intertwine with passions and desires. They are either residents of a convent or live in a nearby religious center. Thus they are connected through their faith as well as their losses.

The first poem throws us right into the battle.

Mr. F. Johnson

I laid down by the little plot, my heart tethered to the stone.

And God fell upon me like a warm blanket, though I still

shivered in the cold.

I prayed early that evening. God my horsepower. For Him my

faith cantered, unreined. But your death, daughter, was a saddle

a dark weight; your body folded untidy as a map in the rumble

of the black coupe. Heart a compass, the needle spinning dizzy

till it stiffened north.

It is noteworthy that much of Bulmer’s poetry appears in theological reviews such as The Anglican Theological Review, as well as in feminist publications and anthologies. Some of her other works are, Spring Rain, Oh My Goddess, Holy Land, The Goddess Psalms, and A Salve for Every Sore, all published by the well-known Serengeti Press. Bulmer utilizes simple language that becomes complex and has layers of meanings hauntingly presented.

In an email Bulmer explains, “The mention of ‘bruised bone’ and ‘oracle’ in ‘Mai Po’ are references to ancient Chinese divination practice. These early people heated bones and tortoise shells to read the cracks and lines that appeared.” Bulmer visited the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto years ago and toured an exhibit of these inspiring spiritual relics.

Bulmer’s works encompass every man’s struggle between good and evil; she brings us back to basics. In a world where every bad deed is counted and dividends for rewards run steep, stakes are high. Brimstone and fire tactics often help the populace behave and survive. Putting your best foot forward is what’s expected although humanity has always struggled with issues such as greed or lust. These desires coincide with our desire to be good and do right.

Bulmer brings profound new meaning to our inner struggles and brings to light the uncertainty that the only reward we receive in this life is the confirmation that if we are good enough, we will enter the kingdom of God after death. Sometimes reaching for the light at the end of the tunnel seems useless when suffering and loss are all we know. Here may be the point. All of Bulmer’s works dance with the desire for the universal search for truth and righteousness while trying to survive the day in a human body with desires and needs. It gives the word guilt more power.

As I spread my wings though the poems, I was carried through a dream-like sequence of events, mixing eroticism and religion with hints of sexual behavior. In addition the characters always attempt to make sense of themselves and their struggles in a way they can understand.

I thought God so loved the Virgin, he himself stepped out of his

work pants, hung his belt on a nail. I wedded him in a bridal gown…

But God so loved me he sent Diamond. …

I trip on my way to chapel … The thorns

break my skin, my ankles and calves bleed. Diamond takes me

to his shed where he stores his tools and bags of loam, lays me

down on a burlap sack: a leak in the roof, a hymn gentle from

the chapel….A hot drink, eggs scrambled

over fire, crusty bread Diamond hacks from a loaf. When the

cinders die, shadows sweep the ashes.

When I got to “Annie,” I wondered if I was misunderstanding. I worried so that I finally wrote Bulmer and asked her if I was on point, raising several issues.

My new dog liked the smell of my yellow soap, thanked me

with kisses to the elbow, wrist and knee. He growled a little

when I clipped his nails and when I snipped at his dewclaw

he broke the skin on my left thigh. I bled.

He didn’t like it among the brooms and buckets, whined for hours.

He was asleep on the rag bag when I opened the door. I carried

him to the bedroom, his body warm against the sleeves of my

cotton night dress. We slept cheek by jowl.

At noon he stood at the window like a little man, wiped the dew

from the window pane and cried. It was the sheriff and a vigil of

town folk at the front door. They kicked at me with their hob-nailed

boots, struck me with shovels and frying pans. The sheriff shot my

dog--a weight he slung into a burlap bag and carried to the river.

Sunday, and no heaving and crying at church. All cheeks were dry.

But as the choir rose, I heard a high-pitched howl, a soulful baying

that swelled my heart to a full moon.

“Did they really kill the dog and beat the woman because the two had sex and they had to be punished?” I wrote her. Bulmer replied, “My fantasy worlds are a little bit eccentric (as you gathered in reading about the woman who slept with her dog). I have a low-key life. I don’t think anyone would be interested in reading about it. You highlighted the major themes of the book. Thank you for your keen reading.”

And my heart swelled to meet the moon and I too heard the cries of a dog dying for doing the forbidden when obviously a dog wouldn’t know better. I wondered too at the charity of letting Annie live. I figure they released her so she might repent her sins. I wondered how the townspeople knew what she and the dog had done.

I recommend all of Bulmer’s work heartily. It is not for the feint of heart--neither is it for prudes. I love the lilt of Bulmer’s words and how they continue to sing in my head, resonating long after the reading is done.

April Bulmer was born and raised in Toronto, but now lives in the small city of Cambridge, Ontario. She has published six books of poetry. Many of her poems deal with women and spirituality. She holds three Masters Degrees in Creative Writing, Religious Studies and Theological Studies. The prose poems that appear here are excerpts from her second book The Weight of Wings (Trout Lily Press, Stratford, 1997). Each piece in the collection deals with the spiritual life of a character in fictional Sweet Grass, Saskatchewan. April's newest manuscript is entitled "Women of the Cloth." To contact her and order books: aprilb@golden.net

Article first published as Book Review: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer on Blogcritics.

[1] Final page, text

[2] Mrs. Gross, page 11

2011-12-11T12:20:00.001-05:00

Amy King writes: A review once described my work as “moving between the registers of the fabulous and the mundane;” as I write, however, I don’t purposely aim to interlace tonalities – I amass, pile, and occasionally flatten as I beat my matter into text.

Poetry needs no one new party to lead it into the fraying future; if we’re to save the world, let’s raise a revolution as shapeshifters. In other words, this book is about metamorphosis through a radical cherishing. I am ravished by the world, aren’t you?

Please support Small Press Distribution - here.

~~~~

"Rarely have the nude and the cooked been so neatly joined” as in Amy King’s I Want to Make You Safe. If “us,” “herons,” and “dust” rhyme, then these poems rhyme. If that makes you feel safe, it shouldn’t. Amy King’s poems are exuberant, strange, and a bit grotesque. They’re spring-loaded and ready for trouble. Categories collapse. These are the new “thunderstorms with Barbie roots."
                                                                                               — Rae Armantrout

Vulnerability, fragility, and anxiety are all flushed out into the open here and addressed with such strong sound and rhythm that we recognize a resilient, defiant strength within them. King puts relentless pressure on forces seemingly beyond our reach and, in bringing them closer, exposes their own vulnerable centers. This is a poetry equally committed to language as a tool with social obligations and language as an art material obligated to reveal its own beauty. King’s language does both magnificently.
                                                                                                    — Cole Swensen

Amy King’s poems seem to encompass all that we think of as the “natural” world, i.e. sex, sun, love, rotting, hatching, dreaming, especially in the wonderful long poem “This Opera of Peace.” She brings these abstractions to brilliant, jagged life, emerging into rather than out of the busyness of living: “Let the walls bear up the angle of the floor,/Let the mice be tragic for all that is caged,/Let time’s contagion mar us/until spoken people lie as particles of wind.
                                                                                                    — John Ashbery

I love Amy King's smile in photos of Amy King, Amy King's exuberance and looping, bashing panache (flamboyant manner, reckless courage) in the poems of Amy King, I'm going to say Amy King every chance I get in this blurb to make you think "I gotta read me some Amy King," especially if you're "looking for anything/that will pull the cork, boil the blood/of displeasure," as only the poems of Amy King can in the world in which Amy King is King (and Queen).
                                                                                                     — Bob Hicok

The first poem I read by Amy King was "MEN BY THE LIPS OF WOMEN" and it struck me with a force I had previously felt on encountering masterworks by Lorca and Dylan Thomas. I won't live long enough to see if her poetry will continue to equal the magnificence of theirs, but the fact that she achieved it once (at least) proves to me it could.
                                                                                                      — Bill Knott

~~~~

Randall Radac aka John Lee Brook has a new book!

2011-06-24T13:48:00.004-04:00

Posting below by editor Joy Leftow, is a short interview with Randall Radac who has had poetry and art published in The Cartier Street Review.

http://www.headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=96

Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble is the best price. Amazon wants more than the price of the book to ship it.

JL: How did you came to write this book?

RR: After meeting some members of the Aryan Brotherhood in jail, I observed they are fascinatingly violent people with almost magnetic personalities. I decided to write a book about them after doing some research and discovering very little had been published about them.

JL: Radac, how bout some spice on this latest publication?

RR: The book is written under my pen name, John Lee Brook and it takes a close look at a White Supremacist Gang. The FBI has says, “In for life and out by death”, the Aryan Brotherhood known as “The most ferocious and notorious of any of the prison groups.”

As an ex-convict in close contact with the Aryan Brotherhood I've written a devastating exposé, revealing how the notorious white supremacist prison gang has become perhaps the most powerful criminal organization in America, an achievement much more remarkable considering that the majority of its members remain behind bars, and its infamous Commission—the folkloric threesome, Thomas ‘Terrible Tom’ Silverstein, Tyler ‘the Hulk’ Bingham and Barry ‘the Baron’ Mills—are kept in maximum-security solitary confinement, as the US government makes an open effort to subdue the organization by any means necessary.doctorradic@msn.com

JL: Any other little blurb, RR?

Yes, despite government efforts to curtail them, the Aryan Brotherhood continues to thrive. My book Blood In, Blood Out demonstrates how a combination of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, meditation, secret codes, brutal violence and sheer will enable its buried puppet masters to continue to tug at the strings of an organization at the forefront of the black market trade in drugs, arms and money laundering. In Blood In, Blood Out, John Lee Brook provides both an extensive overview of the Aryan Brotherhood and a thrilling look at its untold recent history.

About the Author:
John Lee Brook’s study of the white supremacy movement has led him to strange places, where he met hard men with strange beliefs. Blood In, Blood Out: The Violent Empire of the Aryan Brotherhood (Headpress Publishing/June 2011) is his first book about white supremacy.

Publisher: Headpress, June 2011
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1900486776
ISBN-13: 978-1900486774

To contact RR, write: johnleebrook@hotmail.com or doctorradic@msn.comjohnleebrook@hotmail.com

"I Read This": Poetry South 2010

2011-06-05T18:15:00.005-04:00

One of the many things I am grateful for is the New Pages website. I happen to live near the owners, Casey and Denise, and I have begun to read magazines they give to me in order to write a review. For my first effort, I read and wrote about the 2010 issue of Poetry South. It is 64 pages jammed with 49 lyric and narrative poems, among other things. My whole review comes to less than 400 words. If I were you, I'd grab a cup of coffee, enjoy the full review, and then read more reviews at New Pages.

Book Review - 39 Poems by Charles Butler

2011-03-24T13:34:00.001-04:00

Article first published as Book Review: 39 Poems by Charles Butler on Blogcritics.org

39 POEMS by Charles J. Butler

ISBN 978-0-9772718-8-7

Publication date 2010

74 pages

No Shirt Press, Brooklyn, NY

Reading through the 39 Poems brought to mind Hitchcock’s movie, The 39 Steps because each poem stretches the reader and the page towards the next poem and set of steps without explaining where he is going. Also the poems on the pages of the book are laid out in emulation of climbing up and down steps so that while reading I felt like I was skipping steps. Each poem relates to life’s struggles; the various ways love affects us and how meaningful respect is. He writes about everyday things moving us up and down steps lyrically and emotionally.

Butler describes how one can be oblivious to a murder and walk across bloodstains on our big city streets without recognizing them in the book’s first poem, Crimson Stroll. Suddenly while stepping over the red brown stains, the author recognizes it for what it is, seeing a stark vivid beauty of someone’s life bled out on the streets.

Someone’s life bled out

At your feet

Think on it

Times you bled

Times you made others bleed

Look on it

Big dark path on 8^th ave

Brooklyn side

in your way

look on it

the fuel that moves us all

dried out on a dirty sidewalk

who bled …

are they dead

look at it

a dark stain

it’s almost…

beautiful

a bit of Canada flashes up your neck

and ears

back in the world you move around it

and move on

wishing for cold rain

to wash away the stain human sin

most of all

your own

We’re all here – all human and suffering – and this is the grist for this author to describe how we’re all the same and different at the same time, but he wants to show us that we have the capacity to be and do more that drives us and of course this is what drives this poet to create poetry. The stains our lives create must contain beauty otherwise why do we exist? Butler’s struggle is to align himself with the humanity in all of us, despite the murder the chaos, the beauty the differences between rich and poor, black and white, and he struggles with it all, climbing up and down, retreating and coming to terms with wrongs and rights and even the grays and imperfections.

The problem is that our climbing stretching and reaching is never done. You go up you descend and then you begin all over again because that’s the way life is, it’s never done until you’re done - or dead and gone - is more like it - or if you’re a quitter. Butler is no quitter and no matter how far down he’s gone – he bounces back to reexamine his roots and the course of his life, fighting to stay in touch with his spiritual side. This spiritual side is at the root of Butler’s talent, as he controls his anger hurt and humiliation when he’s experienced racism. For any of you who have never experienced racism, normal is a good place to start to understand what it’s about when you get stopped on the street because of the color of your skin.

nature of the beast

now

I’m not gonna say I’ve lost

count o’the many times I’ve been blackstopped

but

it’s more than a few

remember

I’m 16

walkin’ on a bed-stuy street

goin’ noplace fast

blue n’ white rolls up on me

unis pile out …

nicely they ask me if I’m carryin’

a gun

nicely I say no

nicely

they ask if I would submit

to a search

mind you they don’t have

to ask me

a goddamn thing

and they know it

I know it

An’ the brother

watchin’ this

who wishes right now

he was

someplace else

knows

nicely

I say

go ahead

I can relate to this struggle and suffering. All my life as a Jew and especially in my childhood I was called a Christ killer. The recent advent of the Mel Gibson movie and his ensuing drunk arrest and slurred comment about Jews brought it home to me again. But this is a tactic of the upper echelon. They want to keep us all at each other’s throats so we will keep our busy bee status and keep making the rich richer. It’s a means of control and humiliation and it makes us hurt. Mr. Butler knows this hurt intimately and writes about it poignantly.

39 Poems cover a range of experiences; awareness of the haves and have-nots, racism, love, hurt, abandonment and loss, and more importantly the urge to understand and come to terms with it and explain what it’s all about. After all this everyday stuff is the mesh of our lives. The ability to sublimate sets humans apart from other species, to take our hurts and pain and transcend them for the greater good – to create beauty in ugliness is the work Mr. Butler attends to.

In DMV rag, Butler speaks for all of us who have ever been to the DMV.

We’re in the dmv now

Hundreds of black

And brown faces

some whites

all of them wanna be someplace else

but here we are …

it’s all mad

gotta be

half the world is on fire an’

the other is on line waiting for their number to be called

lookin’ for a place t’ sit

an empty seat

is like

fool’s gold

Don’t we all feel like this when we visit official offices, public school registration, social security, Medicaid, even the closed down US passport passport bureaus, and welfare’s the worst. I have a poem about it called, “Welfare’s Still A Bitch!”

The searching and questioning never stop just like in the movie The 39 Steps, there is always another side to examine to analyze understand and conquer. His poems speak to maturity and growth and show how youth and mistakes although unavoidable are only part of climbing and descending those steps, a poem for each step.

In word one baby, Butler explains why a writer writes.

why

write?

writing since he was eleven

thru good days

and dark times

the pain of living

the come hither call

of death

and madness inbetween

even hung ‘em up for a time

didn’t last

why write?

he’s free

Is the author describing himself here or is he speaking for everyone? We all know writers write about what they know and well, … if they write about what they don’t know … everyone knows that doesn’t work. Artists from time immemorial have been known to describe angst which often spurs their creative urges. Does every writer experience angst? I can’t speak for every artist. Many writers have spoken and written about their angst yet angst alone doesn’t make a man an artist. There is some other indistinguishable indefinable something that inspires a writer to create, that makes his writings stand out among others, something that prods him to spend his time writing while others commune, have sex, watch tv or do other things while writing remains a lonely task which takes time.

Words don’t miraculously appear on the page. Writing is what gives Butler the freedom he speaks of above. His words create a freedom that exists nowhere else around in our world and he helps the reader to feel it too. Through that freedom we see what he sees; a stark world filled with fertility and barrenness that provides us not only with a place to survive but a place to grow and thrive. The growth in Butler’s poetry and words inspires me too. I recommend 39 Poems sincerely and without any reservation.

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef - Bernard Alain - reviewed by Joy Leftow

2011-02-06T21:02:00.002-05:00

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef, a witty new chap that may be small but wallops a strong punch that will knock you silly and leave you begging for more.

The editor in me kept looking for that one line that needed help. I finally gave in to his sparse economy of language that flows with an unconscious rhythm and wry dry humor. So dry it made me thirst for more, and I read the entire 36-page chap in one setting that went more quickly than I liked because I couldn't stop reading and laughing. I chewed as much meat from those mammoth bones as I dared!

Congrats Alain, you made a big hit with me - and … what? You thought I’d leave it at that because we used to edit the same mag? Gimme a break. I laughed so hard my eyes teared up and I cried. Not once but several times over a couple of hours. The honesty is over the top handed to us on a pedestal. The chapbook's cover with its mammoth creatures mimic the poems. They are bigger than life and than all of us together. Thank his mom, Anatholie Alain for that, for keeping the organic life form emerging from Alain’s third eye blind.

The hallucinations
have started
The pain more severe
disturbances of the
heart
…
sitting in a dory
out east
not giving a rat’s ass

Only a poet (and sometime even poets don’t) know how to lay out the work so true to form that it remains poetically true to its sparseness and economic wording. He references other poets to let us know he wonders if he matches up, makes the cut or has he been circumcised like most of us. He experiments with sounds and placements of vowels instinctually letting the poem find its own roots and meaning. He lets the poem decide where it needs to go,

The slow process of submission
The eventuality
Arriving at some maniacal correction
For the s’s

So obsessed he
Was possessed
…
who was he kidding

even Blake thought he might’ve liked the
devil

The words evolve to take us on a journey – a rampage inside ourselves where we explore to learn more about why we are who we are. Who else but writers would care where we are spiritually talent wise in life, and who but a writer would mix the two. The book sold out on Amazon but is available here.

