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.
Friday, April 11, 2008
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.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Six Call for Votes
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK SIX
Here are the poems to vote for in week six of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 24, to Sunday, March 30):
36. The Chardin Exhibition, by Edward Hirsch
37. Strangers Buried Him, by Pat Boran (vote only on the first poem)
38. Genesis: Primeval Rivers and Forests, by Pattiann Rogers
39. Theory of Incompletion, by Mark Doty (vote only on the first poem)
40. Little God Origami, by Stefi Weisburd
41. A Witch's Dictionary (M-N), by Sarah Kennedy
42. Ode to the Maker of Odes, by Bill Zavatsky
This is the sixth 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 4! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 5. 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."
Here are the poems to vote for in week six of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 24, to Sunday, March 30):
36. The Chardin Exhibition, by Edward Hirsch
37. Strangers Buried Him, by Pat Boran (vote only on the first poem)
38. Genesis: Primeval Rivers and Forests, by Pattiann Rogers
39. Theory of Incompletion, by Mark Doty (vote only on the first poem)
40. Little God Origami, by Stefi Weisburd
41. A Witch's Dictionary (M-N), by Sarah Kennedy
42. Ode to the Maker of Odes, by Bill Zavatsky
This is the sixth 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 4! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on April 5. 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."
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 5 results
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK FIVE RESULTS
The winner of the fifth week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "Point of View," by Mary Jo Salter, which received 5 votes out of 11 cast.
In second place was early leader "Gardens Down To The Sea," by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, which received three votes. Several voters, including myself, ended up choosing between the first and second-place poems (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 six 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"
The winner of the fifth week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "Point of View," by Mary Jo Salter, which received 5 votes out of 11 cast.
In second place was early leader "Gardens Down To The Sea," by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, which received three votes. Several voters, including myself, ended up choosing between the first and second-place poems (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 six 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"
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Smartish Pace 15
Issue 15 of Smartish Pace contains three of my translations from the French of poems by Jacques Réda: "The Jay," "The Milk of Dawn" (a favorite of mine), and "The Dead House." (Note that, as of this writing, the issue is not on-line; I'm referring to the print edition.)
Of the other poems in the issue, I especially enjoyed quite a few:
Gary J. Whitehead's "The Mouse in the House" juxtaposes the sound of a mouse in the house with the memory of the speaker's mother tearing up her late husband's unsent letters to his estranged sister. How's that for a unique approach to the "late-parent" poem?
Mark Yakich has two poems from a sequence called "Green Zone New Orleans," the second of which I put an asterisk by. "You'll never / See your own // Corpse and nobody / Will ever know // Your mind."
Brooks Haxton's "Consort at Bay Window" begins with the beautiful line "Pine ribs in the body of a lute" (I'm a sucker for poems with lutes and mandolins in them).
Christopher Cunningham's contribution, "The Absinthe Drinker," is an ekphrastic poem based on Degas's painting "L'Absinthe."
Jacqueline Berger's "Cigarettes" is a very unusual poem—a "my parents died" poem apparently written before the fact (or at least "before" for the speaker), with the additional twist of its being the smoking fantasies of a non-smoker:
I'm not a smoker,
but I always imagine myself with a cigarette
when my brother and I visit our parents' graves.
There are two of David Kirby's long, chatty poems; for me, the contrast between the two shows how tricky it is to make his style work: the first, "The Only Good Question" (which turns out to be "What the fuck?"), weaves its various threads together so that they disappear and return with a good sense of timing and a final sense of closure. The second, "Sigourney Weaver, Certified Public Accountant," may be as funny as its title promises, but all the riffing ends up feeling like unmotivated free association without the strong sense of timing and closure of "The Only Good Question." Or rather, "Sigourney Weaver" may provide an intellectual sense of closure, but it does not (at least for this reader) provide an emotional closure.
I read Bradley Paul's "How to Stop Your Doppelgänger from Plagiarizing You" as an excellent variation on "Borges and I," which opens up the dual scene of Borges's test into a triangle: speaker, Doppelgänger, and a "you" that the poem introduces at just the right time (the timing helps the poem be more than just a repetition of Borges).
Bob Hicok has four memorable poems in the issue: "Les fenêtres" juxtaposes a translation of Baudelaire (a translation that seems to be done by someone who does not quite understand the French) with the speaker's inadvertent assumption of a role as a midwife (!). The other three all have some great lines:
We are boring people who thrust our arms
out of cars in the belief that flying
will notice and come to wrap us in the lift-off.
("Hope is a Thing with Feathers That Smacks into a Window")
In a poem about Kenneth Koch:
... I feel free
when reading his "no rabbit stew" poems
to not read them or read bits of them or start one
and think, this is boring, because on the next page
there will be one about which I think, this is like being
a speed-boat painter while the speed boat's
on the lake and tearing my hair out.
("Why Would Your First Guess Be Cock?")
In "Reading to Jesus," which is also addressed to Jesus, the speaker wonders about apologizing to Jesus:
to apologize for ever saying "Jesus fucking Christ,"
for parsing breath into such a twisty
implication of divine self-love, though if anyone
could fuck himself it would be You
And the poem concludes with a dramatic shift of register:
... I bet
You never won at tag, and when the hammer struck
the first time, did You curse the old man or love
this last chance to feel human?
The Hicok poems are followed by Reginald Shepherd's "Miroirs." I have just finished reading his book Fata Morgana, and I am overwhelmed there and in this poem by how wonderfully Shepherd's poems fulfill an aim that he has talked about on his blog and in his essays: how the poem should be an emotional experience prior to understanding. Again and again, his poems produce an emotional effect that can be overwhelming, one that draws me in and makes me want to decipher some of the more riddling passages (the ones that non-readers of poetry would reject as "difficult").
Joseph Harrison's "The Catch" is a ballad stanza that reads like a humorous companion piece to Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish"; part of the humor comes from the fish at the center of the poem: Asian big head carp, which, the epigraph tells us, "are known for jumping into fishermen's boats."
Gail Mazur's "Little Tempest" recalls the day after the last hurricane: "Everyone was out strolling, everyone seemed pleased / in the aftermath. That cold clear light." (But then, I am a sucker for the word "aftermath.")
Dawn McGuire's "I Sleep in My Clothes" depicts a stroke victim who can still write but cannot read. McGuire, a neurologist herself, boldly approaches her figure in his first-person voice.
Finally, Joanne Lowery's "Pleasing Others" describes how "unsuccessful so far" at doing so, the speaker buries herself, to be dug up after "centuries of solitude" as a major archaeological find, when she will finally "know that I do not disappoint."
