April 30 - The Perfect Poetic Experience

What is the ideal experience for a reader of poetry?

I pose this question to myself a fair bit. It seems to me that I would most often prefer to be sitting under a mulberry tree on a calm spring day in the English countryside. Of course, that's hardly something that you an do very often (I don't even know what a mulberry tree looks like, I just know that it's under one that Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale, which everyone should read).

There isn't any kind of ideal setting really. Who's to say I wouldn't be more enriched by a poem if I read it instead on a bus, in a bar, or waiting in line at Ralph's? For the record, I most often read on public transit. All the distractions have a way of helping me focus (bars are good too, because booze).

So, if I can't dictate the experience of a poem, I can at least exert control over its delivery. All I've done this month has been in text, but there's really no reason why I can't include audio or video. Plenty of it exists. In fact, today is the finals for the National Recitation Contest of Poetry Out Loud.

Poetry Out Loud is designed to help further students' poetry comprehension through memorization and performance (something a lot of poets need to do more of, including me). Can you imagine if this had been a club at your high school? Well, it sounds badass to me.

Of course, the live performance of poetry has its own drawbacks. If the language is difficult, a speedy delivery doesn't allow you to re-read a line for better understanding. Conversely, if you have a program and are reading along, you aren't watching the visual aspect of the performance.

There are a lot of audio recordings of poetry. Some are pretty amazing. Alec Guinness, for example, has an album on Spotify in which he is reading different poems.

You can do a voice-over to a video with some poetry. That's got the potential for some really great moments far beyond your standard, "Look at a painting while I read Wordsworth" bits.

(Actually, that video is pretty good. If the Romantics seem cheesy now, it's only because of how much their style has influenced and been aped, kind of like some Mel Brooks and Francois Truffaut films.)

I suppose the difference is primarily context. When a person is listening, their eyes can wander, they can wander. If you're watching a video, reading, or viewing a performance, you pretty much have to stay put. Your framing of the poem is controlled to an extent. Of course, particularly with text, you can choose where to read it. Video as well if you're using a smartphone or laptop.

So to return to the initial question, what would be the ideal experience? I suppose a lot of writers would say it is up to the reader. The audience has final say and that is what makes each experience unique. Is there a wrong way to experience a poem? What if I were reading Holocaust poetry in my undies while eating a tub of ice cream and listening to a Cubs game?

I've never been very comfortable with the idea that the poet has to just write stuff down and fling it out in the world. This leads me to wonder how I might control the audience experience.

Which brings this post to a close. If you're wondering about what my answer to this question really is, I'll let you know once my next project is finished. In the meantime, I'm going to try and continue doing a couple posts each week on poetry and such. Hopefully, this is only the beginning.

"Caminante, no hay camino
Se hace camino al andar.

-Antonio Machado

April 26 - Song Lyrics Suck

Why Song Lyrics Suck

But not really, I'm just sick of reading memes saying that people write/wrote better lyrics now than before, or comparing one artist to another. This isn't because it's an apples to oranges comparison, but also because they way a single image is forced to convey this is by simply writing out two sets of lyrics from two different songs; e.g.,

Whatever your thoughts are on these two songs, it is unfair to present them as such. They are taken out of their musical context. In a lot of cases, I feel people are impressed by song lyrics that can stand alone. Also, I'm currently listening to Run the World, and the image itself is only listing the chorus. There are many more words in that song. Also, it's incredibly well produced, which, in terms of pop music (yeah, it's a generalization), seems to me where the real skill/artistry lies.

The Real Point

If I were in a poetry workshop and someone slid a sheet of paper with the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody to me (assuming the song did not previously exist in this sad, sad hypothetical reality), I'd read through it and think it was somewhat interesting. Then I'd likely complain about the line breaks being too predictable and I'd hate how confessional it is. Unless you're Robert Lowell, that shit's for a diary, yo.

I think a good musical example would be "Around the World" by Daft Punk. I like that song, but actually reading the lyrics by themselves would be sort of missing the point, certainly the experience, of that song.

Also, on the page, song lyrics don't always have an obvious, or even intrinsic, rhythm, making for an odd read.

Anyway, it's like Roger Ebert said, "A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it."

That applies to pretty much all art, with some exceptions. I think that's why I feel a small affront when people want to present lyrics as poetry; it's like wanting me to taste apple pie without the crust. It's kind of a mess.

But I still NEED it.

The same can apply to poetry set to music. Whoa. Full Disclosure: When searching on Spotify for poetry set to music. The album Poe Goes Jazz would be a good example...if it weren't from Deutschland. Hearing Poe in German with smooth jazz interludes makes for a weird morning. However, it works as an example: in this format, the music is secondary, more ambient, creating a frame for the words, rather than at an equal footing with creepy-ass Germoe Poe.

