Conservationism

Ever since I bought the Ipod I’ve been rediscovering music. For the longest of time I stuck to the known entities. The radio wasn’t any help, except the rare NPR interview. I stumbled on Joe Henry in that manner. But the internet is a great tool for finding music and I’ve found sites such as Metacritic helpful.

So Friday I downloaded 2 new works, the new Iron & Wine EP, Woman King, and M. Ward’s new LP Transistor Radio. Both are in the LoFi, primitive modernist, tradition, but of a kind that uses some graceful and unassuming embellishment to accentuate the elemental. Ward’s music sounds peculiarly antiquated, yet not in the same manner as an early Gillian Welch. Ward’s music does not attempt to replicate a tradition as much as grow anew from one.

There’s a lot to learn from such practice, even in the poetry world. Tradition is sustenance as well as origin, but a true conservationist will not only care for the old, but more importantly sow some new. It’s a trick of a true tradesman.

The Journals of GJ Perry: 14-Mar-2005

More snow on Saturday. Not a great storm, but a disturbance nevertheless. The snowflakes were giant-sized and landed on the earth like snowballs thrown from heaven. The roads quickly became slippery. And again I tested my new 4-wheel drive and its persistent motivation. Even when we followed a small car that cut me off on the river road and then proceeded to climb the impending hill at speeds almost less than a walking pace and with a course that slipped like a drunken stroll home, it drove steady. There’s something to be said for such single-mindedness. Although I’ve never had such a quality personally, I appreciate it in this vehicle this winter. It’s like a good boot on a wet trail. And snow becomes only part of the scenery.

Stanza Six

of consciousness returned to its creation—
where only I could tell her what transpired.
She recollected nothing of her visitor
or any divination she acquired,
except the message she had left with me
before she left her principality

My Clairvoyant Weekend 1

Of revelations I can only guess
but I’m the only one alive who can.
My mother, looking from behind the screen
door of our kitchen, slammed it shut and ran
to shelter in her living room and wait
until Samara found her routine state

Allowing the Six Year Old

I think I need to introduce the six year old. Narratives are new to me, at least the longer narrative. The reaper hasn’t written a complete instruction manual, now has he. They. But I suspect you have a little time to name names, maybe sit on the couch a while and talk about the weather. Yet names must be named before any clauses of the contract are discussed. As I was saying, I was six.

Clairvoyancing July 20, 1963

(stanzas 1 & 2 omitted)

Whooping like the Indians I’d seen
on Saturday exclusive matinee
performances of westerns filmed in black
and white with Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea,
she recognizes her native spirit guide
coming through the colorless countryside.

I'm six years old and see nobody there
but she starts talking in an altered tone
of voice to what is only air to me,
yet something eerie says we're not alone,
or that's the notion I remember now
recalling facts doubt doesn't disallow.

Does a blog need to live on the edges of the poet? On the critical frontiers so to speak. Talk about the glass, maybe a bit on the bottle, but never taste the real Bordeaux. Eff it. I’m pouring.

On Boston and Bentwood

My aunt was actually rocking on a Boston Rocker I think. It could have been a rocker like the one Jack Kennedy used. But not a Bentwood. But a Bentwood is so much more intriguing.

Clairvoyancing July 20, 1963

(stanza one omitted)

aurora formed around the lunar specter
come aground. And then Samara stops.
Startled by this unexpected pause
I turn from my science pursuits; the filter drops.
I watch Samara put her hand to her mouth
and look to something she espies in the south.

Whooping like the Indians I’d seen
on Saturday exclusive matinee
performances of westerns filmed in black
and white with Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea,
she recognizes her native spirit guide
coming through the colorless countryside.

When my aunt began whooping, my mother ran and locked herself in the bathroom, leaving my cousin and myself, five and six respectively, alone to witness her transformation and subsequent instructions.

Clairvoyancing Continued

My aunt’s name wasn’t Samara either.

