9.20.14

Weekend Words

11/28/10

The path ended at the empty house

Where people had once been.

And I thought it couldn’t hurt to see,

So I went in.

I did not expect to walk a silent hall

No sinister sound

Or drape of dust,

The place largely preserved

Perhaps it is not my place to enter.

Not hastily abandoned, nor lingered over now

Each dish put away,

Table bare, one angled chair

Paused beside a closed book,

Window blinds partly raised.

The taps are clean and cold.

Could water still run?

The mirror showed no hidden glimpse

Of what was,

The prints still watched out from the walls

Stairs held up, doors shut.

Part abandoned, part preserved

I had no right to impose my wanderings

On these wooden floors;

Curtains draw,

Drawers explore.

What was left was a desperate goal

Folded and measured against the year

Put back for the time that they’d be needed

Part remembered, part ignored.

9.18.14

I used to get really jealous when I'd read about poets like Sylvia Plath or Edna St. Vincent Millay getting their poems published in newspapers or magazines as young women. Not only was I not fabulously talented like those women, but newspapers and magazines just don't publish amateur poetry anymore. (Obviously there are exceptions. I can't remember the last time I saw a poem in the Seattle Times or similar) Though, print media is going one way, and that's an entire topic for some other time, it can change the way everything happens for writers (one of my favorite takes on the traditional vs indie debate comes from Sarah Hoyt. Her blog is really busy so here's an example in an article. Beware, it is a political site). There is a lot to unpack in these ideas, hopefully I will do so adequately.

When I was a kid I submitted to one of those "who's who in ___ poetry" anthologies, not knowing they took any submissions and that it was just a moneymaking operation. It felt great at the time, until I realized it wasn't special at all. Now, with the ubiquity of the web, that option is open to anyone. There are still vanity presses, still "legit" operations, and everything else on the continuum. When you're young, you look for something that seems open to you, and like applying for jobs, it seems to get experience you need to have experience, and vice versa. Of course any place is happy to take your money while giving you the false hope that you'll get lucky, that you're getting you work "out there", or that you're just that darn talented.

Part of why this is ticklish is that writers don't really get "discovered" any more. You pitch your work to the industry, or you publish for yourself via a non-traditional means, and the audience doesn't seem to be that different from one to the other (the money might, but I wouldn't know). Poets aren't superstars. I would, say, writers aren't really superstars either, with maybe a handful of key household names (of course in literary circles this would be different). You can also seek publication, exposure, and sometimes cash through contests, but those are pretty fraught. I like this article that discusses the failures of contests for authors seeking publication.

Publishing new writing by way of contests implies a certain metaphysical attitude--the model privileges randomness, divisibility, fragmentation, unknowability, and nondeterminism, perfected and ground through a process of rationalization to the presumed opposite of these conditions. Something that starts out fluid and yielding is supposed to gel into a final judgment. The contradictions are rife. Victory in a poetry contest is never unequivocal--hence the (sometimes inordinately) long lists of runners-up, finalists, and honorable mentions, as though any of these could easily have been the victor. There is a victor, and yet there isn't. The illusion must be perpetuated that everyone always has an equal shot at winning the contest. All books are potentially publishable.

While I don't agree with the article that there are no outlets/small presses that are willing to read without a fee, a lot of the assertions seem to ring true.  Also, "explosion of MFA programs" may have something to do with why things are changing, or it may be a response. (Googling this appears to have set up several very wiggly cans of worms. People have Strong Feelings about MFA programs and their effect on literature. This article is 6 pages, but worth it).

I wonder if the main issues with all of this is that we are looking at a new problem through old eyes. The turbulence surrounding publication (money, fame, connections, all nearly invisible in reality) has shunted some energy away from the initial impetus. 'I write because ____' is at the root of that. If one writes for the turbulence, then, bombs away. If it's for another reason, then the aforementioned solutions really aren't.

