Yearly Archives: 2019

120 posts

A Carnival of Losses, A Big Top of Gains

poetry poetry books

I just finished poet Donald Hall’s second (and final, given his death last year) collection of essays, A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety. His prose style is concise and entertaining, proving compression (i.e. “the art of poetry”) has pay-offs for the essay writer, too. Make that “especially.”

For fans of poetry, two of the book’s four sections merit mention: “The Selected Poets of Donald Hall” (a series of reminisces about poets Hall met and interacted with over the years) and “Necropoetics” (an extended study of poems about death… something Hall was quite familiar with, having experienced the long and fateful death of his poet wife, Jane Kenyon).

Poets discussed in the “Selected Poets” section of the book include Theodore Roethke, Robert Creeley, Louis MacNeice, William Carlos Williams, John Holmes, Stephen Spender, Geoffrey Hill, James Dickey, Allen Tate, Edwin and Willa Muir, Kenneth Rexroth, Seamus Heaney, Joseph Brodsky, Richard Wilbur, E.E. Cummings, Tom Clark, and James Wright. Most of these “essays” are but a page or two long.

For a shorter one and a taste of Hall’s style, I give you his take on Kenneth Rexroth:

“New Directions published Kenneth Rexroth’s poems, and I read Rexroth with pleasure and excitement beginning in my twenties and thirties. Long poems and short, I admired him and learned from him, his diction and his three beats a line. His radio talks on California NPR made his opinions public. A dedicated anti-academic, he bragged, ‘I write like I talk.’ Whatever his taste or careful grammar, I kept on admiring his poems as he kept on being nasty about me and my eastern gang. I thought of a happy revenge. Frequently I wrote essays for the New York Times Book Review, so I asked its editor if he’d like an appreciation of Rexroth. Sincerely and passionately and with a devious motive, I wrote an essay to celebrate the poetry of Kenneth Rexroth. I imagined the consternation in California after my piece came out in the New York Times—the shock, the shame, possibly the reluctant pleasure. Mind you, he would not thank me. His publisher James Laughlin, mumbling out of the corner of his mouth, brought me a meager but appreciative word.”

Kill ’em with kindness, I always say. Especially when they’re playing tribal politics, something we watch with horror as it plays out in Swampington D.C. and thus, as poets, something we should know better than to repeat in our own little microcosm of intrigues and jealousies.

The reminisce about Allen Tate is quick but quick-witted, showing Hall’s signature sense of humor:

“My recollections of some poets are brief. Allen Tate always looked grumpy.”

The Tate page is so white, it is reminiscent of Basho and jumping frogs. A haiku, then, to the fifth of Snow White’s dwarfs, Grumpy:

Sp
las
h!

When Primitive Means Enduring

poetry

robin

In some ways we are as advanced and as sophisticated as we think we are, but in many ways we remain, as Jane Kenyon puts it, “primitives.” That is, we are as the human race always has been and always will be.

In literature, the definition of “classic” is debatable, but one point seems to meet with agreement: time is not of the essence. Because, if a written work is a classic, it will read as new 500 years from now as it does today.

Shakespeare may not have been aware of this, but readers since his death are. His work traded in basic human emotions, and with that “primitive” stroke, gave many of his plays the gift of immortality.

In her poem “The Blue Bowl,” Jane Kenyon keeps it simple. She buries her cat the old-fashioned way—no coffin, no insurance policy, no service with words of any sort. Just sand and gravel. And a blue bowl, like a sword or talisman buried beside a Viking warrior.

The Blue Bowl
by Jane Kenyon

Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole.
They fell with a hiss
and thud on his side,
on his long red fur, the white feathers
between his toes, and his
long, not to say aquiline, nose.

We stood and brushed each other off.
There are sorrows keener than these.

Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.

The death of a pet will not haunt you like the death of a family member or spouse, no. But it will stay with you for a few days, making that final simile spot-on.

But robins are brown-vested Buddhists living in the present, not sentimentalists paying homage. Not to cats and blue bowls.

The poem is written. Life goes on.

Defining Poetry? Good Luck.

poetry poetry criticism

In his essay, “Notes on Poetry and Philosophy,” Charles Simic takes a shot at defining poetry. It is a moving target, to say the least. One that zig-zags. But that hasn’t stopped the poets and the philosophers from trying. Let’s listen in on an excerpt from Simic’s essay:

“Poetry is not just ‘a verbal universe that looks inwardly on itself,’ as someone said. Neither is poetry merely a recreation of experience. ‘It was and it was not,’ is how the old storytellers used to begin their tales. It lies to tell the truth.

“Mallarmé thought there were two kinds of language: parole brute, which names things, and parole essentielle, which distances us from things. One serves representation and the other the allusive, fictive world of poetry. He’s wrong. It’s not that clear-cut. If anything, it’s both. Poetry is impure. I don’t think Heidegger understands this either.