Far From Kiltartans Poor He Died

2010-07-09T10:02:00.001-04:00

William Butler Yeats poems in memory of Major William Robert Gregory celebrate him as an Irish airman, not giving the fact that he was a lover of the empire and stood against everything the poor of Kiltartan loved or wanted.

This poem explored that aspect of Lady Gregorys son, who did not share his mothers politics.

He died far from Kiltartans poor being shot down by friendly fire in Italy, and far from for them in fighting for Crown and Country.

----------------- The Poem -------------------------

Far from Kiltartans poor he died
As to fight for his dream he tried
To outdo his enemy he vied
Only by his own to be shot down

And a poet who of the war vowed not to write
As it was no a writers war to fight
Nor a fit subject for verse in his sight
Wrote of an allied airman who fought for the crown

For far from the cause of liberty
So for Serbia and Belgium to be free
And Ireland too - far from that he
Wore uniform among the clouds

It was for empire to remain great
To be the worlds most powerful state
White, English, of the Reformed faith
He died, far from Kiltartans crowds

For it was far from fighting for Kiltartans poor
He died far from Kiltartan it is sure
He desired to keep them so, his heart was pure
British, to the very bone.

And the Kaiser, whose forces he faced
Whose Empire his own displaced
Was no more Kiltartans enemy disgraced
Than was the Hero from among their own.

What Smokey Says

2010-06-20T07:35:00.005-04:00

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

"Paris, 7 A.M." by Elizabeth Bishop

2010-06-08T12:53:00.004-04:00

Paris, 7 A.M.

I make a trip to each clock in the apartment:

some hands point histrionically one way

and some point others, from the ignorant faces.

Time is an Etoile; the hours diverge

so much that days are journeys round the suburbs,

circles surrounding stars, overlapping circles.

The short, half-tone scale of winter weathers

is a spread pigeon's wing.

Winter lives under a pigeon's wing, a dead wing with damp feathers.

Look down into the courtyard. All the houses

are built that way, with ornamental urns

set on the mansard roof-tops where the pigeons

take their walks. It is like introspection

to stare inside, or retrospection,

a star inside a rectangle, a recollection:

this hollow square could easily have been there.

– The childish snow forts, built in flashier winters,

could have reached these proportions and been houses;

the mighty snow-forts, four, five, stories high,

withstanding spring as sand-forts do the tide,

their walls, their shape, could not dissolve and die,

only be overlapping in a strong chain, turned to stone,

and grayed and yellowed now like these.

Where is the ammunition, the piled-up balls

with the star-splintered hearts of ice?

This sky is no carrier-warrior-pigeon

escaping endless intersecting circles.

It is a dead one, or the sky from which a dead one fell.

The urns have caught his ashes or his feathers.

When did the star dissolve, or was it captured

by the sequence of squares and squares and circles, circles?

Can the clocks say; is it there below,

about to tumble in snow?

In Bishop's first book of poems, North & South (1946, Houghton Mifflin), this poem is the sixteenth of thirty. It is preceded by poems which are more well-known, including “Wading at Wellfleet”, “The Man-Moth”, and “The Unbeliever”. The poems following this one in her first book are anthologized even less often than this one, although The Poetry Foundation has posted “Roosters” online here.

The scene of “Paris, 7 A.M.” is a dreamlike state of consciousness in which one observes but does nothing. The speaking persona goes anxiously from clock to clock within “the apartment”, and then goes to the window and looks down at the courtyard and up at the sky, but there is no leaving the apartment or other action within it. The sense of stasis is bolstered by the notion of deadness in the absence of death:

Winter lives under a pigeon's wing, a dead wing with damp feathers. (lines 9 to 10)

The childish snow-forts...could not dissolve and die... (lines 18 to 22)

This sky...is a dead one, or the sky from which a dead one fell. (lines 27 to 29)

What can we say about why this person is anxious? We get a clue early in the poem: “days are journeys round the suburbs” (line five). Using Surrealism to conflate a cosmological perspective with that of a domestic one in these early lines, we are left with the question: “What is the urban?” The poem provides no answer, and a memory of “flashier winters” provides no solace, no re-invigoration. This poem does not clarify, elaborate or affirm but disorients and troubles. The “I” is casting about, attending first to this, then to that, and not finding a place to feel at ease.

Another clue as to this anxiety comes in lines 14 to 17:

… It is like introspection

to stare inside, or retrospection,

a star inside a rectangle, a recollection:

this hollow square could easily have been there.

Usually, retrospection and introspection are expected to be separate, even mutually exclusive, territories. But here the speaking persona seeks to collapse these territories into one. The “It” of line 14 is the scene in the courtyard; the “I” would like her interior and her exterior weathers to be the same. But they are not, and this disappoints her, causing her some anxiety.

After looking down into the lifeless courtyard and reflecting on a childhood memory that doesn't seem to help, this person wants to know where the signs of life are (“Where is the ammunition...?”). With no one else to turn to, she wants to know if the clocks can tell her what she wants to know. The “it” of the line next to last includes the pigeon, the Etoile (i.e., the star) and the sky, and the final question of the poem asks, “Is a catastrophe about to happen?”

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Steig Larrson and me

2010-05-22T13:48:00.003-04:00

Steig Larrson, the man behind the stories that gave him his name fame glory posthumously led a fascinating life. Larrson could be one of the characters he became famous for writing about in his millennium series. Fighting to right Nazi wrongs in Sweden, he was a well known journalist who founded Expo, an antifascist magazine. Here in the states people don't usually think much about the Nazis but in Europe people give more importance to World War II and the havoc it created in history. In Sweden, its importance is even more meaningful. According to Lev Grossman in Time Magazine, "Fascism is a live issue in Sweden, and fascist groups have been known to attack reporters who investigate them." Larrson was a known target as the founder of Expo, the antifascist magazine he published. Larrson had built himself quite a reputation as a dragon slayer and his daily life and that of his life-long companion, Eva Gabrielsson, were affected by the backlash. Now there's an inheritance issue because Gabrielsson and Larrson never married in spite of being together over thirty years, so his family controls all. What deepens the suspense is Eva has a copy of the number 4 book on his computer in her possession. I watched her speak about this in a recorded television interview. Apparently they worked together and she edited most of his work.
I first felt compelled to read the girl with the dragon tattoo because of the colorful cover plus all I'd heard and read about it, but when I sat down and read through it, I became enthralled. He's gone and passed on but I love his shit!
Larrson wrote fiction to relax and he loved detective stories. I guess it gave him a break from the harsh reality he faced daily. Strangely even the aftermath of his life reminds us how life is often as strange as fiction.
Larrson proves that writers can create anything. Like my friend Anthony Whyte recently said over coffee, you can take a usual situation where people are sitting at a table drinking coffee and all you need to do is put a gun on the table and boom - the center of attention changes drastically and you can do what you want with your characters. All one has to do is let things fall into place and put things where they should be to add a little drama and spice.
Hooked on Lisbeth, the heroine whose intelligence and resourcefulness never fails her, I sped read the entire book submerged in the characters and events. Little Lisbeth, my heroine, is barely 4 feet two and 94 pounds soaking wet, is an exceptionally skilled computer hacker who survives impossible circumstances. She is lithe, super strong and can kick karate ass as well as Sarah Michelle Geller plus can defeat any enemy intellectually as well. I also love "Kalle fucking Blomkvist" another main character in the trilogy who could be Larrson's alter ego. Together he and Lisbeth could solve any mystery.
The wording is sometimes a bit dry but according to Grossman, that may be due to the translators facility with subtleties but it didn't damage my attention span or interfere with the excitement. This fast paced thriller kept me spellbound like a movie playing in my head.
After this I was compelled to read number two of the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire, the perfect mix of action and expository to drive its thrust. Now I'm going to read number three next.
It is writers like Mr. Larrson who excite me to write. His characters are so finely tuned and defined that we know them as intimately as our closest friends. For those who don't know the series, I wasn't surprised to see Lisbeth buried alive in the end of part two of the trilogy. Lucky for me the first chapter of part three is included at the end of part two. I can't wait. I'll keep you updated!

2010-01-04T07:19:00.004-05:00

Symbolon

2010-01-02T00:44:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone -- I'm working on a new poetry project, which Andy Christ has given me permission to share with you here:

The idea is basically to publish a bi-monthly poetry newsletter highlighting new and recently published work by Michigan writers (or writers with connections to Michigan). The publishing method will be threefold:

1. Emailed newsletter in PDF format
2. Archived newsletter in PDF format on a site/blog
3. Mailed newsletter to everyone who can't stand reading things online or prefers this method of delivery for whatever other reason.

This pretty much keeps costs at a minimum while still enforcing the need to stay connected and "up" on what projects others are working on, have had published recently, etc. It is also a pretty "green" way to go publication-wise, without wholly sacrificing the print option entirely.

If you're interested in learning more about the project, check out http://symbolonpoetry.blogspot.com/. I'm going to publish and archive the newsletter there at first. Snail mail and email subscribers will also receive the PDF in those formats.

In the meanwhile, if you have a recently published or unpublished poem you're working on to share, please send it along to symbolon.poetry@gmail.com. I'm gathering goods for the February issue.

Thanks for thinking on it. And Happy New Year!

Reading John Ashbery's Poetry

2009-11-13T18:35:00.010-05:00

Usually I include excerpts here with links to the site that has the full article, essay, etc. This time I'm including the whole thing because none of this is online, and the book it's from is not so easy to find. The book was written by David Shapiro and published in 1979 by Columbia University Press. Shapiro's idea was to provide readers with something like a Reader's Guide to the poetry of John Ashbery. He titled his book John Ashbery: an introduction to the poetry. I only learned of this recently from Gina Myers, who I recently met. Gina writes, teaches and edits; you can see what she is up to online mainly at http://lamehouse.blogspot.com/ but also at http://www.h-ngm-n.com/ and even at http://www.360mainstreet.com/. In Shapiro's book, John Unterecker (1923 - 1989) wrote the Foreward. That's what I'm including here, Unterecker's Foreward to Shapiro's John Ashbery. If any copyright issues ensue, you mustn't blame Ms. Myers. She will learn of this after it's been blogged, not before. Mr. Unterecker begins and ends his Foreward with general remarks about Ashbery's poetry, and in between the beginning and the ending of his Foreward Mr. Unterecker (pictured) looks pretty closely at a poem from Ashbery's most-awarded book, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, called "The One Thing That Can Save America."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------Begin Foreward

The poetry of John Ashbery seems “difficult,” I think, only because we normally ask of literature vast simplifications. “Don't,” we are always saying to literature, “don't, whatever you are, be as complex as life, as liberty, or as the pursuit of happiness!”

We want literature to be a little difficult, of course, but only a little. A “fruitful ambiguity” flatters us because we have no problem distinguishing paired pears from pared apples, even in a tureen of strawberry jello. And though allegory seems heavy-handed, we enjoy a sophisticated chase through any symbolist jungle. We like always to outsmart the detective, recognizing far sooner than he does that the man in the aquamarine beret is not only not the axe murderer who wore two left shoes but almost certainly the missing husband of the disturbingly uncommunicative but beautiful Tasmanian heiress with whom each and every one of us has fallen desperately in love.

Literature normally flatters and reassures us. It shows us what we all want to see: a pattern, no matter how faint, superimposed on chaos. But when the pattern wavers, vanishes, reemerges briefly in the form of a nervous mirage, and then once and for all dissolves into universal jumble, we are likely to become uneasy and possibly cantankerous. “This is difficult stuff,” we find ourselves remarking, meaning by difficult either outrageous or representational or both.

The writer who presents normal human experience in something like its everyday complexity really is outrageous. He offends us by not making rational the incomprehensible or, at best, confusing overlaps of routine existence. Instead, he diagrams such stuff as shifting personality, “I” trying to adjust constantly to all the personalities that are busy adjusting to “me.” Or he notices how easily anyone projects – frequently with disastrous consequences – his “I” into every “you” in sight, and sometimes fatally fails to do so.

Such a writer, representing the real world of the mind, finds meandering thought his true vocation. What goes on in, say, the assembled heads of an audience during a poetry reading – even one by John Ashbery – would look, if mapped, something like neighboring three-dimensional termite nests. Not just dreamers, daydreamers, and the senile find listening difficult; all of us, most of the time, play peek-a-boo with the stuff that comes in at the ear. We respond to what we hear, all right, but as well to the secondary stimuli that bombard us through eye, nose, mouth, and rubbing skin. For literally everything starts us thinking. We listen to the world most obliquely, tuning in and tuning out, dancing a sort of intellectual buck-and-wing as “private” thoughts commingle quite irrationally with the flow of public phrases that endlessly spill from a jabbering world.

What I am arguing, of course, is that Ashbery's “difficulty” is more imaginary than real. Ashbery presents, often in meticulously representational detail, a normal man's way of apprehending – though not of voicing – reality. In doing so, he is drastically unconventional, since the normal man devotes a great deal of time and energy to disguising the way his mind works. What comes out of the normal man's mouth or typewriter barely resembles the wanderings of his hit-or-miss mind: the ill-heard sentences, the details of his own observation that he can't help notice (the flick of an eyelid, the shadow of a smile), all of the colors, smells, and textures that intrude on him and that, perhaps heroically, he pummels into submission whenever he attempts to “communicate.” We are all hard-working citizens of this kind, much of the time either oblivious to the ways in which our heads work or so disturbed by those ways as to pretend we have no heads at all.

Like Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and others who have attempted to ensnare the psychic processes we so carefully suppress, Ashbery focuses hard on the way the mind deals with the random stuff that drifts into it. But much more recklessly than Stein or Joyce, he offers us not the thoughts of a “persona” – an Alice B. Toklas, for instance, or a Stephen Dedalus – but the abruptly bare phrases that float through his own mind. Or at least he does his best to give us the illusion that those phrases are what he presents, phrases not just obscure but for almost everybody else in the world totally baffling. By drawing on private materials, he forces us to have the strange experience of roaming through someone else's head. “The landscape looks familiar,” we are likely to think as we read through a non-sequeturing Ashbery poem, “but the hands are the hands of Esau.”

Once in a while, he lets us glimpse the process at work:
I know that I braid too much my own
Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.
They are private and always will be.

Later on in “The One Thing That Can Save America,” the poem I am quoting from, these private matters surface again as “the quirky things that happen to me.”

Such things, central to the private energy that fuels the public poem, are its root force, but they clutter up the surface, effectively entangling us in Ashbery's own business of living. Nevertheless, because purely private material can in no conventional way be simplified by literary analysis, we are much better off experiencing it directly rather than trying to “understand” it. “Understanding,” which most readers of poetry have been trained by generations of text-analyzers to believe is the object of reading, can be extracted from an Ashbery poem only at the price of distortion. What Ashbery offers instead is a chance for us vicariously to engage in something that might be called experiential process; he immerses us in a shifting context of unpredictable “meanings” and tones that constantly qualify everything that has gone before them yet that also are constantly qualified by everything that has been established.

Consider, for example, what happens to the phrases from “The One Thing That Can Save America” when they are reinserted back into the poem. Because paraphrase in Ashbery is not just unnecessary but almost impossible, I'd like to quote the whole poem, pausing now and then to watch shifting tones operate rather than trying to make translations of phrases that are perfectly transparent once they are extracted from the amalgam of the poem. What I hope to reveal is nothing more than technique: Ashbery's method of confining meaning to the page, his system of preventing us from discovering a “solution” to something that is in fact not a riddle but an unsolvable work of art.

This poem that I have arbitrarily made central to my discussion is also almost literally central (pages 44 and 45 of an 83 page book) to Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and centrality seems initially to be its central concern. The tone at the beginning is neutral, though phrases like “flung out” and “knee-high” force the reader into momentary minor adjustments of physical point of view:
Is anything central?
Orchards flung out on the land,
Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills?
Are place-names central?
Elm Grove, Adcock Corner, Story Brook Farm?
As they concur with a rush at eye level
Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough
Thank you, no more thank you.

Punning transformations of Stony Brook Farm and Alcott into Story Book Farm and Adcock seem to put us either somewhere in the nineteenth century, on a thruway or possibly on railroad tracks, or in contemporary childhood; but the tone skids away from neutrality and toward a very clear petulance (“enough/Thank you, no more thank you”) as abruptly aggressive (and concurring) places threaten to gang up on the speaker:
And they come on like scenery mingled with darkness
The damp plains, overgrown suburbs,
Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity.

Again point of view has shifted, for we discover that the scenery we had accepted as “real” scenery is in fact only something that is “like scenery” in a commingling community of jumbled “civic pride” and “civil obscurity.”
The second stanza brings us to the first flat assertion of the poem:
These are connected to my version of America
But the juice is elsewhere.

“The juice,” of course, is private – most likely private energy – and though the tone is again close to neutral flatness (with perhaps an ironic pun on breakfast orange juice), it soon shifts into a rhapsodic lyricism:
This morning as I walked out of your room
After breakfast crosshatched with
Backward and forward glances, backward into light,
Forward into unfamiliar light,
Was it our doing, and was it
The material, the lumber of life, or of lives
We were measuring, counting?
A mood soon to be forgotten
In crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow
In this morning that has seized us again?

Both time and perspective tangle in this complex scene that is like a painting but not one, a structure built of crosshatching glances in which the observing “I” is both active participant (and consequently invisible) and yet made visible to his own “downtown” memory as he thinks back on the significant moment. Able to be both in and out of the scene, he has no difficulty in translating the streaks of intersecting glances into an invisible pattern superimposed on light and then considering whether this might indeed be how “the lumber of life” is made significant (measured, counted). “Lumber” achieves a lovely suspension, forcing us to recollect the woods of the first stanza – orchards, forests, plantations, Elm Groves, overgrown suburbs – while at the same time anticipating the “crossed girders of . . . shadow” that will threaten to obliterate the morning that “has seized us again.”

