Monday, February 28, 2005

Redwings, Wilbur, Old Poems, Acadia, and a Pulse

I was filling the bird feeders Sunday morning. The sun was already higher in the sky than December noons. Although cold, the sky was temperate blue and there was verve in the air. A resonance of birds grew around me, soon sounding so strident that I knew it could not be chickadees waiting for me to finish my tasks. I became aware of a particular note that I had not heard for several months. Walking to the parking lot I looked into the butternut trees across the way and saw a flock of red-winged blackbirds singing outrageously of spring’s return.

And this is where I note that Richard Wilbur could do justice to such a moment, its formal rituals, its natural order, its overwhelming sentiment of redemption. I could try but never in a million springs succeed in writing such a poem. Mine would ultimately be tainted by conditions that we now know and not those that we once loved. Like the one I wrote for the occasion 2 years ago:
The First Wave 3.14.03

Reconnaissance arriving from the sun,
the red-winged blackbirds carry on their wings
insignia—crimson epaulets—homespun.
Their trill along the river heralds spring’s
return. The morning bursts with southern sound
as they prepare these northern borderlands
for occupation. Light will seed the ground
for growth and heat unshackle deadlocked sands.
Next week the equinox will land unseen;
its armaments will burn the country green.
Unless of course I was in Acadia National Park. Then I’d heal. And would wonder whether Wilbur then is right after all. That there is a power behind the curtain, that salvation is in our stars and resurrection our rightful inheritance. That voice is not merely our desperate cry but the innate timbre of the word. Until I came back home of course.

Nevertheless, the redwings are back early this year and that for me is enough. Despite the sixteen inches of snow forecasted for tonight, I have heard the best voices of the generations sing of spring. My pulse is good today.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Modern Major Formalists

The reputation of Richard Wilbur rests firmly on his formal mastery. He is no doubt the very model of a modern major formalist. His language is sumptuous and his classical allusions are always ripe and omnipresent. Even his themes, though tinged with shadows here and there, always look towards an integration of brightness, a byproduct of his religious temperament. All of this is good. I heartily endorse a spiritual poetics and drink deeply from his well of meter and form. But he is a reactionary in the true definition of the word, and his work looks more to the past than to the present. His voice is not just elusive; it’s vague at best, chameleon more than not. If there is a formal poet of the mid to late 20th century that deserves our true devotion, I am afraid it is not Wilbur, despite his skills at craft. But it might be Weldon Kees.

Friday, February 25, 2005

The Master’s Voice and Richard Wilbur

In opposition to my take on Wilbur’s voice is Alan Sullivan’s in his essay, Richard Wilbur: Islands of Order, published initially in The Sewanee Review, and now found on his blogsite, Fresh Bilge. As an aside, Alan could be the formalist’s Silliman in this here blogland but chooses to be a conservative curmudgeoning sailor instead. Our great loss! But back to said essay.

In speaking of voice, Sullivan says, “Wilbur expresses his reflections in complex yet always lucid diction.” He adds that “Wilbur’s voice is often conversational, yet he is not colloquial.” And just before he begins a short defense of western civilization, Sullivan notes Wilbur's “own voice is also distinctive, though perhaps more variable, more elusive.”

I, of course, find it so elusive that I haven’t found it yet. That could very well be my own intellectual shortcomings and lack of detective skills. But I did enjoy reading “A Black Birch in Winter,” which was written more in Frost’s voice (“You might not know this old tree by its bark,” it begins), albeit Wilbur’s classical (an allusion to Ara Coeli) optimism (thus it ends):
Old trees are doomed to annual rebirth,
New wood, new life, new compass, greater girth,
And this is all their wisdom and their art,
To grow, stretch, crack, and not yet come apart.
But I will keep on looking even if I'm torn asunder doing so.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Wilbur and But

But I should love this poem. I have written much inferior ones much like it. And there are moments in it that rush my mind. But not my soul. “Shad-time” by Richard Wilbur.

There’s that voice I spoke of earlier, or rather that lack of voice. Sometimes I feel I’m reading clauses and phrases and rhymes (oh my) assembled by a consummate jigsaw artist.

“Though between sullen hills, / Flat intervales, harsh-bristled bank and bank, / The widening river-surface fills / With sky-depth cold and blank,” begins the poem. And did I mention adjectives! But there’s artistry in those lines. He is good, no doubt.