Oh die Glocken, Glocken, Glocken!

Generalizations, Generalizations Everywhere!

In music, the melody often trumps what's actually being said. (OMG, what an offensive thing to say!) Anyway, as far as I know, most music starts with the rhythm, hook, riff, etc., and goes from there. In many cases, the entire composition is completed, with vocals, before any words are written down. There are plenty of demo tracks out there with vocals recorded as simply gibberish set to the melody. (One sec, I can't take the German anymore.)

...I'm also a Client

OK, back to George Jones. Now then, I wonder if my performance project last year fell victim to this. I wanted to combine media in a way in which no one piece would work alone. It was a good first try, and I'm not being a perfectionist about it (Eric Byers=badass). It did not achieve what I wanted as fully as I had hoped, though. Here is where I would add a link to a recording of the performance. Sadly, and somewhat awesomely, no such recording exists. It exists only in the brains of those in attendance.

What a Crappy Ending

If you are still reading, here is where I admit that I have no conclusion, just observation. Also, this bit of thinking in writing is a substitute for an actual poem today. I guess if I want to draw a one-liner from all this, it'd be that it's really hard to create something that functions optimally across art forms. And everything kind of irritates me.

April 25 - Against Whatever It Is That's Encroaching

This image is here for one reason: it was one of the top results for "sitting at home."

Not much time today, I have to go to Venice. Here's a poem by Charles Simic. The link on his name is to a very good bio of him, so I'll just say that he's won the Pulitzer and was poet laureate in 2007. He is currently a co-editor for The Paris Review. This poem is from The Voice at 3:00 AM, a finalist for the National Book Award. If you're not busy tonight, it may give you a nice way to spend your evening as well.



Against Whatever It Is That's Encroaching

Best of all is to be idle,
And especially on a Thursday,
And to sip wine while studying the light:
The way it ages, yellows, turns ashen
And then hesitates forever
On the threshold of the night
That could be bringing the first frost.

It's good to have a woman around just then,
And two is even better.
Let them whisper to each other
And I you with a smirk.
Let them roll up their sleeves and unbutton their shirts a bit
As this fine old twilight deserves,

And the small schoolboy
Who has come home to a room almost dark
And now watches wide-eyed
The grown-ups raise their glasses to him,
The giddy-headed, red-haired woman
With eyes tightly shut,
As if she were about to cry or sing.

April 24 - Like Our Bodies' Imprint

Like Our Bodies' Imprints

by Yehuda Amichai

Like our bodies' imprint,
Not a sign will remain that we were in this place.
The world closes behind us,
The sand straightens itself.

Dates are already in view
In which you no longer exist,
Already a wind blows clouds
Which will not rain on us both.

And your name is already on the passenger list of ships
And in the registers of hotels
Whose names alone
Deaden the heart.

The three languages I know,
All the colors in which I see and dream:

None will help me.

(Translated by Assia Gutmann)



Yeah, so I missed a day yesterday. Sometimes a breakfast and movie with a friend is more important than just about everything.

So I open up Chrome this morning to find a reason to write about a particular poem. My home page is BBC News, so first I see an article about the university police officer shot and killed during the pursuit of the Boston Bombers (which just makes me glad they didn't bomb a marathon in the Bronx, or we'd all just be confused). They are having a memorial service for him today.

Below that was an article about an 8th century minaret (a kind of bell tower for mosques) that was destroyed during the fighting in Aleppo between the Syrian government and the rebels. Of course, both sides blame the other for its destruction. In any case, the mosque was a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Well, what's left of it still is, I suppose. Really, the only reason this stood out to me was the mention of Aleppo, a city that comes up in "My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears." It must be sad news for that family.

Sheesh, the Google Image results for Aleppo are a total downer. This is just from Wikipedia.

Hopefully, no one of Syrian descent will object to my immediately thinking of an Israeli poet. Actually, according to his Carolyn Forche's bio of him, "Israel's foremost living poet." Unfortunately, he died in 2000, so now he seems to be considered the greatest modern Israeli poet, though, it is said, much is lost when it is translated from its original Hebrew.

In any case, Yehuda Amichai is a major figure of international poetry in the 20th century. But that's not really why I bring him into this post. I think as Americans, we have not experienced the destruction of historic objects like older civilizations (certainly not the nuclear family Americans I so callously envisage). That being said, we sure love to play with the idea. How many times have you seen a destroyed Statue of Liberty in a movie? Also, have you seen any film by Roland Emmerich? That's his whole career.