Crosshatched by glances, by planes of light, by simultaneously interior and exterior points of view, and by triple time (the opening statement's “objective” time, the “morning,” and the “downtown” memory of morning that soon will be forgotten), the stanza's multiple perspectives present an “it” impossible to define and also impossible not to respond to.

It is at this stage of the poem's development that another neutral statement returns us to the passages I have already quoted.
I know that I braid too much my own
Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.
They are private and always will be.
Where then are the private turns of event
Destined to boom later like golden chimes
Released over a city from a highest tower?
The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,
And you instantly know what I mean?
What remote orchard reached by winding roads
Hides them? Where are these roots?

By now something of the pattern of the poem should be apparent. Stanzas begin in something like a neutral tone, the speaker addressing what at least seems to be a general audience. But that audience, as in this third stanza, soon breaks up into quite private components – as well as the obvious “public” one. Here, for example, the generalized you becomes both Ashbery talking to himself and, by the seventh line, Ashbery addressing the “you” of the breakfast scene. His subject, however, is privacy and its relationship to something as public as music, painting, and poetry. And the abrupt shift in tone of the “golden chimes” question lets him move from a neutral tone to something very different that might capriciously be called oracular. It also lets him distance his material by shifting his statement into a totally different rhetoric – in this instance, a rhetoric that sounds suspiciously like that of Wallace Stevens. Critics – and, for that matter, uncritical readers – have a hard time with allusive echoes of this sort. That is, they can never be quite certain if the shifted “voice” is parodistic, referential, or perhaps even deferential. And there is always, of course, the possibility that the passage may not be deliberately allusive at all – simply a matter of Ashbery unintentionally sounding like another writer. (The last lines of the second stanza, the passage about the “crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow/In this morning that has seized us again,” sound to my ear a good deal like passages in Hart Crane's poetry; and I am reasonably certain that the final stanza's “All the rest is waiting/For a letter that never arrives” is supposed to trigger us into an “Ah, T.S. Eliot!” response. But what seems to me a Crane allusion may very well not be one; and my conviction that the last stanza's Eliot-like passage is a deliberate allusion tempts me – irrationally – to see the “roots” line of the third stanza as a faint echo of “The Waste Land.”) Such “problems” seem to me ultimately unimportant. That is, the echo or even the possibility of echo is enough to distance the tone. Similarly distancing, the questions at the end of the third stanza force the opening stanza's “real” orchards into a metaphoric role. And distancing through language alone, language that is both serious and a little funny, “quirky things” have some kind of relationship to historical, geographical, and literary landscapes. Yet in spite of all these distances, “I” – both as person and as writer – exist and exist in a present definable America.

The last stanza seems to me to reassemble the scattered tones of the first three. But precise meaning is carefully evaded. The poem is not a sermon:
It is the lumps and trials
That tell us whether we shall be known
And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.
All the rest is waiting
For a letter that never arrives,
Day after day, the exasperation
Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is,
The two envelope halves lying on a plate.
The message was wise, and seemingly
Dictated a long time ago.
Its truth is timeless, but its time has still
Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited
Steps that can be taken against danger
Now and in the future, in cool yards,
In quiet small houses in the country,
Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets.
“We” has by this time become an amalgam of Ashbery, the “you and I” of the second stanza, and the reader that the poem is addressed to; it will become explicitly in the last stanza America. But each “we” also exists separately.

Like the “quirky things” of the third stanza, the “star” that our fate might lead us to in the final one strikes me as rather funny – a cross between the theatrical and heavenly kind. And indeed the ominous Eliotic letter that “never arrives” also takes on faintly qualities when it is ripped open, its contents discovered to be “wise,” its message warning of danger and of the steps that might be taken against that danger now and in the future both known and unknown.

Like much in Ashbery, funny and serious material coexist in one context. The tone of the last stanza grows, however, increasingly “concerned”; and if we never find out what the mysterious undelivered message is that we manage symbolically not to receive, to tear up, and yet to assimilate, we do have some sense of its urgency. It has something, of course, to do with the need for fences and for the walls of small houses, for places that are “cool”; but its “meaning” - like the “meaning” of the poem – is available only to the person who apprehends it without “knowing what it is.”

I offer this non-reading of a poem as a demonstration of technique, but I hope it is also a warning against false readings. Happily, David Shapiro, whose own sense of the integrity of poetry is very strong, approaches Ashbery neither as New Critic nor as historian, but as fellow poet who himself works in modes similar to those used by Ashbery.

He asks us to recall what most of us have casually assimilated: the literatures of America and Europe, an awareness of the history of music and painting, a little knowledge of classical and contemporary physics. Using these tools, he helps us explore not the “meaning” of Ashbery's poetry but the sensibility that gives rise to it and the cultural context of which it is a most vital part.

His approach is unorthodox. His insights into the ways a major contemporary poet organizes his art give us a sense not just of the techniques used by John Ashbery but of a structural aesthetic drawn on by a whole generation of poets, painters, musicians, and sculptors.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- end Foreward

I like this Foreward's claims regarding Ashbery's poetry. For instance, that "Ashbery's 'difficulty' is more imaginary than real." With one reservation, I also like the notion that "Ashbery presents, often in meticulously representational detail, a normal man's way of apprehending – though not of voicing – reality." And "Ashbery focuses hard on the way the mind deals with the random stuff that drifts into it." That's helpful.

But I don't agree with all of Mr. Unterecker's assertions. For instance, that Ashbery "offers us not the thoughts of a 'persona' – an Alice B. Toklas, for instance, or a Stephen Dedalus – but the abruptly bare phrases that float through his own mind." It could be that, in his day, Mr. Unterecker was better than I am at reading minds, but I doubt it. Also, the poem Mr. Unterecker chose to peruse has such a level of complexity that it becomes a bold claim, one which Mr. Unterecker shows no interest in establishing, to say that this is "a normal man's way of apprehending - though not of voicing - reality." And finally, Mr. Unterecker claims that the meaning of "The One Thing That Can Save America" is available only to the person who apprehends it without knowing what it is. Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, but from what Mr. Unterecker has written in his Foreward, I'm not willing to accept this as a conclusion. To me, such a conclusion mystifies rather than clarifies Ashbery's work. To be fair, Mr. Unterecker offers this Foreward as an example of a "non-reading of a poem as a demonstration of technique" with the hope that "it is also a warning against false readings." But it seems to me an opportunity to talk about technique more if one begins by crediting Ashbery with having invented a persona with which to implement the various techniques. I was hoping for more from one who wrote a reader's guide for the poems of W.B. Yeats.

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

something new

2009-09-08T10:38:00.007-04:00

As most of you folk know, it's hard to drag ass and do things when it means you got to go away from de big screen- my computer's like a tv it's so big- so mostly we do a lot of indoor activities. And yes DubbleX is even worse than me about isolating and staying in. You know he gets into his garageband and chess and it's hard to move him anywhere. I do make it out about 2 times a month though and am trying to stick to that and it's easier since I am trying hard to support neighborhood events in Washington Heights. The last time I went someplace else and was supposed to read I forgot my papers and even when i know something real good, I still need my papers.

I read this morning on Wikipedia that now my Washington Heights, where I was born and have lived my entire life is now called Hudson Heights - this is what they're trying to call my neighborhood folks!-

Hudson Heights is some creation from realtors trying to boost up the monied connection in Washington Heights where now you can also spend a million for a co-op or a condo. Washington Heights is my hood...

I digress Sherlock... read on

Well some months ago some dude wrote me a note asking me to go to his blog - and I did because I usually try to do that when someone writes me and asks me too. You know, it's really hard too when only a handful reciprocate. See I'm not talking about the people who come to see the crazy white lady, and I admit I'm crazy. I come by it naturally. They locked my Dad up in Bellevue's psyche ward. My mom was totally drained and bereft; sick on a daily basis and all she did was try to raise her four children. Actually neither one was ever well during my lifetime.

What does this have to do with the bigger picture? Well nothing except that some dude wrote me some time ago and asked me to look and read his stuff about his travel ails - and continued to send me updates. Now this same dude sent me this fantastic musical he wrote and directed. Damo Bullen didn't pay me to say this but I think if you want to be entertained - harmonica hip hop and standard sounds mix in an updated musical for a new generation, just check this.

I guess what this has to do with the rant above is that sometimes we all need distraction and entertainment. It's a radical evolution.

It's called Alibi - The Musical

Be entertained and get happy.

There are several different versions or parts and it's not clear what that is either, nor is the cast clear which it should be. My only complaint except for needing subtitles in part 8 because I couldn't understand hear the dialogue because I can't understand english spoken in some parts of england. An englishman told me it's because english is spoken properly there. That's a joke - a joke. We got some heavily accented folk here too and if you heard me speak before you know I'm all new york jewish style all in your face and funny.

Good show folks! Thanks for looking out...

"A Trek with the Buddha Bard" -- A Review in Danse Macabre

2009-09-07T19:49:00.009-04:00

Nabina Das

"A Trek with the Buddha Bard"

A review of ANNAPURNA POEMS: Poems New & Collected, 2008

By

Yuyutsu RD Sharma

Yuyutsu RD Sharma’s face is like a mountain terrain, when the earth emerges in the gods’ peaks after a flash flood or when a river has receded after the monsoon’s regal fury. I noticed this as soon as I sat down opposite to him in the surprisingly sparsely populated Barista coffee shop in New Delhi’s fashionable Khan Market shopping area. Poet of the Himalayas, Yuyutsu’s greeting resounded almost true in what he wrote in “In the Mountains”:

Fragile my eyeglasses

fragile and foreign

I take them off;

There’s a speck of a scar in them.

On the mule path

I take them off

to face the green

stretch of mountains

beneath the saddle of Annapurnas.

Well, almost true, because he didn’t wear eyeglasses at our meeting! His dark irises reflected the green he writes about and the twining paths he sees better without his educated eyeglasses. And since we met to chat – we didn’t waste time to get on first-name terms – the discussion rightfully turned quickly to his meditative collection Annapurna Poems, a Nirala Series book published in 2008.

On that sweltering summer evening, leafing through the Annapurna poems brought in a sudden whiff of cool mountain air. Musical and reflective. Indeed, Yuyutsu’s poetic tenor is pretty much that of a bard, his voice that treks higher and higher into the wild beautiful upper Himalaya bringing alive the smile of the Buddha and the semiotics of the region’s everlasting gods and goddesses, the Yeti and other resident animals, the soulful rivers, and the ice-kissed rain. True, Yuyutsu laments the loss of a familiar landscape he witnessed prior to political trouble fanning out across Nepal. But his enthusiasm is very much rooted to the peoples’ grasp of their own surrounding, the Nepal that is home to communities and creeds, whether he sees them in the backdrop of the Maoist insurgency or that of a defunct monarchy.

On the level of language, this poetry takes us straight into the heart of the mountain country, Nepal’s unique ethos and the nature that entertains both snowy seasons and hidden eternal gardens. The mule paths, the ‘leech-greasy’ forests, the spells under which the mountain people live and tell fantastic tales, the ‘magnificent daggers of snow’, all build up a world where nature is more than just a phenomenon. It is a companion to the poet and his perception. The cognitive faculty of the poet and the reader works in tandem in recognizing the many layers of meanings unfolded in each aspect of “Annapurna Poems”, exactly like the different layers of the snow. The permafrost is made of the century-old legends and tales on which have grown new fables and events.

Yuyutsu is a poet of expressions as he traverses a train of simplicity. He does not twist language in any show of wizardry. He believes in words and sentences, as they are known and heard in the Himalayan reality, to take him along the mountain journey to rediscover the known nomenclature and trusted actions. All he does is re-paint the scenes of Annapurna in unique details and from surprising angles. Like little Tibetan thangkas. In these scenes, he tells us about those place names that ring out the jeweled eco-system of a mountain town or village as familiar as our recurrent dreams. With him we walk the salt tracks, the gorge trails and visit Birethanti. Ghorepani, Gandrung, Tadapani, Lake Fewa, and many such tongue-trilling spots. For him,

Hillside roosters

Punctual, announcing the dawn

are known elements. If sometimes they might appear delightfully alien to our practiced eyes:

Possessing floral

Faces of riverside birds

They still draw us into the world of Annapurna like ice drops in the cracks (Yuyutsu himself says in the foreword of the book that his poems exist in each crack of this magnanimous mountain world).

Even in this pristine surrounding something troubles the poet who watches the spray of the white surf:

on greasy crotches

of huge mossy rocks

started singing
…

coughing out

the cacophony of cruel cities

In Yuyutsu’s poetry one might like to find the Blake-ian dilemma of having to divide the human soul between Nature and its sufferance, mingle her own fate and existences with that of gods, the Yeti and shamans, and the myriad mysterious of Shangri-La, where imageries take fantastic shapes and have their own sensual and sensuous existence (River: Morning)
…

each time I come

to her deafening banks

to gleam my dreams

over the plump flanks of her warm body

…

and a wrinkle appears

across the shriveled leaf of my life.

However, he is not merely a romantic poet. What comes across is his deep admiration for the Annapurna region as a system tied to the rest of the world – those parts of the world where he is a traveler of a different kind, giving talks and workshops, reading his published work and attending literary events. In the context of these ‘worldly’ acts where he attributes his own poetry having the “otherworldly” and “archival” quality, he is very much a realist. The book’s first section, “Little Paradise Lodge”, is an account of Nepal and Annapurna’s past and present. Interestingly, ‘lodge’ appears to be a pun on ‘lost’ as if he was talking about a ‘little paradise lost’. To me the poems in this section are very much a ‘lost and found’ affair.

On the other hand, quite prominently, his Eliotesque sarcasm for the modern city life and the external influences on his much loved landscape of rains and snows adorn the images he paints in “Rains”:

…
This summer they held me up

In the deserts of their skyscrapers.
…
my face in the dark

feeling tips of snow sacred fishtails of Machapuchchare.

In “Mules” too, their ringing bells are but ‘beating notes of a slavery modernism brings’. While mapping the ‘bloodthirsty mule paths around the glacial of Annapurna’, Yuyutsu watches:

cartons of Iceberg, mineral water bottles,

solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans, carom boards

sacks of rice

and iodized salt from the plains of Nepal Terai.
…
human and mule lives meet

Rain, river, snow, singing gorges and brooks rule the landscape of Annapurna Poems. The romance is palpable between the poet and his subject, almost Sufi in character, ‘madness’ being one of its virtues. Yuyutsu is in complete enchantment of his terrain as a lover is and this love’s longing is realized in a woman’s physical quest (A Lonely Brook):

a lonely woman

waits for a stranger to come

and burst

the ice frozen between her thighs

to make a flame

of her cold sleep
…

Conversation with the river (River) is a personal history, a sequel to the secret rendezvous with the beloved and is artistically lusty.

Between your decisions

and my flickering lamps

the river mad

you, you poet, you bastard, go away!

With Yuyutsu we travel to Ghandrung where a ‘young girl of the scarlet shawl waits/for the colorful procession/of mules carrying cartons of Tuberg beer to pass’ or to Ghorepani, all the while delightfully apprehensive or even curious if a Yeti was following ‘your trail in the desolate mountains’.

Among these portraits resembling eternity’s passing of time in the mountain world, we empathize with the pain in the poets voice (Fish):

Wives wait the final winter

of my rot, opening up

the greed

of their slithering fish

I return to a poem

I postponed decades ago

to touch the mating serpents

slithering on the tip of illicit door

called death.

The book’s second section “Glacier” takes this sentiment to a crescendo as one feels literally like climbing heights with titles like Kala Patthar, Gauri Shankar, Summit and The Buddhist Flag Flutters and looking below with a rooster’s eye view at the fields, the forests and the (once) playful courtyards with their brass bells. The overture continues with the third part “Sister Everest”, a pithy and less descriptive section. In that, the latter is highly evocative. If the first sections read like an ethereal ‘inward’ trek through the upper Himalayan terrain, this section readies us for the fourth one – “The Annapurna Man” – rooted more in the poet’s ‘outward’ experiences. A very brief section, it spews more pain than pleasure. To some extent, I came out of the book through this section with a sense of abrupt termination, as if Yuyutsu’s pain had to invite a quick clinical surgery. For this, the poetry in this section seems disjointed from the book’s original spirit.

Especially, I felt “Silence” is too much of rumination, too personal and reads more like purgation than poetry. The best piece in this section is “Space Cake, Amsterdam”, a witty poem combining introspection and observation by ‘this man from Kathmandu’ (one may well imagine, the rest of our chat that evening centered around that one fantastic experience Yuyutsu recounted to me). The air-conditioned air at that Barista throbbed at my mirth on reading and re-reading the line – ‘whatever happens, you can always make a comeback’!

Yuyutsu R D Sharma’s website is http://www.yuyutsu.de where one can find recent updates about his work and readings. And he has made a comeback, for he has just released “Space Cake, Amsterdam” from Howling Dog Press (I am yet to have a copy) and is currently working on Pratik, a collection of contemporary Indian poetry, with the renowned Indian-English poet Jayanta Mahapatra.

A 'response poem' THE QUATAQUATANTANKUA also accompanies the review in Danse Macabre's new TOTENTANZE issue.

Kay Ryan Birthday Reading

2009-09-04T19:27:00.003-04:00

Hi All - Please join us on Thursday 17 September 2009 as we meet on the occasion of Kay Ryan's birthday. We will meet at Belle Epoque (map attached), 809 Adams St, Bay City (989) 894-2589. Beginning at 7 pm, we will read the following poems and answer the related questions. Any contributions of your own for discussion, sharing, etc. will certainly be welcomed. NOTE: Kay Ryan (pictured, right) will not be there. See you then! ~Andy

Sharks' Teeth

by Kay Ryan

Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth-
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.