And so by the third stanza we have the obligatory classical reference. “Or as the Thracian strings, / Descending past the bedrock’s muted staves,”: I know this stirs the loins of formalists but it burns my arse (acceptable English variation used here for refined reasons my main man/woman). Why must we always?

But I love this: “With such brave poverties the year / Unstoppably begins.” It’s one of the shortest sentences in the poem and maybe because of that one of the most powerful. The clash of opposites with accompanying alliteration is a sight and sound to behold.

And there is much else to like in this poem. For me: the attention to detail, the almost Jeffers-like inhuman world of nature, the wit and play of words with that world, even the end: “Though cloudily astrew / As rivers soon shall be with scattered roe, / Instant by instant chooses to / Affirm itself and flow.”

But with Wilbur, for me, there’s always a “but.”

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Fear and Loathing in Hell
(A Eulogy for Hunter S. Thompson)

“What kind of candy-assed trick is this?” Dick Nixon was screaming from his bleeding lungs somewhere in his special level of hell in-between the floors reserved for war criminals and purse snatchers. “Goddamn it HR, he shot himself on President's Day weekend. Ain’t nothing holy to that Commie-loving dope-fiend?” Someone from above was banging on the floor, telling Dick to keep it down.

His jowls were hanging like the sagging breasts of an aging stripper. His eyes kept shifting in the crimson dark. He was besides himself, and even he didn’t want to be that close to Tricky Dick. But this was dark sacrilege and required some kind of supernatural intervention. It was his weekend and that drug-riddled journalist who had dissed him on his own death had now defiled his very day.

Oh yes, it was still his day. No shameful resignation could take that away. Not only was he elected over that hack Hubert, but he ran the reins of government over that starry-eyed McGovern. But this was personal. Hunter S. Thompson was mocking him once again, and this time for eternity, calling him out for the cheap Oval Office whore that he really was, and taking away what was really his, earned by hook and by crook. But then he laughed and once again transformed into that death-defying hyena that ate idealism for midnight snacks.

Ah! but now the coast was clear. The last of the gonzos had passed and men like Dick Nixon were finally safe again. He could feel the blood lust rising now. The age was turning. Every one wanted in on his action now. They’re loving every minute of it. More Nams. More Iraqs. More mine. They were lining the streets like they used to in DC when protesting his war, his Cambodia, his heart of darkness. But now they wanted in. They were tearing at their hair and scratching out their eyes and foaming at the mouth.

The Doctor is dead! He laughed another octave higher shattering the mirror that never tells our history as it really is. Only one man did that more than thirty years ago and looked where it got him, his brains splattered now in Woody Creek like Kennedy in Dallas. Nixon winced, remembering again the pain of 1960. “Damn that Jack,” he muttered. Black paranoia was setting in again. “And damn this infernal fear and loathing!” He turned to bark another order to Haldeman: “We got to burn his fucking books! They’ll ruin my escape.”
Indeed. How many times can a man be robbed -- on the same street, by the same people -- before they call him a man? Bob Dylan said something much like that in a tattered old song called "Blowin' In The Wind." Read it and weep, you poor bastards -- because Dylan was yesterday, and George Bush is now.

That is a morbid observation, at best, and we are all stuck with it. The 2004 presidential election will be a matter of life or death for the whole nation. We are sick today, and we will be even sicker tomorrow if this wretched half-bright swine of a president gets re-elected in November. Take my word for it. Mahalo.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Where’s Wilbur

I want to look at Richard Wilbur’s poetry and discover why it doesn’t move me. Is it his voice? In a 1995 interview, Wilbur says of free verse and Robert Frost:
I think that in free verse one loses all sorts of opportunities for power, emphasis and precision, especially rhythmic precision. If you read the poems of Robert Frost, above all the North of Boston poems, you hear the New England voice speaking in its native rhythm. Because there's a loose iambic pentameter going on, you can't misread those poems. You can't fail to read them as if you were a New Englander. If you put enough stresses into a Robert Frost line to have it be a pentameter, then you're going to have to be making New England cadences. Now if someone attempts a poetry of distinctive speech rhythms without a metrical base, I think a good part of the intended emphasis is going to get away.
Exactly. But what of Wilbur’s voice? I hear ornate speech, that of a well-read student, a professor now if you will, writing the poem in the manner that he believes one should write that poem. There is always that remove in his meter. Although technically proficient and wonderfully written. As William Carlos Williams is to have said, “Wilbur is good.” Of course he began that appraisal, “Wilbur is wrong.” I’d add, Wilbur is missing.