Clairvoyancing July 20, 1963

The highly wrought baroque curves of the Bentwood
oscillate in balanced, almost seasonal,
geometry as Aunt Samara sways
beneath the darkening the coronal
eclipse is covering the earth in, lit
by just that circular indefinite

aurora formed around the lunar specter
come aground. And then Samara stops.
Startled by this unexpected pause
I turn from my science pursuits; the filter drops.
I watch Samara put her hand to her mouth
and look to something she espies in the south.

And maybe some day I’ll send poems out for publication again. I was having some luck there. But for now, I’m not ready. Again.

Clairvoyancing Is Not Just a Word

I had an aunt who was a clairvoyant. Actually her father was one too. My grandfather, her brother, laid claim to a little of the action himself. Sometimes I think it’s come down to me in the form of poetry.

Clairvoyancing July 20, 1963

The highly wrought baroque curves of the Bentwood
oscillate in balanced, almost seasonal,
geometry as Aunt Samara sways
beneath the darkening the coronal
eclipse is covering the earth in, lit
by just that circular indefinite

Over the past thirteen months, my blogging has found its mission, one of which is to post my poems here, not so much for some kind of vanity publication although of course that always exists, but in a journalistic intent to get to the bottom of it. This one is another serial narrative. I’m not sure where it’s going. Or even if it will get there. But I have some ideas. I've found the tightrope helps.

For the record, I’m post-dating this particular incident about four or five years, but the eclipse came into the poem not because of the rhyme but with it. I remember this particular eclipse. I was in Barnstead NH, where the eclipse was almost total. It was total in Maine.

Eugene Scheifflin Did It

Some birdfeeder business.

All of the European Starlings found today in North America-and they number in the 200 million range-are descendants of approximately 100 birds introduced in New York City's Central Park in the early 1890s. A society dedicated to introducing into America all of the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare set these birds free.

And now they’re invading my birdfeeder.

He said he would not ransom Mortimer;
Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer;
But I will find him when he lies asleep,
And in his ear I'll holla Mortimer!
Nay,
I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but Mortimer, and give it him,
To keep his anger still in motion.

I listen and hear the starlings speaking of Mortimer and so keeping the chickadees and cardinals in motion. And I’m getting somewhat angry.

Why, look you, I am whipp'd and scourged with rods,
Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear
Of this vile politician

The game's a-foot.

Classical Gas

I have it all wrong. Classical allusions really do help invigorate a poem.

Classical Gas

Please excuse me for a minute; nature
calls like Hermes pleading with Calypso:
let Odysseus go! This spicy chili
runs right through my gut like Mercury of
Circus Maximus, whose sacred creature
was the chicken, not conniving burger
dressed with jalapenos. Next time I get
chicken soup or something from Poseidon’s
ocean: maybe tuna, maybe mako,
praying that he spares my world from earthquakes
now that he and great Athena called a
truce and made their chariot, which speaking
of, mine calls. Great Zeus, this chili’s heinous;
Gaia needs to flee from mad Uranus.

I apologize for such childishness. But I needed to prove a point.

On Whimsy on (metrical) Poetry

I’m thinking my subscription ran out with last month’s copy of Poetry but luckily Jeffery Bahr (wait I need to switch my view to large in order to read his otherwise brilliant blog) reviews (in his own exceptional manner) this month’s copy and maybe I’m not missing much. It’s fascinating (as he often is) to see his take on some of the metrical (if even loose IP) stuff.

On McClatchy: “The poem eventually mentions Plato's Republic, and the usual mandatory classical allusions, and eventually turns lyrical.”

On Hadas’ triolets: “With this kind of metrical baggage, it's hard to believe one could be effective.”

On Koethe: “rambles on in loose IP,… but…you just want him to get on with it.”

On Dubrow “works of blank verse end with a rhymed couplet that seemed strange and tacked on.”

Which is actually a pretty good list of problems that I too often have with formalism (even my own). Too many classical allusions (well, not mine), form for the sake of form (just my own nonce kind and maybe a sonnet or three but that one’s a classic that keeps on ticking), slackness (working it), and rhyme for the sake of rhyme (although I love a good couplet at the end of a stanza and will continue until I get it right).

