I like the fact that my nephew Alex has chosen Comparative Literature for his major at Brown. It reminded me of how close I came to attending Brown myself: it was one of three schools that accepted me for graduate studies in Comp Lit back in 1988 (the other two being Berkeley and Penn; I ended up at Penn). Ed Ahearn of Brown called me to make the offer; at one point in our conversation, he politely asked whether I had heard from anyone else already. I admitted that I had heard from Penn, and he was not surprised: he said he could always tell when potential grad students had already heard from another school, because they were less openly excited, more matter of fact.
All this took place 20 years ago, I realized, and I thought of other things that happened in 1988. In August, I was in Boulder, and I bought Philip Levine's "A Walk with Tom Jefferson"—I remember that because it was the same day that Alex (the nephew mentioned above) was born!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Sidney Wade
Six random things; TAG
This is a response to a tag from George Szirtes.
1. Though I play guitar and mandolin, my first instruments were cornet, drums, and flute, none of which I can play now. I did not start learning to play guitar until I was almost 19, in the summer of 1983.
2. I did not start learning German, for that matter, until I was already 19, in the fall of 1983.
3. In fact, I went to college to study physics, but I got sidetracked by Nietzsche.
4. I did not get the joke about the word "beat" in the name of "The Beatles" until I was well into my thirties.
5. [It's hard to think of six things!] If I had not moved to Basel in 1995, I would have gone to spend a year in Poland with my girlfriend (now wife) Andrea, where she would have had a job as a German teacher.
6. [Something many people already know] I attended over 80 Grateful Dead concerts between 1982 and 1993, plus several dozen Jerry Garcia shows (I'd say 30-40).
As George wrote me in an email:
Rules of Tagging:
Mr. Jumbo
Don Brown
Cyril Wong
Swiss
Al Filreis
Michaela
My apologies if any of you have done this one already!
1. Though I play guitar and mandolin, my first instruments were cornet, drums, and flute, none of which I can play now. I did not start learning to play guitar until I was almost 19, in the summer of 1983.
2. I did not start learning German, for that matter, until I was already 19, in the fall of 1983.
3. In fact, I went to college to study physics, but I got sidetracked by Nietzsche.
4. I did not get the joke about the word "beat" in the name of "The Beatles" until I was well into my thirties.
5. [It's hard to think of six things!] If I had not moved to Basel in 1995, I would have gone to spend a year in Poland with my girlfriend (now wife) Andrea, where she would have had a job as a German teacher.
6. [Something many people already know] I attended over 80 Grateful Dead concerts between 1982 and 1993, plus several dozen Jerry Garcia shows (I'd say 30-40).
As George wrote me in an email:
Rules of Tagging:
- Post these rules on your blog.
- Write six random things about yourself in a blog post.
- Tag six people of your own.
- Stick in a link for each person tagged.
- Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
- Let the tagger know your entry is up.
Mr. Jumbo
Don Brown
Cyril Wong
Swiss
Al Filreis
Michaela
My apologies if any of you have done this one already!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Ten
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TEN
Here are the poems to vote for in week ten of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 21, to Sunday, April 27):
You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, May 3! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on May 4. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).
The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."
The winner of week 8 was Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," translated by Clare Cavanagh
The co-winners of week 9 were Sidney Wade's Siamo a la Frutta and John Rybicki's Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me.
Here are the poems to vote for in week ten of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 21, to Sunday, April 27):
64. Dream-I-Believe, by Glyn Maxwell
65. That Little Something, by Charles Simic
66. Grandmother, by Valzhyna Mort (tr. by the author, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Franz Wright)
67. Treason, by James Tate
68. The Secret Room, by David Kirby
69. Insurance , by Peter Waldor
70. Night. Fire, by Elaine Sexton
This is the tenth week of twelve weeks, at the end of which all the winners will be put together for a final vote.
HOW TO VOTE: Please vote for only ONE poem. You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).
You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, May 3! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on May 4. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).
The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."
The winner of week 8 was Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," translated by Clare Cavanagh
The co-winners of week 9 were Sidney Wade's Siamo a la Frutta and John Rybicki's Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me.
The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 9 results
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK NINE RESULTS
Week nine of my fourth Daily Poem Project ended in a tie between Siamo a la Frutta, by Sidney Wade, and Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me, by John Rybicki. Each received 4 votes out of 13 cast (two of which were abstentions). Both poems will be included in my final round in a few weeks.
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week ten in a few minutes.
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Winner of week three: B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo"
Winner of week four: Damian Walford Davies's "Plague"
Winner of week five: Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View"
Winner of week six: Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes"
Winner of week seven: Marie Howe's "The Star Market"
Winner of week eight: Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," (tr. Clare Cavanagh)
Much Ado about Nothing
[Click on the image to enlarge the poster for more information about the Gay Beggars' production of Much Ado about Nothing, running all through May in Basel.]
Proletinnengedichte
My friend Susanne Suna will be reading her poems (in German) on the St. Alban ferry in Basel on May 8 at 7:30 p.m. Drinks and snacks will be served free of charge, and the reading itself is free, too. The title of her reading is mein Kopf wird leicht. proletinnengedichte.
If you come late, you can still get picked up on the shore.
Susanne, who is a trained typographer, has typeset eight of her poems in lead type and will make 40 copies of them, with a cover she has drawn herself.
If you come late, you can still get picked up on the shore.
Susanne, who is a trained typographer, has typeset eight of her poems in lead type and will make 40 copies of them, with a cover she has drawn herself.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Nine
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK NINE
Here are the poems to vote for in week nine of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 14, to Sunday, April 20):
57. Siamo a la Frutta, by Sidney Wade
58. Once, by Michael O'Brien (vote on only the first poem)
59. Milledgeville Aubade 1831, by Sean Hill (vote on only the first poem)
60. Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me, by John Rybicki
61. Beginning and Ending with Birdcall, by Joanna Goodman
62. Pyramid of the Sun, by Jay Rogoff
63. please advise stop [sun setting so quickly...], by Rusty Morrison
This is the ninth week of twelve weeks, at the end of which the twelve winners will be put together for a final vote.
HOW TO VOTE: Please vote for only ONE poem. You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).
You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, April 25! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 26. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).
The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."
The winner of week 8 was Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," translated by Clare Cavanagh
Here are the poems to vote for in week nine of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 14, to Sunday, April 20):
57. Siamo a la Frutta, by Sidney Wade
58. Once, by Michael O'Brien (vote on only the first poem)
59. Milledgeville Aubade 1831, by Sean Hill (vote on only the first poem)
60. Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me, by John Rybicki
61. Beginning and Ending with Birdcall, by Joanna Goodman
62. Pyramid of the Sun, by Jay Rogoff
63. please advise stop [sun setting so quickly...], by Rusty Morrison
This is the ninth week of twelve weeks, at the end of which the twelve winners will be put together for a final vote.
HOW TO VOTE: Please vote for only ONE poem. You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).
You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, April 25! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 26. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).
The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."
