Yearly Archives: 2024

123 posts

Man + Machine = Poetry

poetry reading poetry

Joyce Sutphen likes to write about country life, specifically farm life, and I like to read poems about country life, farm life included. This poem, “H,” is about man’s best friend, the machine. Surely to a farmer, the old tractor wins out over the old dog. (Hey, life can be ruff sometimes.) Let’s see how it’s done:

 

“H”
by Joyce Sutphen

Of all the tractors, I love the “H” the best:
first for its proportions, the ratio of body to machine,
arm to wheel, leg to clutch, hand to throttle,

and for the way it does not drown the voice,
but forces it to rise above the engine,
and for the smoke signaling from the silver pipe,

for the rip-rap of tread on the big tires, driver
perched between them, as on a throne in kingdoms of oats
and corn, scrolling along the meadow’s edge,

then sometimes standing still, engine turning the belt
that turned the wheels in the hammer mill
or whirling the gears that divided the oats from the straw.

And “H” for the ache to see my father plowing fields again—
the silhouette of a red tractor and a man, one hand
on the wheel, the other waving free.

 

Notice how the first four tercets are all one sentence, a breathless homage to, of all things, a tractor. Notice how, like many good poems, this poem has a “turn,” specifically in the last stanza, a new sentence, where Sutphen shifts to the gist of things: namely, the man on the machine, who counts as much as the machine itself.

An homage to a machine, yes; but an elegy to a man as well—her father, who seemed a part of the machine given how often he sat “on a throne in kingdoms of oats / and corn, scrolling along the meadow’s edge.”

That ache mentioned in the last stanza was the raison d’être for this poem, no doubt—something every good poem has. A catalyst. An emotional spark. The fire that makes readers warm to it.

When “Anti-Poems” Are the Solution

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Having trouble writing a poem? Try writing an “anti-poem.”

For inspiration, you might delve into The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. My copy features an introduction written by fellow poet John Ashbery (pictured). In it, Ashbery details O’Hara’s penchant for writing whatever, whenever. Frank also had a habit of losing his poems. They were that slapdash.

By way of evidence, Ashbery quotes a few lines from various O’Hara poems. Given the body of evidence (read: a lot), it was easy to do. We see O’Hara writing stream of consciousness. O’Hara having fun. O’Hara not O’Caring.

This is the New York School of Poets, strongly influenced by French poets like Rimbaud and Surrealists like never sat around King Art’s Round Table (“Get real, Sir Real!”). Ashbery himself was a card-carrying member (or should I say, “non-card-carrying” member, as rules were made to be broken and schools were made to be skipped).

Which brings me to this piece of advice. If you’re feeling blocked as a poet and overwhelmed by the self-imposed pressure of writing something meaningful and artsy, go New York (“New York” = “rogue”). Write an anti-poem.

Anti-poems, by my definition (which is all that counts, because I am now in “anti-” mode, a.k.a. some sweet kind of superpower), are poems that just hatch out of your head like Athena’s breech birth from the dome of Daddy Zeus (heads or tails, m’lord?).

What does that look like? Think of your composition book or computer monitor after you’ve done a free write, then take a minute or three to gussy it up. The result might look like this 2005 poem from Ashbery:

 

“Composition”
by John Ashbery

We used to call it the boob tube,
but I guess they don’t use tubes anymore.
Whatever, it serves a small purpose after waking
and before falling asleep. Today’s news—
but is there such a thing as news,
or even oral history? Yes, when you want to go back
after a while and appraise the accumulation
of leaves, say in a sandbox.
The rest is rented depression,
available only in season
and the season is always next month,
a pure but troubled time.

That’s why I don’t go out much, though
staying at home never seemed much of an option.
And speaking of nutty concepts, surely “home”
is way up there on the list. I feel more certain about “now”
and “then,” because they are close to me,
like lovers, though apparently not in love with me,
as I am with them. I like to call to them,
and sometimes they reply, out of the deep business of some dream.