But maybe that’s just some postmodern trick and the joke’s on us.

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Confessional Clarifications 1

It’s not that I’m unaware of their talent. They are accomplished poets and deserve all the recognition they receive. But it’s a fixed game for me. I’ll never be that accomplished in their genre of poetry no matter how I try. I am not underselling myself. If anything I’m overselling. I’m assuming that I can be accomplished in some genre akin to theirs. Some way. Somehow. Wayne Gretzky never played in the NBA. Even Mario Mendoza batted above the Line one season, but not in the NHL. And Richard Wilbur can never be my patron saint.

Deer and Coyote Part 4

And so we begin day two of stillness. I have nothing left to say it seems. But that’s not really the case. I have nothing I wish to say. I could stop blogging outright. It seems to be an epidemic. Or maybe I could quit and then return, reenergized. Or not. Instead, maybe I’ll just take the long weekend off.
Addressing her unswerving silence, he
detects disorientation and disquiet,
a deer that’s caught in circumstances starker
than the existential light of day.
Or chop down a cherry tree.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Deer and Coyote Part 3

I really don't have anything to say today.
The beach all but vanished, she dreams of sleep
amid some breach in the dunes (despite awareness
that a storm is streaming from the west
venting extremes of weather towards this coast).

But then she chances on a stranger reflecting
on driftwood, leaping at suggestions from
the sea. She pauses, then grows motionless;
he pushes her with animated speech.

She stares intently at him yet doesn’t speak;
he’s bewildered by water at her feet.
Her face is weathered from something more than wind;
he wonders why she’s calling on the wild?
That could become a problem.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Ice Out

There are some in New England for whom spring begins at the sign of the first crocus or the sighting of the first red robin. There are others who believe that spring begins when pitchers and catchers report for Red Sox spring training (today, by the way). But for the past eleven years, spring begins for me when there’s ice-out on the Merrimack.

This winter has not been a severe one. The first true cold snap didn’t come until mid-January, but it was strong enough and long enough to cast a frozen spell upon the river. Everything seems to be in suspended animation when the river ices over: where previously flowed a blue mercurial existence now everything stops still. Day after day, week after week, the whole world is locked away. In time your very soul feels imprisoned, and in a little more time you’ve forgotten the living river life and grown accustomed to your hard sentence of winter.

But then one day the ice cracks and the water makes a break for it. You see the open stretch of currents running beneath the sun. Just as suddenly something in your heart unlocks and life itself again is streaming through your veins. And if you’re half-human still, maybe a tear just rises to a single eye to water this vision and make it grow. Ah, the shoot of spring is rising. Before you know it, the red-winged blackbirds will soon be blooming.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Thoreau on Poet Laureates

Henry has something to say about wildness and hawks and genius and poetry that stopped me in my tracks tonight reading the Journals. This one is worth blogging twice no doubt.
What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own. The hen-hawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly shelter and support of the pine. It will not consent to walk in the barn-yard, but it loves to soar above the clouds. It has its own way and is beautiful, when we would fain subject it to our will. So any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, as genius itself. No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted or above persecution. It can never be poet laureate, to say “Pretty Poll” and “Polly want a cracker.”
We may not all be geniuses, but there is a genius that resides in all of us. It wants to escape its cage and soar. A little bird just told me so.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Plum Island High Tide Redux

Last week, on Plum Island, I walked the boardwalk from Parking Lot 5 to the beach. I could hear the surf from the access road. When I reached the end of the boardwalk, I realized there was, for all intents and purposes, no beach. I had never seen the tide so high. It wasn’t an especially ferocious ocean. The waves weren’t that large, but the surf had reached the dunes. I stood there watching the waves, resigned to the fact that I would not be walking the beach that morning. But I noticed someone approaching from the north. Well, if they could do it, so could I. I noticed a small strand along the south still safe, so I walked towards a large driftwood tree washed ashore between an open area between large dunes.