The winner of week 8 was Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," translated by Clare Cavanagh
The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Eight Results
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK EIGHT RESULTS
The winner of the eight week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "In a Little Apartment," by Adam Zagajewski (tr. Clare Cavanagh), which received 4 votes out of 11 cast.
Despite the low number of votes (the lowest yet this round, much to my chagrin), all seven poems received votes this time, with only August Kleinzahler's September also receiving two.
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week nine in a few minutes.
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Winner of week three: B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo"
Winner of week four: Damian Walford Davies's "Plague"
Winner of week five: Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View"
Winner of week six: Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes"
Winner of week seven: Marie Howe's "The Star Market"
Thursday, April 17, 2008
New European Poets
New European Poets is an anthology edited by Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer and published by Graywolf. I received a contributor's copy because it contains one of my translations of Dieter M. Gräf. I have not had a chance to read it yet, but it looks fantastic, covering more than forty European languages. Definitely worth getting and browsing through, in any case!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Mortal / Harlot: A poetry reading in Basel on May 5
[Click on the image to see the poster in a larger format.]
Sunday, April 13, 2008
The Fourth Daily Poem Project Week 8 call for votes
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK EIGHT
Here are the poems to vote for in week eight of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 7, to Sunday, April 13):
50. First Snowfall, by Jon Pineda (vote only on the first poem)
51. Atlas, by Fady Joudah (vote only on the first poem)
52. Elegy, by Elise Partridge (vote only on the first poem)
53. In a Little Apartment, by Adam Zagajewski, tr. Clare Cavanagh (vote only on the first poem)
54. Embarrassment, by Brenda Shaughnessy
55. Cairo, NY, by Cornelius Eady
56. September, by August Kleinzahler
This is the eight week of twelve weeks, at the end of which the twelve winners will be put together for a final vote.
HOW TO VOTE: You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).
You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, April 18! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 19. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).
The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."
Here are the poems to vote for in week eight of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 7, to Sunday, April 13):
50. First Snowfall, by Jon Pineda (vote only on the first poem)
51. Atlas, by Fady Joudah (vote only on the first poem)
52. Elegy, by Elise Partridge (vote only on the first poem)
53. In a Little Apartment, by Adam Zagajewski, tr. Clare Cavanagh (vote only on the first poem)
54. Embarrassment, by Brenda Shaughnessy
55. Cairo, NY, by Cornelius Eady
56. September, by August Kleinzahler
This is the eight week of twelve weeks, at the end of which the twelve winners will be put together for a final vote.
HOW TO VOTE: You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).
You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, April 18! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 19. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).
The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."
The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 7 results
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SEVEN RESULTS
The winner of the seventh week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "The Star Market," by Marie Howe, which received 4 votes out of 14 cast.
The vote was exceptionally close, with Kevin McFadden's "Is" receiving three votes and three other poems receiving two each. Many of those who posted comments on the call for votes post said that they found themselves choosing among several of the poems.
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week eight in a few minutes.
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Winner of week three: B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo"
Winner of week four: Damian Walford Davies's "Plague"
Winner of week five: Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View"
Winner of week six: Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes"
The winner of the seventh week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "The Star Market," by Marie Howe, which received 4 votes out of 14 cast.
The vote was exceptionally close, with Kevin McFadden's "Is" receiving three votes and three other poems receiving two each. Many of those who posted comments on the call for votes post said that they found themselves choosing among several of the poems.
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week eight in a few minutes.
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Winner of week three: B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo"
Winner of week four: Damian Walford Davies's "Plague"
Winner of week five: Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View"
Winner of week six: Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes"
Friday, April 11, 2008
Sappho, translated by Willis Barnstone
After Horace came Sappho. Not historically, of course, but after I read Horace, I wanted more classics, and it came down to the Aeneid (which I am saving for the summer) or Sappho (since I didn't want to reread Homer or Ovid's Metamorphoses, the other Greeks and Romans on my shelves).
Willis Barnstone's translations of the Sapphic fragments are simply beautiful, and Sappho is (surprise!) a truly exhilarating writer:
Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is
the one you love.
But the bits of her work that are left are all touched with the melancholy of fragments. The few apparently complete poems that have survived 2,500 years are, like the one I just quoted, so brilliant that I cannot help but be saddened by the loss of all the other brilliant poems she must have written. Barnstone calls one of the most famous poems "Seizure":
To me he seems like a god
as he sits facing you and
hears you near as you speak
softly and laugh
in a sweet echo that jolts
the heart in my ribs. For now
as I look at you my voice
is empty and
can say nothing as my tongue
cracks and slender fire is quick
under my skin. My eyes are dead
to light, my ears
pound, and sweat pours over me.
I convulse, greener than grass,
and feel my mind slip as I
go close to death,
yet, being poor, must suffer
everything.
I wonder, wonder, wonder what the rest of this poem said:
Come, holy tortoise shell, my lyre,
speak to me and find your voice.
Or this, which, like so many passages in Horace, reveals so much about the world Sappho lived in, without trying to tell us anything in that "informational" way at all:
Dika, take some shoots of dill and loop them
with your tender hands about your lovely hair.
The blessed Graces love her who wears flowers
but turn their backs on one who goes plain.
I mentioned Horace's reference to the purple dyes of Sidon; Sappho refers to them, too:
My mother always said
that in her youth she was
exceedingly in fashion
wearing a purple ribbon
looped in her hair.
But the girl whose hair is yellower
than torchlight need wear no
colorful ribbons from Sardis
or some Ionian city. A
garland of fresh flowers will do.
These are just a few examples of the wonderful moments in Barstone's versions. I'll just put one more in, because it turned out to play such a central role in the next book I read after Sappho, Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet:
Like a sweet apple reddening on the high
tip of the topmost branch and forgotten
by the pickers-no, beyond their reach.
Like a hyacinth crushed in the mountains
by shepherds; lying trampled on the earth
yet blooming purple.
Willis Barnstone's translations of the Sapphic fragments are simply beautiful, and Sappho is (surprise!) a truly exhilarating writer:
Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is
the one you love.
But the bits of her work that are left are all touched with the melancholy of fragments. The few apparently complete poems that have survived 2,500 years are, like the one I just quoted, so brilliant that I cannot help but be saddened by the loss of all the other brilliant poems she must have written. Barnstone calls one of the most famous poems "Seizure":
To me he seems like a god
as he sits facing you and
hears you near as you speak
softly and laugh
in a sweet echo that jolts
the heart in my ribs. For now
as I look at you my voice
is empty and
can say nothing as my tongue
cracks and slender fire is quick
under my skin. My eyes are dead
to light, my ears
pound, and sweat pours over me.
I convulse, greener than grass,
and feel my mind slip as I
go close to death,
yet, being poor, must suffer
everything.
I wonder, wonder, wonder what the rest of this poem said:
Come, holy tortoise shell, my lyre,
speak to me and find your voice.
Or this, which, like so many passages in Horace, reveals so much about the world Sappho lived in, without trying to tell us anything in that "informational" way at all:
Dika, take some shoots of dill and loop them
with your tender hands about your lovely hair.