From http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20903 accessed 22 August 2009.

Question for discussion:

As we get to know the silence(s) of this poem, do we understand the poem better?

Are the words of this poem full of zest?

The Niagara River

by Kay Ryan

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice—as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced—
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.

From http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20196 accessed 22 August 2009.

Question for discussion:

What do you suppose the people at the dinner table are talking about?

Patience

by Kay Ryan

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.

From http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20263 accessed 22 August 2009.

Question for discussion:

Is it a kindness that this poem is as short as it is?

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Kate Evan interviews Joy Leftow

2009-08-14T08:52:00.001-04:00

I like Joy Leftow's iconoclastic ways and writing so much that I wanted to feature an interview with her on this blog. Enjoy!

Please tell us about the genesis of your book.
Spot of Bleach is an organic mix of sensibility and growth up until the time book was printed in 2006, dating back to poetry first written in 1980 when I wrote the sestina “Twisted, A Sestina of Love” at a writing class at Columbia University. As I put the book together, it seemed to choose its own subjects from which I named chapters.

The placement of the chapters took some time to figure out. I took the book apart and put it together several times before being sure the fit was right. Finally it made sense that the very risqué love story should go at the end. I wrote that story in 2001 when I attended the creative writing program at CCNY, where I earned my second masters.

From the very beginning, my creative writings caused a riff in every writing class. Other members became angry about my style and very often argued about my characters complaining that the characters didn’t make them feel empathy. Most professors pointed out that the very thing that the other students didn’t like about my characters, are the things that make the characters alive and real.

What's the one thing you most want people to know about your book?
The book evolved out life experience, creativity, and my powers of observation. There are many stories to tell and within this volume I tell many. You may hate what I write about or how I write, but I promise this book won’t bore you.

I need writing like air and this book is what I breathed out. I call my poems “my offspring” because I have given them life. In that regard, the book is a parallel expression of the years from which the works are collected, an assortment of articles, stories, philosophical meanderings or what may now be called flash fiction along with narrative poetry.

Please tell us a little about the photographs that are included in your collection and how you see them as complementing the poems.
Years ago after I purchased my first digital, people said I had a good eye for showing things in a different perspective. Since the book is very personal, the photos add to this view by showing more about how I see things. For example, the cover section Philosophy has a photo I took while in Thailand visiting the Golden Buddha. The cover for the chapter forms is a famous rock form in Los Cabos. The cover pic came to me in a dream, and although the pic was ten years old, it was an urban pic of me in Central Park with my favorite statue, the Lewis Carroll Statue of Alice in Wonderland.

A Barbara Walters question: If you were a poem by any writer, which poem would you be and why?
I would be “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. Since childhood, I have loved that poem and trees have always appealed to me. I watch the moon and stars through stark branches. I watch the trees change season-to-season and sometimes fall into ill health or get blown over in a storm. Living in a big city as I do, trees are my opportunity to commune with nature. I’m lucky my building is in the northern tip of Manhattan Island where there are many parks. My apartment overlooks an extended spot of nature near the highway. I have several poems inspired by nature and trees.

Why do you write poetry?
I write because I have to; I don’t have a choice. Writing is my first love. I need writing to survive. My poetry has evolved along with me to do more than only share stories. Sometimes there’s a story within, but it will only be one facet of the entire poem which has taken on existential and surreal elements, especially in my newer bluetry series and other writing which can be seen on my blog.

Do you think the Internet is a good complement to writing—or does it just get in the way?
The internet is made for networking and research or maybe just made for me. I can surf all day and network endlessly and it seems to fit my style. It works for me. Look at all the things I’ve done on Facebook alone; first I made a fan club for someone else then for myself, then for a magazine which published my work. Then I promoted several other groups and people. Afterwards I became an editor for The Cartier Street Review and another editor took note of all this activity and asked me to edit an anthology with her. The internet helps move things along.

The only problem I see with this is for a solitary person like me, it encourages me to stay in the house and remain solitary. Why go out when I can accomplish so much sitting in front of a computer?

Do you believe all poetry is political—or just some poems?
I think all poetry is political to the extent that life is political. Every time we make a statement or write a sentence it has wider implications, unless all you say is pass the butter, and even something like that can be made political. Why not get up and get the butter yourself? So much is a mechanism of social behavior we learn. And why must we follow norms? Who is it who decides what norms to follow?

I have always rebelled against norms. For example, I love to eat with my hands instead of a fork, I love to bring up subjects that could be embarrassing. I often write about relationships based on power structures. Work relationships and the structure of work are also political so if you write about work then, in essence, it’s political. Some poetry is blatantly political, concerning the presidency or human rights. More subtle poetry is about relationships or written from a woman’s or man’s view. Sometimes people don’t consider my work political in spite of the fact that I often address social issues in my writing.

Please share with us one poem from the collection, and then riff a little about the journey the poem takes the reader on.

LISTEN TO TUPELO HONEY BY CLICKING HERE, THEN ON THE GCAST PLAYER.

I’m close with this nurse who works at Presbyterian Hospital. One day she told me this story about this baby who’d been born at the hospital and was so tiny because he’d been born addicted to crack. This woman could not have her own children and had considered adoption but finally gave up on the idea. You know how couples are sometimes, they have so much for each other and there’s no more to go around, and her husband thrived under all her attention. This newborn called out to her in a way that made her move like she’d never moved before. As if suddenly without learning she’d gotten up and could tango. She told me a story and we both had tears in our eyes because I felt her pain and the pain of this infant.

Professional caregivers often suffer and burn out because of our pain. It’s a difficult job to keep giving with no payback in sight except to know you’ve done right by someone, so I related. That night, I said I’m going to write a poem about this baby and JoAnne said, Please do, it would help me to deal with it.

I wrote this poem back in 1994 and it’s as apt today as it was then because the problem still exists. I have friends on the scene who tell me each time they hear the poem they hear different things. People cry when I read this poem. They get it! Sometimes people get angry and tell me my poetry isn’t real poetry. There’s been a lot of controversy around that. I actually have a piece on my blog about this which got a great many responses.

Others who have heard me read this before will request it at readings. I'm actually quite bad at attending readings which is kind of strange because there's this dichotomy; I'm very friendly and outgoing while simultaneously reclusive and shy. The other thing to remember is that when blues first emerged, they said it wasn’t “real” music and the same with jazz. Dare to be different, I’ve lived my life by that code.

What are you working on now?
I am currently working on a series of bluetry poems. I labeled them bluetry (yes I made it up) because this series concerns the common themes of blues. This year has been a year for the blues for me. I was compelled to write these. The first bluetry I wrote invokes Billie Holiday—one of my all-time favorites—and is called “I sing the blues for you today.” This poem took me three months before I knew where I was.

I threw Billie’s lines in the bluetry and they took off. I also have a bluetry poem about a dog rescue and canned hunts, another passion of mine. What I see happening in my poetry and writing is that I mix more elements together and take risks. I take a pinch of surreal, mix with equal parts enthusiasm and passion, add existentialism and observations, throw in some reality and voilà!

Here is the link for the first bluetry.

Anything else you'd like to add?
The most frequent comment about my work usually concerns its honesty and openness or something about my passion. Absolutely, I write with passion, the way I live. People often write me about my poetry and comment on my life being so sad. I don’t know what to do about that really but passion is evoked from intensity. That is the way I am and the way I was born. Perhaps artists become artists because they do feel things more intensely.

From way back I always have a pen in my hand. Now I mostly sit in front of the computer but if I'm forced to go out, I've always got pen and paper at hand and most often use it. Now, I have very little time, being totally involved with two current projects, editor at The Cartier Street Review, and also for The Smoking Book, an anthology concerning smoke, fire, fog, or anything that concerns smoke. I also write interviews for Street Literature Review, the paper mag. It’s also time to return to that unfinished 186 page novel and just spit it out! I love writing and love reading. Being busy with passion is what I live for.

2 comments:

Andrew Christ said...: Yay Joy!; Saturday, May 16, 2009
Lisa Allender said...: Thanks, Kate Evans, for letting us all in on the "secrets" of joy/(Joy) so few authors possess. Even when the material is dark, there can be beauty in the "reveal" of it.; Thursday, July 02, 2009

Being and Writing: Joy Leftow: Dare to be Different

2009-08-14T08:41:00.000-04:00

Being and Writing: Joy Leftow: Dare to be Different

Precious, a novel by Sandra Novack, book review by Joy Leftow

2009-08-12T03:34:00.005-04:00

Ms. Novack advertised her full-length debut novel on Facebook , Precious, from Random House. Curious to read it I promptly wrote her a letter explaining I wanted to review her novel and she sent me one. Thus began my journey through her smooth agile verse. Precise and elegantly elegiac, like the movements they describe, Ms. Novack’s tale begs the question of what possibly could go wrong in a pleasant nuclear middle class family in a burb of Pennsylvania not far from New Jersey. Ah, my - my, what could not go wrong in Novack’s scenario?
Novack jumps in and out of each of her characters magically, like Sissy jumps in and out of the pool in the back yard and Eva jumps into wayward trouble without her mother around to set her straight. As easily as an able person can enter and leave a shower, she follows their watery moody depths from one situation to the next. Like the stick of a pinprick, punctiliously moving from one character to the next, she reveals the most hidden thoughts of each character.
Natalia wants more than what she has with her introverted reserved husband, Frank, who spends all has spare time beneath his car. Nostalgic for her gypsy roots, and romance, Natalia decides to leave. When her teenage daughter, Eva, tries to convince Natalia to stay, her mom replies, “A person’s heart doesn’t shed itself like a tree in winter, it doesn’t bare itself just because you want it to.” Natalia, bored with her life, her husband, and her children, idealizing her freedom and seeking new experiences, leaves on a trip to Europe with the doctor she works for. Natalia’s fantasies don’t play out how she imagined. Once in Europe and alone with the doctor, Natalia discovers she’s more bored with him than she ever was with her husband. Since her early childhood, Natalia had yearned to return to her gypsy family, a desire nourished by faint distant memories mixed with tales she heard from her adopted family.
Surprised, Natalia finds herself desperately pining away for her children and Frank, reminiscing longingly. This, combined with her sadness about her feelings of loss is what drives Natalia back home. Novack is inside her character’s heads, she knows them intimately.
“Didn’t he suddenly want to give Eva what a girl like her so desperately wants – to see herself through another’s eyes and to find that she is precisely as she wishes but never quite believes – beautiful and full of possibility.” Seeing ourselves through the eyes of others is what we all think we want - until we do it and are often caught off guard in what we see. We often wish to see the world through the other’s eyes. Novack has hit the nail direct.
Eva is filled with anger and wanting more, yet stuck with her kid sister, Sissy and her Dad when Mom abandons them. Eva searches for love and finds separation and sorrow in the middle of nowhere as do all teenage girls in trouble. Eva keeps herself alive and vibrant through her interactions with Sissy, her pivot. Eva is guilty for being a young girl who goes out to hang out with boys and have an affair with an older married man while she is responsible for taking care of her younger sibling. Eva sustains herself by feeding stories to Sissy. Eva’s stories are fed on exasperation mixed with myth and her anguished insights into adult behavior. Disillusioned by love, her family, her mom’s return home instead of righting things in the family, sends Eva over the edge into a place she cannot come back from.
The title of the book, Precious, and the placing of the title in the story raised a childhood memory for me. As a youngster from a poverty stricken Jewish family in New York City, filled with illness and sorrow, I watched my sister pamper her dolls. I was not permitted to touch my sister’s dolls because although she was eleven and I was six, she held on to her dolls for dear life. She had very little too and was miserable. I respected her belongings because I feared her temper. She’d hit me before. I only got my first new doll (not hand me downs or throwaways) the Christmas after this ensuing event. I had another sister eight years older than me too. One day after we’d all arrived home from school almost simultaneously at about three-ten; my sister discovered her beloved porcelain doll with its head broken off.
Because my sister could see no other possible culprit, she accused me of breaking the doll and proceeded to beat living daylights out of me with no interference from anyone in my family. Later, I was surprised to learn my mother had kept silent and let me take a beating for something she knew I hadn’t done. That made no sense. Several days later, mom divulged she’d had a guest that day who had brought her small child with her when she visited and mom had not paid attention to the child. I surmise my mom was afraid of my sister’s temper too and that was why she let me take that beating. I had no clue back then. I was six years old.
The doll in Novack’s tale is also ruined when Sissy and her best friend Vicki fight about who can play with the doll at a sleepover. During their struggle when the doll is literally ripped in two, Vicki becomes Sissy’s ex best friend. I wondered why a half page description about a doll named Precious becomes the title. Maybe because relationships and people mean more than we imagine and when we give them up we discover their preciosity and maybe because of the evocative tone of Novack’s descriptions. After all, Novack’s words brought my memory back to me from my six-year old self.
It is Vicki, Sissy’s ex best friend, who broke Sissy’s favorite doll Precious, who goes missing, never to be seen alive again. Vicki’s disappearance drives the story forth, revolving around every character’s angles. The townspeople come together to try to help Ginny deal with the loss of her child. Natalia is conflicted with survivor guilt and grateful her children are safe even if she had nothing to do with keeping them safe. She cannot confront Eva’s behavior and accusations. Eva and Frank are unforgiving and relentless in their judgments. Natalia rehearses speeches she cannot say while struggling to regain her footing in a lost life.
After reading Precious, I ask, what possibly couldn’t and won’t go wrong? Isn’t that the way of the world, after all? Everything in the world goes amiss, changes in lives occur in a finger snap. Novack’s lyrical and haunting prose maintains a rhythm; she doesn’t skip a beat.
It reminds me of a Woody Allen character who announces, dead-pan, earnestness exuding from his pores, “It’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics: sooner or later everything turns to shit.” And in this small town turned topsy-turvy through a whirlwind of unconnected events, that is exactly what occurs inside Novack’s elegant poetic prose.
When we read others writings and feel inspired by what we read, plus the author provokes memories, this is where we explore the connections. It is in this vein I write, to reach the person who reads and responds with their guts, with passion.
Novack reminds us that every day we make choices in our losses. Each moment begins with new choices. Each choice provides new possibilities. We live with daily decision-making processes that influence us as we plunder through our lives. Novack exposes our most primal fears concerning approval and loss. She makes us wonder if anything new will ever take the place of what we lose or if there’s even the slightest chance to begin to fill all the empty spaces from all our losses put together. Wounds hurt. At funerals divorces and such, people always try to assuage sadness by saying things like, “Oh, it gets better as time goes on,” but that’s absolutely untrue. Some hurts last a lifetime. Trust me, I’ve had a few.

Marvin Bell Birthday Reading

2009-08-08T10:53:00.004-04:00

Hi All - Please join us on Thursday, 13 August as we meet on the occasion of Marvin Bell's birthday. Meet us at the Barnes & Noble on Tittabawassee Road at 7pm. We will begin by reading the following poems and answering the related questions. Please feel free to bring questions and other contributions of your own for discussion, sharing, etc. NOTE: Marvin Bell (pictured, right) will not be there. See you then! ~Andy

“A Man May Change”
by Marvin Bell

As simply as a self-effacing bar of soap
escaping by indiscernible degrees in the wash water
is how a man may change
and still hour by hour continue in his job.
There in the mirror he appears to be on fire
but here at the office he is dust.
So long as there remains a little moisture in the stains,
he stands easily on the pavement
and moves fluidly through the corridors. If only one
cloud can be seen, it is enough to know of others,
and life stands on the brink. It rains
or it doesn’t, or it rains and it rains again.
But let it go on raining for forty days and nights
or let the sun bake the ground for as long,
and it isn’t life, just life, anymore, it’s living.
In the meantime, in the regular weather of ordinary days,
it sometimes happens that a man has changed
so slowly that he slips away
before anyone notices
and lives and dies before anyone can find out.

From http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175942 accessed 20 July 2009.
Question for discussion:
* What do you think is “the regular weather of ordinary days”?

“An Introduction to My Anthology”
by Marvin Bell

Such a book must contain—
it always does!—a disclaimer.
I make no such. For here
I have collected all the best—
the lily from the field among them,
forget-me-nots and mint weed,
a rose for whoever expected it,
and a buttercup for the children
to make their noses yellow.

Here is clover for the lucky
to roll in, and milkweed to clatter,
a daisy for one judgment,
and a violet for when he loves you
or if he loves you not and why not.
Those who sniff and say no,
These are the wrong ones (and
there always are such people!)—
let them go elsewhere, and quickly!

For you and I, who have made it this far,
are made happy by occasions
requiring orchids, or queenly arrangements
and even a bird-of-paradise,
but happier still by the flowers of
circumstance, cattails of our youth,
field grass and bulrush. I have included
the devil’s paintbrush
but only as a peacock among barn fowl.

From http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175938 accessed 20 July 2009
Question for discussion:
* What could be “the flowers of circumstance”?

“Your Shakespeare”
by Marvin Bell

If I am sentenced not to talk to you,
and you are sentenced not to talk to me,
then we wear the clothes of the desert
serving that sentence, we are the leaves
trampled underfoot, not even fit to be
ground in for food, then we are the snow.

If you are not what I take you to be,
and I am not what you take me to be,
then we are the glass the bridegroom smashes,
the lost tribes underfoot, no one sees,
no one can speak to us, in such seas we
drift in we cannot be saved, we are the rain.

If I am unable to help myself,
and you are unable to help yourself,
then anything will happen but nothing follows,
we eat constantly but nothing satisfies.
We live, finally, on the simplest notions:
bits of glass in the head’s reticent weather.

From http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175934 accessed 20 July 2009
Question for discussion:
* What is the value of communication?

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Teaching Poetry

2009-08-07T13:50:00.007-04:00

Lit Instructor
by William Stafford (pictured, right)

Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.
I dance my way toward the family of knowing,
embracing stray error as a long-lost boy
and bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;
it bites like a saw into white pine.
I communicate right; but explain to the dean—
well, Right has a long and intricate name.