Here’s stanza 4, 5, & 6 of the current project. (1-3 were posted yesterday)
But Barbara does. And so today she slogs
along that filament of beach, her camera
at hand, apprehending an indistinct
ocean, a muted blue advance nearby

arising from unknown cerulean
horizons. The tide is new moon full and soon
the shore is nothing more than walls of dunes.
The sand is unsettled and steep, and walking is

intractable for one beyond her prime.
Her breathing plumbs untold depths; she steps unsure.
The only place to walk is now the wash
of surf; the tide’s grown astronomical.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Turning Prose to Verse

In attempting a short narrative poem, I'm in the process of converting my prose post of 2/9 (Incident at the Lunar New Year) into verse. It’s an interesting experiment. And one that I think could be useful in the future. It’s easier for me to write a narrative in prose. Later I can bang it into verse. Here’s the first three stanzas:
Where the Deer and Coyote Play

That the wildlife refuge on Plum Island
is not a sanctuary from concerns
of business, home, or everything pop culture,
but topography for being wild—

as shorebirds, songbirds, hawks, coyote, deer,
and that occasional photographer
or poet—is not a thing that every creature
sees. For instance, birders look for Iceland

Gulls, Tri-colored Herons, or Virginia
Rails, and almost never know the land
itself, that wilderness of marshes, dunes,
and start to infinite Atlantic seas.
Blithely I go along, and to be continued.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Bless me Father for I have Blogged (my confession)

One year ago tonight I began blogging. There were various reasons why I began, although looking back the obvious one was my recent discovery of political blogs. The 2004 election had begun in earnest and I had come upon Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, Eschaton, etc. From there I discovered others, including most importantly, poetry blogs. So why not me?

But now that a year has passed, I suppose I could ask, why continue. Well, first of all, it’s fun. Secondly, I enjoy reading all the other blogs out there, and would probably stop reading them if I stopped blogging, only if for the obvious addictive nature of the entire business. But third, and maybe the best reason, I have just begun to find my voice in more ways than one.

I started writing poetry back in high school, got semi-serious in college with my roommate Paul Kelly (where oh where), my mentor. I continued writing after dropping out of BC, but by the birth of my daughter in 1980, I had ceased and desisted. Until 1994 that is, and my finding Rhina Espaillat and the Powow Poets.

For six years I was a steady member, and slowly learned the meter game. I lived for every second Saturday. Literally. But in late 2000, I experienced one of those workshop moments when a member savages you and leaves your carcass on the table, words bleeding all over the place. I realized then that I had to step back and get serious on my own.

I attended workshops off and on after that, mostly off. I started using the online workshop Eratosphere where I was savaged by Alan Sullivan weekly (not weakly). But such beatings are easier to take virtually I guess, and I think I learned an important lesson or two from the Editor from Hell. I was published in several journals, and took heart that it’s better late than never.

Last January I had a reading at the Powow monthly reading, and attended some workshops. But something had changed. The warm atmosphere that had existed in the late nineties had disappeared in a haze of professional careerism. I thought I had entered a boardroom where marketing was king. I felt an outsider, even though especially Rhina and Len and Deborah and Alfred were, as usual, wonderful. And although the reading went very well, confirming my decision to grow alone, I realized that you can’t go home again. They had moved on.

I would have to too, but I see now that the direction I need to take goes elsewhere than back there. It’s taken me a year of blogging to actually face that decision down, and realize I will never again be a real Powow. Just typing that sentence is heartbreaking. So I’ll have to stop these personal confessions here. Except to say thank you to all of you out there that read me, and all of you out there that I read. I’m signing on for another year. Keep on blogging on.

Talkin' 'bout Thoreau

There's an interview with the editor (that would be moi) of The Blog of Henry David Thoreau over at the Tattered Coat. If you're interested in that crazy Thoreauvian fellow and his inane responses to thoughtful questions. Thanks Matt.

Friday, February 11, 2005

TDV3: A Declaration Pro Forma

There has always been something in formalist language that’s rubbed me the wrong way, even as I learned to appreciate the fact of meter, its rhythm and its energy. This kind of poetry demotes the language to an almost colloquial speech, and most often a suburban one. It’s as if in order to defend the use of form and meter, those much abused poetic concepts accused of high crimes and misdemeanors, loyalty to past monarchies and treasonous acts against anything contemporary, formalist poets use the weapon of common language. Such poetry cannot be accused of being outdated or grandiose if the language is of the common man.