 

Quite conversational, wouldn’t you agree? As for form? It is to laugh. Philosophical? In its way. Talky? Some might call it “prattle poetry.”

All that said, the New York Poets weren’t writing garbage and their work certainly appeals to broad swaths of readers, even those who are not poetry sorts. And you must admit, “rented depression” is rather nice, as are the final lines of the poem, which grows dreamy with deep business.

Still, I find easy-looking poems, whether they were easy to compose or not, to be great sources of inspiration, especially when you are trying too hard, because the fact is, trying too hard can wreck a poem before it puts its shoes on. And winging it by taking a walk barefoot can sometimes gift you with the oxygen of ideas. Something to feel good about. Something to mine and refine.

Then you can call it poetry from the (fill in your state or country here) School. For me, that’d be the “Maine School of Poetry.”

See how easy? Take ownership and pride. Then make like Ashbery and O’Hara: Write like you don’t O’Cara.

One Man’s Loss Is Another Man’s Win

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readersblock

Every once in a while, you stumble across a book that proves an unexpected charmer. David Markson’s Reader’s Block, a book I keep near to dip into, is one of those rare treats.

Ostensibly, it’s about an old reader who sits down to write a novel. Trouble is, he suffers not so much from writer’s block as reader’s block. He is so well-read and knows so many facts about artists and the arts that he would put Ken Jennings to shame. His head is literally swimming with obstructions of knowledge.

The book, then, is not laid out in paragraph form so much as stream-of-consciousness form, where the stream is a roiling with trivia about poets, artists, composers, painters, philosophers, etc.

To give you a taste, I’ll share a few notable ones about poets and other famous sorts below. Some I knew already, but most I did not. I wonder how many will lodge into my long-term memory vs. here today, gone tomorrow? Probably more than I think. I’m pretty good when it comes to the “Useless Facts for $500” category on Jeopardy!

 

  • There is no mention of Ockham’s Razor in anything Ockham ever wrote.
  • Not one of Thomas Hardy’s first three novels sold more than twenty copies.
  • Wallace Stevens told Robert Frost his poems were too often about things. Frost told Stevens his were about bric-a-brac.
  • Tolstoy and Gandhi corresponded.
  • Berryman’s name was originally John Smith. He adopted his stepfather’s name when his mother remarried.
  • Walt Whitman more than once wrote anonymous favorable reviews of his own work.
  • Thomas Hobbes was born prematurely when his mother became hysterical at the approach of the Spanish Armada.
  • The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time. Said Einstein.
  • Balzac called Ann Radcliffe a better novelist than Stendhal.
  • Pouring out liquor is like burning books. Said Faulkner.
  • Robert Frost had exactly five poems accepted in the first seventeen years in which he was submitting.
  • Baudelaire spent two hours a day getting dressed.
  • Being a successful reader of poetry on stage, said Akhmatova, is not necessarily the same as being a writer of successful poetry.
  • Twenty American publishers rejected Elie Wiesel’s Night.
  • Johnny Keats piss-a-bed poetry, Byron called it.
  • Aesop was executed for embezzlement.
  • Philip Larkin: I wouldn’t mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay died at the first light of morning after having sat up all night reading a new translation of the Aeneid.
  • Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. Said Eliot.
  • Housman published a volume entitled Last Poems in 1922. And lived until 1936.
  • Captured by Moorish pirates at sea, Cervantes spent five years as a slave before being ransomed.
  • Stalin was one of Maxim Gorky’s pall bearers.
  • An enormous dungheap, Voltaire dismissed the sum of Shakespeare as.

You get the idea. One man’s block is another man’s page-turner. Or, if you’ve already read it and vaulted the blocks with pleasure, another man’s page-dipper, a constellation most any reader would admire.