And the saying of it is a lonely thing.

from http://www.newsfromnowhere.com/stafford/stafford00.html accessed 7 August 209

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"I've always believed in the Keirkegaardian notion that education, real education, begins when the teacher learns from the students, when there's a reciprocity." ~Theodore Roethke (pictured, right)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When a person encounters another person in total immediacy, he or she may also experience a glimpse of God. ~Martin Buber (pictured, right)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

September 1, 1939

by W.H. Auden (pictured, right)

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

– W. H. Auden

from http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15545 accessed 7 August 2009

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

New Book Review

2009-08-01T09:57:00.006-04:00

Amy George (pictured, right), editor of Bird's Eye Review, the online journal of contemporary narrative poetry, has generously reviewed my chapbook Philip & the Poet (2008, Mayapple Press). The review is online at 360 Main Street dot com. Here is an excerpt from the review:

Christ's poems are full of colorful snapshots of people, the poems themselves bearing the brightness of Polaroid moments. Along the journey, we meet monks in Tibet, Fyodor Dostoyevsky at a dinner party, and even God. In the title poem "Philip and the Poet," we are swept away with feelings of nostalgia as the speaker recalls watching a young boy dive into the water with a head full of imagination:

there goes Philip in my memory,
trotting toward the water, calling out
"To the Netherlands!" or maybe "To China!"

Read the full review here.

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

THE UNFOLD PINNACLE by Basanta Kumar Kar – A review by Nabina Das

2009-07-29T13:51:00.005-04:00

The Turbulent Top: Marginalized Women’s Voices from India

THE UNFOLD PINNACLE by Basanta Kumar Kar
– A review by Nabina Das

Basanta Kumar Kar’s involvement in the Indian nonprofit sector for years has afforded him a close-up of tribal societies, backward classes and marginalized sections of India's developing and diverse society. He writes with flourish in first-person voices of personas as varied as an under-aged girl with a history of abuse to a Gond or Maria tribal woman struggling against the onslaught of modern civilization to a mother-cum-sex worker reflecting on her fate in the ruthless city. As a professional in his poetic role, Kar brings alive the disillusionment and haplessness of India’s marginalized women, especially those from Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). While involving himself in his subject’s plight he remains a keen observer. Kar shares the wealth of his experiences with his readers in the rather long unpublished 73-page collection.

Wikipedia defines the SC/ST as ‘Indian population groupings that are explicitly recognized by the Constitution of India, previously called the "depressed classes" by the British, and otherwise known as untouchables. SCs/STs together comprise over 24% of India's population, with SC at over 16% and ST over 8% as per the 2001 census… Some Scheduled Castes in India are also known as Dalits. Some Scheduled Tribe people are also referred to as Adivasis. Commenting on the crisis of faith people from these underprivileged communities experience, in the aptly titled “Faith First”,
Kar writes:

Smoke and cloud work in tandem
swings of snow peep
hills draw lines, mesmerize
they butcher;

The actions embodied by the elements smoke, cloud, snow, hills etc. are swift and brutal, akin to the experience of his subject. Nature provides no succor. It is a constant reminder of bad fortune. In “…mesmerize/they butcher” this is particularly amplified. The short staccato sentences metaphorically and literally “work in tandem”. The cosmogony of the women Kar writes about, socially denied and deprived, and often under a double yoke of social stigma within their own communities, is comprised of humanistic elements that surprise us with their animateness, the only source of comfort for the subjugated lot:

I understand my neighbours
tamarind tree, dates and nuts
pigs and chicken, ghosts and spirits
traditional healers.

The weltanschauung of the women is stark yet conveys the environment they thrive in:

We are together
no one more equal than others.

Kar’s writing style is abrupt and rhetorical for the most part, characteristic of his subject’s emotional graph:

The flower fades
the bird escapes the cage
I ponder over the lineage
but to yet another cruel destiny.

“Border I” – where Kar’s palette proffers a touch of hope for the voice of an ‘other backward caste’ widow from the state of Chhattisgarh in eastern India – is a delightful study in astuteness. The lilting tones of “The fading barks almost ochre” escalates the almost ochre-ness of the still life reflected in the river as if a frame of decay and degeneration. Kar repeats the water/river motif to encompass the broad expanse of the subject’s silence and depth of agony in “The silent river Tel”. For the widow, “festive is the air for all else” in her village bordering the eastern state of Orissa. And Kar’s prophetic yet passive observation that “the scheme unfolds at pinnacle” tells of a subtext of events and actions that this particular festive moment encapsulates. Rather than celebration, all that the subject takes recourse to is complete surrender to her destiny. In the festive scenario, the only activity she is entitled to is “to bring smoke before the sunset”.

Kar’s poetry is often marked by chopped rhymes and a frequent absence of article usage. In effect this highlights the speech pattern of his poetic subjects, most of whom we realize to be without any worldly pedigree. Although it may surprise and annoy a stickler for English grammar -- Kar follows the British spelling system followed in India – the parole brings alive the shared linguistic ethnography of the Chhattisgarh-Orissa-Andhra Pradesh state cluster, the rawness of forest and village life, and the customs of the people ensconced there. Kar’s style at times, however, becomes overbearing in his earnestness to communicate his subjects’ travails. Many expressions become repetitive. The elements of his environment, the ecology and ethnography of it, is often enmeshed in commonplace poetic metaphors. Also, trying to highlight only the pain and subjugation of single mothers, the abused, the widowed, and the institutionally sidelined among the backward caste and Adivasi women in this passionate collection Kar calls ‘verse for a cause’, his poetry rarely offers any tonal variation.

The world of “The Unfold Pinnacle” also has moments away from the oppressing villages and the tribal regions. Life has not heralded better times for a twenty-two year old Bedia girl even in the urban setting of the city of Mumbai in Maharashtra state. A bar girl now, a shade different from her ancestral profession, her plaintive tone in “Bosom” (Alluring Bombay bar seduces/in a panoramic green room/from a late night to dawn) unfolds the pinnacle where misfortune spews.

NABINA DAS is a poet and fiction writer dividing her existence between the US and India. She has been widely published in North America and India and freelances and blogs at www.fleuve-so uterrain.blogspot.com

Ekleksographia -- Guest edited by Amy King

2009-07-15T23:47:00.000-04:00

: "The Burden of Happiness" by Orna Ben-Shoshan

Ekleksographia #2

Diana Adams	Cynthia Arrieu-King with Hillary Gravendyk
Anny Ballardini	Jeanne Marie Beaumont
Dan Boehl	Alexander Dickow
Linh Dinh	Tomas Ekström
Erica Miriam Fabri	Farrah Field
Adam Fieled	Annie Finch
Ossian Foley	Jennifer H. Fortin
Maya Funaro	Heather Green
Niels Hav, trans. by P. K. Brask & Patrick Friesen	Scott Hightower
Dan Hoy	Dorta Jagić, trans. by Ana Božičević
Amy King	Tony Mancus
Nicholas Manning	Miguel Murphy
Gina Myers	Keith Newton
Obododimma Oha	Daniela Olszewska
Maya Pindyck	Matthew Rotando
Tomaž Šalamun, trans. with Michael Thomas Taren	Barry Schwabsky
Evie Shockley	Lytton Smith
Sampson Starkweather	Rohith Sundararaman
Chris Vitiello	David Wolach

Reviews

Thanks, Matt, for your kind words!

Contests and Submissions

2009-07-07T09:01:00.007-04:00

Poets, fiction and creative nonfiction writers interested in submitting their work for publication or in entering their work in contests will be interested in the free information available at the Yahoo! group created and maintained by Allison Joseph, author of Imitation of Life (pictured, right). The group, created in 2005, is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crwropps-b/.

By joining the group - there is no cost to you - you can have the updates sent directly to your e-mail inbox. The list is updated frequently throughout each week.

How to join the group?

+++++++++++++++++

Ms. Joseph explains: Send a blank e-mail message to crwropps-b-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

You will receive a sign-up message in return.

If you don't get the sign-up invitation, check the junk mail folder of your e-mail for it.

Or visit

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crwropps-b

and click on "Join This Group."

Follow on-screen instructions to complete sign-up.

+++++++++++++++++

The updates from this list are much closer to real-time announcements than what's available, for instance, in the annual Poet's Market or in Poets & Writers magazine which comes out six times a year. I found Allison's "Creative Writers Opportunities List" a huge help when I was sending poems out for publication.

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

A Bear of a Project

2009-07-03T19:11:00.006-04:00

At Facebook, poet J.P. Dancing Bear has well over 1000 friends - closer to 2000. Recently he spoke with novelist Leslie Pietrzyk (who is among Bear's Facebook friends) about the poems he's been writing. She blogged about what he told her at her Work-in-Progress blog. Here are a few excerpts from her post:

[Pietrzyk] I had noticed that J.P. Dancing Bear wrote and posted “birthday poems” every week or so, along with artwork. Yes, click-click, I “liked” his work--very much. And then it was my birthday…and there was a lovely birthday poem for ME! I had assumed the poems he wrote were for people he knew beyond the Facebook sense, but no…so I invited him to tell me more about these beautiful birthday poems of his...

[Bear] I’d been a member on Facebook for roughly six months and had tried to send a birthday greeting to all the people who had befriended me leading up to that point. But sometimes I missed some, or they missed it. So originally, my plan was to use other people’s applications to send them a birthday poem. I had some 1000+ friends on Facebook and I wanted to give something I’d created in their honor to them. This is something I’ve done all my life, either a painting or a drawing and/or a poem.

[Bear] At times I was writing anywhere between 1 to 9 poems a day, with the average around 3 a day.

[Bear] So I try to spend no more than twenty minutes on each. After everything is written, I spend a few minutes reading everything aloud, just to make sure it sounds right—so a very cursory editing process. And as I pick these up and submit them to magazines, I will do another reread/rewrite/editing at that point. The other thing I try to do is make references to other arts like film, music, novels... and/or science (biology, chemistry, physics, etc. etc) and/or sometimes (philosophy/theology/mythology).

[Bear] So far, I’ve written about 850 poems, which is far more than I had imagined when I started the project (because not everyone likes to publish their birthdays). I still have about 5 months left and the average has risen to about 4 or 5 poems a day.

[Bear] Last year, I wrote possibly twenty poems for the whole year. I was making excuses for why I couldn’t or wouldn’t write and I had overburdened my editing/writing process to slow down the process. So the project has been an eye-opener for me.

Read the full article here.

Nice!

Poems written for particular occasions are examples of occasional poetry.

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Interview: Spotlight on Poet Heller Levinson and Hinge Theory by Joy Leftow

2009-07-03T18:52:00.005-04:00

James Heller Levinson and I met at Willy’s Bar and Grill on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to talk about hinge theory. Staff was gracious and did not mind that we had our long interview first and waited to eat. We both forwent drinks, sticking to water. We began with an application to put practice into action and to break the ice. Heller said,

“Let’s use with as the pivot.”

“Sure, with celebrity, works with that.” I said.

That led to bulbs flashing and purple irises.

We then tried another. “With arson,” Heller said. “embers,” I replied and thus we jump-started our interview.

Heller’s lust for this theory has taken on a life of its own, as has the hinge process. He’s utterly and hopelessly consumed by it or perhaps it’s the other way round, and the theory has consumed him and he’s become part of its core. I love being an observer of passion. True passion feels me. When someone has passion and conveys that passion, it’s contagious.

I’m jumping a bit here and want to explore this organically without explaining what the theory is about, would like to begin where the passion lies, and that is in the possibility of causal effects triggered by using the applications of hinge theory in our daily lives. The dream is that hinge theory and its applications will have limitless effects on world peace, and creating cogent solutions in musical arrangements with the universe. Now that I’ve got my passion under control I can move on to discuss hinge and its applications.

Hinge is not reducible to smaller denominations; it is expandable. The title of Heller’s book, Smelling Mary became clear as we spoke. Smelling is one of our six senses and is also investigative. We smell to explore and learn. Heller’s entire world is hinged on creating a new linguistic universe composed of modules (which are the pivots like with above). If we use language to cure our lives by expanding, enriching, enhancing and embellishing, our universe is a didactic dialogue. It gives us tools to use language cogently with complexity. It’s a stimulating mental exercise that is also instinctual. If we stop to analyze the experience while we are practicing we may lose the preciosity of the moment. If we follow the flow organically, for example, navigating the circulating pulmonary rotators the hinge process is an investigative expansive living entity. Heller explained how he and Michael Annis, the discoverers of hinge, experimented by translating hinge applications to Spanish using experienced translators. Then they translated back to English to see that the applications proved their theory in terms of expansiveness and practicality. Heller called the applications “a linguistic medicinal healer and mind expander.” How can anyone go wrong with an economic application used to enhance the spirituality of life?

Heller spoke about how we as artists, have power to spread spiritual awareness and to make the earth mellifluous and profitable for all species. Heller sees hinge as the antidote to the Walmart experience. He spoke passionately of Soutine and referenced him several times as being inspirational to hinge and described how Soutine personally blew him away. Excoriate Exhale: Routing Soutine, Heller’s 22 page chapbook was the finalist for the 2008 poetry competition by Refined Savage Press.

This made me research the Jewish abstract expressionist painter who died from a bleeding ulcer while trying to escape the Gestapo. This made me very sad. I always feel more Jewish knowing how much prejudice there still is in the world against Jews, even though I am not a practicing Jewess. I have experienced a great deal of anti-Semitism first hand – right here in NYC. If hinge will cure prejudices I’m all for it. Hinge revolves inside of power systems.

Our political world is set up like this, we little schmucks fight about bs while others hold the power. The hope here being that the power of hinge may unhinge us from our parallel powerful past experiences. This ultimately is in reach for higher truth and universal enlightenment radiating positive energy. I’m a sucker for this theory Buster, I’m all for bettering ourselves and the universe too. I want world peace to be affected and effected by my artistic energy too. This is contagious energy.

I ask about the title, Smelling Mary, since smelling is a sense and Mary is originally a Jewish woman’s name and she is Christ’s mother. Over years, Mary has become a Christian name, like John or James – which is Heller’s middle name. I wanted more. Heller provided it after agreeing smelling is an investigative experience and Mary is a religious figure associated with purity.

“In the beginning was word. Language found us. All species communicate through their own language. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for one hundred and fifty million years before they died out,” Heller explained. “Humanoids have only been around for thirty thousand years. The earth, life, the human species, and language; all emerged from the original gases. There is a symbiotic health between the universe, life, and language.” Hinge has unlimited possibilities in promoting world peace and solutions for global warming and world economy intrinsically built in to its usage. The spread of infinite linguistics will affect and effect social and behavioral phenomena.

“This affirms what I already know,” I say, “We are entering a new enlightened age minus Reagan and Bush is what I say.” He agrees with me that hinge has emerged organically and simultaneously with a new political view.

This brought our interview full-circle and we ended where we began, discussing pivots modules and applications of hinge using mermaids as an example. Mermaids will evolve into their own universe of applications (poems). Mermaids will become a vehicle for hinge, a module to be followed, extensionality and complementarily; infinitely incremental and complementing.

In my head I imagine a class of several six or seven year olds practicing word analogies based on mermaids. I imagine holding out linguistic delights poetically to our young ones with analytic descriptions of how limitless words can be intrinsically. I share these images.

Levinson laughed and agreed absolutely we could, that “everything in its complexity enhanced, everything specialized and distinct to a mermaid in her own existence, you know he said, “it’s all mupae.”

I think my mouth may have fallen open here but I’m not sure. Heller didn’t tell me if my mouth was agape.

“What,” I said, flabbergasted and intrigued, “what is mupae?”

“Ah glad you asked,” he said waving his arm expansively “mutational update panel animation extenders.”

Poetically leaving me at that moment, with the obvious question, “what are mutational update panel animation extenders?” Hmmm guess that will have to be part II of this interview, investigating mutational update panel animation extenders.

Not in Kansas Any More

2009-06-27T22:24:00.006-04:00

Robert Peake (pictured, right) recently graduated from his MFA program at Pacific University. Today he gave the student speech at the commencement ceremony. Here is an excerpt from that speech:

Ours [students'] has been, if anything, an inner transformation—toward a greater awareness of what Paul Eluard meant when he said, “there is another world, and it is in this one,” and, hopefully, an experiential understanding of what our own Marvin Bell points out when he reminds us that, “in art, you’re free.” This experiential understanding of what it means to live through the eyes and ears of a writer can not be inculcated through lectures, workshops, or assignments alone. There is something about good writing one simply has to catch. And the privilege of spending time with mentors who are talented but unpretentious, wise with a sense of humor, and generous almost to a fault—is a rare and wonderful gift.

Read the full text of that speech here.

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Reading Ashbery: Part Two

2009-06-17T10:23:00.060-04:00

During the last eight months or so I've been reading John Ashbery's book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. I've written about this book in other posts to this blog. One of those posts is here and the other is here. It's been several months since I began reading and thinking about these poems and I'm ready to move on. One thing I've learned is that Ashbery expects his readers to know a great deal about art, music and poetry before reading his poems. In my writing about the Self-Portrait poems here, I go in order directly through the first few poems of the book, make a few comments on a poem that appears later in the book and then bring it back to the first poem. This is sort of me thinking out loud about where I've been recently, sort of like making a scrapbook. If you find it amusing or helpful somehow, great. If not, no loss.

About a month ago I happened to find a book by John Shoptaw titled On the Outside Looking Out. I think I must have read a comment about it somewhere online. Maybe it turned up in a search when I was looking for something related. Usually I remember better where I hear of books. Anyway, in his book, Shoptaw writes about each book of Ashbery's poetry. The book was published in 1994; the most recent book Shoptaw writes about is Flow Chart. Naturally I wanted to read what Shoptaw wrote about Self-Portrait, so that's what I read first.