The play between understanding and emotion also features in one of my Réda translations, "The Milk of Dawn," which is about hearing Woody Herman as a youth:
In our initiation into poetry,
A major moment was the song beginning: "Milkman,
Keep those bottles quiet" — we never really fully
Understood all of what followed that command.
Of the other poems in the issue, I especially enjoyed quite a few:
Gary J. Whitehead's "The Mouse in the House" juxtaposes the sound of a mouse in the house with the memory of the speaker's mother tearing up her late husband's unsent letters to his estranged sister. How's that for a unique approach to the "late-parent" poem?
Mark Yakich has two poems from a sequence called "Green Zone New Orleans," the second of which I put an asterisk by. "You'll never / See your own // Corpse and nobody / Will ever know // Your mind."
Brooks Haxton's "Consort at Bay Window" begins with the beautiful line "Pine ribs in the body of a lute" (I'm a sucker for poems with lutes and mandolins in them).
Christopher Cunningham's contribution, "The Absinthe Drinker," is an ekphrastic poem based on Degas's painting "L'Absinthe."
Jacqueline Berger's "Cigarettes" is a very unusual poem—a "my parents died" poem apparently written before the fact (or at least "before" for the speaker), with the additional twist of its being the smoking fantasies of a non-smoker:
I'm not a smoker,
but I always imagine myself with a cigarette
when my brother and I visit our parents' graves.
There are two of David Kirby's long, chatty poems; for me, the contrast between the two shows how tricky it is to make his style work: the first, "The Only Good Question" (which turns out to be "What the fuck?"), weaves its various threads together so that they disappear and return with a good sense of timing and a final sense of closure. The second, "Sigourney Weaver, Certified Public Accountant," may be as funny as its title promises, but all the riffing ends up feeling like unmotivated free association without the strong sense of timing and closure of "The Only Good Question." Or rather, "Sigourney Weaver" may provide an intellectual sense of closure, but it does not (at least for this reader) provide an emotional closure.
I read Bradley Paul's "How to Stop Your Doppelgänger from Plagiarizing You" as an excellent variation on "Borges and I," which opens up the dual scene of Borges's test into a triangle: speaker, Doppelgänger, and a "you" that the poem introduces at just the right time (the timing helps the poem be more than just a repetition of Borges).
Bob Hicok has four memorable poems in the issue: "Les fenêtres" juxtaposes a translation of Baudelaire (a translation that seems to be done by someone who does not quite understand the French) with the speaker's inadvertent assumption of a role as a midwife (!). The other three all have some great lines:
We are boring people who thrust our arms
out of cars in the belief that flying
will notice and come to wrap us in the lift-off.
("Hope is a Thing with Feathers That Smacks into a Window")
In a poem about Kenneth Koch:
... I feel free
when reading his "no rabbit stew" poems
to not read them or read bits of them or start one
and think, this is boring, because on the next page
there will be one about which I think, this is like being
a speed-boat painter while the speed boat's
on the lake and tearing my hair out.
("Why Would Your First Guess Be Cock?")
In "Reading to Jesus," which is also addressed to Jesus, the speaker wonders about apologizing to Jesus:
to apologize for ever saying "Jesus fucking Christ,"
for parsing breath into such a twisty
implication of divine self-love, though if anyone
could fuck himself it would be You
And the poem concludes with a dramatic shift of register:
... I bet
You never won at tag, and when the hammer struck
the first time, did You curse the old man or love
this last chance to feel human?
The Hicok poems are followed by Reginald Shepherd's "Miroirs." I have just finished reading his book Fata Morgana, and I am overwhelmed there and in this poem by how wonderfully Shepherd's poems fulfill an aim that he has talked about on his blog and in his essays: how the poem should be an emotional experience prior to understanding. Again and again, his poems produce an emotional effect that can be overwhelming, one that draws me in and makes me want to decipher some of the more riddling passages (the ones that non-readers of poetry would reject as "difficult").
Joseph Harrison's "The Catch" is a ballad stanza that reads like a humorous companion piece to Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish"; part of the humor comes from the fish at the center of the poem: Asian big head carp, which, the epigraph tells us, "are known for jumping into fishermen's boats."
Gail Mazur's "Little Tempest" recalls the day after the last hurricane: "Everyone was out strolling, everyone seemed pleased / in the aftermath. That cold clear light." (But then, I am a sucker for the word "aftermath.")
Dawn McGuire's "I Sleep in My Clothes" depicts a stroke victim who can still write but cannot read. McGuire, a neurologist herself, boldly approaches her figure in his first-person voice.
Finally, Joanne Lowery's "Pleasing Others" describes how "unsuccessful so far" at doing so, the speaker buries herself, to be dug up after "centuries of solitude" as a major archaeological find, when she will finally "know that I do not disappoint."
The play between understanding and emotion also features in one of my Réda translations, "The Milk of Dawn," which is about hearing Woody Herman as a youth:
In our initiation into poetry,
A major moment was the song beginning: "Milkman,
Keep those bottles quiet" — we never really fully
Understood all of what followed that command.
Robert Fagles
I read and loved the Homer translations by Robert Fagles, and I have his Aeneid on my shelf, waiting for the summer (great summer beach reading, I'm sure!). Sad to hear that he passed away.
Then down they lay at last and took the gift of sleep. (Iliad, 7:558)
carry your well-planed oar until you come
to a race of people who know nothing of the sea (Odyssey, 11: 139-140)
Then down they lay at last and took the gift of sleep. (Iliad, 7:558)
carry your well-planed oar until you come
to a race of people who know nothing of the sea (Odyssey, 11: 139-140)
Thursday, March 27, 2008
To Richard Boyle
When I was reading Alexander Pope a few weeks ago (see my previous posts here and here), I was struck by a point made twice in his poem "To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington" (Boyle was an architect):
You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,
And pompous buildings once were things of use.
Or, as Pope puts it later:
'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense,
And splendor borrows all her rays from sense.
I was reminded of Goethe's remarks in Spoleto, at the end of the same century, with the same emphasis on the utility of Roman architecture, in contrast to the alleged uselessness of the architecture of Pope and Goethe's respective contemporaries.
You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,
And pompous buildings once were things of use.
Or, as Pope puts it later:
'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense,
And splendor borrows all her rays from sense.