The blessed Graces love her who wears flowers
but turn their backs on one who goes plain.
I mentioned Horace's reference to the purple dyes of Sidon; Sappho refers to them, too:
My mother always said
that in her youth she was
exceedingly in fashion
wearing a purple ribbon
looped in her hair.
But the girl whose hair is yellower
than torchlight need wear no
colorful ribbons from Sardis
or some Ionian city. A
garland of fresh flowers will do.
These are just a few examples of the wonderful moments in Barstone's versions. I'll just put one more in, because it turned out to play such a central role in the next book I read after Sappho, Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet:
Like a sweet apple reddening on the high
tip of the topmost branch and forgotten
by the pickers-no, beyond their reach.
Like a hyacinth crushed in the mountains
by shepherds; lying trampled on the earth
yet blooming purple.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Epistles of Horace
After reading Alexander Pope's variations on Horace, I went to my bookshelf and pulled off a book that had been on it for a while: David Ferry's translations of Horace's Epistles. There's a reason people have been reading Horace for two thousand years: the poems are absolutely splendid. Knowing no Latin, I cannot judge the accuracy of the translations, but the English poems Ferry has produced are simply brilliant.
People are punished for whatever maddens their kings. (Book 1, Epistle 2)
I could quote dozens of lines and passage that struck me; some of which seemed uncannily timely, like that one. This is poetry that counsels, advises, amuses, mocks, entreats, entrances, and generally thrills its reader.
... The man who puts off
The time to start living right is like the hayseed
Who wants to cross the river and so he sits there
Waiting for the river to run out of water,
And the river flows by, and it flows on by, forever. (1:2)
Often, Horace exemplifies the poet as dispenser of wisdom in elegant and memorable forms:
Between hope and encouragement, fears, and angers, and such,
Treat every day as the last you're going to have,
Then welcome the next as unexpectedly granted. (1:4)
But the wisdom does not just take the form of counsel about how to live your life; it can also take on more amusing forms:
But look what drinking can do! It reveals what's hidden;
It tells you that you'll get what you always wanted;
It pushes the coward right out into the battle;
It lifts the anxious burden from troubled hearts;
It helps you do what you couldn't do before.
Who hasn't been made more eloquent by drink?
However confined in poverty, tell me, who hasn't
Been freed for a while from feeling that he's unfree? (1:5)
The Epistles share with other classical texts the fascinating feature of revealing things, whether inadvertently or intentionally, about the shared knowledge of all those who lived in that world, information that one might feel the need to provide footnotes for today, though in the following case, it really isn't necessary:
The man who doesn't know the difference between
Wool dyed with Sidonian purple or just with dyes
From Aquinum isn't as badly off as the man
Who isn't able to tell the true from the false. (1:10)
This one struck me particularly because a few days before I read the passage, Miles's second-grade homework included "Why was purple the color of kings in the ancient world?" as the "Question of the Week" that they do every week, so along with him, I had learned about Sidonian purple! But the text gives you all the information you need without a footnote or a quick Wikipedia check.
Of course, reading Horace also leads you to passages that seem somehow familiar, because you've heard the story before, or perhaps even read references to it before, without knowing (or registering) that the story came from this source:
The stag was a better fighter than the horse
And often drove him out of their common pasture,
Until the horse, the loser, asked man's help
And acquiesced in taking the bit in his mouth.
But after his famous victory in this battle
He couldn't get the rider off his back
And he couldn't get the bit out of his mouth. (1:10)
What a joy it must be to translate lines that are that good!
Horace does have a thing about wine, or perhaps I do, as I am the one who kept noting passages where he talks about it:
No point in even asking about the wine.
At home I'm used to putting up with whatever;
But when I go away I want to have
Something a whole lot nicer, smooth and mellow,
Infusing hopefulness into the heart and veins,
Good for banishing care and promoting a flow
Of eloquence to make some lady think
That I'm still young when it's perfectly clear I'm not. (1:15)
The playful tone here appears throughout the epistles and keeps their morality from becoming moralizing, as when, a few lines later, he comments on the idea of moderation:
I'm just like that. When there isn't a lot to be had,
I'm very good at praising moderation;
But when there's something better and richer offered,
Why then I'm very good at praising how
You rich men live it up in your splendid houses. (1:15)
Or as he puts it two epistles later:
But if you want to be a little kinder
Both to yourself and your friends, be willing to go
To dinner once in a while at a rich man's house. (1:17)
That's assuming you can get an invitation, of course. And if you do, then the wine you drink will put you in good company, that of the Muses:
... Ever since Bacchus
Enrolled us poets among his fauns and satyrs,
There's been a hint of the memory of wine
On the morning breath of the Muses. (1:19)
And, as this implies, Horace naturally spends a lot of time talking about poetry:
If poetry, like wine, improves with age,
Then tell me, I'd like to know, how do you know
Exactly in what year a particular poem
Turns into a good one? (2:1)
Horace wrote this in an epistle to Augustus; has anyone written criticism in poetic form for any American President or British PM? :-)
Even the spread of poetry beyond the professionals to just about anyone gets a detailed comment:
But times and tastes have changed. Now everyone
Is seized with the desire to write a poem;
Grave elders and their offspring crowned with wreaths
Dictate their verses to one another at dinner;
And as for me, I'm lying in my teeth
When I solemnly swear I've sworn off scribbling lines.
No sooner do I wake up than I call for a pen
And paper, and off I go. A man who knows nothing
About how to sail a ship won't do it; he's scared to.
Doctors do doctor's work. Carpenters handle
The tools it takes a carpenter's skills to use.
But skilled or unskilled we all feel free to write poems. (2:1)
Before you think that Horace sounds like a critic of creative-writing courses, you have to read what follows:
And yet in the end there's something to be said
For this craze. It's relatively harmless,
And, more than that, it even has its virtues. (2:1)
The last epistle (2:3) is the Ars Poetica, and it has far too many wonderful bits in it to quote them all. This one reminded me of Yeats:
My aim is to take familiar things and make
Poetry of them, and do it in such a way
That it looks as if it was as easy as could be
For anybody to do it (although he'd sweat
And strain and work his head off, all in vain). (2:3)
At the same time, though, Horace contradicts the bit of Yeats that that passage reminded me of ("Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught"):
Withhold your favor from any poem that doesn't
Show signs of the time spent upon it ... (2:3)
And there are familiar bits here, too, of course, that you might vaguely remember came from some Roman or Greek:
Poetry wants to instruct or else to delight;
Or, better still, to delight and instruct at once. (2:3)
Pope referred to Homer's nodding, and I thought, "Oh, that comes from Pope!" But it doesn't, it comes from Horace:
... It's true that it bothers me
When Homer nods, but, after all, it's true
That writers of such long works must drowse sometimes. (2:3)
And, of course, I don't always agree with Horace:
... A poem's
Created to yield delight to the heart and mind.
If it falls a little short of doing that,
It falls right down to the bottom, all the way down. (2:3)
This comes quite close to the idea that any poem that is not a good poem is not a poem after all, a conception of poetry (or of art in general) that seems utterly unproductive to me. One has to be able to say that a particular work of art is bad; it is unnecessary to banish the bad art from the realm of art entirely.