Personally, I write because I feel like I have to, because I used to have to. It isn't really the same any more, and the more I learn about it, the less I like it or feel I have anything to contribute. Since the birth of poetry is oral tradition and at their most base they are just stories, then the point is to be shared, thus, the sharing. I guess I'm jealous of the relative ease with which publication could be attained (or the terrific skill of some of the greats of our language).

So, for those of you who want to reach a wider audience, Poets & Writers (I am tempted to be a pill and spell it out as Poets Ampersand Writers) has a fairly useful tool in their literary magazine database. The publications are broken down by what they accept, what type of submissions to send, whether any prize is involved, etc etc. I spent some time sending out little things to various outlets, (all unsuccessfully) and as long as you keep a spreadsheet of what you are sending where, it should be relatively easy to get a number of pieces out into the ether for consideration. (Many of these are multi-form as well, accepting art and prose and experimental works). Can't hurt.

9.16.14

Carl Sandburg, an American poet from Illinois, is a modern creator of epic poetry. Not in the slang sense (well, yes, but also no), but in the sense of poems that are sagas and take the reader on journeys. While not textbook-definition epics, his poems are the logical continuation of that trend of Western civ. From Wiki: "Epics tend also to highlight cultural norms and to define or call into question cultural values, particularly as they pertain to heroism". I have his chapbook Honey and Salt, which contains 77 poems of varying length, unfortunately some of the standout choices are too long to reproduce for blog purposes. The works are lyrical and full of (literal) questions about man's surrounds, with little foray into experimental forms or formats. Sometimes the text can be a little whimsical, with items such as "moonmist" and "windflowers", but it doesn't take away from the work in the slightest. Here are some items that echo and play with "epic" themes. 

Leif the Lucky

Leif Ericson crossed the sea
to get away from a woman--
did he?

I have looked deep into the cisterns of the stars--
      said Leif--and the starts too, everyone one was a 
      struggler.

My neck shall not be broken without a little battle--
      said Leif--and I shall always sing a little in
      tough weather.

I hunted alligators on the moon and they had excellent
     teeth for grinding even as the camels had excellent
     humps for humping--so ran one of his dreams.

He told the crew of a souse who said, Get me drink
     and have some fun with me--and his mood
     changed and he told them it would be grand
     to travel the sky in a chariot of fire like Elijah. 

He saw a soft milk white horse on the top cone of an
     iceberg looking for a place to slide down to
     pearl purple sea form--and he murmured, 
     "I've been lonely too, though never so lonely
     one wind wouldn't take me home to the four
     winds."

He went on murmuring, "Never have I known time to
     fail me, time with its monotonous mumbling in
     the masts and stanchions, its plashing plashing
     measuring plashing the bulwarks, the slinking
    of the sea after a storm, the crying of the birds
     as they ride the wind when the wind goes down".

He lifted his head toward scrawny warning horizons
     and nailed up a slogan: Blessed are they who
    expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed:

Yes Leif Ericson crossed the sea
to get away from a woman--
perhaps--maybe. 


I like the idea of a stoic-sounding character such as Leif Ericson using humor, having dreams, and flights of fancy. There is a bit of a taste of the biblical, with Elijah and chariots and Blessed and such adding to the epic feel of the poem (that, and, the Blessed slogan strikes me as very British, with their empires and explorations I feel it fits nicely). Here's another short-ish one, but I can't recommend enough the longer pieces, especially Timesweep (even the name speaks of epics). 


Lesson

In early April the trees
end their winter waiting
with a creep of green on branches.

             In early October the trees
             Listen for a wind crying, 
             for leaves whirling.

                  The face of the river by night
                   holds a scatter of stars
                   and the silence of summer blossoms
                   falling to the moving water. 

                          Come clean with a child heart.
                           Laugh as peaches in the summer wind.
                           Let rain on a house roof be your song.
                           Let the writing on your face
                                   be a smell of apple orchards in late June. 

So, that one isn't really an epic in any way, even as it does move through time. But it's very pretty, and very composed (in the calm way, rather than the contrived way).

I have to go do other things, sorry for the clipped prose. 