I was reminded of Goethe's remarks in Spoleto, at the end of the same century, with the same emphasis on the utility of Roman architecture, in contrast to the alleged uselessness of the architecture of Pope and Goethe's respective contemporaries.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Containment
My favorite poem in the March issue of Poetry is "Containment," by one of my favorite poets, A. E. Stallings. She so wonderfully balances the issue of balance, and so precisely captures the scene at the heart of her simile: "a face to match the scolding."
In the Q&A about his poems, Terrance Hayes hauntingly summarizes the skeptic's world view: "There are always questions sleeping next to any of my beliefs." He also quotes something that might help explain the frustration of Barack Obama's pastor: "Have you ever suffered political despair, despair at the organization of things?" Of his poems, I particularly enjoyed "Ode to Big Trend."
All the poets in the issue have such Q&A sections; in his, H.L. Hix addresses the real figures behind the unidentified people in his poems here: "from my point of view a reader will 'get' the poems not by identifying the speaker and the other characters but by identifying with them." Further, he adds, "I mean to invite each reader to hear his or her own emotional experience anew, through the emotional experience of this speaker." In other words, poetry is not about deciphering the hidden secrets of a text but about providing the basis for an emotional experience. To me, Hix leaves out something important: the controlling force of the poem in this experience. The poem is not a realm for the projection of the reader's experience; instead, it projects itself into the reader.
W. S. di Piero's "Johnny One Note" starts from Bobby Hutcherson, the jazz vibraphonist, and does startling things with the sound of the vibes.
The April issue is already online, which shows how long it took me, first, to get the issue in Switzerland, secondly, to read it, and thirdly, to finally post something about it! :-)
In the Q&A about his poems, Terrance Hayes hauntingly summarizes the skeptic's world view: "There are always questions sleeping next to any of my beliefs." He also quotes something that might help explain the frustration of Barack Obama's pastor: "Have you ever suffered political despair, despair at the organization of things?" Of his poems, I particularly enjoyed "Ode to Big Trend."
All the poets in the issue have such Q&A sections; in his, H.L. Hix addresses the real figures behind the unidentified people in his poems here: "from my point of view a reader will 'get' the poems not by identifying the speaker and the other characters but by identifying with them." Further, he adds, "I mean to invite each reader to hear his or her own emotional experience anew, through the emotional experience of this speaker." In other words, poetry is not about deciphering the hidden secrets of a text but about providing the basis for an emotional experience. To me, Hix leaves out something important: the controlling force of the poem in this experience. The poem is not a realm for the projection of the reader's experience; instead, it projects itself into the reader.
W. S. di Piero's "Johnny One Note" starts from Bobby Hutcherson, the jazz vibraphonist, and does startling things with the sound of the vibes.
The April issue is already online, which shows how long it took me, first, to get the issue in Switzerland, secondly, to read it, and thirdly, to finally post something about it! :-)
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Memory, Writing, and Democracy
A workshop on "Memory, Writing, and Democracy" will be taking place in Basel on April 4. The focus of the program is on South Africa. The interdisciplinary workshop is organized by the Zentrum Gender Studies, the Department of History, the Department of English and the Centre for African Studies Basel. It is aimed at all interested advanced and doctoral students.
For more information, click here.
For more information, click here.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage
... I spent so long in your lordship's land / and was hosted in your house ...
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage
I read Sir Gawain a few years ago, as translated by Brian Stone, and I enjoyed it, but I ended up with very little clear memory of the story. Everything seemed vague and dreamy in retrospect, even shortly after I had read it.
I doubt that will be the case with Simon Armitage's new translation, which is full of energy and clarity. I enjoyed reading it so much that I tried to convince Miles to let me read it out loud to him, and he let me read the first part and a bit of the second part to him before he got bored, wanting more action. The pleasure of reading this:
So summer comes in season with its subtle airs,
when the west wind sighs among shoots and seeds,
and those plants which flower and flourish are a pleasure
as their leaves let drip their drink of dew
and they sparkle and glitter when glanced by sunlight.
Then autumn arrives to harden the harvest
and with it comes a warning to ripen before winter.
The drying airs arrive, driving up dust
from the face of the earth to the heights of heaven,
and wild sky wrestles the sun with its winds,
and the leaves of the lime lay littered on the ground,
and grass that was green turns withered and grey.
Then all which had risen over-ripens and rots
and yesterday on yesterday the year dies away,
and winter returns, as is the way of the world
through time.
Armitage's alliterations never grow stale, and his attention to the form keeps the language focused and clear. Surprise: I recommend this book highly!
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage
I read Sir Gawain a few years ago, as translated by Brian Stone, and I enjoyed it, but I ended up with very little clear memory of the story. Everything seemed vague and dreamy in retrospect, even shortly after I had read it.
I doubt that will be the case with Simon Armitage's new translation, which is full of energy and clarity. I enjoyed reading it so much that I tried to convince Miles to let me read it out loud to him, and he let me read the first part and a bit of the second part to him before he got bored, wanting more action. The pleasure of reading this:
So summer comes in season with its subtle airs,
when the west wind sighs among shoots and seeds,
and those plants which flower and flourish are a pleasure
as their leaves let drip their drink of dew
and they sparkle and glitter when glanced by sunlight.
Then autumn arrives to harden the harvest
and with it comes a warning to ripen before winter.
The drying airs arrive, driving up dust
from the face of the earth to the heights of heaven,
and wild sky wrestles the sun with its winds,
and the leaves of the lime lay littered on the ground,
and grass that was green turns withered and grey.
Then all which had risen over-ripens and rots
and yesterday on yesterday the year dies away,
and winter returns, as is the way of the world
through time.
Armitage's alliterations never grow stale, and his attention to the form keeps the language focused and clear. Surprise: I recommend this book highly!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Five Call for Votes
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK FIVE
Here are the poems to vote for in week five of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 17, to Sunday, March 23):
29. Point of View, by Mary Jo Salter
30. Gardens Down To The Sea, by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
31. Future Structures, by William D. Waltz
32. Infinity, by Christopher Buckley
33. Sun Sutra, by Dana Levin
34. The Polish Immigrant, by Peter Skrzynecki
35. Procession, by Michael Miller
This is the fifth 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 FRIDAY, March 28! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which might only be on March 29 or 30. 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."
Here are the poems to vote for in week five of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 17, to Sunday, March 23):
29. Point of View, by Mary Jo Salter
30. Gardens Down To The Sea, by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
31. Future Structures, by William D. Waltz
32. Infinity, by Christopher Buckley
33. Sun Sutra, by Dana Levin
34. The Polish Immigrant, by Peter Skrzynecki
35. Procession, by Michael Miller
This is the fifth 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 FRIDAY, March 28! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which might only be on March 29 or 30. 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."