Top two results before we see a flag or fireworks.

We love the idea of vengeance and resurrection. It's a great marriage of Old and New Testaments.

The Romantics dwelt on the idea a bit, what with Shelley's "Ozymandias" and Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Hell, lots of poets these days love talking about the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy), it's terrifying to think that all will be lost at some point, but comforting to think that includes all the mistakes, faults, and atrocities we commit and remember today.

April 22 - Their Faces Shall Be as Flames

OK, I'm back from Coachella. As many may suspect, I am not much for large festivals. Crowds make me a bit nuts. That being said, I had a great time, although the fact that the two bands I enjoyed most, Blur and The Descendants, are from another era made me feel a bit old.

But enough about that, today's Earth Day. I think that's more important. Of course, how do I start it? By forgetting to turn off the AC last night. Anyway, Earth Day often seems marketed as a kind of celebration of the idea that we all live on the same planet and lots of fun activities to help us better protect it. I was lying in bed thinking about what Earth Day reminds me of, and I came up with three things: Roald Dahl flying over Africa, the population of frogs in America and hive collapse.

Roald Dahl has an autobiography about his life before during and after World War II entitled Going Solo. In one passage he is training in his plane over the Serengeti and he writes about the vast herds of animals he sees. It is easy to forget the sheer quantity of wildlife that used to exist, the casual vastness of unique biomass.

Like this, but not at all like this.

Which reminds me of catching frogs in a bowl when I was a kid. My friend, Spry, and I could run through his backyard and catch a dozen frogs in minutes. Even thinking about this now feels like an exaggeration. Bullfrogs seem like an endangered species.

Which leads into the more recent population cliff of colony collapse disorder, in which we can't even keep them alive when we want to.

Here is a poem by G.C. Waldrep, originally published in The New England Review and Harper's Magazine, though I found it in Best American Poetry 2010. Waldrep is in his forties and has been the editor of the Kenyon Review and professor at Kenyon College. He currently works at Bucknell and edits the journal West Branch. He also is an historian, completing his undergrad at Harvard and doctorate at Duke. I first saw this poem in Best American Poetry 2010.

To say this is an "environmental" poem is not entirely accurate, nor is it entirely inaccurate.


Their Faces Shall Be as Flames

That was the spring the bees disappeared, we didn't know
where they went, where they'd gone, where they were going, it was a
rapture of the bees, only the weak, the young, the freshly dead
left behind, a rapture of bees, my neighbor with the ducks had begun to walk
like a duck, Follow follow follow Sam he sang as he walked, and they followed,
it was that simple, of course I thought of the Piper, although
this procession was more benign, my neighbor's I mean, though he intended
to have each for dinner, eventually, and he did not name them,
as we don't name bees, because we don't see clearly enough
to distinguish them as persons, person in the grammatical sense, first second
or third, which is why we refer to them in the collective, usually,
they breed, they swarm, they milk their honey for us
in the collective, and they vanish collectively, is this then the true
rapture, was the one true God after all a god of bees, and now she is taking
them home, is this any more comforting than all the other proposed explanations,
pesticide, fungus, mites, electromagnetism, even the infrasound the giant
the giant windmills make, that send the bats and raptors
to their deaths, all invention gone awry, hive after hive
suddenly empty, as if they'd all flown out less than purposefully, casually,
and somehow forgotten to come back, held up at the doctor's or the U-Haul
dealer's, swarms of them, hundreds, thousands vagabond
in some other landscape, or rising, we shall meet them in the air,
at the post office to mail a letter to a woman who might or might not be my love
because a rate change had caught me with insufficient postage
I had to wait, the clerk was preoccupied with a sort of crate
made of wire mesh, through which I could see bees, Resistant the clerk said
as she filled out the forms and sent them, registered parcel post, somewhere
else, only then did she sell me the stamp I needed,
or thought I needed, or hoped to need (there is a season
when one hopes to need), and I thought about what it would be like
to mail a crate of bees, Resistant, to my love, if I had a love, and have them
vanish en route, the mesh crate arriving dusty, empty, one or two
broken, desiccated bodies rattling lightly around inside, like seeds in a gourd,
or like a child you'll never have, that is, the possibility of that child, rattling
blood of it, a different sort of vanishing, we would all like to believe
in the act, that Houdini was a man, only a man, as he proved in the moment
and by the precise circumstance of his death, and the fact of his body,
lifeless but extant, rattling around the arcade, the park, the amusement pier
of disturbing coincidences, while in Missouri another hobbyist beekeeper
walks out to her tomblike hives on a spring morning
to find nothing there, just boxes, empty boxes, a sort of game
a child might invent, this rapture, same sort of funny story
a child will invent, when shown a photograph, This is the policeman, 
and this is the woman with two heads, and this, which looks like a modest
red house in a suburb, this is really the ghost of the bees,
a small ghost, a modest ghost, like the ghost of the locusts and the elms,
not a ghost to trouble us, until (in the photograph) the house spreads its wings
and vanishes, as houses do, or as houses will when the rapture extends
to architecture, the god of small houses having, first, existed, and then wed
the bee god, so that we are left sleeping alone again, and out of doors, in spring,
as one more source of sweetness is subtracted from this world
and added to another, perhaps, as we would like to think, one of the
more comforting ideas, a sort of economics, a grand
accounting, until what angel of houses or of bees blows what trumpet,
and we fall as mountains upon the insects, devour them as seas,
scorch the houses as with fire, we become the ground that hollows beneath
them and the air they fly through, their wormwood star, as all the bees of heaven
watch from heaven and all the houses of heaven lean down
for a closer look, and the smoke drifts upward, and we are the smoke, we are
only the smoke, inside of which my neighbor walks, with his ducks, and sings,
and they follow, and my hive lazes, drowses as if they or it were dreaming
us, as if they or us were touchable, simple as a story, an explanation,
any fiction, as if they thought of us, or were praying, or were dancing,
or were lonely, as if they could be, or would be, touched.