“The poem is an attempt at self-recovery, self-recognition, self-remembering, the marvel of being again. That this happens at times, happens in poems in many different and contradictory ways, is as great a mystery as the mystery of being itself and cause for serious thought.”

So, there. Some homework for you. Define poetry by giving it some serious thought. And good luck to you, because you’re going to need it.

As the prophet Peggy Lee once put it: Ain’t we got fun?

General Stores, Specific Poems

poetry reading poetry

store

In this Big Brother day of hidden cameras and mics, social networks designed to data-mine and influence, and cautionary tales in a Key of Orwell, it seems quaint to talk about voices around us. You know, the type you hear with with your own ears. When in close proximity. The old-fashioned way.

Those voices are often a song, a precept those who listen more than they talk have appreciated since time immemorial. Sometimes you hear them in a small diner. Sometimes at the movies while waiting for coming attractions to attract. And sometimes at the general store, an institution still found in small New England towns.

If voices be songs then poetry is not far behind. In that sense, the quiet poet, going about his or her business by placing a bunch of bananas and a head of broccoli in a basket, serves as conductor who must later pull these musical strands together. Here’s how Jane Kenyon did it up in New Hampshire:

At the Store
by Jane Kenyon

Clumps of daffodils along the storefront
bend low this morning, late snow
pushing their bright heads down.
The flag snaps and tugs at the pole
beside the door.

The old freezer, full of Maine blueberries
and breaded scallops, mumbles along.
A box of fresh bananas on the floor,
luminous and exotic…
I take what I need from the narrow aisles.

Cousins arrive like themes and variations.
Ansel leans on the counter,
remembering other late spring snows,
the blue snow of ‘32:
Yes, it was, it was blue.
Forrest comes and goes quickly
with a length of stovepipe, telling
about the neighbors’ chimney fire.

The store is a bandstand. All our voices
sound from it, making the same motley
American music Ives heard;
this piece starting quietly,
with the repeated clink of a flagpole
pulley in the doorway of a country store.

Depending on the listener, this poem may sound antiquated or passing familiar. What’s sure is this: It in no way resembles pushing a cart through Target or, God save us, any big-box store with piped-in music (especially cloying in the Christmas season, which starts the day after Halloween).

No, you need the same type “bandstand” as could have been gathered round a generation or three ago. Small-town America. Mom & Pop stores. Small and independent businesses where the mega-stores won’t bother because, the zip-code Gods say, the money isn’t there.

So, if you’re collecting voices and cobbling together poetry, let that be a start. Go where the money isn’t and where the people are. Then listen. And write.

"At the Store" Jane Kenyon

The Canonization of Mr. Moose

poetry reading poetry

When it comes to God, there are a lot of “what if’s.”

Across the ages, people have wondered, “What if God is female?” and “What if God’s skin is black or brown?” and “What if God looks nothing like a human at all?”

In his poem “Adirondack Moosehead,” Jeffrey Harrison takes it to another level. After many a summer in an Adirondack cabin, he begins to wonder about the moosehead hanging over the great stone fireplace. In what ways could a moosehead, of all things, remind one of God?

Poetry-Writing Basic #1: Stare at anything — anything — long enough, and strange thoughts will begin to browse at the edge of your field. Let’s look at this particular narrator’s logic:

Adirondack Moosehead
by Jeffrey Harrison

The moose that once presided over games
of Monopoly and crazy eights,
that loomed above us, goofy and majestic,
into whose antlers we threw paper planes,
still hangs over the great stone fireplace
like the figurehead of a ship.

All these years he hasn’t flicked an eyelash
in response to anything we’ve done,
and in that way resembles God,
whom, as children, we imagined looking down
but didn’t know how to visualize. A moose
over the altar would have been

as good as anything—better than a cross—
staring down on us with kind dark eyes
that would have seemed, at least, to understand,
his antlers like gigantic upturned hands
ready to lift us off the ground—
or like enormous wings outspread for flight.

In stanza two, we see that the moosehead’s indifference to “anything we’ve done” first inspires the narrator’s comparison. Then he shifts to childhood, to a kid’s struggle to picture something so abstractly awe-inspiring as God looking down. The moosehead, then, provides a ready image riding (without legs) to the rescue: “staring down on us with kind dark eyes / that would have seemed, at least, to understand.”

And why not? The antlers look “like gigantic upturned hands / ready to lift us off the ground— / or like enormous wings outspread for flight.”

Look at something long enough—even a flea-infested moosehead—and certain Christian images (hands, wings) will begin to elbow their ways in. Like antlers. Like a glowing halo over his long-deceased head.

Bullwinkle would be proud.