 

So Much for Red Wheelbarrows

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Perhaps one of the most famous little poems out there is William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Of course, one of the hazards of fame is that it attracts the twin scourges, satire and parody. This came to mind when I was thumbing through old copies of Poetry and found some fun in a 2020 issue, compliments of a poet almost as well-known as red wheelbarrows and white chickens, Mary Ruefle.

Her “homage” to WCW goes like this:

 

Red
Mary Ruefle

I fucking depended on you and
you left the fucking wheelbarrow
out and it’s fucking raining
and now the white chickens
are fucking filthy

 

I don’t know about you, but when I read poems like this my mind ricochets all over the place.

First, I wonder if Mary Ruefle is a huge fan of WCW’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” poem or if she can’t stand it. I could see either being true. I could see either inspiring her to see red and filthy white.

If she loves Williams’ poem, this is ha-ha laughing with him, and if she loathes Williams’ poem, this is ha-ha laughing at him (and at people who consider it a good poem). That’s the nature of parody, after all.

But what made me more envious still is that I could never write this same poem, send it to Poetry, and expect to see it published. If I could, though, it would be so cool.

Alas, this is another clear example of a “Haves vs. Have Nots” poem. Joe Nobody (of Have Not, Georgia) sends it over the transom and it might not even get past the first reader. Joe Somebody (of Have, Ohio) sends it and, wham!, it’s accepted with a check written in J.S.’s name pronto (and make no mistake — Poetry pays well not only for wheelbarrows but for rain and chickens, too).

So, yeah. Brief poem but extensive brain meandering. But I did use a wheelbarrow this weekend for fall cleaning. Gray as a cloud, my wheelbarrow. No rain. No chickens. And, oh. No f-bombs, either. (This is a family blog, after all.)

But synchronicity! Me and Mary! An f-ing team in that we both gave some not-so-serious thought to one-wheeled wonders. Thanks for the fun, M. And thanks for your fame, WCW.

Wheeling over and out, KC.

 

“A Girl Gets Sick of a Rose”

poetry reading poetry

Gwendolyn Brooks has many well-known poems, but if you were to choose one that most people identify with her work, it would be the infectious little ditty “We Real Cool,” wherein seven pool players at the Golden Shovel get their comeuppance in the form of not-so-cool future elegies.

Me, I prefer Brooks’ ode to teenage rebellion, where she uses the front and back yards (of all things) as metaphors for conformity and resistance. The voice of “We Real Cool” is motherly and ironic, a cool Cassandra calling it like it was, is, and ever shall be. But here the voice is more plaintive and imaginative. A bit less golden shovel, a bit more golden dreams — the type woven from the threads of boredom:

 

A Song in the Front Yard
Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

 

In L3 we see that the weeds are “hungry,” as is the speaker, who’s grown tired of the overly-nurtured flowers in the front yard (“A girl gets sick of a rose”). She’s hungry for a “good time” now, charity children or no. She senses that the authority figures in her life have been denying her both “wonderful things” and “wonderful fun.”

The speaker’s mother — a voice more in line with “We Real Cool” — simply sneers. She knows where “fun” lands the Johnnie Maes and Georges of the world. The young speaker tries to calm her down. She flat-out admits to herself that she’d like “to be a bad woman, too,” though Mom is certainly not getting that version.

And what exactly is a “bad woman,” anyway? You know. The kind who dons “brave stockings of night-black lace.” The kind who gets to “strut down the streets with paint on my face.”

Is that so bad, Ma?

James Dean and Marilyn Monroe would say no, not at all, a girl’s got to live. Like the Sirens in the back yard, they’d call, “Come on over, child. The back yard is life.”

In truth, some children grow up in and eventually cultivate their own front yards, while others light out for the unkept and less predictable back yards connecting to alleys and God knows what. The two plots of land — and the urges they represent — represent human nature.