April 19 - From Song of Myself

So in looking at the news and various anniversaries coming up, I noticed that late April is kind of a hot spot for tragedies, disasters, mass murders and so on. I'm not going to write about that. I'm going to start with Mae West and end up with a 19th century firefighter.

On April 19th, 1927, Mae West (she of King Kong and Coke bottle fame) was sentenced to 10 days in jail for writing and starring in the play Sex. This was odd since the play had premiered the previous year and had already been staged 375 times. It was deemed "obscene."

This made me think of another book considered far too sexy for the common man to handle, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, one of the greatest works in the English language.

There was a lot of controversy following the first print of the book, which contained only 12 of what would eventually become over 400 poems. (Whitman revised and added new material to the book from its first printing in 1855 until shortly before his death in 1892.)

Now, of course, with a work as famous as Leaves of Grass, there is a vast amount of available info that I will not include here. I will say that even from the beginning, many critics found the work far too sexual/erotic in nature. First, Whitman's boss at the Department of the Interior read the book and immediately fired him.

Next, critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold called the book a "stupid mass of filth." He even made one of the first suggestions that Whitman may engage in, and he wrote this in Latin in his review, "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians."

In one of the best reactions to a bad review and attempted public shaming, Whitman included the review in its entirety in later editions of the the book. Of course, other critics compared the work to Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri, and rightfully so.

In the first edition, no author was credited. There was only this steel engraving of Whitman (he was 37 at the time). Why? Because fuckin' Walt Whitman, that's why!

Oh, and for the record, Whitman basically created American poetry as a style truly apart from British lit. Without this gay or bisexual American (unconfirmed which, but does it matter?), we would have lost an incalculable amount of...well, everything.

From the 1883 edition. He is never not awesome. The writing says,
Lo, where arise three peerless stars,
To be thy natal stars, my country,
Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom,
Set in the sky of Law.

There's soooo much more to say, but I gotta get to rockin'. So since I'm about to hit the road, here's one of my favorite Whitman poems. Oh, and Leaves of Grass can be downloaded for free on your smartphone. Also, since this is the Internet, and Whitman's poems can be quite long, this is only an excerpt.

From Song of Myself

From section entitled "Heroes"

I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times,
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death 
chasing it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of
nights,
And chalked in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you;
How he followed with them and tacked with them three days and would not give it up,
How he saved the drifting company at last,
How the lank loose-gowned women looked when boated from the side of their prepared
graves,
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipped unshaved men;
All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
I am the man, I suffered, I was there.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,
My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken,
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels;
They have cleared the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.

I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake,
Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,
White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their firecaps,
the kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches...

April 18 - Of Love and Other Disasters

Nemo's

So today is Champions Day in Detroit. I only found this out today, but in 1936 the Detroit Lions were NFL champions, the Detroit Tigers were MLB champions and the Detroit Red Wings were NHL champions. They created this holiday to commemorate the success. Since then, no city has ever held three championships simultaneously from the four current major American sports.

Sorry 'Sheed. Wrong year, but happy trails nonetheless.

This is also how Detroit earned the nickname, "City of Champions." Of course, since 1936 the fate of Detroit has been pretty well documented. However, just because the economy went south on the city, there are plenty of reasons why Detroit still deserves the nickname.