People are punished for whatever maddens their kings. (Book 1, Epistle 2)
I could quote dozens of lines and passage that struck me; some of which seemed uncannily timely, like that one. This is poetry that counsels, advises, amuses, mocks, entreats, entrances, and generally thrills its reader.
... The man who puts off
The time to start living right is like the hayseed
Who wants to cross the river and so he sits there
Waiting for the river to run out of water,
And the river flows by, and it flows on by, forever. (1:2)
Often, Horace exemplifies the poet as dispenser of wisdom in elegant and memorable forms:
Between hope and encouragement, fears, and angers, and such,
Treat every day as the last you're going to have,
Then welcome the next as unexpectedly granted. (1:4)
But the wisdom does not just take the form of counsel about how to live your life; it can also take on more amusing forms:
But look what drinking can do! It reveals what's hidden;
It tells you that you'll get what you always wanted;
It pushes the coward right out into the battle;
It lifts the anxious burden from troubled hearts;
It helps you do what you couldn't do before.
Who hasn't been made more eloquent by drink?
However confined in poverty, tell me, who hasn't
Been freed for a while from feeling that he's unfree? (1:5)
The Epistles share with other classical texts the fascinating feature of revealing things, whether inadvertently or intentionally, about the shared knowledge of all those who lived in that world, information that one might feel the need to provide footnotes for today, though in the following case, it really isn't necessary:
The man who doesn't know the difference between
Wool dyed with Sidonian purple or just with dyes
From Aquinum isn't as badly off as the man
Who isn't able to tell the true from the false. (1:10)
This one struck me particularly because a few days before I read the passage, Miles's second-grade homework included "Why was purple the color of kings in the ancient world?" as the "Question of the Week" that they do every week, so along with him, I had learned about Sidonian purple! But the text gives you all the information you need without a footnote or a quick Wikipedia check.
Of course, reading Horace also leads you to passages that seem somehow familiar, because you've heard the story before, or perhaps even read references to it before, without knowing (or registering) that the story came from this source:
The stag was a better fighter than the horse
And often drove him out of their common pasture,
Until the horse, the loser, asked man's help
And acquiesced in taking the bit in his mouth.
But after his famous victory in this battle
He couldn't get the rider off his back
And he couldn't get the bit out of his mouth. (1:10)
What a joy it must be to translate lines that are that good!
Horace does have a thing about wine, or perhaps I do, as I am the one who kept noting passages where he talks about it:
No point in even asking about the wine.
At home I'm used to putting up with whatever;
But when I go away I want to have
Something a whole lot nicer, smooth and mellow,
Infusing hopefulness into the heart and veins,
Good for banishing care and promoting a flow
Of eloquence to make some lady think
That I'm still young when it's perfectly clear I'm not. (1:15)
The playful tone here appears throughout the epistles and keeps their morality from becoming moralizing, as when, a few lines later, he comments on the idea of moderation:
I'm just like that. When there isn't a lot to be had,
I'm very good at praising moderation;
But when there's something better and richer offered,
Why then I'm very good at praising how
You rich men live it up in your splendid houses. (1:15)
Or as he puts it two epistles later:
But if you want to be a little kinder
Both to yourself and your friends, be willing to go
To dinner once in a while at a rich man's house. (1:17)
That's assuming you can get an invitation, of course. And if you do, then the wine you drink will put you in good company, that of the Muses:
... Ever since Bacchus
Enrolled us poets among his fauns and satyrs,
There's been a hint of the memory of wine
On the morning breath of the Muses. (1:19)
And, as this implies, Horace naturally spends a lot of time talking about poetry:
If poetry, like wine, improves with age,
Then tell me, I'd like to know, how do you know
Exactly in what year a particular poem
Turns into a good one? (2:1)
Horace wrote this in an epistle to Augustus; has anyone written criticism in poetic form for any American President or British PM? :-)
Even the spread of poetry beyond the professionals to just about anyone gets a detailed comment:
But times and tastes have changed. Now everyone
Is seized with the desire to write a poem;
Grave elders and their offspring crowned with wreaths
Dictate their verses to one another at dinner;
And as for me, I'm lying in my teeth
When I solemnly swear I've sworn off scribbling lines.
No sooner do I wake up than I call for a pen
And paper, and off I go. A man who knows nothing
About how to sail a ship won't do it; he's scared to.
Doctors do doctor's work. Carpenters handle
The tools it takes a carpenter's skills to use.
But skilled or unskilled we all feel free to write poems. (2:1)
Before you think that Horace sounds like a critic of creative-writing courses, you have to read what follows:
And yet in the end there's something to be said
For this craze. It's relatively harmless,
And, more than that, it even has its virtues. (2:1)
The last epistle (2:3) is the Ars Poetica, and it has far too many wonderful bits in it to quote them all. This one reminded me of Yeats:
My aim is to take familiar things and make
Poetry of them, and do it in such a way
That it looks as if it was as easy as could be
For anybody to do it (although he'd sweat
And strain and work his head off, all in vain). (2:3)
At the same time, though, Horace contradicts the bit of Yeats that that passage reminded me of ("Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught"):
Withhold your favor from any poem that doesn't
Show signs of the time spent upon it ... (2:3)
And there are familiar bits here, too, of course, that you might vaguely remember came from some Roman or Greek:
Poetry wants to instruct or else to delight;
Or, better still, to delight and instruct at once. (2:3)
Pope referred to Homer's nodding, and I thought, "Oh, that comes from Pope!" But it doesn't, it comes from Horace:
... It's true that it bothers me
When Homer nods, but, after all, it's true
That writers of such long works must drowse sometimes. (2:3)
And, of course, I don't always agree with Horace:
... A poem's
Created to yield delight to the heart and mind.
If it falls a little short of doing that,
It falls right down to the bottom, all the way down. (2:3)
This comes quite close to the idea that any poem that is not a good poem is not a poem after all, a conception of poetry (or of art in general) that seems utterly unproductive to me. One has to be able to say that a particular work of art is bad; it is unnecessary to banish the bad art from the realm of art entirely.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated
I was struck by the three lines from Pope's "Essay on Criticism" that have become proverbial, and one thing I noted in "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," the first of his "Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated," was the appearance of the phrase "Damn with faint praise"; later, a line appears that reminded me of a web site I have occasionally followed links to: "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" (The web site is called "Butterflies and Wheels.")
Describing his childhood, Pope produces this couplet, in which "numbers" means "metrical verses":
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
So verses began coming to him even as a child, and never stopped doing so. But at least they stop while he sleeps, as he points out that he "can sleep without a poem in my head." I like that puzzling image, not because I agree with it, but because sometimes I wish I could "sleep without a song in my head," when a song heard during the day haunts my dreams all night, and even the dreamless periods seem to follow the same chords.