 

William Blake, British Rockers, and a Chariot of Fire

poetry updates on a free-verse life

blake

Students tend to think of poetry as an English teacher problem. “Oh, man,” their attitude seems to be. “Only an English teacher could love something like poetry. Me, I can’t understand any of it, except maybe the poems I read in elementary school.” Ironic, given how much students love music, because music means lyrics and lyrics are first cousin not-at-all-removed from poetry. If you don’t believe me, you only need go as far as a Swedish Academy near you, where some fellow name Bob Dylan, songwriter, once stole off with the Nobel Prize for Literature.

One particular “grown-up” poem that shows how poetry can meld with music and film is William Blake’s lovely nugget from the larger poem Milton. Embraced by the British, the poem segment is more often known by its first quoted line, “And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time.”

My first exposure to Blake’s poem came not via the classroom, but by way of an album cut in 1973 by the British rockers Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Brain Salad Surgery (what a poetically-lovely title!) opens with, of all things, Blake’s poem, only I didn’t know it at the time. I thought it was the fantastic brainchild of the group itself. Only years later would I learn that the mesmerizing words came from a fascinating mystic who lived in England from 1757 to 1827.

When I offered the poem in my classroom, I always played the old Emerson, Lake, and Palmer version after we’ve read and discussed it. Then I reinforced the word “allusion” by talking about the 1981 movie that took its name from Blake’s poem. That movie was about British runners who competed in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

As for the poem itself, I simply ask students to point out the “cool lines.” It is amazing how simple that request can be in the classroom. Students, even those who know nothing about poetry and profess to hate it, are naturally drawn to poetic devices and good writing.
They were intrigued by metaphors in lines like “these dark Satanic mills,” “my Bow of burning gold,”  “my arrows of desire,” and “my Chariot of fire.” They loved the personification of “Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand.” And they were fascinated by the concept of Jerusalem being built in, of all places, “England’s green & pleasant Land.”

And who wouldn’t be? In Blake’s hands, even an ordinary and clichéd word like “pleasant” becomes le mot juste. There can be no better evocation for the natural beauty of England under the threat of industrialization and those “dark Satanic Mills.”

Here, then, is the poem that inspired the music and the film. If you teach, it will inspire your students, too.

“And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time”
by William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

“Undrinkable as a Glass of Scorpions”

poetry

Alcoholism, it would seem, is fertile ground for poetry. Only, like poetry, nothing’s as simple as the notion that states it should be simple. Alcoholism is so… abstract. Nebulous, Incendiary.

Sure, your poem could go under the influence and come up with some sober and concrete words, but what about not-so-obvious words like lamb, puddle, black cigar, romas, cream, rainclouds, piles of ash, bayonet, the Nile, bluebrown ocean, glass of scorpions, fragrant honey and the bees, and dust on a mirror? 

Can you drink that in such a way that it works?

Which brings me to a Kaveh Akbar poem from his book Portrait of the Alcoholic. If drinking brings altered states, poetry-writing can, too—only a wild and disciplined altered state. You know. Kind of like New Jersey.

Imbibe, why don’t you:

 

“Portrait of the Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober”
by Kaveh Akbar

The first thing I ever saw die—a lamb that took ten
long minutes. Instead of rolling into the grass, her blood
pooled on the porch. My uncle stepped away
from the puddle, called it a good omen for the tomatoes
then lit a tiny black cigar. Years later I am still picking romas

out of my salads. The barbarism of eating anything
seems almost unbearable. With drinking however
I’ve always been prodigious. A garden bucket filled with cream
would disappear, and seconds later I’d emerge
patting my belly. I swear, I could conjure rainclouds

from piles of ash, guzzle down whole human bodies,
the faces like goblets I’d drain then put back in the cupboard.
So trust me now: when I say thirst, I mean defeated,
abandoned-in-faith, lonely-as-the-slow-charge-into-a-bayonet
thirst. Imagine being the sand forced to watch silt dance

in the Nile. Imagine being the oil boiling away an entire person.
Today, I’m finding problems in areas where I didn’t have areas before.
I’m grateful to be trusted with any of it: the bluebrown ocean
undrinkable as a glass of scorpions, the omnipresent fragrant
honey and the bees that guard it. It just seems such a severe sort of

miraculousness. Even the terminal dryness of bone hides inside our skin
plainly, like dust on a mirror. This can guide us forward
or not guide us at all. Maybe it’s that forward seems too chronological,
the way the future-perfect always sounds so cavalier
when someone tells me some day this will all have been worth it.