This defense has been built so close to the skin, that any criticism on formalist poetry is considered outrageous, an attack against form and meter itself, and therefore preposterous in and of itself. There they go again, attacking form and meter as something outdated and grandiose when we here know we’re just your average Joes working in a time-tested manner. But the attack, if we want to call it that, is on CONTENT, not form.

Brian Phillips on a message board has recently called it “contemporary life slipped too blithely into iambs, not contemporary life slipped into iambs at all.” There’s some truth in them there hills. There’s a kind of chic suburban aesthetic, where even journeys toward the promised land are demoted to the New Yorker meets the National Lampoon vacation in the desert gone awry. Hey, if you like it, fantastic. That’s your prerogative. Just don’t nuke the Continent when the attack is in your own backyard.

But my point is ultimately this. New Formalists do not own form and meter, despite their attempt sometimes to appropriate the matter. They only own their content. Which in my opinion can often be quite anemic, although not always. Still, meter is mine as well, and I intend to try some of this and some of that, and a little of that blithe thing too if I feel like it. That’s my dynamic prerogative while keeping it somewhat real.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Towards dYnAmIc Verse (two)

Oh, and it really doesn't have to rhyme. Although I often like using rhyme for the final couplet. For closure you know. As for the length of the line. Not a great problem energy-wise when there is no rhyme. If there is, though, the longer the meter, the more problems with slackness. Those added little words wreak havoc on the energy. Avoid them at all costs.

The rest of Alexander:
Alexander the Surfer

Alexander walks the surfaces
each wave unfolds with unbelievable
stability despite the wetsuit wrapped
around his senses tighter than religious
schooling on the continental shelf.
His world is swell. I watch him navigate
another oceanic circle with agnostic
skills discovered at Manhattan Beach.
At first he drives the curl with microscopic
detail. Then he slides above the seas
like science. Lastly, Venus realigns
with Neptune as he threads his way between
black rocks, before he ends in shallow water—
and no return unless he weds their daughter.
UPDATE: replaced Jupiter with Venus (the original). Just makes more sense, doesn't it?

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Incident at the Lunar New Year

The wildlife refuge at Plum Island is not a sanctuary from the everyday concerns of business, home, or everything that makes pop culture, but a place for life that’s wild, the shorebirds, hawks, coyote, deer, and occasional photographer or poet. Not everybody knows that though. Birders look for Iceland Gulls, or Northern Shrikes, and almost never look upon the land itself, that wilderness of marshes, dunes, and ocean.

But Barbara does. And so today she walks along the narrow strand of beach, her camera close at hand, and looks out on the indistinct sea, powder blue close at hand but dissolving into mist light blue skies. The tide is new moon high and soon the beach is nothing more than the steep side of dunes. The sand is soft and sloped, and walking is a chore for seventy-seven year old legs. Her breathing grows more labored, her steps unsure. Soon the only place she has to walk is in the wash of surf. With no way out she starts to think of sleeping in the dunes, despite her knowledge that a storm is brewing from the west and will bring snow and cold tonight from off the ocean.

Until she meets a man sitting on a driftwood tree writing in a journal. She stops still some feet before him. He greets her on the beauty of the day. She stares and does not answer. He notices the water lapping at her shoe. She’s old, he thinks, but healthy; her face is weathered from outdoors. Why is she walking this dangerous beach today?

He hails her again but still no answer. He notices confusion on her face. Are you alright he asks. She shakes her head indicating no. He rises and helps her to the driftwood tree and says just rest awhile. Her breathing is heavy, but soon grows normal as she then explains her plight. He answers there’s an entrance from the road just 100 hundred feet away. She just passed it in fact, he tells her. She sighs, and asks if he could walk her back and drive her to her car. And so he does.

She says he saved her life. He doesn’t tell her he’s just Coyote, but says he’s playing hooky today from work. He knows now the island called him there. He only thought he was hopping in the sun, but it had greater work for him to do. Because she loves the island for its wildness and not a place to stare at wildlife flying or dying, it finds a way to send her home, safe and sound.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Towards dYnAmIc Verse (one)

This recent excursion towards projective verse has brought me back to this self-understanding. One of the reasons I write in meter is the dance of syllables, the rhythm of the words, and the resultant energy radiated from this iambic ensemble. Although substitutions (that is, non-iambic combinations) are allowed, there’s times when I just like to let the iambs loose.