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Four Results
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK FOUR RESULTS
The winner of the fourth week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "Plague," by Damian Walford Davies, which received 4 votes out of 13 cast.
The vote was again quite close, with two poems receiving three votes: "Black Baldwin Grand," by Gretchen Steele Pratt, and "Mud Cap," by Dana Roeser. The comments on the votes were fascinating (see the call for votes post).
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week five 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"
The winner of the fourth week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is "Plague," by Damian Walford Davies, which received 4 votes out of 13 cast.
The vote was again quite close, with two poems receiving three votes: "Black Baldwin Grand," by Gretchen Steele Pratt, and "Mud Cap," by Dana Roeser. The comments on the votes were fascinating (see the call for votes post).
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week five 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"
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Shake the Hand
My friend Lee Altenberg wrote me an email a few weeks ago with this anecdote. — Warning: Deadhead stuff! :-)
I shook Phil Lesh's hand by the baggage claim in SFO tonight. Both his right and left hands.
When I saw him standing there, I wasn't sure it was him. I haven't seen photos of him since the Grateful Dead, so I am comparing my memories of 13 years ago with this fellow. I looked at how he was dressed — finely tailored leather jacket. Don't rock stars wear leather? My posterior probability was raised.
He was right by the baggage claim chute. I got up the nerve to ask, "Are you stationed right there to grab your bass as soon as it comes down? I ask because you look like a famous bass player, I know."
He said, "I wouldn't check my bass."
Ahah! It was him. "So, you're Phil?"
"Yes."
"May I shake your hand?"
He shook my hand. I had shaken the hand of Bobby Weir years ago when he walked up the car ramp at the Pauley Pavilion. My brother had a method of sneaking back stage where you hide under the bleachers after the show until everyone is gone, and then you just walk out confidently and go back stage — if you are there at that time then you are supposed to be there. We had successfully done this but didn't last long back stage before we were ejected, and ended up by the exit that Bob Weir and his woman would take a bit later. Weir's arms were full, so he gave me his left hand which I shook. Flashing back to the present moment with Phil Lesh, I asked, "Can I shake your left hand? I shook Bobby's left hand years ago."
And he gave me his left hand.
I said, "I love your bass playing, man," and departed. I soon realized that I wish I had really told him of the extent of my appreciation: "I want to thank you for giving me the greatest musical experiences of my life, which I treasure along with Beethoven." Alas, the moment had passed...
I shook Phil Lesh's hand by the baggage claim in SFO tonight. Both his right and left hands.
When I saw him standing there, I wasn't sure it was him. I haven't seen photos of him since the Grateful Dead, so I am comparing my memories of 13 years ago with this fellow. I looked at how he was dressed — finely tailored leather jacket. Don't rock stars wear leather? My posterior probability was raised.
He was right by the baggage claim chute. I got up the nerve to ask, "Are you stationed right there to grab your bass as soon as it comes down? I ask because you look like a famous bass player, I know."
He said, "I wouldn't check my bass."
Ahah! It was him. "So, you're Phil?"
"Yes."
"May I shake your hand?"
He shook my hand. I had shaken the hand of Bobby Weir years ago when he walked up the car ramp at the Pauley Pavilion. My brother had a method of sneaking back stage where you hide under the bleachers after the show until everyone is gone, and then you just walk out confidently and go back stage — if you are there at that time then you are supposed to be there. We had successfully done this but didn't last long back stage before we were ejected, and ended up by the exit that Bob Weir and his woman would take a bit later. Weir's arms were full, so he gave me his left hand which I shook. Flashing back to the present moment with Phil Lesh, I asked, "Can I shake your left hand? I shook Bobby's left hand years ago."
And he gave me his left hand.
I said, "I love your bass playing, man," and departed. I soon realized that I wish I had really told him of the extent of my appreciation: "I want to thank you for giving me the greatest musical experiences of my life, which I treasure along with Beethoven." Alas, the moment had passed...
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Four Call for Votes
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK FOUR
Here are the poems to vote for in week four of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 10, to Sunday, March 16):
22. "Afar," by Allen Grossman
23. "Plague," by Damian Walford Davies
24. "Everything to Measure," by Julia Hartwig / tr. by John and Bogdana Carpenter (please vote only on the first poem)
25. "The Mission," by Matthew Sweeney (please vote only on the first poem)
26. "The Heavenly Ladder," by John Witte
27. "Black Baldwin Grand," by Gretchen Steele Pratt
28. "Mud Cap," by Dana Roeser
This is the fourth 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).
I will be out of town for Easter, returning late on Easter Sunday. So I will accept votes until Sunday, March 23 (and I will probably only post the results on Monday, March 24, and the call for votes for week 5). 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."
Here are the poems to vote for in week four of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 10, to Sunday, March 16):
22. "Afar," by Allen Grossman
23. "Plague," by Damian Walford Davies
24. "Everything to Measure," by Julia Hartwig / tr. by John and Bogdana Carpenter (please vote only on the first poem)
25. "The Mission," by Matthew Sweeney (please vote only on the first poem)
26. "The Heavenly Ladder," by John Witte
27. "Black Baldwin Grand," by Gretchen Steele Pratt
28. "Mud Cap," by Dana Roeser
This is the fourth 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).
I will be out of town for Easter, returning late on Easter Sunday. So I will accept votes until Sunday, March 23 (and I will probably only post the results on Monday, March 24, and the call for votes for week 5). 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."
Essay on Man
My edition of Pope begins with "An Essay on Criticism," then things got kind of slow for me for a while; even "The Rape of the Lock" (the title poem of the edition) did not really thrill me. "Windsor Forest" is a charming poem that reminded me of Ausonius's fourth-century poem to the Mosel (the earliest piece of literature known to have been written in what is now Germany), but of course Ausonius himself was working in a long-existing genre, celebrating a particular place in verse. Pope's "Eloïsa to Abelard" did not add much to my understanding of those celebrated lovers, but I was surprised to discover the line "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind." I've never seen the movie, but it does make me wonder whether it contains a Pope reference or not!
"An Essay on Man," though is a fabulous work. I've always had the lines about "Know then thyself" in my head, without ever having read the poem itself, and I was pleased to discover lots of quotable passages:
Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.
Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier play-thing gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;
Till tired he sleeps, and Life's poor play is o'er.
One passage reminded me of Nietzsche's essay on the use and abuse of history:
To each unthinking being, Heaven is a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end
Pope rejects (as I do) Hobbes's idea of a violent "state of nature" ("her" here refers to "Nature"):
Self-love and Social at her birth began.