Reading the Angels

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It being All Saints Day and the spooks of Halloween having all returned to their subterranean digs, I thought I’d dig around for some poets’ thoughts on these winged dreams known as angels. Here are three strange ones. In the spirit of D.H. Lawrence’s poem of angels knocking at the door, which do you admit—one, two, or all three? And what if you had to write a poem about an angel. Would it be good, dark, or indifferent?

 

“Women Who Love Angels”
by Judith Ortiz Cofer

They are thin
and rarely marry, living out
their long lives
in spacious rooms, French doors
giving view to formal gardens
where aromatic flowers
grow in profusion.
They play their pianos
in the late afternoon
tilting their heads
at a gracious angle
as if listening
to notes pitched above
the human range.
Age makes them translucent;
each palpitation of their hearts
visible at temple or neck.
When they die, it’s in their sleep,
their spirits shaking gently loose
from a hostess too well bred
to protest.

 

“Angels”
by Linda Pastan
        Are you tired of angels?
–Myra Sklarew

I am tired of angels,
of how their great wings
rustle open the way a curtain opens
on a play I have no wish to see.
I am tired of their milky robes,
their star-infested sashes,
of their perfect fingernails
translucent as shells
from which the souls
of tiny creatures have already fled.

Remember Lucifer, I want to tell them,
his crumpled bat wings
nose-diving from grace.
But they would simply laugh
with the watery sound a harp makes
cascading through bars of music.
Or they would sing to me in
my mother’s lost voice,
extracting all the promises
I made to her but couldn’t keep.

 

“Angels”
by Russell Edson

They have little use. They are best as objects of torment.
No government cares what you do with them.

Like birds, and yet so human . . .
They mate by briefly looking at the other.
Their eggs are like white jellybeans.

Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man to do more with his life than he might have.
But what is there for a man to do with his life?

. . . They burn beautifully with a blue flame.

When they cry out it is like the screech of a tiny hinge; the cry of a bat. No one hears it . . .

 

 

As you can see, the poetic mind goes many places when the prompt waxes angelic.

Aubades: Love Poems That Dawn On You

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“Poetry doesn’t get enough mainstream attention these days. It’s a mode of engaging with the world, it feels like magic, it requires nothing of you other than a willing ear. It’s also a mode of engagement that is not argumentative, it’s full of surprise, and it’s full of grace.”

Thus spake Jia Tolentino in her video intro to a reading of Tracy K. Smith’s “Solstice,” taken from Life on Mars, the book I’ve been rereading (or perhaps that’s been rereading me).

The book itself is a rich nougat, much sweeter and more filling than expected. All manner of poetry is going on here, from free verse to bound forms to boundless imagination in the form of postcard missives between people.

As another example of the variety, I give you an aubade entitled, quite simply, “Aubade.” An old French form, an aubade, gets its own 2-minute podcast on Merriam-Webster. Although it looks like you’d pronounce it with a long “a,” it is, in fact, pronounced “oh-BOD.” Without further ado, here is Tracy’s love song to the morning:

 

“Aubade”
by Tracy K. Smith

You wake with a start from some dream
Asking if I want to walk with you around the block.

You go through the things that need doing
Before Monday. Six emails. A presentation on Manet.

No, I don’t want to put on clothes and shoes
And dark glasses and follow the dog and you

Down Smith Street. It’s eight o’clock. The sun
Is toying with those thick clouds and the trees

Shake their heads in the wind. You exhale,

Wheel your feet to the floor, walk around to my side
And let your back end drop down onto the bed.