9.14.14

Much like dialects of a language have high and low aspects, poetry often fulfills the "high" end of cultural verse. The continuum would run from high (courtly love, artistic themes, nature, self-actualization) to low (folk celebrations of the seasons, "regular" love, family ties, etc). Today this is not really an issue, as poetry is appropriate for any theme, but I still like to see the different lects represented.

While it may not focus on a "high" theme, The Trailer Park Papers by Danielle Vantress does focus on people's journeys, whether or not they go anywhere. Her introduction begins:

Somehow, introducing The Trailer Park Papers is like shoving an uneducated, socially awkward, embarrassed adolescent in front of a crowd of hip teens and asking her to say something cool. The Trailer Park Papers are not cool. They are not necessarily even poetic--at least not in the sense that they display a profound love for the language they beg to speak their heart with. There is not a single counting of beats here. No attention given to iambs. No guided rhymes or carefully crafted couplets. There is in actuality perhaps no craft here at all--save in the unreasonable survival of the "I". The Trailer Park Papers are an experiment in survival. They are an experiment in the tracking of a people who, in the process of writing their own stories, erase themselves. Who in the act of "living" destroy themselves. They are an experiment in the dubbing over of the screams, the wails, the outrages and, ultimately, the pleas of a people who, in efforts to survive the sick belligerence with which drug addiction, alcoholism, abuse, and insanity consumes the human spirit, have sold their voices for a momentary reprieve from the real. 

Woah. This is heavy but I appreciate the lack of punches pulled. Also, this is what we can expect from the  chapbook. Many of the poems are named for people, some of which reoccur as the pages go.

Shiner

What broke was my heart--
not my chin     or how you pushed it
with your first through my face
     until it seemed I had no lips to pout with.
It was my heart that dropped--
not me    onto the stairs' cement
where, kicking, you towered over
    with all of your bulk
        with which once you had loved me.
my teeth wanted a knocking.
Give me two black eyes.
"It's what you're not that I can't stand"
what I could never be     and myself.
I still think of you always
    still love.
Think only of before
   I found myself crumpled on steps
heaving heaps of disbelief and
     forgiving with what is small of me.
Years love tumultuously.


While the content is raw, I disagree with the introduction in that these are not carefully crafted. It may not be care in the form of metric precision, but I believe the voice present is made to be true to the subject matter. It is certainly not contrived. The spaces between phrase fragments indicate pausing, perhaps heaving sighs. There is a certain breathless resignation of the speaker to their life, ready to go through with the motions rather than agitate against the inevitable.


Maple Syrup

Been back just a little over a week
    and already he's "missing" since last night.
The city crawl'll get him every time--
thinkin' he's over it.
But how do you "get over" total painlessness
    and the humm?
I can smell the burning tinfoil through just the thought of it.
That brown snaildrip trail and the bubbling bitter.
Then there's the puke--
unless you're used to it,
Wonder if he puked today,
that would be good--
how getting sick borrows time from the "Flu".
You ask what it's like
   and all I can think of
      is a big green couch:
         a weightless arm raised above my head for hours--
          wheat waving in a field of sun--
          contentment within a fearless dream and floating...
That, and the nickel-sized cigarette burns
scarring my body like worms.

Weekend Words

Some words for you.

9/24/12

I am ill-suited for this type of fare.

I prefer the digestible reality

of fiction that presumes,

and this

is not conforming.

now I must remold,

and the surface is unforgiving.

I open a lunchbox of bombs.



That feels like not enough, so here is one more:

1/1/13

The first in motion was a moth,

a ghostly falling feather,

and where it lit,

dust covered the earth.

The land aged instantly,

and still the slow wings moved up

and down,

antennae circled in the empty morning,

blotting out signs of the sun.