I have different reasons for assuming that early humans were social beings, and not isolated enemies à la Hobbes: the gregariousness of the other great apes. Yes, chimps can be pretty violent, but mostly outside their own social group.
It's amusing to come across an idea promulgated by contemporary supporters of free trade:
What War could ravish, Commerce could bestow,
And he returned a friend, who came a foe.
How does the line go? Something about how no two countries that both have McDonalds franchises have ever fought a war against each other. :-)
My maternal grandmother's maiden name was Howard (I think it's her birthday today; she's ... 93, I think. I better call her!), so I was amused by this couplet:
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! Not all the blood of all the Howards!
And for those of us who have ever felt the itch to be famous (which is all of us, isn't it?), Pope has an antidote:
What's Fame? a fancied life in others' breath,
A thing beyond us, even before our death.
"A fancied life in others' breath" so beautifully captures one of the main features of fame!
Now, let's see if I really know the "Know then thyself" couplet:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
I did not get the capitalization of "Man" right, but otherwise, I have always been quoting it correctly. The memorability of the heroic couplet—one reason, apparently, that Pope chose to write even his "essays" in his favorite (only?) poetic form.
"An Essay on Man," though is a fabulous work. I've always had the lines about "Know then thyself" in my head, without ever having read the poem itself, and I was pleased to discover lots of quotable passages:
Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.
Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier play-thing gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;
Till tired he sleeps, and Life's poor play is o'er.
One passage reminded me of Nietzsche's essay on the use and abuse of history:
To each unthinking being, Heaven is a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end
Pope rejects (as I do) Hobbes's idea of a violent "state of nature" ("her" here refers to "Nature"):
Self-love and Social at her birth began.
I have different reasons for assuming that early humans were social beings, and not isolated enemies à la Hobbes: the gregariousness of the other great apes. Yes, chimps can be pretty violent, but mostly outside their own social group.
It's amusing to come across an idea promulgated by contemporary supporters of free trade:
What War could ravish, Commerce could bestow,
And he returned a friend, who came a foe.
How does the line go? Something about how no two countries that both have McDonalds franchises have ever fought a war against each other. :-)
My maternal grandmother's maiden name was Howard (I think it's her birthday today; she's ... 93, I think. I better call her!), so I was amused by this couplet:
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! Not all the blood of all the Howards!
And for those of us who have ever felt the itch to be famous (which is all of us, isn't it?), Pope has an antidote:
What's Fame? a fancied life in others' breath,
A thing beyond us, even before our death.
"A fancied life in others' breath" so beautifully captures one of the main features of fame!
Now, let's see if I really know the "Know then thyself" couplet:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
I did not get the capitalization of "Man" right, but otherwise, I have always been quoting it correctly. The memorability of the heroic couplet—one reason, apparently, that Pope chose to write even his "essays" in his favorite (only?) poetic form.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Essay on Criticism
I took Alexander Pope off the shelf off a few days ago, an edition of The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems that I picked up in the U.S. last summer. The first poem in the book is "Essay on Criticism," which surprised me, first of all, by being the source of three proverbial statements:
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
But the poem is, of course, much more than its quotable quotes. I was equally struck by Pope's sense of the interplay between rules and the breaking of rules:
If, where the rules not far enough extend,
(Since rules were made but to promote their end)
Some lucky licence answer to the full
The intent proposed, that licence is a rule.
By breaking the rules, then, one may "snatch a grace beyond the reach of art."
As a poet playing the critic of critics, Pope tends to defend the poets, where they deserve defense, in his eyes. The errors one may detect may well turn out to be one's own (in what I have since discovered is an allusion to Horace):
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
Or, as I would put it, once a writer or artist has proven to be brilliantly successful in some significant number of works, one should assume that what looks like "nodding" was intentional. I'm not sure I would go as far as Pope to suggest that the problem is then always in the reader, but I am well aware of the role of my own "dreaming" in my response to works. But then, if I dream, perhaps it is not that I am not paying attention, but that the author is not holding my attention.
But perhaps Pope's point, in his reference to Homer, is one he reiterates later, one I wholeheartedly agree with:
A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ
All too often, critics condemn works for not living up to conventions or standards that the author of the work was simply not interested in. The work should be responded to on its own terms, and not on terms imposed by the critic.
Its didactic side is perhaps the most significant feature, then, of Pope's "Essay on Criticism": Pope wants to tell you how to be a critic. Some of the advice is worth sending to various contemporary critics, for example:
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence
...
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
There is a lot to be said for the confidence of the strong critic, but Pope's points here (and in the whole passage starting in line 560) make clear that an arrogant approach and a self-styled bluntness end up saying less about the work in question than about the critic. For example, I do enjoy William Logan's critical skewerings, but not as commentaries on the poets and collections he addresses. Rather, they are simply performances in their own right—and they lack something truly good reviewing always has: the communication to each reader of the simple sense of whether he or she will like the work, independent of whether the reviewer likes the work. (In fact, it's only as I was thinking about this that I realized that that is lacking in Logan's criticism—I may know that he dislikes a particular collection, but after reading his criticism, I have no sense of whether I will like it or not.)
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
But the poem is, of course, much more than its quotable quotes. I was equally struck by Pope's sense of the interplay between rules and the breaking of rules:
If, where the rules not far enough extend,
(Since rules were made but to promote their end)
Some lucky licence answer to the full
The intent proposed, that licence is a rule.
By breaking the rules, then, one may "snatch a grace beyond the reach of art."
As a poet playing the critic of critics, Pope tends to defend the poets, where they deserve defense, in his eyes. The errors one may detect may well turn out to be one's own (in what I have since discovered is an allusion to Horace):
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
Or, as I would put it, once a writer or artist has proven to be brilliantly successful in some significant number of works, one should assume that what looks like "nodding" was intentional. I'm not sure I would go as far as Pope to suggest that the problem is then always in the reader, but I am well aware of the role of my own "dreaming" in my response to works. But then, if I dream, perhaps it is not that I am not paying attention, but that the author is not holding my attention.
But perhaps Pope's point, in his reference to Homer, is one he reiterates later, one I wholeheartedly agree with:
A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ
All too often, critics condemn works for not living up to conventions or standards that the author of the work was simply not interested in. The work should be responded to on its own terms, and not on terms imposed by the critic.
Its didactic side is perhaps the most significant feature, then, of Pope's "Essay on Criticism": Pope wants to tell you how to be a critic. Some of the advice is worth sending to various contemporary critics, for example:
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence
...