You resort to the weather. A high today of 78.
But that’s hours aways. And look at the dog

Still passed out cold, twitching in a dream.

When we stop talking, we hear the soft sounds
He makes in his sleep. Not quite barking. More like

Learning to speak. As if he’s in the middle of a scene
Where he must stand before the great dog god

Trying to account for his life.

 

Mornings can get rather prosaic, as this aubade attests, making it a much easier form for poets to explore than the ghazals we find leaping around in so many poetry journals these days. And it feels as if the aubade isn’t done speaking, either, when we see, two poems later, Smith’s continuation of the dog theme. For what goes with mornings more than dogs, eager and ready to be your best friend while going out into their best friend (the outdoors)?

 

“Eggs Norwegian”

by Tracy K. Smith

Give a man a stick, and he’ll hurl it at the sun
For his dog to race toward as it falls. He’ll relish
The snap in those jagged teeth, the rough breath
Sawing in and out through the craggy mouth, the clink
Of tags approaching as the dog canters back. He’ll stoop
To do it again and again, so your walk through grass
Lasts all morning, the dog tired now in the heat,
The stick now just a wet and gnarled nub that doesn’t sail
So much as drop. And when the dog plops to the grass
Like a misbegotten turd, and even you want nothing
More than a plate of eggs at some sidewalk café, the man–
Who, too, by now has dropped even the idea of fetch—
Will push you against a tree and ease his leg between
Your legs as his industrious tongue whispers
Convincingly into your mouth.

 

A stronger poem, I think, but every bit as lovely as morning, the best time of day, the most creative time of day, the time of day I need no alarm clock to greet. Speaking of days, maybe we need to discover the Norwegian word for “egg poems.”

Love, dogs, eggs — may yours go over easy and be a good day, no matter how much remains of it.

Music, the Opium of the Masses

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Karl Marx is famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) for saying, “Religion is the opium of the masses.” Right church, different pew, I think. It’s music that is the opium of the masses, which may explain why churches resonate with song, the nearer God to be.

Unconvinced? You need only walk along city sidewalks or ride in the subway to see as much. People with earplugs, now wireless and white, poking out of their ears as they walk or sit to the beat of their own drummers, avoiding at all costs engagement with their fellow man.

Thomas Lux (Latin for “light”) was on to this. In fact, he penned a poem to music, specifically music without words which, by his reckoning, loses nothing without the voices. There’s something primal in the beat, he was convinced. Something beautiful, like a field of poppies in bloom.

 

Regarding (Most) Songs
by Thomas Lux

Whatever is too stupid to say
can be sung.
—JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)

The human voice can sing a vowel to break your heart.
It trills a string of banal words,
but your blood jumps, regardless. You don’t care
about the words but only how they’re sung
and the music behind—the brass, the drums.
Oh the primal, necessary drums
behind the words so dumb!
That power, the bang and the boom and again the bang
we cannot, need not, live without,
nor without other means to make sweet noise,
the guitar or violin, the things that sing
the plaintive, joyful sounds.
Which is why I like songs best
when I can’t hear the words, or, better still,
when there are no words at all .

 

Lux was fond of wandering into a patch of end rhymes before returning to his regularly-scheduled free verse. Thus “sung,” “drums,” “drums,” “dumb.” Dumb but necessary. And primal because of “the bang and the boom and again the bang,” which is Lux’s way of employing a sound device (alliteration) and rhetoric (polysyndeton) to the rhythm and the cause.

It works. I should know. I sometimes offer myself up to music, too. Or lose myself to it. And write to it.

And I, too, prefer wordless music–at least when I write. It seems to lead me to heights without leading me astray as the distraction of lyrics might.

What about you? Ever been to the church, mosque, or temple of music? And ever notice how important it is to its second cousin twice removed (but returned), poetry?