"Adirondack Moosehead" Jeffrey Harrison

What Groundhog Day Means to Poets

blathering comma mine poetry

phil connors

When the movie Groundhog Day was released in 1993, it received mixed reviews. Since then, however, the film has been embraced by many as a dark-horse (woodchuck?) comedy with serious undertones.

It’s even been embraced by Buddhists, who see TV weatherman Phil Connors’s repeating day as a metaphor for reincarnation and striving to try, try, try again until you reach enlightenment.

But I come not to praise born again (and again, and again) weathermen, I come to show how Phil’s inability to escape February 2nd echoes the life of a poet.

How shall I compare thee to a winter’s day, then, one that starts with Sonny & Cher on a clock radio singing, “I’ve Got You, Babe” at 6 a.m.? Like so:

a poet writes every day
a poet wakes to see the same poems every day, and the more he tries to change them, the more stubborn they become against transformation
a poet calls on pick-a-Muse-any-Muse and gets Sonny & Cher (the 10th and 11th Muses) instead
a poet knows the drill because he’s been there before (note the hard hat)
a poet sends “finished” poems into the world
the world sends “unfinished” poems back to the poet
a poet recognizes each day as yet another “No Reply At All Day” from markets
a poet reads good poetry
a poet says of good poetry, “Looks easy. I can do that!”
a poet writes good “finished” poetry, sends it into the world, waits through months of “No Reply At All Days,” and receives “unfinished” poetry back from the world
without comment
a poet writes a line he considers brilliant only to stumble upon the same idea in a poem he’s never read before
until he reads it
and thinks, “Great minds think alike, you lousy thief!”
a poet builds “I Got You, Babe” habits:
like black coffee
like riffs upon riffs of background Bach
like byzantine marketing systems
a poet, realizing reader-fee markets won’t go away unless you boycott them, only sends work to non-fee markets (if he can still find them)
a poet, realizing poetry markets will dry up without resources, ponies up reading fees until he realizes he is a poetry market, too, drying up slowly
a poet rationalizes
every day
again
and again
and again
else he’s no poet
finally, and most importantly, a poet believes, with persistence, that his day will come
it’s called February 3rd
and when it comes, he will seize the day
as his own.

Poetry as News Story

poetry reading poetry

Just the facts, Jack. That’s what detectives deal in when there’s a mystery, and that’s what newspapers deal in when there’s not.

Reporters are more about the 5 Ws and the H: who, what, why, when, where, and how. Or as many of the above as you can find, all presented in the classical inverted-pyramid style, facts first, because we can’t count on the reader to go any further than the first paragraph or two before becoming distracted by another headline.

Question is, can a straight-news, “this-happened-to-me” style work for poetry? My vote is yes, and the title of the following poem by Robert Wrigley, is a good, “just the facts” start. Exempli gratia:

Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho
by Robert Wrigley

The doe, at a dead run, was dead
the instant the truck hit her:
In the headlights I saw her tongue
extend and her eyes go shocked and vacant,
Launched at a sudden right angle—say
from twenty miles per hour south to fifty
miles per hour east—she skated
many yards on the slightest toe-edge tips
of her dainty deer hooves, then fell
slowly, inside the speed of her new trajectory,
not pole-axed but stunned, away
from me and the truck’s decelerating pitch.
She skidded along the right lane’s
fog line true as a cue ball,
until her neck caught a sign post
that spun her across both lanes and out of sight
beyond the edge. For which, I admit, I was grateful,
the road there being dark, narrow, and shoulderless,
and home, with its lights, not far away.

The poem reminds me a bit of William Stafford’s more famous deer-accident poem, “Traveling through the Dark.” Still, it’s no cinch to just relay facts like a reporter and call it poetry. It has to be rich with the muscle and bones of good writing — specific nouns and action verbs.

And yes, it wouldn’t be poetry if there wasn’t some kind of reflection at the end. Gratefulness despite the brush with another creature’s death foreshadowing one’s own, in this case, with human hungering, as always, for “home, with its lights, not far away.”

Scoring an MFA in 10,000 Hours

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practice

And again. From the beginning, maestro! Remember the Maine! And, better still, remember Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000-hour rule,” which states that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in anything will lift you to professional status.

Of course, that claim has since been debunked, but pretty-sounding studies (and the power of repetition) give anything legs, even since-disproven rules, so run with it, writers, for this reason and this reason only: Can 10,000 hours of writing hurt?

I didn’t think so.

That’s why, this morning, as I curate my next manuscript of poems anxious to get out into the world (“Whoa, Nelly! Not so soon!”), I start from the beginning.

What’s 10,000 hours of rereading every poem, after all?

What’s 10,000 hours of revising every poem, after all?

Now you may argue that a manuscript needs more eyes, and that may be—depending on the eyes.