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
There is a lot to be said for the confidence of the strong critic, but Pope's points here (and in the whole passage starting in line 560) make clear that an arrogant approach and a self-styled bluntness end up saying less about the work in question than about the critic. For example, I do enjoy William Logan's critical skewerings, but not as commentaries on the poets and collections he addresses. Rather, they are simply performances in their own right—and they lack something truly good reviewing always has: the communication to each reader of the simple sense of whether he or she will like the work, independent of whether the reviewer likes the work. (In fact, it's only as I was thinking about this that I realized that that is lacking in Logan's criticism—I may know that he dislikes a particular collection, but after reading his criticism, I have no sense of whether I will like it or not.)
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Three Results
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK THREE RESULTS
The winner of the third week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo," which received 6 votes out of 15 cast.
The vote was incredible close the whole way, with the final vote deciding the issue, sending Frank O'Hara's "For Grace, After a Party" into second place with 5 votes. The only other poems to receive votes were the three translations.
Some of the votes, along with comments by some of the voters, are in the comments section of the call for votes from last Sunday.
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week four on Sunday (tomorrow).
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
The winner of the third week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo," which received 6 votes out of 15 cast.
The vote was incredible close the whole way, with the final vote deciding the issue, sending Frank O'Hara's "For Grace, After a Party" into second place with 5 votes. The only other poems to receive votes were the three translations.
Some of the votes, along with comments by some of the voters, are in the comments section of the call for votes from last Sunday.
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week four on Sunday (tomorrow).
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Friday, March 14, 2008
Tyrannosaurus Rex versus The Corduroy Kid
I finally got around to reading Simon Armitage's 2006 collection Tyrannosaurus Rex versus The Corduroy Kid (I had lots of time to read while recovering from pneumonia).
I was not surprised to be so pleased, as I generally enjoy Armitage's poems quite a bit. I'll just mention two here that I particulary liked: "Horses, M62" and this one:
EVENING
You’re twelve. Thirteen at most.
You’re leaving the house by the back door.
There’s still time. You’ve promised
not to be long, not to go far.
One day you’ll learn the names of the trees.
You fork left under the ridge,
pick up the bridleway between two streams.
Here is Wool Clough. Here is Royd Edge.
The peak still lit by sun. But
evening. Evening overtakes you up the slope.
Dusk walks its fingers up the knuckles of your spine.
Turn on your heel. Back home
your child sleeps in her bed, too big for a cot.
Your wife makes and mends under the light.
You’re sorry. You thought
it was early. How did it get so late?
Below the poem, I wrote "and miles to go before I sleep." I highly recommend this collection.
I was not surprised to be so pleased, as I generally enjoy Armitage's poems quite a bit. I'll just mention two here that I particulary liked: "Horses, M62" and this one:
EVENING
You’re twelve. Thirteen at most.
You’re leaving the house by the back door.
There’s still time. You’ve promised
not to be long, not to go far.
One day you’ll learn the names of the trees.
You fork left under the ridge,
pick up the bridleway between two streams.
Here is Wool Clough. Here is Royd Edge.
The peak still lit by sun. But
evening. Evening overtakes you up the slope.
Dusk walks its fingers up the knuckles of your spine.
Turn on your heel. Back home
your child sleeps in her bed, too big for a cot.
Your wife makes and mends under the light.
You’re sorry. You thought
it was early. How did it get so late?
Below the poem, I wrote "and miles to go before I sleep." I highly recommend this collection.
Kurzer Bericht an einer Akademie
Zeilen wie diese überrollten mich, bevor ein Verständnis sie auffangen konnte. (Durs Grünbein, "Kurzer Bericht an einer Akademie")
Lines like the Hölderlin passage he has just cited "rolled over him before an understanding could catch them," says Grünbein in his "Brief Report to an Academy," the speech he gave in October 1995 at the Darmstadt Academy. He was being given the Georg Büchner Prize, for which he gave a different speech; this "brief report" was presented the evening before, when the new members of the academy are asked to introduce themselves (and then the Büchner Prize winner gives a reading from his or her work).
This passage caught my eye when I was rereading the "Brief Report" this week: it so strikingly captures how the experience of poetry comes before any understanding of it. The mystery of the lines "rolls over" the reader and, if the poem is working, suspends the problem of understanding.
This does not mean that "understanding" a poem is not important, though: a poem that cannot be understood at all eventually becomes boring, even if the lines are overpowering (see Clive James on Ezra Pound; my comment on it is here). But the process of understanding is a secondary step; it comes after an experience that makes one want to understand.
*
I was at the Büchner Prize ceremony in 1995. I met Grünbein that day, and Michael Krüger, whose novel The Cello Player I later translated (and who published my poems and an essay on W. G. Sebald in Akzente). But the most memorable event was the self-introduction of the new members. Grünbein's speech was very memorable, as were those by Thomas Hürlimann and Odo Marquard, both of which I can still talk about in detail until this day.
You can ask me about them over a beer sometime. :-)
Lines like the Hölderlin passage he has just cited "rolled over him before an understanding could catch them," says Grünbein in his "Brief Report to an Academy," the speech he gave in October 1995 at the Darmstadt Academy. He was being given the Georg Büchner Prize, for which he gave a different speech; this "brief report" was presented the evening before, when the new members of the academy are asked to introduce themselves (and then the Büchner Prize winner gives a reading from his or her work).
This passage caught my eye when I was rereading the "Brief Report" this week: it so strikingly captures how the experience of poetry comes before any understanding of it. The mystery of the lines "rolls over" the reader and, if the poem is working, suspends the problem of understanding.
This does not mean that "understanding" a poem is not important, though: a poem that cannot be understood at all eventually becomes boring, even if the lines are overpowering (see Clive James on Ezra Pound; my comment on it is here). But the process of understanding is a secondary step; it comes after an experience that makes one want to understand.
*
I was at the Büchner Prize ceremony in 1995. I met Grünbein that day, and Michael Krüger, whose novel The Cello Player I later translated (and who published my poems and an essay on W. G. Sebald in Akzente). But the most memorable event was the self-introduction of the new members. Grünbein's speech was very memorable, as were those by Thomas Hürlimann and Odo Marquard, both of which I can still talk about in detail until this day.
You can ask me about them over a beer sometime. :-)
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Spring
... yesterday, the sky was blue, the wind was slightly chilly, and I drove my son Miles to his drum lesson, opened up the sun roof, and cranked up the Grateful Dead. "Look for a while at the China cat sunflower ..." That's spring ...