I was surprised and excited to learn that the first poem in Ashbery's book, "As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat", takes its title from the first line of a poem by Andrew Marvell. Here is Ashbery's poem (from http://poems.pinkfist.net/2009/03/13/as-one-put-drunk-into-the-packet-boat/ accessed 17 June 2009):

As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat
by John Ashbery

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight
Filters down, a little at a time,
Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,
As the Sun yellows the green of the maple tree…

So this was all, but obscurely
I felt the stirrings of new breath in the pages
Which all winter long had smelled like an old catalogue.
New sentences were starting up. But the summer
Was well along, not yet past the mid-point
But full and dark with the promise of that fullness,
That time when one can no longer wander away
And even the least attentive fall silent
To watch the thing that is prepared to happen.

A look of glass stops you
And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?
Did they notice me, this time, as I am,
Or is it postponed again? The children
Still at their games, clouds that arise with a swift
Impatience in the afternoon sky, then dissipate
As limpid, dense twilight comes.
Only in that tooting of a horn
Down there, for a moment, I thought
The great, formal affair was beginning, orchestrated,
Its colors concentrated in a glance, a ballade
That takes in the whole world, now, but lightly,
Still lightly, but with wide authority and tact.
The prevalence of those gray flakes failing?
They are sun motes. You have slept in the Sun
Longer than the sphinx, and are none the wiser for it.
Come in. And I thought a shadow fell across the door
But it was only her come to ask once more
If I was coming in, and not to hurry in case I wasn’t.

The night sheen takes over. A moon of cistercian pallor
Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed,
Finally involved with the business of darkness.
And a sigh heaves from all the small things on earth,
The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons
Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere, and all the lower
Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night.
The summer demands and takes away too much,
But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes.

Here is Marvell's poem (from http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/marvell/may.html accessed 17 June 2009):

Tom May's Death
by Andrew Marvell

As one put drunk into the Packet-boat,
Tom May was hurry'd hence and did not know't.
But was amaz'd on the Elysian side,
And with an Eye uncertain, gazing wide,
Could not determine in what place he was,
For whence in Stevens ally Trees or Grass.
Nor where the Popes head, nor the Mitre lay,
Signs by which still he found and lost his way.
At last while doubtfully he all compares,
He saw near hand, as he imagin'd Ares.
Such did he seem for corpulence and port,
But 'twas a man much of another sort;
'Twas Ben that in the dusky Laurel shade
Amongst the Chorus of old Poets laid,
Sounding of ancient Heroes, such as were
The Subjects Safety, and the Rebel's Fear.
But how a double headed Vulture Eats,
Brutus and Cassius the Peoples cheats.
But seeing May he varied streight his song,
Gently to signifie that he was wrong.
Cups more then civil of Emilthian wine,
I sing (said he) and the Pharsalian Sign,
Where the Historian of the Common-wealth
In his own Bowels sheath'd the conquering health.
By this May to himself and them was come,
He found he was tranflated, and by whom.
Yet then with foot as stumbling as his tongue
Prest for his place among the Learned throng.
But Ben, who knew not neither foe nor friend,
Sworn Enemy to all that do pretend,
Rose more then ever he was seen severe,
Shook his gray locks, and his own Bayes did tear
At this intrusion. Then with Laurel wand,
The awful Sign of his supream command.
At whose dread Whisk Virgil himself does quake,
And Horace patiently its stroke does take,
As he crowds in he whipt him ore the pate
Like Pembroke at the Masque, and then did rate.

Far from these blessed shades tread back agen
Most servil' wit, and Mercenary Pen.
Polydore, Lucan, Allan, Vandale, Goth,
Malignant Poet and Historian both.
Go seek the novice Statesmen, and obtrude
On them some Romane cast similitude,
Tell them of Liberty, the Stories fine,
Until you all grow Consuls in your wine.
Or thou Dictator of the glass bestow
On him the Cato, this the Cicero.
Transferring old Rome hither in your talk,
As Bethlem's House did to Loretto walk.
Foul Architect that hadst not Eye to see
How ill the measures of these States agree.
And who by Romes example England lay,
Those but to Lucan do continue May.
But the nor Ignorance nor seeming good
Misled, but malice fixt and understood.
Because some one than thee more worthy weares
The sacred Laurel, hence are all these teares?
Must therefore all the World be set on flame,
Because a Gazet writer mist his aim?
And for a Tankard-bearing Muse must we
As for the Basket Guelphs and Gibellines be?
When the Sword glitters ore the Judges head,
And fear has Coward Churchmen silenced,
Then is the Poets time, 'tis then he drawes,
And single fights forsaken Vertues cause.
He, when the wheel of Empire, whirleth back,
And though the World disjointed Axel crack,
Sings still of ancient Rights and better Times,
Seeks wretched good, arraigns successful Crimes.
But thou base man first prostituted hast
Our spotless knowledge and the studies chast.
Apostatizing from our Arts and us,
To turn the Chronicler to Spartacus.
Yet wast thou taken hence with equal fate,
Before thou couldst great Charles his death relate.
But what will deeper wound thy little mind,
Hast left surviving Davenant still behind
Who laughs to see in this thy death renew'd,
Right Romane poverty and gratitude.
Poor Poet thou, and grateful Senate they,
Who thy last Reckoning did so largely pay.
And with the publick gravity would come,
When thou hadst drunk thy last to lead thee home.
If that can be thy home where Spencer lyes
And reverend Chaucer, but their dust does rise
Against thee, and expels thee from their side,
As th' Eagles Plumes from other birds divide.
Nor here thy shade must dwell, Return, Return,
Where Sulphrey Phlegeton does ever burn.
The Cerberus with all his Jawes shall gnash,
Megera thee with all her Serpents lash.
Thou rivited unto Ixion's wheel
Shalt break, and the perpetual Vulture feel.
'Tis just what Torments Poets ere did feign,
Thou first Historically shouldst sustain.

Thus by irrevocable Sentence cast,
May only Master of these Revels past.
And streight he vanisht in a Cloud of Pitch,
Such as unto the Sabboth bears the Witch.

Who was Tom May? If we accept the opinion of Marvell's poem, then May was, as Shoptaw says, "a poetaster". Be that as it may, we also know that May was an actual person. We can learn a bit about him at this Wikipedia entry.

Before I go on with what Shoptaw has to say about Ashbery's poem, I'd like to add here a comment of my own regarding the very nice article at the Poetry Foundation about Andrew Marvell. According to that article, Marvell lived during the transition from medieval to modern times, and his poetry reflects that. One example of this can be seen, I think, when Tom May emerges "amaz'd on the Elysian side" after having been transported not by Charon across the River Styx but in a perfunctory manner as when a package gets delivered - which, by the way, is exactly what a packet-boat is used for. Again and again in the Self-Portrait poems we encounter the notions of change, transition, uncertainty and waiting. Certainly such notions were familiar to Marvell, and I think it likely that Ashbery enjoyed the ambiguities rife in Marvell's poetry - ambiguities pointed out clearly in the Poetry Foundation article.

Ashbery's "Packet-Boat" is appropriately first in his book not only because, as Shoptaw says, it was at one point the title poem of the book but because Ashbery's ambition is announced in the first line: "I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free." The "as" in the title denotes a recurring concern in the poems: as one thing is happening, another thing, seemingly insignificant by comparison, is happening as well. Apparently Ashbery and his friend Frank O'Hara picked up on this notion from Boris Pasternak's autobiographical story Safe Conduct. Rather than have his writing serve the nation-state, Pasternak deliberately tried to write such that his writing would serve history and not a political entity. It is much more this type of "as" than the type of "as" in a simile that is prevalent in the Self-Portrait poems. We see it again in "As You Came from the Holy Land" and then again in the first line of the title poem: "As Parmigianino did it . . . ".

Often the thing that seems insignificant during the main event is a period of waiting, and the ones who wait are like a fallow field. The implication seems to be that it is reasonable to expect a sort of passive revolution or an inevitable conflict that may or may not be announced: something else will grow in what seems to be a fallow field and, as that growth happens, that which had dominated the scene will come to be supplanted. Even as we speak, change is happening. In such circumstances, what narrative strategies will we prefer?

One strategy Ashbery uses in a few of the Self-Portrait poems, as Shoptaw points out, is that of the folk or fairy tale. In such narratives, "any number of improbable adventures can happen along the way toward their fulfillment." Moreover, "By pouring their hopes and fears into a tale's simple, empty characters, readers (or bedtime listeners) learn the self-fashioning process of identification." We see this approach in, for instance, "Sheherezade", "Marchenbilder", "Oleum Misericordiae" and "Hop o' My Thumb".

The "self-fashioning process of identification" was a concern W.H. Auden had when he composed the poems of his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Anxiety, and it is a concern that emerges in several of the Self- Portrait poems as well. Ashbery addresses this concern specifically in "Worsening Situation". According to Shoptaw, Ashbery's personal concern here is "the splitting of his published from his private personality", as indicated by "This severed hand" which "Stands for life, and wander as it will,/East or west, north or south, it is ever/A stranger who walks beside me." Shoptaw goes on to say that Ashbery begins to "sound hysterical" when he tries to "reintegrate" himself: "The name you drop and never say is mine, mine!" Of course, Ashbery's broader concern is: with so much information inundating us on a daily basis and so much that we are expected to do, how are we to know ourselves, and how are we to know each other? There is cause here for great anxiety. Ashbery acknowledges the problem and says he "can't seem to keep it from affecting me,/Every day, all day. I've tried recreation,/Reading until late at night, train rides/And romance." The poem, potentially discouraging, takes a turn toward lightheartedness when Ashbery injects a sense of humor into the poem:

One day a man called while I was out
And left this message: "You got the whole thing wrong
From start to finish. Luckily, there's still time
To correct the situation, but you must act fast.
See me at your earliest convenience. And please
Tell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it."
I thought nothing of it at the time. Lately
I've been looking at old-fashioned plaids, fingering
Starched white collars, wondering whether there's a way
To get them really white again. My wife
Thinks I'm in Oslo - Oslo, France, that is.

Such humor, while amusing, fails to address the situation fully. Throughout the Self-Portrait poems, Ashbery uses humor as a strategy to enable the registering of conflicting viewpoints. For example, in "Suite", we begin in a workplace: "The inert lifeless mass calls out into space:/Seven long years and the wall hasn't been built yet". Presumably this refers to the Biblical story of the man who worked for seven years in another man's vineyard with the promise of marriage to the owner's daughter at the end of those years only to be told at that time that he'd have to work for another seven years in order to reach his goal. The poem proposes no humor in this, but at the end of the second stanza we have a bit of humor thrown in sort of like a spice added to a sauce. Here is the second stanza:

This was to be forgotten, eliminated
From history. But time is a garden wherein
Memories thrive monstrously until
They become the vagrant flowering of something else
Like stopping near the fence with your raincoat.

The "stopping near the fence with your raincoat" pokes fun at the poetry of Robert Frost ("Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening") and also at the poetry of William Carlos Williams ("The Red Wheelbarrow"). These poets privilege the image (see imagism). By poking fun in this way, Ashbery uses humor to allow, without ridicule, the recognition of a difference between his poetry and the poetry of Frost and Williams. The humor is like a spice in that it adds to the poem but does not contribute protein, carbohydrates or fat to the metaphorical meal that the poem is. We have this sort of strategy with humor in several poems throughout the Self-Portrait book.

Ashbery considers, in "Forties Flick" how we know ourselves by another type of media: film. The audience does not appear but is included as part or parcel of the film genre:

Silence of the library, of the telephone with its pad,
But we didn't have to reinvent these either:
They had gone away into the plot of a story,
The "art" part - knowing what important details to leave out
And the way character is developed. Things too real
To be of much concern, hence artificial, yet now all over the page,
The indoors with the outside becoming part of you
As you find you had never left off laughing at death,
The background, dark vine at the edge of the porch.

This is a sobering reversal of the humor that concludes "Worsening Situation". More than "the willing suspension of disbelief" happens when we enjoy movies. Because there are so many movies, we have to make choices as to which ones we will allow to entertain us. And what was the impact on people in, for instance, Mexico of the 1950s when they saw Hollywood movies of the 1940s that showed an American middle-class standard of living? Still, if we consider fully the impact of movies on our lives, will we have considered fully the questions related to the "self-fashioning process of identification"?

Ashbery goes deeper into thinking about the impact of tradition on our lives in "As You Came from the Holy Land". Fittingly, Ashbery's "Holy Land" title is taken from a traditional ballad. In "A Man of Words", Ashbery addresses the situation of the playwright and, according to Shoptaw, his actor. It seems to me Ashbery also considers how the relation of the playwright and actor relates to poets and, in doing so, mentions poets who admire Walt Whitman's poetry:

Ah, but this would have been another, quite other
Entertainment, not the metallic taste
In my mouth as I look away, density black as gunpowder
In the angles where the grass writing goes on,
Rose-red in unexpected places like the pressure
Of fingers on a book suddenly snapped shut.

The "grass writing" is writing done by poets who admire and admit to being influenced by the poetry of Walt Whitman. And, still in "A Man of Words", we have again the notion of how we know ourselves:

All diaries are alike, clear and cold, with
The outlook for continued cold. They are placed
Horizontal, parallel to the earth,
Like the unencumbering dead. Just time to reread this
And the past slips through your fingers, wishing you were there.

I think, if an enlightened Buddhist read this poem, he (or she) would say something like, "Of course! I identify with all things! I am the playwright, the actor, the poet and the writers of diaries." And of course Whitman would feel the same way. Far from feeling overwhelmed by all the information and possibilities, Whitman would sound his barbaric yawp and it would sound a lot like, "I am excited to be alive! I myself am sublime!" But no one can feel this way all the time, yes? We have cookies to bake, diapers to change, stories to tell, etc, etc. Ashbery I think is skeptical in exactly this way. He may be excited to be alive at times but getting him to admit it is another matter. Ashbery would I think more likely admit that he pretends to be excited to be alive and actually feels something more like a quiet and reflective wonder and/or awe at all the information and possibilities life has to offer. To honor the many "small things on earth", Ashbery prefers an anti-sublime strategy.

In the Self-Portrait poems, we see the anti-sublime strategy most clearly in "The One Thing That Can Save America" which appears later in the book. First, though, I have a few more words regarding the sublime strategy. Any narrative that features a hero is employing the sublime strategy. An example of a poem that is in accord with the sublime strategy is "America the Beautiful" by Katharine Lee Bates.

America the Beautiful
by Katharine Lee Bates

O beautiful, for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America! God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.

O beautiful, for pilgrim feet

Whose stern, impassioned stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness!

America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw;

Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!

O beautiful, for heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved

And mercy more than life!

America! America! May God thy gold refine,

Till all success be nobleness, and ev'ry gain divine!

O beautiful, for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years,

Thine alabaster cities gleam

Undimmed by human tears!

America! America! God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!

One way of thinking about the sublime strategy is that it seeks to unify by inspiring all to a central ideal. The notions of America as "melting pot" and "E Pluribus Unum", the motto stamped on American coins, are likewise in accord with the sublime strategy. This type of thinking has led to, for example, E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s book Cultural Literacy which argues that schools should teach a specific curriculum in order to facilitate greater shared understanding.

In "The One Thing That Can Save America", the first 3 stanzas are made up mostly of questions, and the central one is in the first line: "Is anything central?" This question, following the title which suggests drama and the sublime strategy, challenges the received opinion that there is something on which cultural literacy can be built. We then have a sort of intellectual searching: "Are place names central?" The first stanza features things which are neither immortal nor free. "These are connected to my version of America/But the juice is elsewhere." ... "Was it our doing, and was it/The material, the lumber of life, or of lives/We were measuring, counting?" The second stanza features the love of a couple (potentially immortal and free) and acknowledges a disadvantage of the anti-sublime strategy: glances as opposed to visions. "I know that I braid too much my own/Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me./They are private and always will be./Where then are the private turns of event/Destined to boom later like golden chimes/Released over a city from a highest tower?" The third stanza identifies the problem the anti-sublime strategy has with the notion of privacy. The problem can be overcome when one joins a community, something larger than oneself - but not something erotic ("A mood soon to be forgotten") or idealistic ("Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity.") "What remote orchard reached by winding roads/Hides them?" He is not interested in finding the "city upon the hill" - that is for the people interested in the sublime strategy. When he asks, "Where are these roots?" we have to take care: if Ashbery is one of the roots then we begin leaning toward mythologizing Ashbery. If a person wants to mythologize himself (or herself), that's one thing. It worked for Walt Whitman, and it can work for you too. But if other people mythologize you that's something else. "It is the lumps and trials/That tell us whether we shall be known/And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star." Throughout the Self-Portrait poems, the pronouns are interesting, but the "we" and "our" here are at least as interesting as the notion of fate. Robert Bly recommends the term "communal self" for the "speaker" of Ashbery's Self-Portrait poems. The fourth stanza proposes a general response to all the questions posed. Ashbery is genuinely interested in finding an alternative to the prevailing sublime strategy, and he'd like his readers to engage in this pursuit as well. "All the rest is waiting/For a letter that never arrives,/Day after day, the exasperation/Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is,/The two envelope halves lying on a plate./The message was wise, and seemingly/Dictated a long time ago./Its truth is timeless, but its time has still/Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited/Steps that can be taken against danger/Now and in the future, in cool yards,/In quiet small houses in the country,/Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets." The "two envelope halves" refer to the haves and the have-nots, and the timeless truth of the message refers to the ideals in the Declaration of Independence. In an anti-sublime poem, it is generous to mention so respectfully the sublime strategy. Understanding how far we are to keep ourselves from the heroic/sublime seems to be the work of this poem.

Because it depicts a pastoral scene, Ashbery's "Packet-Boat" poem draws on romanticism, according to Shoptaw: "The poem employs a pastoral crisis narrative: a summer storm gathers but passes, leaving the relieved, mortal poet in the dark. This romanticism may be taken as a sign . . . ". The external crisis is rivaled by an internal anxiety: "A look of glass stops you/And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?/Did they notice me, this time, as I am,/Or is it postponed again?" "But," continues Shoptaw, "the immortal, frontal moment of being seen face to face never comes to pass." Shoptaw speculates that the "Harsh words" that are mentioned in Ashbery's poem reflect the scolding of Tom May by Ben Jonson in Marvell's poem.

