Archive for the ‘ Poetry ’ Category
New York Review – Study the Panther!
I am always on the lookout for good writing I can reccomend. This is a review of Letters to a Young Poet – the fifth translation into English, and probably the best one. I have ordered it from Amazon.
The review ends with this fragment from the Duino Elegies:
…because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
The answer for most is simple
it has gone away
and we don’t want it back.
I find this amazing
how can they live without it?
I can hear the answer.
They aren’t living
they are doing something else
we have no way of writing about.
Not even with Poetry.
That being said, check out Moves in the Field by Sara Miller in the January Poetry Magazine. The rest of her stuff is not bad either.
Poetry Magazine – Michael Lista Q&A
I wasn’t too impressed by the poems in the December issue. But this poem, the last one, is worth referring to. It’s about Canada’s most famous rapist and serial killer, Paul Bernardo.
Bernardo was a psychopath, a type of human—it isn’t an illness, and it can’t be treated, never mind cured—that was first described by a Canadian, Robert Hare. Bernardo was good looking; he and his accomplice, his wife Karla Homolka, an equally demented psychopath, were called “the Ken and Barbie killers” by the American press because they were beautiful and charming and ostensibly well put-together. When Bernardo was finally charged, the judge who presided over the case had to rule whether or not the videos of the crimes, which Bernardo had filmed, could be shown in open court. The judge, Patrick LeSage, ruled that Canadians could hear them but they could not see them.
The writer of this series of poems also noted that Early Greek Christians thought of Christ as a new Orpheus – which made me look up Orpheus on Wikipedia.
Spark Notes - Frost’s Early Poems
Just a Tommy Blog – The Figure a Poem Makes
I took an online course recently on Modern and Contemporary Poetry – and I have to admit I was discouraged by it. The only poet I liked was one who deliberately bucked the Modernist trend – Robert Frost. A poet that many of his contemporaries considered hopelessly out of date.
I was glad to see the following in the December 2001 Poetry Magazine – the Q&A issue where poems are followed by questions to the poet – in this case Richard Kenny:
The poem’s last word is “love.” We were put in mind of Auden’s struggling with the last line of his famous, and (in his lifetime) suppressed “September 1, 1939”: “We must love one another or die.” “We must love one another and die.” The fulcrum, in both poems, seems to be hope. Any thoughts on this?
I suppose I think what others have thought, that the first version spoke a commonplace: we are mayflies. The second version, the sort of miracle revision one could hardly in cold blood think one’s way to, rattles our bones and frightens the future. I love the line, but the love of which I think I was thinking at the time was Frost’s, in my favorite essay, “The Figure a Poem Makes.” Frost speculates of poetry that its “figure is the same as for love.” Forty years ago that struck me as a handsome poeticism; in the intervening years I’ve come to understand he meant it. So, hope.
You heard him, now get on with it.
This is taken from Susan Howe’s My Emily Dickinson, the last sentence on page 35. Howe is a poet herself, and can appreciate other poets – especially women.
Through of forest of mystic meaning, Religion hunts for Poetry’s freedom, while Poetry roams Divinity’s sovereign source.
Our earliest literature (including the Bible) was poetical – composed to be easily remembered and recited. God composed the Ten Commandments (inscribed in stone) but people preferred to hear his commandments spoken to them directly. There was no substitute for direct communication with the Divine.
I am reading My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe. The Preface turned me off, it is so feminist. But when she finally got around to talking about Emily, she got my attention again.
The following is taken from page 38 (chunked up into smaller paragraphs):
Emily Dickinson was born exactly two hundred years after the Great Migration led by John Winthrop brought her ancestors to America. Like Hawthorn, and unlike Emerson, her conscience still embraced the restless contradictions of the Puritan strain.
Her ancestors, rigid Calvinists determined to walk the ancient ways and not to stumble on the path of Righteousness, voluntarily severed themselves themselves from their origins to cross the northern ocean on a religious and utopian errand into the wilderness.
Calvinism grounded in the Old Testament, through typological interpretation of the New, as an authoritarian theology that stressed personal salvation throught strenuous morality, righteousness over love, and an autocratic governing principle over liberty.
God’s infinite and absolute sovereignty were conceived in terms of legal authority. Divine judgement and a moral law were necessary for a fallen humanity. Rage and rigor in the name of Jehovah and Hosea, required unswerving submission to HIS absolute dominion.
Here is the definition of typology from the Merriam Webster Unabridged:
a doctrine or theory of types; specifically : a doctrine that things in the Christian dispensation are symbolized or prefigured by things in the Old Testament (as the sacrifice of Christ and the Eucharist by the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb)
I had always assumed the Puritans had little lasting effect on America – which quickly became more materialistic. But perhaps I was wrong. Once you dig below the surface, all kinds of things show up.
Magic is always involved in power, and is a necessary part of what it is. But being all-powerful is a fatal aberration produced by a fatal kind of irresistible magic. Any people under its spell are doomed.
And in our present global culture this means nearly everyone. We have been overwhelmed by this all-powerful magic – the belief that we have grabbed the world in sucked it into ourselves. Making us everything.
Now that I have written that last paragraph, I am amazed by it. I am usually perplexed by the difficulty explaining this new environment. Perhaps I should explain how I came across this sudden inspiration.