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Snakeskin, March 2008
I have three poems in the March 2008 issue of the on-line journal Snakeskin: "Cigarette," "Baby Clothes," and "Melinda Compton." My apologies to Melinda. :-)
Of the other poems in the issue, I particularly enjoyed Alison Brackenbury's "Three," Maggie Butt's "List," and Colin Will's "Iron Road to Lhasa." Colin's poem reminded me of Christoph Ransmayr's verse novel Der fliegende Berg, which, unfortunately, has still not been translated into English.
My "Cigarette" is a further, even more dramatic example (than "River") of a poem that took its time getting published: it was the first poem I wrote in Philadelphia, which means I wrote it in September 1988. The moral again: stick with the poems you believe in and eventually they will find a home!
Of the other poems in the issue, I particularly enjoyed Alison Brackenbury's "Three," Maggie Butt's "List," and Colin Will's "Iron Road to Lhasa." Colin's poem reminded me of Christoph Ransmayr's verse novel Der fliegende Berg, which, unfortunately, has still not been translated into English.
My "Cigarette" is a further, even more dramatic example (than "River") of a poem that took its time getting published: it was the first poem I wrote in Philadelphia, which means I wrote it in September 1988. The moral again: stick with the poems you believe in and eventually they will find a home!
Monday, March 10, 2008
For All We Know
The maitre d’ was looking at us in a funny way
as if he caught the drift I sought between the lines you spoke.
O'Callaghan's book is a "New and Selected," so it would have been quite startling to have the book seem as flat Hadfield's collection; after all, you should have a certain degree of quality to reach the stage of a "selected poems"! And her book is quite strong. The poems are often quite humorous: "Life is way too short / for blasé colours" ("Spring Robe"). Or a description of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing, in "Saturday Afternoon in Dublin":
as if he caught the drift I sought between the lines you spoke.
Here, in "Second Time Around," the first poem in Ciaran Carson's For All We Know (a perfect example of a verse novel, but one the author has not called that himself), Carson's narrator pursues various ways in which meaning can be elsewhere (anywhere but here, that is): "between the lines you spoke" (a traditional example of meaning being elsewhere), but "the drift I sought" there (trying to find the meaning in what another person says), while the waiter seems to have "caught [that] drift" (trying to find the meaning in a conversation one overhears).
Carson continues with words "insinuating something else," again embedded in the dialogue between the speaker and his conversation partner:
For one word never came across as just itself, but you
would put it over as insinuating something else.
The particular "insinuations" of this couple's conversations are the issue here, not the general philosophical-literary-linguistic problem of slippery language. This is made even clearer in the image that follows:
Then slowly, slowly we would draw in on one another
until everything was implicated like wool spooled
from my yawning hands as you wound the yarn into a ball.
This "drawing in on one another" complicates the previous image of "you" talking and "me" listening, in the process rendering another cliché vivid: after "between the lines," the idea of a story as a "yarn" is suddenly much more complex, involving wool, hands, and the winding of a ball of yarn.
This imagery begins a story that is "told slant," to echo Emily Dickinson. The central event is the couple's first meeting, which does not get presented until halfway through the first section of the book, in "Fall," where they have just "exchanged names" when "the bomb went off at the end of the block":
... and drowned all
conversation. All the more difficult to find the words
for what things have been disrupted by aftershock and shock,
a fall of glass still toppling from the astonished windows,
difficult to ponder how we met, if it was for this.
The line about the "fall of glass" took my breath away while I was reading and was my initial reason to quote this passage, but of course it also plays into the theme of uncertain, ambiguous meaning that opens the book.
Shortly thereafter, "Birthright" explores the identities one tries to establish for oneself and the identity that one is finally unable to abandon:
For all that you assumed a sevenfold identity
the mark of your people's people blazes on your forehead.
The malleability of meanings ends up running into the immutable identity one receives at birth: being Irish, being Catholic or Protestant. Still, "whatever happens to you next is nothing personal."
When you begin Part Two of For All We Know, something will seem familiar: the title of the first poem, which is again called "Second Time Around." In fact, the poems in the second part of the book have the same titles as those in the first, in the same sequence. This doubling allows Carson to explore what is "between the lines" further, as the second poem always reflects (if often only indirectly) back on the first.
That does not keep the individual poems from standing out on their own terms. In the second poem called "Treaty," for example, the poem's "you" tells the narrator about growing up "between languages": "My mother spoke one tongue to me, my father another." This resonates with me, though not because of my own upbringing—my wife and I are raising bilingual children. And the resonance is increased when the speaker later adds: "When I learned to write, that was another language again." My children learn English and German at home, and Basel German dialect at day care, then learn to write in German at school, so their layering is similar to that of the speaker's experience here.
The doublings of the poems through the repetitions of the titles is most explicit in the pair of poems called "The Shadow." Echoing a scene from the beginning of the film "The Lives of Others," in which Ulrich Mühe is lecturing to future Stasi officers, the first poem begins:
You know how you know when someone's telling lies? you said. They
get their story right every time, down to the last word.
Whereas when they tell the truth, it's never the same twice. They
reformulate.
The poem later refers to Herman Hesse's The Glass-Bead Game, which becomes the central topic of the longer, second poem called "The Shadow":
It's like this, you said. Those who play the Glass Bead Game don't know
there's a war on they're so wrapped up in themselves and their game.
I've discussed this book at some length in order to more than simply say "get this, it's brilliant." But that's what I want to say in a nutshell. Like his namesake Anne Carson in Autobiography of Red, Ciaran Carson has used the narrative form to channel his playful, explosive side into a shape whose power only increases as one continues reading. In the past, I have always been impressed by C. Carson's work, but not moved. This book is deeply moving, and it concludes with an allusion to a deeply moving film that is just as elusive, Hiroshima mon amour:
You woke up one morning and said, I must go to Nevers.
so I return to the question of those staggered repeats
as my memories of you recede into the future.
*
Jen Hadfield, Nigh-No-Name
Julie O'Callaghan, Tell Me This Is Normal
Stephen Romer, The Yellow Studio
Kathryn Simmonds, Sunday at the Skin Launderette
Hadfield's book (the first one I read) struck me as quite flat, except for two excellent cat poems at the end. That was a disappointing start, but things got better through the rest of the Recommendations and then Carson's book.