Ashbery, according to Shoptaw, may have had some anxiety that he himself could be similarly scorned. Around the time Ashbery was working on the poems that would appear in Self-Portrait, Harold Bloom's book The Anxiety of Influence was published. Because it got attention, Ashbery was sure to have had some familiarity with it. Clearly, by calling on the resources of romanticism for his "Packet-Boat" poem, Ashbery removes his poem from the critical conversation that includes Marvell and Jonson, both of whom preceded the Romantics.

Back in Ashbery's "Packet-Boat", calm returns when ". . . I thought a shadow fell across the door/But it was only her come to ask once more/If I was coming in, and not to hurry in case I wasn't." This kindhearted maternal character of Ashbery's poem contrasts with "the fulminating Jonsonian" presence of Marvell's, and the "not to hurry" of Ashbery's poem contrasts with the "hurry'd hence" of Marvell's. In this way, Ashbery further distinguishes his poetry from the poetry represented by Marvell and Jonson.

Shoptaw sees another poem that relates to Ashbery's "Packet-Boat". Ashbery translated a prose poem by Giorgio de Chirico titled "On Silence". In Ashbery's translation of de Chirico's poem, "a moon of boreal pallor is rising in the great silence"; in Ashbery's poem, "A moon of cistercian pallor/Has climbed to the center of heaven . . ." In de Chirico's poem, a storm gathers. A few people have protected themselves in their rooms, but eventually their security is disrupted when "wind blows open a window: 'they forget everything and start chasing the white sheets and catch them in flight. . . . Beware, friends, of the silence that precedes such events.'" In Ashbery's poem, the storm that gathers doesn't actually happen, and "a sigh heaves from all the small things on earth,/The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons/Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere . . .". The silence that seems to be a menace in de Chirico's poem seems, in Ashbery's poem, to be much nearer "to the center of heaven". And the wind that blows open the windows in de Chirico's poem becomes, in Ashbery's, a sigh of relief. By setting up his poem to contrast against de Chirico's, Ashbery manages to counteract the anxiety of influence described by Bloom.

Shoptaw is convinced that, by the end of "Packet-Boat", Ashbery's poem has overturned itself. Rather than try each thing to see which is "immortal and free", Ashbery "chooses . . . a life of waiting over blinding moments of illumination." He "looks in the nostalgic trunks for an answer".

Take me to your honey.

Meet Paul Polansky

2009-06-16T15:42:00.004-04:00

To many readers the name of Paul Polansky may not register, indeed to most people of whom I have spoken about him to their is always a confusion with Roman Polanski - note the spelling variation - but to those familiar with north Kosovo, they will know him as a man, an activist, and a poet of controversy.

And a few people in the Czech Republic will not forget him either.

So, who and what is this poet?

He first came to prominence with the Lety concentration camp allegations with his book Black Silence, highlighting the Czech running of the camp, not German running during WWII.

The camps inmates predominantly were Roma, known to us in the west as Gypsies.

After this he came to Serbia, around the time of the Kosovo war, and worked in Nis and in Mitrovica in Kosovo where he is to this day. His poems highlight the crises the Roma live in wherever he comes across them, and his work is hard-hitting and truthful.

Unfortunately he does not rhyme, but I'm sure that makes translation easier. Here I post some of his poems for your perusal:

THE EGYPTIANS

'We're not Gypsies,the darkskinned man pleaded,
trying to save his family.
'We came from Egypt
over a thousand years ago".

'Then go back
to your pyramids.'
the KLA soldier yelled.
"Kosovo is only
for Albanians."

GYPSY POET

Gazman showed me the camp
where the Serb army
had held several thousand Gypsies
until the end of the war.

The barbed wire fence was gone.
So were the old newspapers
and flattened cardboard boxes
the people had slept on
for more than two months.

Gazman's eyes
turned away
from the field now covered
in ankle-high grass.

"It was too cold," he said,
"to remember any details,
I tried to keep a journal,
but my mind was too numb
to move the pen."

JUNE 12TH

is now Kosovo's July 4th.

People parade in open-top cars
waving red Albanian flags.

Shots are fired into the air
while hand grenades are thrown
into homes where
Gypsies still live.

Independence Day fireworks
in Kosovo

are for real.

References:

Page on Facebook
Wikippedia Entry
Text of book Blackbirds of Kosovo

YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-WCKRhbiHI

The Captain and the Reader

2009-05-09T21:10:00.006-04:00

Lighthouse
by Jane Hirshfield

Its vision sweeps its one path
like an aged monk raking a garden,
his question long ago answered or moved on.
Far off, night-grazing horses,
breath scented with oat grass and fennel,
step through it, disappear, step through it, disappear.

The Captain and the Reader

by Andrew Christ

[submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements of application to Warren Wilson College MFA, March 2009]

The effect of the poem “Lighthouse” by Jane Hirshfield is to create in the reader a sophisticated sense of friendship toward humanity. In this paper, I will show that, by focusing the reader's attention on the lighthouse, the poet expects the reader to figure out the extent to which the monk is similar to the lighthouse. I will also show that, by not mentioning the sea captain in the poem, the poet has deliberately attenuated the didactic tone of the poem. I will explain how the poet creates the complicated effect by asking the reader to take into account how the poet sets the scene of the poem.

With “Lighthouse,” Hirshfield puts her readers in a field with a lighthouse at night. There may be danger nearby – a cliff, a rocky coast. It is perhaps safer for the captains of the ships at sea than it is for us as we are in the dark and near the shore. The captains can benefit more easily from the lighthouse and its beam of light than we can. But this is a calm night – horses graze within sight on oats and fennel grass. The horses may be wild, but perhaps it is a domestic scene.

Hirshfield intends the poem to have an impersonal feel: it neither addresses the reader directly nor introduces a speaking “I”. The “night-grazing” horses are “far off”, but we know that their breath smells of “oat grass and fennel”. Do we know this because we have spent some time there and are familiar with the scene? Perhaps, but I don't think that's the likely interpretation. There is no person in the poem, only an imagined monk. A lighthouse, the cynosure of the poem, is built with the purpose of aiding anyone at sea in an impersonal, useful, responsible and perhaps generous way. From what we have in the poem, we don't know if any captain at sea is benefitting from the light from the lighthouse. In the last line, the poet returns the reader's attention to the light from the lighthouse. The horses “step through it, disappear, step through it, disappear.” where “it” is the light from the lighthouse. The reader is focused therefore on the lighthouse and on the light it casts out at night, not on anyone's familiarity or unfamiliarity with the scene.

Hirshfield further focues the reader's attention by using a similie to compare the lighthouse to an imagined monk. The monk is not raking in a garden near the base of the lighthouse. He is raking in a garden, and he may be at home; he is probably feeling comfortable and secure, but from what we have in the poem the monk's life doesn't have anything to do with the lighthouse mentioned in the poem. The comparison is purposeful: the reader is given to understand that a monk can be to an intelligent, imaginative reader what a lighthouse can be to a sea captain.

The extent to which the monk and the lighthouse are similar is left for readers to decide. The light – extended, constant, circling, in the dark, a guide to safety – is like an elderly monk who works in a garden with a rake, “his question long ago answered or moved on.” The monk has practiced his discipline for years. He found his question and learned how to deal with it. He sometimes works in a garden with a rake. Because Buddhist monks are known to work in gardens and to work with a rake in gardens, it is likely that the monk in this poem is a Buddhist monk. Because he is Buddhist, the monk believes in reincarnation. Buddhists speak of living life after life as a series of cyclical experiences. The Buddhist's goal however is not to adjust to the repetition of living but to attain enlightenment and thereby to stop the cycle of rebirth. To not attain enlightenment means to continue being reborn, living and dying just as the light in the lighthouse continues to beam out so reliably as it circles through its one path. Because he has accepted his life in Buddhism, the monk is committed to one way of living – of responding to experience, just as the lighthouse is fixed in its activity.

The consistency and the intensity of the beam of light is only part of what makes the lighthouse a reliable aid. If captains did not have training in navigation and failed to pay attention to the tides and other current conditions, the benefit of the lighthouse would be lost. By engaging their discipline and by using the information available from various sources including the lighthouse, the captains can avoid hazards and find instead safe harbor. Likewise the reader, to make much sense of the poem, must bring to the poem some knowledge of lighthouses, monks, Buddhism and sailing, and must pay attention to how the lighthouse and the monk are depicted.

The poem's created effect on the reader of a sophisticated sense of friendship toward humanity is achieved when one makes the inference that a reader of this poem stands in relation to a monk in the same way a sea captain stands in relation to a lighthouse. It is important that a reader not infer that one stands in relation to this poem as a captain stands in relation to a lighthouse. The poet is not saying anything like, “I am a monk.” or “Be my disciple.” Because the monk is an imagined monk who doesn't speak in the poem and because the sea captain is not mentioned in the poem, one can conclude that Hirshfield intends for the didactic tone of this poem to be an attenuated one. There is nothing like the message, “You should study with a Buddhist monk.” in these lines. Nevertheless, the poet has implied that any reader of “Lighthouse” may benefit by having a relationship with an experienced monk in which one regards the monk as a lighthouse and one regards oneself as the captain of a ship at night. To make such a deliberate and generous, if oblique, suggestion can only inspire a sense of friendship toward humanity in one who receives that suggestion.

Follow-up: The folks at Warren Wilson selected other applicants for the few seats they have for students. Subsequently, I learned that there was a problem with my FAFSA which is another requirement for application to the Warren Wilson MFA. Whether the FAFSA had anything to do with me not being selected, I don't know. Warren Wilson doesn't comment on rejections.

Remember: only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Humor, Satire and Criticism

2009-05-03T09:33:00.007-04:00

At Suite 101, an article by Cicely A. Richard explains satire as a literary device capable of enriching readers' understanding of the foibles inherent in the prevailing views of their time:

In the poem "Don Juan," George Gordon Lord Byron (pictured, right) deviated from the common perception of the notorious lover, Don Juan, and paints him as a man on whom women prey. Additionally, he takes a satiric look at politics and the arts of his time. In this poem, Byron illustrates the effectiveness of satire as a literary device.

...

Satire is an effective way to enlighten people about things that may otherwise be taken for granted. It is successful because the humor makes people take a lighter look at serious matters. So, when others finish absorbing the words of the satirist, they begin to think about the information presented to them. For that reason, Byron's use of satire is instrumental the success of "Don Juan."

Read more: "George Gordon Lord Byron's "Don Juan": Byron's Use of Satire and Political Commentary" - http://british-poetry.suite101.com/article.cfm/don_juan_by_george_gordon_lord_byron#ixzz0ES2xWBUP&A

Popular contemporary examples of satire include the TV shows "The Simpsons", "South Park" and "The Daily Show" which is actually more of a parody of TV news that includes satirical bits now and then.

Another example of satire in British poetry comes to us by way of John Dryden (pictured, right) in his poem "Mac Flecknoe". Flecknoe, a fictional ruler whose kingdom enjoyed many years of peace, now must choose from among his many sons one to succeed him. He decides upon Shadwell:

And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage immortal war with wit;
Cry'd, 'tis resolv'd; for nature pleads that he
Should only rule, who most resembles me:
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years.
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day:
Besides his goodly fabric fills the eye,
And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty:
Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain,
And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.

from http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=649 accessed 3 May 2009

The satire appears when the reader realizes Mac Flecknoe is John Dryden and Shadwell is Thomas Shadwell, the poet who succeeded Dryden as Britain's Poet Laureate.

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Eye of the Beholder

2009-04-25T12:52:00.007-04:00

I'm sure you've heard the expression "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Beauty, yes. And so much more. I think meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Nowadays, poets such as Ted Kooser, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver and others prefer to consider and portray ordinary experiences and ordinary things in their poems in extraordinary ways. For instance, here is a poem by Ted Kooser titled "Tattoo":

TATTOO

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

Or consider this splendid little gem by Billy Collins:

Some Days


Some days I put the people in their places at the table, bend their legs at the knees, if they come with that feature, and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs. All afternoon they face one another, the man in the brown suit, the woman in the blue dress, perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved. But other days, I am the one who is lifted up by the ribs, then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse to sit with the others at the long table. Very funny, but how would you like it if you never knew from one day to the next if you were going to spend it striding around like a vivid god, your shoulders in the clouds, or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper, staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

Poetry is so great, isn't it? Here's one more. This one's by Mary Oliver:

Breakage

I go down to the edge of the sea.

How everything shines in the morning light!

The cusp of the whelk,

the broken cupboard of the clam,

the opened, blue mussels,

moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—

and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,

dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.

It's like a schoolhouse

of little words,

thousands of words.

First you figure out what each one means by itself,

the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop

full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

Such eyes they have. Such capacity to see beauty. And how nice of them to take the time to put their vision into such clever little things for us.

Of course, beauty may be other than what is easy to observe. For instance, the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. It's been nearly 30 years since they've been on TV. But, if you watch the 2004 Disney production titled "Miracle", you may see beauty in the determination of the coach to prepare the team to beat the Soviets who had dominated Olympic hockey since the 60s.

Or consider the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Initially, the Court was weak when compared to Congress and the President. The Justices first met in an official capacity early in 1790, and it wasn't until 1792 that they heard and decided their first case. Until 1801 or so, Congress and the President had nothing to fear when it came to having limits imposed on their powers by the judicial branch. That changed after President John Adams appointed John Marshall to the position of Chief Justice in 1801. At least one judicial scholar regards Marshall as the Babe Ruth of Supreme Court justices. No other Chief Justice has served longer than Marshall's 34 years. During his tenure, the U.S. Supreme Court became much stronger than it had been - some would even say that today it is the strongest branch of U.S. government - chiefly by claiming for itself the powers to A) interpret the Constitution and B) determine the constitutionality of laws passed by the U.S. Congress and by the state legislatures. I think there is great beauty in the growth of power seen in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. I think this beauty constitutes reason for existentialists, among others, to rejoice: men are capable of living within legal limits imposed by themselves.

I've got to change the subject a bit before I begin to sound too naive or optimistic. Who trusts an optimist? Anyway, in recent decades, some people regard the American experiment to be in its death throes. Men seek office not to serve a constituency but to see if they can achieve their vision or some portion of it. Such men want to win at any cost. Of course, when they embrace such an ambition they have already lost themselves. They are then in the service of an ideal they neither created nor control, perhaps confusing their commitment with that of a happy, successful marriage. In addition, some people regard the so-called "fourth estate" - the media - as impotent, toothless, incapable of effecting any meaningful change. I beg to differ.

The way I see it, the media create for citizens something like George Orwell's "Big Brother"; however, the ones being monitored are not the general population but the people elected and appointed to office. I mean, people in Czechoslovakia, for instance, could not believe it when "Dr. Strangelove" was produced and shown in the U.S. Likewise, what a tribute to the media that A) the Watergate break-in could be exposed and that B) David Frost could interview President Nixon and ascertain for viewers everywhere the arrogance that otherwise may have escaped history books. Fast-forward to 16 October 2007 when the PBS series "Frontline" aired an episode titled "Cheney's Law" and featured the Vice-President's collusion with attorneys. According to the program, Cheney wanted to restore to the Presidency what he saw as the beautiful, dignified importance of the power of the office of the President of the United States which, according to Cheney, had been lost after Nixon's resignation. Viewers need not have a law degree or pass the bar exam to recognize arrogance.

By keeping your heart and mind open, you can find beauty all around you.

Only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Simic and Sudoku

2009-04-24T17:16:00.006-04:00

Sometime in the mid 90s, my friend Al (Hellus) - God rest his soul - told me about Charles Simic. On Al's recommendation, I read Simic's Pulitzer Prize-winning (prose) poems in The World Doesn't End. I was blown away. I thought they were great. I'd never read poems that twisted logic to its own ends like that before.

Since then, I've talked to other poets who say of these poems that they "don't get them". I understand that because, the first time - at least the first time - I read the poems, I often didn't know what to make of them either. More than half of the poems are untitled. Clearly though, the poems feature recurring atmospheric elements such as life after wartime, barking dogs, poverty and an overhanging sense of a distant governing authority that may use force to obtain the cooperation of the governed. Occasionally a poem will allude somehow to art and/or literature.

More recently I read the 51 poems in Simic's book of poems (2005, Harcourt) titled my noiseless entourage. In these poems, Simic continues to twist logic according to the needs of his poems. Gone, however, are the atmospheric elements of life after wartime, barking dogs, poverty and the sense of a ruling stultifying political power. And each poem has a title.

To Simic's would-be readers who "don't get" his poems, I recommend reading my noiseless entourage before The World Doesn't End. Here is the initial poem of my noiseless entourage:

Description of a Lost Thing
by Charles Simic

It never had a name,
Nor do I remember how I found it.
I carried it in my pocket
Like a lost button
Except it wasn't a button.

Horror movies,
All-night cafeterias,
Dark barrooms
And poolhalls,
On rain-slicked streets.

It led a quiet, unremarkable existence
Like a shadow in a dream,
An angel on a pin,
And then it vanished.
The years passed with their row

Of nameless stations,
Till somebody told me this is it!
And fool that I was,
I got off on an empty platform
With no town in sight.

Now, what if, instead of going after the meaning of this poem with hammer and tongs, we use instead our powers of inference, conjecture and surmise? Our initial inference is likely to be that the lost thing is small enough to fit in his pocket. Because I've read enough poems by Simic, my conjecture at the end of the first stanza is that the poem is not going to tell me what the lost thing is. But I see at that point that three stanzas remain. As I continue reading, I keep an eye open for what else might be going on, since the lost thing is probably not going to matter much to this poem. Immediately (2nd stanza) the reader is given several places where the lost thing was taken as a matter of course, being part or parcel of the speaker. Then (3rd stanza) we learn that the lost thing did not draw attention to itself but was small and quiet. The poem ends (4th stanza) by telling how life has been for the one who lost the thing and does not mention any more the lost thing.