Still, in the "First Satire of the Second Book of Horace," a dialogue between P and F (Pope and Fortescue, to whom the poem is dedicated, Pope responds to F's suggestion that he ought to stop writing:
... Not write? But then I think,
And for my soul I cannot sleep a wink.
All poets know that feeling: if you don't get up and write something down, you're not going back to sleep. And sometimes, to paraphrase David Mamet, only writing can stop the thinking, all that terrible noise in there.
*
I won't write a separate post on The Dunciad, which I found rather slow going, but I did find a few things worth noting, first and foremost "The Cave of Poverty and Poetry," to which all poets always fear being banished. I was also amused to find the line "something betwixt a Heidegger and an owl," which I would anachronistically read as a reference to a German philosopher and to Athena, but it turns out that this Heidegger was a famously ugly man who was "master of revels" for George II.
Describing his childhood, Pope produces this couplet, in which "numbers" means "metrical verses":
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
So verses began coming to him even as a child, and never stopped doing so. But at least they stop while he sleeps, as he points out that he "can sleep without a poem in my head." I like that puzzling image, not because I agree with it, but because sometimes I wish I could "sleep without a song in my head," when a song heard during the day haunts my dreams all night, and even the dreamless periods seem to follow the same chords.
Still, in the "First Satire of the Second Book of Horace," a dialogue between P and F (Pope and Fortescue, to whom the poem is dedicated, Pope responds to F's suggestion that he ought to stop writing:
... Not write? But then I think,
And for my soul I cannot sleep a wink.
All poets know that feeling: if you don't get up and write something down, you're not going back to sleep. And sometimes, to paraphrase David Mamet, only writing can stop the thinking, all that terrible noise in there.
*
I won't write a separate post on The Dunciad, which I found rather slow going, but I did find a few things worth noting, first and foremost "The Cave of Poverty and Poetry," to which all poets always fear being banished. I was also amused to find the line "something betwixt a Heidegger and an owl," which I would anachronistically read as a reference to a German philosopher and to Athena, but it turns out that this Heidegger was a famously ugly man who was "master of revels" for George II.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
The Fourth Daily Poem Project, week seven call for votes
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SEVEN
Here are the poems to vote for in week seven of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 31, to Sunday, April 6):
43. Anti-Love Poem, by Grace Paley (vote only on the first poem)
44. Dreaming of the Dead, by Anne Stevenson
45. Is, by Kevin McFadden (vote only on the first poem)
46. Tea Break, by Julie O'Callaghan (vote only on the first poem)
47. Old War, by Alan Shapiro (vote only on the first poem)
48. The Star Market, by Marie Howe
49. Waiting to Cut the Hay, by Erica Funkhouser
This is the seventh week of twelve weeks, at the end of which the twelve winners will be put together for a final vote.
HOW TO VOTE: You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).
You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, April 11! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 12. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).
The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
Here are the poems to vote for in week seven of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 31, to Sunday, April 6):
43. Anti-Love Poem, by Grace Paley (vote only on the first poem)
44. Dreaming of the Dead, by Anne Stevenson
45. Is, by Kevin McFadden (vote only on the first poem)
46. Tea Break, by Julie O'Callaghan (vote only on the first poem)
47. Old War, by Alan Shapiro (vote only on the first poem)
48. The Star Market, by Marie Howe
49. Waiting to Cut the Hay, by Erica Funkhouser
This is the seventh week of twelve weeks, at the end of which the twelve winners will be put together for a final vote.
HOW TO VOTE: You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).
You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).
Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, April 11! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 12. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).
The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 6 results
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SIX RESULTS
The winner of the sixth week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "Ode to the Maker of Odes," by Bill Zavatsky, which received 5 votes out of 14 cast.
Two poems finished in a tie for second place with three votes each: "The Chardin Exhibition," by Edward Hirsch, and "Theory of Incompletion," by Mark Doty. These two poems seem to have split the vote on what one voter called "epiphanic moments" (though I'd like to hear more about the critique of such moments that she mentioned, too; see the comments on the call for votes post).
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week seven in a few minutes.
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Winner of week three: B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo"
Winner of week four: Damian Walford Davies's "Plague"
Winner of week five: Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View"
The winner of the sixth week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "Ode to the Maker of Odes," by Bill Zavatsky, which received 5 votes out of 14 cast.
Two poems finished in a tie for second place with three votes each: "The Chardin Exhibition," by Edward Hirsch, and "Theory of Incompletion," by Mark Doty. These two poems seem to have split the vote on what one voter called "epiphanic moments" (though I'd like to hear more about the critique of such moments that she mentioned, too; see the comments on the call for votes post).
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week seven in a few minutes.
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Winner of week three: B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo"
Winner of week four: Damian Walford Davies's "Plague"
Winner of week five: Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View"
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Signposts
You gotta love this.
It reminds me of this little bit I wrote earlier this year, which I attributed to "Roddy Rascal":
Throughout history, murder has been a much-discussed topic. I think this raises the question of whether it is okay to murder people. Looking more closely at the question, it has to be said that it can be answered in many ways. This essay will analyze the issue and address various aspects of it. I would like to argue that I think it is our own minds that we all have to make up about whether it can be argued that everybody has to decide for themselves in every individual case whether it is okay to commit murder.
It reminds me of this little bit I wrote earlier this year, which I attributed to "Roddy Rascal":
Throughout history, murder has been a much-discussed topic. I think this raises the question of whether it is okay to murder people. Looking more closely at the question, it has to be said that it can be answered in many ways. This essay will analyze the issue and address various aspects of it. I would like to argue that I think it is our own minds that we all have to make up about whether it can be argued that everybody has to decide for themselves in every individual case whether it is okay to commit murder.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Matthew Sweeney interview
[This interview was conducted in May 2007 when Matthew Sweeney was visiting the International School Basel in Reinach, Switzerland. The interview was conducted by Kate Anthony a student at the school, and I was asked by Padraig Rooney of the ISB if I was interested in posting it. The "book coming out in July" that Sweeney refers to is Black Moon.]
Matthew Sweeney was born in Donegal, Ireland in 1952. His collections of poetry include Blue Shoes (1989), The Bridal Suite (1997), A Smell of Fish (2000) and Sanctuary (2004). His Selected Poems was published in 2003. In addition to writing books he gives readings at poetry festivals and schools and conducts workshops for both adults and children.
Why did you start writing poetry?
I started writing in Secondary School, when I was about fifteen. I didn’t take it too seriously at the time. Sometimes I did it to make myself feel better. I had another friend who also wrote and we used to compare what we did and encourage each other to do more. If he came up with some new pieces and I didn’t have any I would want to come up with something to show him, that sort of thing.
Did you receive any other encouragement?
I didn’t receive any encouragement from my English teachers. When I showed three of my best poems to my Head of English he just glanced at them and said “Poetry is something one grows out of.”
What were some of your early influences?