There’s nothing better in this measure than to mix it up with mono-, di-, and poly-syllabic words and watch their rhythm interlock like jigsaw partners in perfect step for line after line and even stanza after stanza. Such cadence need not be metronomic, and in fact will not be, especially when three-plus syllable words are introduced into the mix. It is indeed dYnAmIc.

Polysyllabic words in and of themselves are ripe with varying intensities on the metrical accent of each syllable. Disyllabic words introduce another feature, a usually strongly accented syllable that stomps on the line a bit with some emphasis and flair. Blend in some monosyllabics and the dance slows its tempo slightly. Intermixing trochee beginnings with feminine endings will help vary the lines while still keeping the rhythm constant.

Lastly, when writing this dance, it’s important to remember that the world of metrical accents is not a bi-polar one. There is a scale of intensity. I’ve found that Timothy Steele’s 4-level system of metrical accents is helpful. It allows for the complexity of accents without clouding it in a technical system riddled with infinite numbers and strange feet that only help trip you up in the end. Keep it simple Wilson.
Alexander the Surfer (part one)

Alexander walks the surfaces
each wave unfolds with unbelievable
stability despite the wetsuit wrapped
around his senses tighter than religious

schooling on the continental shelf.
His world is swell. I watch him navigate
another oceanic circle with agnostic
skills discovered in Manhattan Beach.

Monday, February 07, 2005

You May Think That This is the End

Language is sometimes only words, even in the postmodern world. That’s encouraging. Jonathan critiques a Rae Armantrout poem for me (blogland is such a luckily accommodating world). And as I began reading the poem, my first reaction was a positive one, an appreciation of the wordplay and tightness of the first five lines. But I thought the succeeding lines slackened, as lines. And, come to find out, that was, for the most part, Jonathan’s analysis. So maybe he is right: “I object to the notion that you can't judge this by ordinary means, that you need some secret code to be able to talk about the extent to which this poem is effective or not.”

Jasper Bernes also examined some poems for me. I wasn’t enamored in the least with the poem he thought problematic. And in the poem he praised, I too had stopped at a particular word, “prolepsis,” but enjoyed the language otherwise. Although, as to meaning, well, I’ll reserve judgment.

Chris responded that there’s “some kind of appeal to the garishness, a kind of call for “all girl-on-girl action” in poetry criticism.” Well, that really wasn’t my intent. But I concur with his opinion that “one school criticizing another is too easy– all the arguments ultimately boil down to relatively unsupportable positions that are assumed to be self-explanatory.”

I appreciate Jonathan’s and Jasper’s time and effort here in responding to my public appeal. These are acts of intellectual generosity, and help me believe that the gap between poets of differing schools need not be such a grand canyon.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Be Kind to Your Friends in the Swamp

Thank you Jonathan. I’m not sure if you answered my question, but your response is helpful. And I share with you the trepidation of criticizing your kind. I fear for my currency.

First, let me clear this misunderstanding. In no way do I have an “assumption that there is some lower standard of writing for avant-garde” And I apologize to any out there who read my post that way. I’m not always the most transparent window in the house.

No, I assume there is a standard, but one I do not understand. Higher? Well, I guess that may be arguable, but I’m not up for that argument tonight.

But let’s get to the meat of Jonathan’s criticism, although completely agreeing with his preface (“I would object to the notion that there is a generic "postmodern poem." Doesn't each poet have to justify his or her own style?”):
I could point to the ways in which Greg's poem fails to employ any strategy with any consistency. Yes, there can be a consistent purposiveness even in disjunction! The "bad writing" (i.e. the phrase "nicely and earnestly") does not seem redeemed by any higher purpose. The first line sounds utterly sophomoric.

That first adolescent line indulged itself because of music I was hearing from above, that is, upstairs. And the rest just flowed from there, utilizing association or phonic play (even that awful “earnestly and nicely / in lawns”). So I’d argue that the poem does employ a strategy. And consistently. I’m just not arguing that it’s good.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

For a Duck May be Somebody's Mother

So, speaking of postmodern poetry, you know what I’d like. I’d like somebody to tell me why this isn’t a good postmodern poem (and not just a bad poem period).
Postmodern Poem 2

Jazz is dripping from the ceiling
wheeling abstract keyboards
falling faster miles an hour
but roadrunner no it’s not.