9.10.14

I wanted to talk about a chapbook I've had for a while but never really explored. I bought it for a poetry course in college and I know I read it at least cursorily because there are some annotations, but I didn't remember doing so. The text is called The Weather by Lisa Robertson. It has an introduction leaflet put in after the fact, and it almost seemed like part of the work rather than explaining it, so I'll omit that, but I did like the introductory quote:

"Architecture, fashion--yes, even the weather-- are, in the interior of the collective, what the sensoria of organs, the feeling of sickness or health, are in the individual ---They stand in the cycle of eternally selfsame, until the collective seizes upon them in politics and history emerges" --Walter Benjamin

The weather is a background to a lot of other things, but ranks among the unchanging, despite its many moods. Think about that old saying when you meet someone, that you should talk about your health and the weather to avoid being controversial/too personal. So that platform was something I was looking for as I read.

The chapbook is a concept, rather than a collection, with an entry for each day of a week. Each day opens with a prose poem-type of text, with very clipped phrases and heavy verbal and structural repetition that seeks to set a pattern or mood. I didn't quite know what to do with these segments, since I have so little experience with this type of verse. After the blockier prose segments there were some more structurally-familiar poems. Here's one:


Give me hackneyed words because
they are good. Brocade me the whole body
of terrestrial air. Say spongy ground
with its soft weeds. Say self because it can.
Say arts of happiness. Say you have just died.
Say sequin because the word just
appeared. Say weather take this adult
from its box. Memorize being sequined
to something, water. Everything you forget
inserts love into the silent money.
memorize huge things of girders greased. Say
the water parting about the particular
animal. Say what happens to the face
as it gala tings my simple cut
vicious this afternoon the beautiful
light on the cash is human to guzzle
with--go away wild feelings, there you go
as the robin as the songsparrow go
the system shines with uninterrupted
light. It's petal caked. Leaves shoot up. Each
leaf's a runnel. Far into the night a
sweetness. Marvelous. Spectacular. Brilliant.
Clouded towards the south. It translates
Lucretius. Say cup of your heart rush
sluice is yellow sluice Kate Moss is Rosseau
have my arms. Say impasto of
atmosphere for her fur. Halo open
her face. Misplace the death. All the truth
under the tree has two pinky oozy
names. Say trying to possess or not. Say
if you thought love was ironical. If
pleasure emancipiates, why aren't you some-
where. Sincerity.


The sense of this at first is very blocky as well, and its tempting to receive each little fragment as a separate thing, which is too many little things all at once at equal value. I do like that the repetition of "say" makes some passive phrases more active, or changes the activity that is going on. Here's another:


Sometimes I want a corset like
to harden me or garnish. I
think of this stricture--rain
language, building--as a corset: an
outer ideal mould, I feel
the ideal moulding me the ideal
is now my surface just so very
perfect I know where to buy it and I
take it off. I take it off. If all things fall
and we are just emperors, serious
and accurate and fugitive
in such dormant lines of gorgeousness
the day is a locksmith
dew lies long on the grass
and I a rustic ask: what is
a surface--and respond
only omniscience, the crumpling face
as the domestic emotions elucidate
themselves a sea of mist
exists so strangely side by side
the potent mould of anarchy and scorn.

This one returns me to the introductory quote, finding a base point in something, and basing a structure around it. The very real constriction of a corset helps, and consequently the idea that it can make or unmake what it touches/relates to. The repetition of that and "mould" literally shape things (I also like that mould could have two different noun meanings and one verb in this piece).

In the notes in the end of the book, Robertson offers some context for the work, saying it was an "intense yet eccentric research in the rhetorical structure of English meteorological description" during a 6-month stay in Cambridge.

Something I like about doing this exercise is that I am exposed to things that I don't normally seek out, and I'm learning a ton as a result. This is not a book I would say is a favorite, but it is good mental exercise.

9.9.14

Since poetry is great at defining and crossing/bridging boundaries, I wanted to bring up rap. I know a lot of traditionalists would not hesitate to say they are nothing alike, and for the most part I agree. However, since there is a strong presence of performance and slam poets, I would say they do share attributes. I would be hard-pressed to define poetry by what it is (or what it isn't), and since the ceiling between the formerly "high art" of poetry and folk expression is mostly destroyed, I want to name rap as a lect of poetry. Maybe a lower one, but that's okay. 