I read a lot when I was a child, and I think when you read a lot and become immersed in the pretend world of the book it makes you want to create those pretend worlds yourself. When I was about ten or eleven, I was first introduced to poetry. I liked the sound of poetry, the mystery of it, and the way that a story could be told in a very short space, leaving some of the story for the person reading it to finish in their own head. Then when I actually started writing my own poetry, I took some poems that I liked and used them as models for my own writing. I have very little memory of this time, but I do distinctly remember that I took Coleridge’s ghost poem, ‘Christabel’, and used it as a model for a piece of writing of my own; trying to keep something of the shape and the rhythm and the sound effects of the original poem.
Who were your favourite authors as a child?
My favourite book as a child was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. I liked the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson, both the novels and the poetry – and the poetry was always aimed at children. I liked, when I came across them, some of the poems of Walter de la Mare, the English poet, and some of Yeats, the Irish poet’s early poetry to do with ghosts and fairies.
Then when I was older and really starting to get going as a poet, around twenty, the poet who was primarily important to me, and from whom, I think, I learned the most was the American poet Sylvia Plath. The Czech German writer Kafka was also important to me.
Why do you try to write stories in your poems?
I don’t know. One of the influences on my writing is the oral storytelling in Ireland and I remember noticing how much fictionalizing went on in these stories, because when I heard the same stories over and over again from an old grand-uncle of mine they would have changed. They would keep changing all the time as if fictionalising was part of it, and those poems that I mention by Yeats and de la Mere, they were stories too. Another kind of poetry that was important to me early on was the anonymous ballads of the Scottish and English border, and they tend to be stories told in a very short space.
I like the fact that in poetry you can tell a story in a short space. I remember doing a reading once and in the audience was the English novelist Beryl Bainbridge who said to me afterwards “You poets are all the same. When you tell a story you leave half of it out, you begin in the middle and you finish before the end.” And she added, “For example, I wanted to know if such and such fitted in the story but you didn’t tell me.” And I said, “I don’t care, it’s up to the reader to decide that.” Later on I was working with students in Guernsey, and this girl said to me after working with me for a few hours, like a light finally came on in her head “So the reader of the poem has to, as it were, finish writing the poem?” And I just looked at her and said, “You got it, baby!”
Do you like doing workshops and readings?
Yes, I like doing readings, and I also like doing workshops, although workshops are a bit more draining. Readings are draining in a different way, you have to get really up for them, and the adrenaline has to get pumping before you can do it. And you have to give a shape to your reading; the whole thing has to have a sort of shape. A workshop is a bit more low level a performance, but it is a performance in itself. I suppose a workshop feels more like giving golf lessons whereas a reading is more like playing in a golf tournament, to use a golfing analogy.
Do you find that your poems have anything in common?
I think what you have to do in writing poems is find your own distinctive voice. I’d been publishing poems for a few years before I wrote a poem that I could tell immediately nobody else could have written – it was so distinctively me. And once you discover that territory, then you have to try, as you keep writing and publishing, you have to try extending that territory as much as possible in all directions. But you should always be able to look back and see where you started from. When I published my Selected Poems, which I took from six or seven books, it was very nice to see that some English critics who had had difficulty with some of my earlier works, suddenly understood Suddenly it all made sense to them to see the whole lot fitting together and the very early stuff they could see in a way they couldn’t see before, by looking at it in the context of the later stuff. Sometimes you need a bit of space for somebody to see – it’s the same for a painter, a composer, you need to see a range of work to begin to make some sense of the distinctive world of it. I would hope that each of my books would have a slightly different feel from any of the previous ones so that I would be introducing an element of variety to the distinctive world. But of course they would always have some kinship.
You might notice, if you look at the way Selected Poems is organized chronologically, that I couldn’t write those early poems again, no more than I could have written the book that’s coming out in July twenty years ago. And that’s a good thing. I heard this analogy used one time about a poet, and someone who didn’t like his work said “all his books are the same – its just like rolling out a big roll of tweed and every time a book is ready, cutting it with a pair of scissors, and in a few more years, cutting another piece off again. You line all these rolls of tweed up and you can’t tell one from the other.” That seems, to me, to be a terrible thing to have said about you.
What advice would you give writers trying to develop their own voice?
Read a lot. Read poetry and try to see how poems work, try to define that voice, what gives the poet that distinction, what it is about their work that tells what that poet is trying to do. And read poems that you don’t like, but that other people do. Read these and analyze what makes other people like them. That’s the only way to develop a true voice and variety in your work.
The only other thing I would say is, keep writing. I was already writing to a standard that people wanted to publish in magazines when I wrote that poem where I could feel it was my own voice. It was almost as if I had to wait until the voice decided to make itself heard. Some other people got their voice very early and others have to wait awhile. It doesn’t really matter how early or late you get it, all that matters is you get that voice, and you can’t force it – it’s either going to come out or its not.
What elements do you think make a good poem?
I think ‘freshness’ is a crucial element, the element of surprise. A definition of the American poet, Robert Frost’s is “Poetry is a fresh look and a fresh listen.” So the language has to be fresh, fresh from life and not some clichéd language that people think is the language poetry has to be written in as opposed to the language you use in your daily discourse.
I think images, very clear, startling images, can stay in the mind of someone who has read them. I think poems can have a nice noise to them, a kind of music that can be a dark music or a warm music, all kinds of effects.
I also think that poetry works on the senses: the visual sense, the sense of hearing, speaking – if you say a poem aloud you can feel somehow the rhythm of it. I sometimes read aloud to people poems they have found in a book and they get so much more sense of the poem than what was thereon the page when they read it. The last time I did it was the work of a poet who was a long time dead, whom I hadn’t even met but just saying his poem aloud just brought it alive. And poems can also be very tactile, you can get a sense of touching something from what is described in the poem. So I think the senses have a very important role to play.
In addition to publishing many books of poetry, you also wrote a children’s book, Fox. Do you prefer writing fiction or poetry?
Poetry. Fiction is a hard slog, because it’s much more conscious mind driven, whereas poetry has more to do with the unconscious. It’s impossible to write poetry whenever you want to. You can try to do that with fiction, but when you write poetry it’s because something has grabbed you – the old word used to be inspiration. I would like to think of it another way, when something’s got hold of me, something’s caught me, something that’s like an itch that I have to write to get rid of. An image is given to me and I have to make sense of the image. When you’ve got that shape, when a real poem grabs hold of you, then your unconscious mind is pushing that poem out. Robert Frost puts it really beautifully, “I like it that a poem begins as a tantalizing vagueness and in the art of writing it either finds its thought, and becomes that poem or it comes to nothing.” That idea of a tantalizing vagueness, something that you’re trying to get clear, its just little things coming to you and you’re wanting to break through into clarity as in Frost’s comment. There is no guarantee you’ll get there, no guarantee the poem will get written. In other words, you have to be prepared to fail to get success, which is something that Samuel Bennett said - he said “Fail, fail again, fail better.” You just keep trying to get it better, and that unconscious mind is pushing the poem on. Part of the crafting of a poem is the conscious mind working with the unconscious mind to try to get the promptings of the unconscious mind to come down on the page in a way that feels crafted and has the necessary tension and cadences and sounds of a poem.