Now you may argue that having famous poet slash professors in an expensive MFA program as those eyes is the only way—and that may be, too.

And you may argue that being a protégé of such a professor slash poet means the poet slash professor has a personal stake in your success—and who am I to argue?

All that said, it remains debatable when aspiring writers use young or new poets’ published books as evidence of all of the above. I speak of the infamous Acknowledgments Page, where all manner of star “insider poet” names are thanked for their tireless and selfless help.

How does this advantage even happen in a fair world, you ask? And whatever happened to the truth held self-evident that all poets, lettered or not, are created equal? (Thank you, Mr. Jefferson!) And would buying those three expensive letters (M, F, and A) really mean the difference for you?

No, no, no. Those 10,000 hours can serve in stead of the poet slash professors, and you could come out of a letter-less nowhere, of course. You’ve just got to believe. Or kid yourself at the very least. Or push on no matter what.

For 10,000 hours. And if that doesn’t do the trick, for 100,000 hours.

And, since you asked, I have no idea who’s tracking these hours. It’s the honor system, Jones.

Write. Revise. And again. From the beginning, maestro! Remember the Maine! (And forget that it sank.)

Time Passes, So Have a Drink!

poetry

Time passes. A theme for the ages. Put into poetry, however, one sees the poignant, or sad maybe, or pitiful maybe, or endearingly universal maybe truth of it all.

This is what one thinks upon reading Gavin Ewart’s tribute to the common man, who just wants more time to show up every day where everybody knows their name. A pub. A tavern. A bar. To drink away what they do not want to lose. Time.

In “Yorkshiremen in Pub Gardens,” Ewart uses end rhyme to measure time: ABABCC. There’s something about rhyme that brings us back to when we were kids “screaming for a teddy or a tinkling / musical box.” Mother Goose, you see. The Golden Age of Me. When time was not of the essence because, happily, we were immortal and had no need to forget with a draught that all is for naught:

Yorkshiremen in Pub Gardens
by Gavin Ewart

As they sit there, happily drinking,
their strokes, cancers and so forth are not in their minds.
Indeed, what earthly good would thinking
about the future (which is Death) do? Each summer finds
beer in their hands in big pint glasses.
And so their leisure passes.

Perhaps the older ones allow some inkling
into their thoughts. Being hauled, as a kid, upstairs to bed
screaming for a teddy or a tinkling
musical box, against their will. Each Joe or Fred
wants longer with the life and lasses
And so their time passes.

Second childhood: and ‘Come in, number eighty!’
shouts inexorably the man in charge of the boating pool.
When you’re called you must go, matey,
so don’t complain, keep it all calm and cool,
there’s masses of time yet, masses, masses…
And so their life passes.

Second childhood. A Shakespeare theme shaken in a snowglobe and settled into a new landscape of poetry. All the world’s a stage but also a pub populated with men glad for the entrances and ignoring the exits.

At least until they’ve downed another ale or three.

end rhyme "Yorkshiremen in Pub Gardens" Gavin Ewart

Opposition in the Poetry Classroom

poetry poetry prompts teaching poetry

Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine has an assignment for his students called “The Opposites Game.” He gives them a famous line of poetry and asks that they create a “new” poem by changing each word to its opposite.

As a teaching exercise, you can see how this could prove an interesting prompt for student creativity. Only, as is the case in the video below, sometimes the opposite of a word doesn’t surrender easily.

Will this prove a weak point in the assignment? Hardly. It’s the strength of the assignment, because it scatters student thoughts in multiple directions.

For instant, for his video example on youtube, Constantine chose an Emily Dickinson line and spread it out like so:

My
life
had
stood
a
loaded
gun

As you might guess, the exercise goes smoothly until the last word. What is the opposite of gun, after all? His students argue, divide, pledge allegiance to opposing words. And for Constantine, the story of “The Opposites Game” becomes a poem of sorts of its own.

As a teacher, you can show this film and stop before Constantine shares all of his students’ choices for antonyms. Turn the process over to your students and write their ideas on the board. Finally, play the remainder of the film to see how many matches you find.

After that? Easy. Create your own opposites games by simply scouring around the poetry books that surround you. Put a line on the board, especially one with a tricky word like Emily’s, and turn ’em loose. It’d be a great daily warm-up during a poetry unit. (Not that I sequester poetry into “units.” I prefer to pepper poems over the course of the year.)

Nota bene: Not a teacher? You know what they say to doctors: “Physician, heal thyself!” Meaning, as a writer, you can play the game yourself. (“Poet, create thyself!”)

It will not only have you reading good poetry, it will have you thinking of endless variations on a theme of opposition.

“How antithetical of me,” you’ll say afterwards. “I’m such a contrarian sometimes. And we’re not even talking politics here!”

That’s the refreshing part, isn’t it? Because the opposite of politics is….