Stephen Romer is another expat, an English poet who is a professor in Tours. His Yellow Studio is a book full of excellent details, along with a goodly number of strong individual poems. There's a fullness to his writing that makes it resonant even with the poems that are not as strong individually.
there were tears, along with tequilas ... ("Recognition")
He requires a definition // and all we can give him are instances... ("A Bridgehead of Sorts")
O'Callaghan's book is a "New and Selected," so it would have been quite startling to have the book seem as flat Hadfield's collection; after all, you should have a certain degree of quality to reach the stage of a "selected poems"! And her book is quite strong. The poems are often quite humorous: "Life is way too short / for blasé colours" ("Spring Robe"). Or a description of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing, in "Saturday Afternoon in Dublin":
Dietrich, meanwhile, has moved on to a beautiful, sad,
song with harps—I'm glad I don't know any German—
it's even sadder hearing words sung
that make no sense.
He says, "Ja, ja," better than anyone.
O'Callaghan was born and raised in Chicago, but lives in Ireland, so it's no surprise, I guess, that she has some expatriate poems that move this expatriate (born in Detroit, living in Switzerland), such as "Home," which you can read all of here (scroll down a bit). The reverse of being an expat is the experience of being back where you raised and finding things different, if only in the slightest ways, as in the poem "Sipper Lids," where O'Callaghan describes not having known what to do with the sipper lid on her hot cup of coffee to go!
In her debut Sunday at the Skin Launderette, Kathryn Simmonds demonstrates that she is a great lister—in fact, though her lists are always convincing and interesting, she demonstrates her skill with lists a tad too often. Still, when her lists are not the whole poem, but are fully embedded in scenes, then the poems work exceedingly well, as in "The Men I Wish I'd Kissed," or even more so in "The Woman Who Worries Herself to Death" and "Handbag Thief." And "Tate Modern" is a memorable poem about contemporary art, as the speaker discovers at the end of the poem that the installation she had liked best (with its abandoned coffee cup, stepladder, and tools, among other things) was a room that was "out of use," that is, closed for renovation.
All in all, not a bad set of Choice and Recommendations: a superb Choice (Carson), two very strong collections (O'Callaghan's and Romer's), one promising debut (Simmonds), and only one book that left me flat (Hadfield's).
(One thing I've noticed: write about a collection by an American poet, and you're bound to find lots of on-line poems to link to. British and Irish poets do not publish as many poems in advance, so many fewer end up on-line as possible links for a blog review!)
Garfield Minus Garfield
Thanks to Seth Abramson for the link to the truly brilliant Garfield Minus Garfield, in which an intrepid Photoshop editor removes Garfield from Garfield strips and produces something quite brilliant.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Three Call for Votes
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK THREE
Here are the poems to vote for in week three of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 3, to Sunday, March 9):
15. The Other, by Eugenio Montejo / tr. from Spanish by Kirk Nesset
16. For Grace, After a Party, by Frank O'Hara (please vote only on the first poem)
17. Lane of Blue Mist, by James Haug
18. Family Dinner, by Marina Colasanti / tr. from Portuguese by Cristina Ferreira-Pinto Bailey
19. We End, Like Galileo, by B. T. Shaw
20. The Moment of Exchange, by Emmy Hunter (please vote only on the first poem)
21. The Return, by Ronald Augusto / tr. from Portuguese by Isis McElroy
This is the third 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 FRIDAY, March 14! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which might only be on March 15 or 16. 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."
Here are the poems to vote for in week three of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 3, to Sunday, March 9):
15. The Other, by Eugenio Montejo / tr. from Spanish by Kirk Nesset
16. For Grace, After a Party, by Frank O'Hara (please vote only on the first poem)
17. Lane of Blue Mist, by James Haug
18. Family Dinner, by Marina Colasanti / tr. from Portuguese by Cristina Ferreira-Pinto Bailey
19. We End, Like Galileo, by B. T. Shaw
20. The Moment of Exchange, by Emmy Hunter (please vote only on the first poem)
21. The Return, by Ronald Augusto / tr. from Portuguese by Isis McElroy
This is the third 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 FRIDAY, March 14! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which might only be on March 15 or 16. 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."
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Two results
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWO RESULTS
The winner of the second week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is Martha Zweig's "Overturn, "which received 5 votes out of 17 cast.
Two poems tied for second with 3 votes: Ciaran Berry's "For the Birds" and Adélia Prado's "The Dictator in Prison" (tr. Ellen Doré Watson).
Some of the votes, along with comments by some of the voters, are in the comments section of the call for votes from last Sunday.
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week three on Sunday morning.
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's Edward Thomas's daughter
(In case you did not see her comments, Brackenbury commented on my post about her poem.)
The winner of the second week of my fourth Daily Poem Project is Martha Zweig's "Overturn, "which received 5 votes out of 17 cast.
Two poems tied for second with 3 votes: Ciaran Berry's "For the Birds" and Adélia Prado's "The Dictator in Prison" (tr. Ellen Doré Watson).
Some of the votes, along with comments by some of the voters, are in the comments section of the call for votes from last Sunday.
My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week three on Sunday morning.
Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's Edward Thomas's daughter
(In case you did not see her comments, Brackenbury commented on my post about her poem.)
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Jeff Tweedy on migraines
Fans of Wilco, as well as those who suffer from migraines (or know those who do), will be interested in Wilco front-man Jeff Tweedy's discussion of his migraines (and depression and panic attacks) on the New York Times blog about migraines.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week Two call for votes
THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWO
Here are the poems to vote for in week two of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, February 25, to Sunday, March 2):
8. For the Birds, by Ciaran Berry
9. Overturn, by Martha Zweig
10. Dwarf in the Shade of a Eucalyptus, by Elton Glaser
11. The Dictator in Prison, by Adélia Prado / translated from the Portuguese by Ellen Doré Watson
12. A Place in Tuscany, by David Malouf
13. Prepare, by Danielle Grace Warren
14. Nora Barnacle's House, by Gerard Smyth
This is the second 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 FRIDAY, March 6! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which might only be on March 7 or 8. 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.
Here are the poems to vote for in week two of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, February 25, to Sunday, March 2):
8. For the Birds, by Ciaran Berry
9. Overturn, by Martha Zweig
10. Dwarf in the Shade of a Eucalyptus, by Elton Glaser
11. The Dictator in Prison, by Adélia Prado / translated from the Portuguese by Ellen Doré Watson
12. A Place in Tuscany, by David Malouf
13. Prepare, by Danielle Grace Warren
14. Nora Barnacle's House, by Gerard Smyth
This is the second 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 FRIDAY, March 6! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which might only be on March 7 or 8. 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