I was watching a bus-load of German tourists taking pictures of our Catholic Church, one of the few remaining from the Colonial Era. I asked myself “What on earth are they trying to do?”
I am also reading a book about Imagism in poetry. Where the author, Daniel Tiffany, is discussing Visuality – a surprisingly difficult subject.
And I have written about my father the photographer whose studio produced images intended to show the respectability of his customers. An obsession that was fading, and disappeared, along with the studio.
And I am listening to The Winds of War, and marveling at how well it illuminates WWII – and also how it has had no effect, because the survivors of that war had lost their ability to appreciate it – or indeed, anything else.
And even, at the subliminal level, the religion of my family – who thought they were the chosen people (and therefore very respectable) but who too were in the process of disappearing.
People who are all-powerful are not concerned with their respectability.
Closely associated with respectability was the impulse towards perfectibility. Which was being superceded by its opposite – the impulse to be defective and make defective.
Finally, in my declining years, I can look back and see these conflicts (and their resolutions). And compare myself to another recluse – Emily Dickinson. A genius who is still in the process of being discovered – over one hundred years after her death.
But let me return to the subject – and the magic that makes all-powerful. Which has consumed the world. And is in the process of destroying it.
No one, as far as I know, has noticed this. And I can only marvel. Instead, everyone is determined not to notice it.
And this is where we are.
I am taking a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) on Modern and Contemporary Poetry from the U of Pennsylvania. It has been a learning experience – as it was intended to be. But what I learned was probably not what was intended – which in a way, is a tribute to the open-mindedness of the course.
What I could not help noticing as the course progressed (see the syllabus here) was how mechanical it was becoming. Sometimes this was conscious, with poets like John Cage who used algorithms to make their poems (and their music). But usually, with poets like Gertrude Stein – unconsciously. With all kinds of mixtures in-between.
I am nervous about being a critic of poetry – a very esoteric calling. But, on the other hand, I have suffered from it (as well as benefited from it) and am stubbornly determined to have my say. And the subject of people and their machines is dear to my heart.
It does seem to me that poetry should be more aware of this. That poets, of all people, should be more sensitive to the effect of the Machine.
I am sure computer technology can be useful in analyzing poetry – and even in composing it. The human ear is probably the best overall, but the computer is best at routine drudgery. It never gets bored.
But poets are not programmers. And they are not much good at detecting the unconscious effects of anything in their work. They have always imitated each other (mostly unconsciously) and they now are imitating the computer.
I remember when I was attending the U of Illinois in the late Fifties (where I became an Engineer) that there was a professor writing programs that created classical music in the style of various composers (such as Mozart and Beethoven). I never heard any of his music – and evidently it wasn’t too impressive, because I never heard of it again. But the idea is intriguing – he no doubt learned a lot about classical music from writing his programs.
Computers are now used routinely to write all kinds of fairly ordinary things - such as TV scripts. There is no reason they could not write routine poetry. Artists would still be needed for overall direction, or to fill in the details.
I am reminded of Marlboro billboards, where standard images are manipulated in fancy computers to create eye-catching effects – the outline of this image is printed in sections – the sections are mounted on a large frame – and artists paint in the sections – using a little creativity themselves to enhance the overall effect. Which sells lots of cigarettes.
Or animations – with characters people like even better than real actors.
There is only one problem to all of this – few people are interested in poetry – in contrast to cigarettes.
His Wikipedia page describes him this way:
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer ofindeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century.[1][2][3][4] He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage’s romantic partner for most of their lives.[5][6]
It gives plenty of space to his music, but does not even mention his poetry. My online poetry course, however, is spending a whole week on him, and poets like him!
There are strong reasons to deny this is even poetry, since poetry has always involved sounds - which Cage is not interested in at all. What he was, before his time, was a computer – writing his poems using an algorithm. He was strictly in his head, and no one found this shocking. He wanted to get away from his gut, with all its disgusting messiness. And he had plenty of company.
My class at Penn U has an excellent introduction to his writing – with a priceless photo of him teaching at Oberlin College. Be sure to click on the photo.
Two poets are considered precursors to modern poetry – Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Who were about as different as two persons could be. Neither one of them knew the other, and they lived in entirely different worlds.
Dickinson wrote small poems – which have stimulated large explanations of her poetry. Whitman wrote large poems, and was such a blabber-mouth no one else could get a work in edgewise – and what was worse, no one wanted to.
Dickinson lived a very restricted life; she was practically a recluse. Whitman was a compulsive socializer who wanted to go everywhere and know everyone. Whitman wanted everyone to like him, Dickinson could care less. Dickinson was well-acquainted with all the human emotions – Whitman only the happy and enthusiastic ones (partly to cover up his less acceptable feelings). Whitman was an example of what Americans would be like for the next century. Dickinson was soon forgotten – including for a long time, her poetry.
Still, Leaves of Grass is just too much - too many poems. People in my parent’s generation usually considered it their favorite poetry. But I am absolutely certain that they were enthusiastic about it because they were supposed to be enthusiastic about it, and probably never read it.
I would like to see a much smaller selection of his works, with commentary for each selection. Unfortunately, no one has much interest in doing this. Walt was so productive that he over-produced himself.
A trap that America is prone to. We overdo everything.
I used to be a technical writer in Silicon Valley in California. Now I live on my Social Security in a beautiful valley in Costa Rica.