Some artists rap more in a sing-song manner, some are more spoken/"spit", and the lyrical content of the songs makes a difference in whether or not they can be read as poetry. Similarly to the read/spoken debate, I'm going to present this as something to be read first, then listened to. 

Tears for the Sheep*

by Atmosphere

A city of fools
I wanna bash whoever's responsible for this incomprehensible lack of passion
The sucker's been seduced down to the stick
And the peasants fill their bellies with the poisons you omit
I've come to separate the heads and shoulders
Of these tracing paper soldiers
That have been designated to take it over
I'ma roll a couple of boulders off the cliff
On the road below (look out below)
'Cause I don't know what I'ma hit (yo)

I live by the word until I die by your sword
Even when I'm dead my head will live inside your RCA cords
I wait for the right time, but it resembled now-a-days
Descended on the Earth to put an end to all your holidays
The assassin covered in plain clothes
Smothered the sunlight and set flame to your rainbows
And then came the storm (and then came the storm)
Bewildered those that didn't contemplate
Fake disguised as the norm (as the norm)
And when the smoke evaporated and the damage was assessed
The causalities were counted as they looked upon the mess
As they focused they eyes on the horizon, who'da guessed?
All that stood atop the hill was number seven silhouette

And with this head splitting tears, cement breaking
weeping for these people walking in their sleep
(these people walking in their sleep)
My talk is not as cheap
And my thoughts are not as deep
As the day I woke up to discover I lost my sheep
head splitting tears, cement breaking
Leaping for these people walking in their sleep
(these people walking in their sleep)
My talk is not as cheap
And my thoughts are not as deep
As the day I woke up to discover I lost my sheep

They say a picture's worth a thousand words
Well I beg a thousand pardons for each word I've used for personal gains
But the letters that float through my head, demote my sentences,
Could never be contained by your simple picture frames
For every intoxicated moment I hate life

I strive to balance my aura by dancing with the light
And sometimes it's difficult to stay quiet
I fight it, each time I find myself walking across your eyelids
Wishing the malnutrition, the imagination of yours
Could see the truth you breathe through each one of your pores
And now the days are drastic, the nights last forever
Wanna tear this motherfucker up and put it back together
I'd like to ask the cats that act like they my peers
If you spent the energy I've spit, trying to count the tears
One of these days you're gonna climb the tallest building of all
Give a warning to those below and let the tears fall

(And with the) all the head splitting tears, cement breaking
weeping for these people walking in their sleep
(these people walking in their sleep)
My talk is not as cheap
And my thoughts are not as deep
As the day I woke up to discover I lost my sheep
head splitting tears, cement breaking
Leaping for these people walking in their sleep
(these people walking in their sleep)
My talk is not as cheap
And my thoughts are not as deep
As the day I woke up to discover I lost my sheep

Nobodies here except my mirror on the wall

The damage...overseen by anyone that comprehends
The anguish...felt only by the ones that invest
The language...was primitive, the listener complex
And everybody was trying to define success
All the self-proclaimed prophets dressed up to look like poets
Pretending to be martyrs that they're not
You can learn all their names
And engrave them on your brains
Memories so you can spout them off the top (spout them off the top)
Yo kill 'em all, and let God give 'em handcuffs
The flood has begun, and no one has been paired up
So I'ma take a second to beckon the downfall
of your so called civilized nation
(Yo yo yo yo yo) stop the sound now!

Reading it like a poem has some downfalls, namely (in my opinion) the lack of punctuation. I also would have moved some line breaks around. The speaker is also more confined within the rhythm, so some syllables have been sacrificed and others elided to make it work. The sonic stresses are still very clear, and if this were solely a poem, critical reviewers may suggest a freer attitude towards such a strict rhyme. 

Here is the song courtesy of youtube. 

* I have taken the liberty of inserting stanza breaks between verses and chorus since they exist in the musical version.