****************
Update:

Well, I guess my subscription hasn't yet expired! After reading the above poems in question, I mostly second Jeffery's estimation. I'd add: McClatchy is metrical only by accident and waxes classical for no reason at all; the settings for Hadas' trite triolets are, oh of course, Greece; Koethe I wouldn't add anything because enough is enough already; Dubrow I like although the last lines in each poem sounds a bit forced and Krakow is oddly such a breath of fresh air amid such classical gas.

Mercury Rising Darn Right

I’ve been experimenting with short line forms for the lyric lately.

Yesterday’s poem was another such test. It’s simply iambic pentameter lines split in two. I like the energy it lends to the lines as well as the initiative it presents in ridding them of any slackness that may be there. A short line demands strict attention.

The poem, if written in pentameter lines, would be two, what I like to call, “Dylanesque Sestets,” that particular form having a rhyme scheme of ABCBDD.

I like playing with such simple forms. And I love naming them. I’m calling this double Dylanesque Sestet with split pentameter lines a “Blonde on Blonde” after Dylan’s great album, which has a “wild mercurial sound” according to Bob.

That description is my goal with this form.

PS On another note, I’m looking forward to reading Chapter 4. Fraud is a pretty strong word.

Monadnock Double Tall Blonde on Blonde Latte

Beverly and I joy-rode out to Keene Saturday trying out the new Rav4. Monadnock had created its own little weather system of flurries and hid behind its mist. Looking over Dublin Pond I felt the sacred force of the mountain despite the fact I couldn’t see it. There’s a lot of hokum out there about spirits but I know the real deal when I feel it. And I always feel it there.

The Phantoms of Monadnock

Around Monadnock
Saturday the sun
dissolved in light
snow showers while its ridges
slipped away akin
to native nations
before the white
assault. That sacrilegious
triumph wasn’t one
that worried away
the spirit might
in ruin and disarray.

Some wafted in the air
as prophets warning
dwellers of their past—
it’s not quite clear
as planimetric maps
have drawn it out
to be. The boundaries
between the here
and then are thinner
than the rich and famous,
but surer than cool
mists of Nostradamus.

It ain’t Wilbur or even Kees, but one has to play the cards he’s been dealt. And I got nothing up my sleeve. My cards are on the table.

On the Issue of Wilbur and Kees

Having one myself I’m a sucker for these kind of poems: two poems concerning daughters, Richard Wilbur’s “The Writer” (thanks to Jodie for suggesting I read it) and Weldon Kees’ “For My Daughter.”

As Clive James said, Wilbur can write a killer-diller line. His poem begins “In her room at the prow of the house / Where light breaks” and then continues with the ship conceit in a masterful route. But then in a self-deprecating manner, he dismisses his figure as easy, and in the next five breathtaking stanzas narrates a tale of a trapped bird in quick language, ending in one to die for:

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

But he goes one stanza too far, returning to his “darling.” wishing “What I wished you before, but harder.” He tries too hard for the ending here. But that is Wilbur’s bane. He is an outrageously fine writer that often tries too hard to prove it. Those five stanzas about the bird are just Wilbur writing a magnificent poem. The last stanza is Wilbur playing the poet.

Kees is another story. His language is certainly not pretty. In fact it’s quite brutal at times. His poem begins harmless enough in the eyes of an innocent daughter, then descends slowly but surely into our hellish world, much as he fears his daughter will.

Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting
Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel
Bride of a syphilitic or a fool.

Ouch. But then comes Kees’ coup. If it’s poker these poets are playing, Richard has made a safe bet, one he has calculated carefully and placed with care and some flair. But Weldon bets the house, the farm, his savings account, and all his future descendants’ lives. For he finishes with literal nihilistic abandon, “These speculations sour in the sun. / I have no daughter. I desire none.”

And that is why Kees walks, though wild-eyed and awake with too many midnights of bourbons straight-up, away from the table much richer than Wilbur. But I'm not sure I'd like to walk with him; I wish Wilbur had won.