With prose, there’s a bit of unconscious mind working in it, but on the whole its more conscious mind driven, therefore there’s all this tinkering involved – drafting and drafting and drafting. It feels more like building a snowman – you know, I keep on having to add bits here and take off bits there. It takes a long time, in my experience, to write prose, but on the other hand, there’s a real satisfaction in getting the snowman right, even though it takes a while.
But with poetry, I might only write one or two poems in a month, and that would be a good month, and most days I wouldn’t be able to write a poem if you put a gun to my head and said “I’m gonna kill you if you don’t write a poem.” But for those few days where I’m working on it, it’s easier than slogging away at fiction every day. Poetry is more like a conjuring trick than a snowman – pulling something out of nothing. They’re both valid forms of writing, and I know a lot of people who write both – but they will tell you the process is very different.
Why do you think people tend to read fiction as opposed to poetry?
I think most people are afraid of poetry. And I firmly believe that most of the reading public would be pleasantly surprised if they allowed themselves to be shown a way into the world of poetry. You know, I have a few examples of that happening:
There’s a primary school in East London where I sometimes work and both the Head Teacher and the School Secretary have become fanatically interested in poetry from my working with the kids. So much that they go to poetry readings in London and buy poetry books. They both said to me that they had no idea before they discovered poetry what an important part of their lives it would become.
Also, I remember doing a reading once in London, in the Irish Club in Eaton Square, and in a room across the corridor was a Chopin piano recital. This woman came in late and sat down and I could see immediately that she was in the wrong room and was too embarrassed to get up and leave. She was squirming for a while and then she stopped squirming and started to listen. She came up to me afterwards and said, “I was in the wrong room,” and I said I could see that, and then she said, “But I really liked it. I didn’t think I would. I have a friend who’s been trying to get me to go to poetry readings for years, and I told her I wasn’t interested. But I’m going to go back and tell my friend that she was right and I was wrong because I didn’t know poetry could do that.
Then there was another example, I did a reading in Budapest last autumn and there was a woman there who was the wife of the Irish cultural attaché. In a restaurant afterwards she said “I don’t know anything about poetry but that was fascinating – I didn’t know that poems could connect so much with the world we’re living in - I did not know poetry could do that.”
So there are some examples of people who didn’t exactly give poetry a chance but were brought along by the current. They were very pleasantly surprised by what it had given back, but there is no way we will ever convert the vast majority of people. Most people think poetry has nothing to say to them about the world they’re in so they’re not going to look into it.
But for those people who do discover poetry, what do you think it is that makes it so appealing?
I think the magic and mystery in poetry can be so surprising. When I read poetry I often find it makes me look at this world in a different way, and freshens it up for me. I just think it can make the world a richer place for those who truly like poetry.
Matthew Sweeney was born in Donegal, Ireland in 1952. His collections of poetry include Blue Shoes (1989), The Bridal Suite (1997), A Smell of Fish (2000) and Sanctuary (2004). His Selected Poems was published in 2003. In addition to writing books he gives readings at poetry festivals and schools and conducts workshops for both adults and children.
Why did you start writing poetry?
I started writing in Secondary School, when I was about fifteen. I didn’t take it too seriously at the time. Sometimes I did it to make myself feel better. I had another friend who also wrote and we used to compare what we did and encourage each other to do more. If he came up with some new pieces and I didn’t have any I would want to come up with something to show him, that sort of thing.
Did you receive any other encouragement?
I didn’t receive any encouragement from my English teachers. When I showed three of my best poems to my Head of English he just glanced at them and said “Poetry is something one grows out of.”
What were some of your early influences?
I read a lot when I was a child, and I think when you read a lot and become immersed in the pretend world of the book it makes you want to create those pretend worlds yourself. When I was about ten or eleven, I was first introduced to poetry. I liked the sound of poetry, the mystery of it, and the way that a story could be told in a very short space, leaving some of the story for the person reading it to finish in their own head. Then when I actually started writing my own poetry, I took some poems that I liked and used them as models for my own writing. I have very little memory of this time, but I do distinctly remember that I took Coleridge’s ghost poem, ‘Christabel’, and used it as a model for a piece of writing of my own; trying to keep something of the shape and the rhythm and the sound effects of the original poem.
Who were your favourite authors as a child?
My favourite book as a child was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. I liked the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson, both the novels and the poetry – and the poetry was always aimed at children. I liked, when I came across them, some of the poems of Walter de la Mare, the English poet, and some of Yeats, the Irish poet’s early poetry to do with ghosts and fairies.
Then when I was older and really starting to get going as a poet, around twenty, the poet who was primarily important to me, and from whom, I think, I learned the most was the American poet Sylvia Plath. The Czech German writer Kafka was also important to me.
Why do you try to write stories in your poems?
I don’t know. One of the influences on my writing is the oral storytelling in Ireland and I remember noticing how much fictionalizing went on in these stories, because when I heard the same stories over and over again from an old grand-uncle of mine they would have changed. They would keep changing all the time as if fictionalising was part of it, and those poems that I mention by Yeats and de la Mere, they were stories too. Another kind of poetry that was important to me early on was the anonymous ballads of the Scottish and English border, and they tend to be stories told in a very short space.
I like the fact that in poetry you can tell a story in a short space. I remember doing a reading once and in the audience was the English novelist Beryl Bainbridge who said to me afterwards “You poets are all the same. When you tell a story you leave half of it out, you begin in the middle and you finish before the end.” And she added, “For example, I wanted to know if such and such fitted in the story but you didn’t tell me.” And I said, “I don’t care, it’s up to the reader to decide that.” Later on I was working with students in Guernsey, and this girl said to me after working with me for a few hours, like a light finally came on in her head “So the reader of the poem has to, as it were, finish writing the poem?” And I just looked at her and said, “You got it, baby!”
Do you like doing workshops and readings?
Yes, I like doing readings, and I also like doing workshops, although workshops are a bit more draining. Readings are draining in a different way, you have to get really up for them, and the adrenaline has to get pumping before you can do it. And you have to give a shape to your reading; the whole thing has to have a sort of shape. A workshop is a bit more low level a performance, but it is a performance in itself. I suppose a workshop feels more like giving golf lessons whereas a reading is more like playing in a golf tournament, to use a golfing analogy.
Do you find that your poems have anything in common?
I think what you have to do in writing poems is find your own distinctive voice. I’d been publishing poems for a few years before I wrote a poem that I could tell immediately nobody else could have written – it was so distinctively me. And once you discover that territory, then you have to try, as you keep writing and publishing, you have to try extending that territory as much as possible in all directions. But you should always be able to look back and see where you started from. When I published my Selected Poems, which I took from six or seven books, it was very nice to see that some English critics who had had difficulty with some of my earlier works, suddenly understood Suddenly it all made sense to them to see the whole lot fitting together and the very early stuff they could see in a way they couldn’t see before, by looking at it in the context of the later stuff. Sometimes you need a bit of space for somebody to see – it’s the same for a painter, a composer, you need to see a range of work to begin to make some sense of the distinctive world of it. I would hope that each of my books would have a slightly different feel from any of the previous ones so that I would be introducing an element of variety to the distinctive world. But of course they would always have some kinship.