Second verse stickier than
the first amendment and the voices,
the visiting extraterrestrials
listen: wherever the river veers
sliding dice-like along the long
gutter earnestly and nicely
in lawns and liver spots but not
tennis elbows beset with better
homes and garden apartments
mint breath breezy sleepy
and priceless by a third:

there comes the quiet cornerstone.
But after that easy chore is accomplished, you know what I would like better than Josh Corey’s series of Grood poets or Mayhew's unindicted co-conspiracies and unnamed sources. I’ll tell you what. I’d like some avant pomo poet to criticize (constructively of course, or is that deconstructively) an avant pomo poem’s shortcomings (and not mine, that is). Just once.

Maybe then I could begin to tell the difference myself.


Friday, February 04, 2005

Be Kind to your Web-footed Friends

The formalistas are up in arms about some short reviews in Poetry. They’re picking up pens and storming the letters to the editor. Some of their own have been criticized, they think, unfairly. Well all criticism can be viewed as unfair. And the poets in question here, David Mason and Catherine Tufariello, are indeed accomplished and deserving of much praise. But the examples that Brian Phillips uses to point out their shortcomings are reasonable.

Mr. Mason, he thinks, is uneven. He complains of Mason’s “deviation from zero,” which the formalistas mock as some crazy incomprehensible comment, when it just means an adherence to strict meter over tight language. And the example he uses is indeed a slack one: Mason’s “much like” fleshing out the meter in order to get to the rhyme. The other lines that Phillips highlights do seem too cultivated for their own good, bringing in F. Scott Fitzgerald in the voice of a drunken, half-Indian murderer. Even the Reaper would question that narrative act: “No character and no action may violate the essence of that character or act.” These examples from Mason’s work are indeed missteps from one otherwise walking in the right direction.

As for Tufariello, Phillips criticism of her original poetry (her translations he praises) concerns “the tinny antiquarianism, the sense of program taking precedence over art, the absurd quaintness of contemporary life slipped too blithely into iambs.” And the examples he uses, again, I think are fair, especially the line, “While plaintive crickets quavered in the yard.” If that line is not a parody of the worst in Victorian poetry, it should be. His comparison of her work to a girl in finishing school is an unfortunate one that does ring of sexism, but his concluding observation is sound:
Formal discipline, unless bound up in the higher discipline that brings form into a sufficient relation with content, is an apprentice goal. This has always been true, of course, but the intensity with which we feel it should now be at its height. The twentieth century did have the audacity to take place.

Criticism can be a useful tool if fair and I believe Phillips’ is fair. But maybe that’s because his objections to some of the formalist agenda are much like my own, especially:
Adherence to strict meter over tight language (slackness)
Too cultivated for its own good
but also to an extent:
Antiquarianism
Program taking precedence over art
The absurd quaintness of contemporary life slipped too blithely into iambs

As I work my way to some formalist understanding, I do wish to remember that the 20th century did take place, as well as those previous centuries of course, and forward that vector to somewhere in the 21st century where contents are under pressure can explode to some metrical accompaniment.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Contents Under Pressure

There’s an interesting interview performed by Jack Foley with Michael McClure that I googled up recently when searching Projective Verse. First let me say that I saw McClure read many years ago during a Kerouac festival in Lowell, backed by Ray Manzarek (of Doors fame) on keyboards. It’s way up there on my top ten poetry reading list. McClure was breathtakingly syllabic and Manzarek's accompaniment was dexterously exquisite.

But I digress. As a poet working in form, one of my concerns with formalist poetry as a whole is its lack of vigor. Not only is some of it slack in its practice, but much is just too domesticated or cultivated for its own good. Now don’t get me wrong. You can write about matters domestic without being domesticated. Rhina Espaillat may be the best example of that. Her work is anything but settled down. On the other hand, outdoors work is not always necessarily fresh. Although Tim Murphy’s work almost always is.

But setting aside these masters, the direction I see in that school (if you can call such a diverse crowd of poets a school) seems sometimes too safe and sound. I’ll admit I’m searching for my own direction, but that’s neither here nor there. More digression.