We can surmise a generosity on the part of the speaker of the poem. At some point, the speaker took the time to notice a seemingly insignificant thing which was then kept for some time in a pocket. Although the thing was small and quiet, the speaker remembers it and composes this poem on its behalf. We can also surmise a sense of humility on the part of the speaker. When "somebody" tells him "this is it!" he disembarks onto "an empty platform/With no town in sight." Because of this, he regards himself as foolish. But we know he isn't stupid by the way he talks about the years passing as a ride on a train. It is neither similie nor metaphor. We might call it surrealism. In Simic's poetry, there's a lot more where that came from.

If you enjoy solving Sudoku puzzles, I'm sure you've noticed that inference, conjecture and surmise are also useful for solving those puzzles. In my writing here, I haven't included any wrong inferences, conjectures or surmises I made while reading "Description of a Lost Thing". That doesn't mean I didn't make any. Part of the fun of reading Simic's poems is figuring out what's important and what isn't so important. As with Sudoku, sometimes one has to erase incorrect interpretations of Simic poems before arriving at a satisfying understanding.

Remember: only you can improve the audience for poetry.

What is Poetry?

2009-04-14T14:25:00.006-04:00

I didn't think anyone else could be more enthused for poetry than I am, but I may have met my match in Charles Ghigna. He teaches kids how to understand and write poems. A brief introduction to poetry that Charles wrote is online at the Poetry Teachers website. Here is an excerpt from that introduction - which he titled "What Is Poetry?":

Poetry is a natural part of our lives. It's not just something we have to memorize and recite in front of the class. Losing ourselves in a poem is one of the best ways of finding out who we are. The act of writing brings us to that point of discovery, of discovering on the page something we didn't know we knew until we wrote it.

Read the full introduction at the Poetry Teachers website.

Toward the end of his introduction, Charles included a few poems of his own to illustrate ballad stanzas. Here is one of them:

A POEM IS A LITTLE PATH

A poem is a little path
That leads you through the trees.
It takes you to the cliffs and shores,
To anywhere you please.

Follow it and trust your way
With mind and heart as one,
And when the journey's over,
You'll find you've just begun.

Find out more about Charles Ghigna at his website.

In your poetry reading, I wish you A) happy trails and B) many happy returns!

Remember: only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Coffee at Home

2009-04-11T19:07:00.029-04:00

One of my favorite poets, William Stafford (pictured at right), wrote a poem called "A Day at Home". Here it is:

A Day at Home
by William Stafford

On the near pine rain hangs
the way I suppose it hangs
on the far.

Being yourself, you are always
on time - right where your kind
of person should be.

Why not wait here while the rest
of the world happens? It is better as
history than it is as news.

The dog, his head on the coffee table,
gazes tranquilly, resting his chin
on a volume of Martin Buber.

I especially like the rhetorical question - "Why not wait here while the rest/of the world happens?" and then what seems like an offhand remark: "It is better as/history than it is as news." And perhaps it is meant to be taken as a casual, offhand remark. Off course, in poetry, what seems like an offhand remark makes our ears perk up.

If you are willing to wait "while the rest of the world happens", consider what that reveals about you. It means you are willing to take yourself out of the picture, so to speak. It means that you are willing to consider whether the world is better as history or as news.

The rhetorical question and the offhand remark constitute nothing less than an invitation to an intellectual discussion. But there's more: the last stanza illustrates animal nature at ease with profundities such as those available in the writings of Martin Buber (1878 - 1965), a Jew so highly respected that the Nazis did not kill him - a fact that becomes especially interesting when you consider that Buber was known for his "philosophical dialogue". He believed in an apolitical Zionism. Even more, he believed in Hasidism.

I prefer here to focus on Stafford's poetics rather than on issues we may or may not be able to find in Stafford's poems. Consider, in contrast to the hospitality of "A Day at Home", the fiercely private posturing in the often-anthologized "Ask Me":

Ask Me
by William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

What seems at first an entirely cold facade turns out to be a very nice (i.e., thoughtful and engaging) way of saying "wait and see".

In the spirit of hospitality, I offer the reader the following poem by Derek Walcott and also a series of pictures I took at home the other day.

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

"It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."
River Junction Poets Mission Statement

Reading writing ... equals literacy

2009-04-07T13:18:00.015-04:00

The recent article I wrote on my blog, Our Educational System, spurred me on to re-examine how this system affects our young students and their skills. As a social worker who worked in our system in public high schools with teens from 13 to 21 years old for 16 years and then worked with pre-k children for another 5 years, I’d like to share what I learned about our children and their skills. This necessitates a comparison.
Back when I was in school we had five classes per grade, beginning with the number 1 class and proceeding to the number 5 class. Thus, there was 1-1, 2-1 etc. Logically speaking one would have thought that the 5 class would have been the slowest and the number 1 would have been the fast learners, however in my school, the 1 class was the “quick learners” and the number 2 class was the "health education class," which included wheelchair bound children and very slow learners. What really was strange was that everyone knew how to read albeit some read more slowly than others. Also everyone eventually learned to write as well. The slower learners weren’t as good with grammar and spelling and for many of the slower learners, spelling and grammar problems remained. I was always in the number 1 class as I was very precocious and generally learned anything to do with reading or writing very fast. My deficits were about where things are, so maps and map memorization was a problem for me. There were always more than 30 children in each class. In those days, my neighborhood, Washington Heights, (now called Hudson Heights by all the realtors) had many foreigners.
The difference is that they were from many places, not like now when there are a handful of Russians and mostly Dominicans. There was a great influx of Puerto Ricans and Greeks to my area, and people from Russia and other Slavic nations (the nations now have since changed names). From the time when I was very young, all my teachers complained that I couldn’t keep quiet. Any foreigner was seated next to me and usually learned English quickly as I would share my notes and help them. This situation also seems unique now.
The first 5 years I worked with pregnant teens in high schools, I learned that over half of our students could not write a proper sentence. About half could write within two years of their grade level. About another quarter could write with many spelling and grammatical errors but the words would make sense. And the last quarter or 20% could not logically string one sentence to the next to write a cohesive paragraph on any given subject matter – even on one they know about. For example, if they were asked to write a paragraph on who is their favorite rapper and why, only half of them could do this successfully.
I was dismayed to observe how poor their writing, reading and comprehension skills were. Teenagers 15 years old were writing at what I judged to be a second or third grade level. At this time, some of the high schools I worked at tried to get around this issue by teaching their youngsters to think and to argue out a point verbally. The principals applied for waivers from the state so the children could do a series of oral defenses and speeches instead of taking regents, where they learned to argue a thesis from beginning to end. I was impressed by what I saw but still, again, there was at least 40% who could not keep up to the regiment or structure and this was in spite of the judges trying hard to be very lenient. I wondered why our society had changed this much from the time I was a teen to now and I still don’t have an answer.
I have met writers too who are good writers, and they cannot spell and don’t know proper grammar. Professional agents and book companies have told me, that they feel basic academic writing skill is unnecessary and unimportant. They say, what is important is that the person write well or rhyme well. I can round this out by adding that they will further say that's why they hire someone like me to do the editing and clean it up. And the weird thing here is that I know how to make street lit sound street lit enough and put in enough modernisms to make it a go on both sides too. White people and everyone else in the public schools now write Ebonics if they write at all. Proper writing is a dying skill today.
A few years back, a young man was sent to me from 9th grade. I was told to find out how he had gotten to this grade and couldn’t read or write at all. I did as I was told and apparently, he was such a sweet personality, that no one had paid attention to the fact that he couldn’t read an entire sentence. Even when given a children’s book for 5 to 7 year olds, he could barely read any of the words. OK, I admit this is unusual, but not as unusual as it seems. I have also met special education students who could barely write, but who could spout beautiful rhymes instantaneously apparently effortlessly as well.
I grew up without a television. Our radio broke when I was about 6 and wasn’t replaced for a few years. Books was my only entertainment, without which, I would have suffered even more than I did. As I tell everyone, my childhood was fraught with anxiety and despair. My mother was diagnosed with cancer when I was a few months old and the first year of my life welfare sent a series of caregivers to care for us so my dad could go to work. My mom was in hospital for about 6 months. We were have-nots in every way. I had two dolls which I had been given after I’d turned 6. I washed my own clothes and ironed them at 7 years old. Sorry, I wish I knew what childhood meant. One sister liked to play teacher and I learned to read and write to please her originally. I was reading and writing at 4 years old. I read and wrote for love.
Obviously I have no idea where this dilemma of our literacy is headed but one place it is headed is to put the entire onus for literacy on the teachers in the way of statistics like I described in the previous article. I also think that perhaps our society is going to return to a previous age when letter writers got paid and people got paid to read to others too. In the middle ages there was a particular class of people that were paid to perform this service for the general populace. Hey if I live long enough I can be one of those people. I urge you to talk to our teachers about this, talk to each other – you’ll see I’m not exaggerating.

Also check out this fascinating stuff:
John Taylor Gatto and his official website

"It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."
River Junction Poets Mission Statement

William Wordsworth Study Questions

2009-04-07T11:51:00.004-04:00

Penguin Editions has a nice volume of Wordsworth's Selected Poems that includes a twenty-page introduction, notes to poems and an index. I didn't know how important Plato's idea of pre-existence was to Wordsworth until I read about him and his poetry. I also didn't know about his skill with linguistics and rhetoric until I read about him and his poetry. Here is a brief selection of his most-anthologized poems along with a few questions to help get discussion started. We used some of this in our meeting last night.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

What role, if any, does memory play in this poem?
How does Wordsworth's "poetry of nature" in this poem transform itself into the "poetry of self-consciousness"?

The following is excerpted from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Gray

Lucy Gray is not one of Wordsworth's “Lucy” poems, even though it is a poem that mentions a character named Lucy. The poem is excluded from the series because the traditional "Lucy" poems are uncertain about the age of Lucy and her actual relationship with the narrator, and Lucy Gray provides exact details on both. Furthermore, the poem is different than the "Lucy" poems in that it relies on narrative storytelling and is a direct imitation of the traditional 18th century ballad form.

The narrator begins the poem by stating:

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:

And, when I crossed the wild,

I chanced to see at break of day

The solitary child. (lines 1–4)

She may be, as the narrator claims, the "sweetest thing that ever grew" (line 6), but she is dead, as the narrator explains:

But the sweet face of Lucy Gray

Will never more be seen. (lines 11–12)

The narrator transitions to say that she was told to "take a lantern, Child, to light/Your mother through the snow" (lines 15–16), to which she agrees. She left, and

The storm came on before its time:

She wandered up and down;

And many a hill did Lucy climb:

But never reached the town. (lines 29–32)

Her parents attempted to search for her, and

At day-break on a hill they stood

That overlooked the moor;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood,

A furlong from their door.

They wept—and, turning homeward, cried,

"In heaven we all shall meet;"

—When in the snow the mother spied

The print of Lucy's feet. (lines 37–44)

They followed the footprints throughout the area,

And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy bank

Those footmarks, one by one,

Into the middle of the plank;

And further there were none! (lines 52–56)

Although she is probably dead, the narrator explains that her spirit, according to superstition, can still be seen:

—Yet some maintain that to this day

She is a living child;

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray

Upon the lonesome wild.

O'er rough and smooth she trips along,

And never looks behind;

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind. (lines 57–64)

What role, if any, does memory play in this poem? Compare to “I Wandered...”
Why is it important to Wordsworth's speaker that Lucy is solitary? What is the value of solitariness?

Questions for discussion of “A Few Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey”

See line 40 - why has the world become "unintelligible" to the speaker? What has happened to him over time?
What is the difference between the pleasure the speaker took in nature as a child and the pleasure he draws from it now? What does the poet gain from his reflections on the past?
What is the role of "affective memory" in "Tintern Abbey"? How, in other words, does this kind of memory help Wordsworth's lyric speaker first to recognize his problem and then to resolve it?

The following is excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intimations_of_immortality_from_recollections_of_early_childhood

"Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood" is a long ode in eleven sections by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. It is a deeply philosophical work, with themes ranging from the Platonic belief in pre-existence, to Wordsworth's belief that children have an instinctive wisdom that adults lack. Composed at Grasmere, in the English Lake District, between 1802 and 1804, "Intimations of Immortality" was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). Arranged in eleven stanzas of anywhere from eight to forty lines each, the poem is written in anisometric verse, with lines of varied iambic stresses.

Wordsworth applies memories of his early childhood to his adult philosophy of life. According to the author's prose introduction, "Intimations of Immortality" was inspired in part by Platonic philosophy. Plato taught pre-existence, meaning that the soul dwelled in an ideal alternate state prior to its present occupation of the body, and the soul will return to that ideal previous state after the body's death. The immortality the title refers to is the immortality of the soul, which Wordsworth maintains is felt or intimated during early childhood. Hence Wordsworth's famous line: "The Child is Father of the Man."

"Intimations of Immortality" begins with the speaker recalling how nature and "every common sight" once seemed divine to him. In Stanza II, he reminds himself that rainbows and the like are still "beautiful and fair" to him, but nevertheless he feels "there hath past [passed] away a glory from the earth." In Stanza III, he feels that no private grief can diminish the joyous quality of nature. He feels nature's joy in the fourth stanza, but the feeling quickly fades.

In Stanza V, Wordsworth begins to philosophize in earnest. "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," he says, for our souls originate in a purer, more glorious realm: heaven itself. Small children retain some memory of paradise, which glorifies their experiences on earth, but youths begin to lose it, and adults, distracted by earthly concerns, entirely forget it (Stanza VI).

Next, the speaker observes a six-year-old boy mimicking adult behavior in his play, "as if his whole vocation / Were endless imitation." In Stanza VIII, the speaker addresses the child, wondering why he, "thou best Philosopher" and "Mighty Prophet," imitates adult behavior as though he were eager to hasten "the inevitable yoke" of earthly cares and customs ("freight").

In the ninth stanza, the speaker rejoices that his memories of childhood ("those shadowy recollections" that "are yet a master light of all our seeing") remain to inspire him. In the tenth stanza, he calls on the birds to sing and the lambs to bound, to share his joy. Instead of mourning the loss of childhood innocence and wisdom, the speaker vows to "find / Strength in what remains behind" and to develop a mature "philosophic mind", 'which stems from a consciousness of mortality, as opposed to the child's feeling of immortality.'

Wordsworth sums up his philosophy in the final stanza (XI). His mature mind, he says, 'enables him to love nature and natural beauty all the more, for each of nature's objects can stir him to thought, and even the simplest flower blowing in the wind can raise in him "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."'

Stirringly written with 'linguistic strategies [that] are extraordinarily sophisticated and complex', "Intimations of Immortality" is Wordsworth's 'mature masterpiece' reflecting his belief that 'life on earth is a dim shadow of an earlier, purer existence, dimly recalled in childhood and then forgotten in the process of growing up.'

What two kinds of self-consciousness are described in "Intimations of Immortality"? Which type is more desirable? Why?
What differences, if any, do you find in this ode's "affective resolution" compared to the one in "Tintern Abbey"?

Three Years She Grew

Three years she grew in sun and shower,

Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown;

This Child I to myself will take;

She shall be mine, and I will make

A Lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be

Both law and impulse: and with me

The Girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,

Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

"She shall be sportive as the fawn

That wild with glee across the lawn

Or up the mountain springs;

And hers shall be the breathing balm,

And hers the silence and the calm

Of mute insensate things.

"The floating clouds their state shall lend

To her; for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see

Even in the motions of the Storm

Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form

By silent sympathy.

"The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face.

"And vital feelings of delight

Shall rear her form to stately height,

Her virgin bosom swell;

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give

While she and I together live

Here in this happy dell."

Thus Nature spake—The work was done—

How soon my Lucy's race was run!

She died, and left to me

This heath, this calm and quiet scene;

The memory of what has been,

And never more will be.

What will be the relationship between the child and nature? Is it a different one than is posited for the speaker? If so, how?

Questions from http://www.ajdrake.com/e212_spr_05/materials/authors/wordsworth_w_sq.htm accessed 1 April 2009.

Remember: only you can improve the audience for poetry.

Birthdays of Poets

Book Review by Joy Leftow: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer

Randall Radac aka John Lee Brook has a new book!

"I Read This": Poetry South 2010

Book Review - 39 Poems by Charles Butler

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef - Bernard Alain - reviewed by Joy Leftow

Far From Kiltartans Poor He Died

What Smokey Says

"Paris, 7 A.M." by Elizabeth Bishop

Steig Larrson and me

Symbolon

Reading John Ashbery's Poetry

something new

"A Trek with the Buddha Bard" -- A Review in Danse Macabre

Kay Ryan Birthday Reading

Recommended Reading: The Burden of the Past

Kate Evan interviews Joy Leftow

2 comments:

Being and Writing: Joy Leftow: Dare to be Different

Precious, a novel by Sandra Novack, book review by Joy Leftow

Marvin Bell Birthday Reading

Teaching Poetry

When a person encounters another person in total immediacy, he or she may also experience a glimpse of God. ~Martin Buber (pictured, right)

New Book Review

THE UNFOLD PINNACLE by Basanta Kumar Kar – A review by Nabina Das

Ekleksographia -- Guest edited by Amy King

Contests and Submissions

A Bear of a Project

Interview: Spotlight on Poet Heller Levinson and Hinge Theory by Joy Leftow

Not in Kansas Any More

Reading Ashbery: Part Two

Meet Paul Polansky

Recommended Reading: Poetry as Persuasion

The Captain and the Reader

Humor, Satire and Criticism

Eye of the Beholder

TATTOO

Breakage

Simic and Sudoku

What is Poetry?

Coffee at Home

Reading writing ... equals literacy

William Wordsworth Study Questions

Three Years She Grew