You might notice, if you look at the way Selected Poems is organized chronologically, that I couldn’t write those early poems again, no more than I could have written the book that’s coming out in July twenty years ago. And that’s a good thing. I heard this analogy used one time about a poet, and someone who didn’t like his work said “all his books are the same – its just like rolling out a big roll of tweed and every time a book is ready, cutting it with a pair of scissors, and in a few more years, cutting another piece off again. You line all these rolls of tweed up and you can’t tell one from the other.” That seems, to me, to be a terrible thing to have said about you.
What advice would you give writers trying to develop their own voice?
Read a lot. Read poetry and try to see how poems work, try to define that voice, what gives the poet that distinction, what it is about their work that tells what that poet is trying to do. And read poems that you don’t like, but that other people do. Read these and analyze what makes other people like them. That’s the only way to develop a true voice and variety in your work.
The only other thing I would say is, keep writing. I was already writing to a standard that people wanted to publish in magazines when I wrote that poem where I could feel it was my own voice. It was almost as if I had to wait until the voice decided to make itself heard. Some other people got their voice very early and others have to wait awhile. It doesn’t really matter how early or late you get it, all that matters is you get that voice, and you can’t force it – it’s either going to come out or its not.
What elements do you think make a good poem?
I think ‘freshness’ is a crucial element, the element of surprise. A definition of the American poet, Robert Frost’s is “Poetry is a fresh look and a fresh listen.” So the language has to be fresh, fresh from life and not some clichéd language that people think is the language poetry has to be written in as opposed to the language you use in your daily discourse.
I think images, very clear, startling images, can stay in the mind of someone who has read them. I think poems can have a nice noise to them, a kind of music that can be a dark music or a warm music, all kinds of effects.
I also think that poetry works on the senses: the visual sense, the sense of hearing, speaking – if you say a poem aloud you can feel somehow the rhythm of it. I sometimes read aloud to people poems they have found in a book and they get so much more sense of the poem than what was thereon the page when they read it. The last time I did it was the work of a poet who was a long time dead, whom I hadn’t even met but just saying his poem aloud just brought it alive. And poems can also be very tactile, you can get a sense of touching something from what is described in the poem. So I think the senses have a very important role to play.
In addition to publishing many books of poetry, you also wrote a children’s book, Fox. Do you prefer writing fiction or poetry?
Poetry. Fiction is a hard slog, because it’s much more conscious mind driven, whereas poetry has more to do with the unconscious. It’s impossible to write poetry whenever you want to. You can try to do that with fiction, but when you write poetry it’s because something has grabbed you – the old word used to be inspiration. I would like to think of it another way, when something’s got hold of me, something’s caught me, something that’s like an itch that I have to write to get rid of. An image is given to me and I have to make sense of the image. When you’ve got that shape, when a real poem grabs hold of you, then your unconscious mind is pushing that poem out. Robert Frost puts it really beautifully, “I like it that a poem begins as a tantalizing vagueness and in the art of writing it either finds its thought, and becomes that poem or it comes to nothing.” That idea of a tantalizing vagueness, something that you’re trying to get clear, its just little things coming to you and you’re wanting to break through into clarity as in Frost’s comment. There is no guarantee you’ll get there, no guarantee the poem will get written. In other words, you have to be prepared to fail to get success, which is something that Samuel Bennett said - he said “Fail, fail again, fail better.” You just keep trying to get it better, and that unconscious mind is pushing the poem on. Part of the crafting of a poem is the conscious mind working with the unconscious mind to try to get the promptings of the unconscious mind to come down on the page in a way that feels crafted and has the necessary tension and cadences and sounds of a poem.
With prose, there’s a bit of unconscious mind working in it, but on the whole its more conscious mind driven, therefore there’s all this tinkering involved – drafting and drafting and drafting. It feels more like building a snowman – you know, I keep on having to add bits here and take off bits there. It takes a long time, in my experience, to write prose, but on the other hand, there’s a real satisfaction in getting the snowman right, even though it takes a while.
But with poetry, I might only write one or two poems in a month, and that would be a good month, and most days I wouldn’t be able to write a poem if you put a gun to my head and said “I’m gonna kill you if you don’t write a poem.” But for those few days where I’m working on it, it’s easier than slogging away at fiction every day. Poetry is more like a conjuring trick than a snowman – pulling something out of nothing. They’re both valid forms of writing, and I know a lot of people who write both – but they will tell you the process is very different.
Why do you think people tend to read fiction as opposed to poetry?
I think most people are afraid of poetry. And I firmly believe that most of the reading public would be pleasantly surprised if they allowed themselves to be shown a way into the world of poetry. You know, I have a few examples of that happening:
There’s a primary school in East London where I sometimes work and both the Head Teacher and the School Secretary have become fanatically interested in poetry from my working with the kids. So much that they go to poetry readings in London and buy poetry books. They both said to me that they had no idea before they discovered poetry what an important part of their lives it would become.
Also, I remember doing a reading once in London, in the Irish Club in Eaton Square, and in a room across the corridor was a Chopin piano recital. This woman came in late and sat down and I could see immediately that she was in the wrong room and was too embarrassed to get up and leave. She was squirming for a while and then she stopped squirming and started to listen. She came up to me afterwards and said, “I was in the wrong room,” and I said I could see that, and then she said, “But I really liked it. I didn’t think I would. I have a friend who’s been trying to get me to go to poetry readings for years, and I told her I wasn’t interested. But I’m going to go back and tell my friend that she was right and I was wrong because I didn’t know poetry could do that.
Then there was another example, I did a reading in Budapest last autumn and there was a woman there who was the wife of the Irish cultural attaché. In a restaurant afterwards she said “I don’t know anything about poetry but that was fascinating – I didn’t know that poems could connect so much with the world we’re living in - I did not know poetry could do that.”
So there are some examples of people who didn’t exactly give poetry a chance but were brought along by the current. They were very pleasantly surprised by what it had given back, but there is no way we will ever convert the vast majority of people. Most people think poetry has nothing to say to them about the world they’re in so they’re not going to look into it.
But for those people who do discover poetry, what do you think it is that makes it so appealing?
I think the magic and mystery in poetry can be so surprising. When I read poetry I often find it makes me look at this world in a different way, and freshens it up for me. I just think it can make the world a richer place for those who truly like poetry.
Concelebratory Shoehorn Review
Issue 16 of the on-line journal Concelebratory Shoehorn Review contains four of my poems: "Campfire," "Mandolin," "Romance," and "Those Who Wake at Night."
I have not had a chance to look at the rest of the poems in the issue yet, so I cannot recommend any of them in particular, but the photographs by Yuliya Shevchenko are worth a look, and there are lots of other artworks, poems, and articles to check out at your leisure.
I have not had a chance to look at the rest of the poems in the issue yet, so I cannot recommend any of them in particular, but the photographs by Yuliya Shevchenko are worth a look, and there are lots of other artworks, poems, and articles to check out at your leisure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