Here’s an exchange that I find awfully intriguing:
Jack Foley: W.C. Williams published most of Olson’s “Projective Verse” in his Autobiography (1951). Williams was impressed with Olson’s essay. It’s interesting your seeing projective verse as an alternative to free verse--which I think is quite right. At the point of which you’re speaking, free verse was beginning to become the major way in which poetry was taught in the universities.

Michael McClure: It was the major way in which poetry was taught in universities, and young academics who were pretending that they weren’t academics were cranking it out by the mile. You can crank out miles of free verse.

Jack Foley: Yes, it’s bad prose. Broken prose. One of the things that’s been happening with the New Formalism is that its practitioners tend to talk about free verse versus formal verse. Sometimes you write in one, they say, sometimes you write in another, as in the case of Thom Gunn or Dana Goia. But by free verse they mean something that returns to the left-hand margin. I think your version of projective verse is a wonderful response to the either/or problem postulated by the New Formalists. Projective verse allows for both within a single form.

Michael McClure: I know how to write forms. I’ve written most of them: sonnets, ballads, sestinas, villainelles, sapphics--and I love those forms. Parts of them sneak into my projective verse. I truly love them. But I believe that if you follow forms closely today it would be difficult to make poetry of significant energy. I can imagine that there are people who might be able to. But I haven’t seen it. People like Lewis Turco write books about these forms and write poems in these forms--it’s charming--but it doesn’t do much more for me other than to be a wonderful museum exhibit.
And McClure is right: it is difficult to make poetry of significant energy following form. But not impossible. Some have done it in their way. Although I think the examples are few and far between. I’m still looking for my own way. Because I believe the combination of form and energy can create a major blast. It’s like: Warning! Contents under Pressure!

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Charles Olson is a Complete Quark

Olson’s postmodern tenets were three-fold:
1. A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader.
2. FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT
3. ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION

Energy always scares me. Poets aren’t electricians. Or even physicists. And I wonder whether Olson is traveling down a tube better left to atom smashers, not syllable crunchers. Five years into the atomic age and Charles is energy bound!

Physics tells me my desk consists of more open field than meaning. But I wouldn’t want a carpenter to build a quarky one for me. On the other hand, I’m staying open to the possibility that Mr. Olson is right, and the poem should consist of pure kinetics.

If that’s all there is, my friend, then let’s keep dancing.
Herodotus in America 1

Water power falls from nowhere
special agents double oh
Oklahoma isn’t Lowell
where Jack was subterranean
but demon mills and there a dam

thing you can do about it. Progress
looms. The water wheel is parked
and happy as a Vegas night
out on the gasoline and fifth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it scans. Form is following the dance of history.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Charles Olson in the Aisles of Home Depot

And so we’ve come to Charles Olson and his Projective Verse. The lamp that I purchased for cheap at Home Depot doesn’t light anymore. But let me come in closer. For any poet, and by that I mean myself, who has researched meter the past decade, the middle section holds some close interest. I will never enter the doors of Home Depot again despite my finding a Weber grille there last June. “It would do no harm, as an act of correction to both prose and verse as now written, if both rime and meter, and, in the quantity words, both sense and sound, were less in the forefront of the mind than the syllable, if the syllable, that fine creature, were more allowed to lead the harmony on.” Home Depot deposits situations that America continues to inherit despite democratic latencies that at last are late for the show. But Olson warns, “to step here to this place of the elements and minims of language, is to engage speech where it is least careless—and least logical.” Home Depot is the show and America is the mortgaging of souls to sway a ticket. But the syllable has a twin: the line, that bohemian bastard born of the heart. Head via ear to syllable. Heart by the breath towards line. And so we refuse to cross the threshold of Home Depot for rhetorical devices such as the simile and the like. Home Depot is sluggish and mind-numbing and doesn’t let me dance the dance I danced in Gloucester back in Dogtown when the perfect storm blew in from the Elizabethan seas. But what does Olson mean in the age of hyperlinks bought at Best Buy? I sneeze. Olson blesses, "It is true what the master says he picked up from Confusion: all the thots men are capable of can be entered on the back of a postage stamp. So, is it not the PLAY of a mind we are after, is not that that shows whether a mind is there at all?"