Let's talk about Detroit native and Wayne State alum Phillip Levine. As one of America's greatest living poets, his list of accolades deserves to be right up there with the Wings'. He's won the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, a National Book Critics Circle Award, multiple Guggenheim fellowships, and was the 2011-2012 U.S. Poet Laureate. None too shabby.

So, in honor of Detroit's day and one of her favorite sons, here's a poem from Levine's most recent book of poems, 2009's News of the World

Of Love and Other Disasters

The punch press operator from up north
met the assembler from West Virginia
in a bar near the stadium. Friday, late,
but too early to go home alone. Neither
had anything in mind, so they conversed
about the upcoming baseball season
about which neither cared. We could
be a couple, he thought, but she was
all wrong, way too skinny. For years
he'd had an image of the way a woman
should look, and it wasn't her, it wasn't
anyone he'd ever known, certainly not
his ex-wife who'd moved back north
to live with her high school sweetheart.
About killed him. I don't need that shit,
he almost said aloud, and then realized
she'd been talking to someone, maybe
to him, about how she couldn't get
her hands right, how the grease ate
so deeply into her skin it became
a part of her, and she put her hand,
palm up, on the bar and pointed
with her cigarette at the deep lines
the work had carved. "The lifeline,"
he said, "which one is that?" "None,"
she said, and he noticed that her eyes
were hazel flecked with tiny spots
of gold, and then—embarrassed—looked
back at her hand which seemed tiny
and delicate, the fingers yellowed
with calluses but slender and fine.
She took a paper napkin off the bar,
spit on it, and told him to hold still
while she carefully lifted his glasses,
leaving him half blind, and wiped
something off just above his left
cheekbone. "There," she said, handing
him back his glasses, "I got it," and even
with his glasses on, what she showed
him was nothing he could see, maybe
only make-believe. He thought, "Better
get out of here before it's too late," but
suspected too late was what he wanted.

April 17 - My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

Hi again! So it seems important to retain levity without sacrificing a recognition of significance. I say recognition because, political or otherwise, isn't poetry about recognizing the significant? 

Obviously, there are plenty of books discussing what poetry is or isn't, itself kind of a silly question, but I simply mean that humor in poetry allows for a connection to real life that we can all understand. It's hard for me to stay focused on serious issues sometimes due to a constant stream of poop jokes, song lyrics and cheat codes. (Why start with Glass Joe anyway? It's not until you get to the second Bald Bull that you have to start paying attention.)

Fuck you, Mario! It was a fast count! I can see  the coins falling out of your pocket!

The poem today is by Mohja Kahf, a Syrian-American poet. She writes a lot about feminism in the Middle East as well as the various intersections and detours one must navigate in modern American culture as a woman, Muslim, Syrian and American. This is from her first book, Emails from Scheherazad, published in 2003. She currently teaches at the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas.

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears

to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,

wudu,

because she has to pray in the store or miss

the mandatory prayer time for Muslims

She does it with great poise, balancing

herself with one plump matronly arm

against the automated hot-air hand dryer,

after having removed her support knee-highs

and laid them aside, folded in thirds,

and given me her purse and her packages to hold

so she can accomplish this august ritual

and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares

Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown

as they notice what my grandmother is doing,

an affront to American porcelain,

a contamination of American Standards

by something foreign and unhygienic

requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray

They fluster about and flutter their hands and I can see

a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom

My grandmother, though she speaks no English,

catches their meaning and her look in the mirror says,

I have washed my feet over Iznik tile in Istanbul

with water from the world's ancient irrigation systems

I have washed my feet in the bathhouses of Damascus

over painted bowls imported from China

among the best families of Aleppo

And if you Americans knew anything

about civilization and cleanliness,

you'd make wider washbins, anyway

My grandmother knows one culture—the right one,

as do these matrons from the Middle West. For them,

my grandmother might as well have been squatting

in the mud over a rusty tin in vaguely tropical squalor,

Mexican or Middle Eastern, it doesn't matter which,

when she lifts her well-groomed foot and puts it over the edge.

"You can't do that," one of the women protests,

turning to me, "Tell her she can't do that."

"We wash our feet five times a day,"

my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic.

"My feet are cleaner than their sink.

Worried about their sink, are they? I

should worry about my feet!"

My grandmother nudges me, "Go on, tell them."

Standing between the door and the mirror, I can see

at multiple angles, my grandmother and the other shoppers,

all of them decent and goodhearted women, diligent

in cleanliness, grooming, and decorum

Even now my grandmother, not to be rushed,

is delicately drying her pumps with tissues from her purse

For my grandmother always wears well-turned pumps

that match her purse, I think in case someone

from one of the best families of Aleppo

should run into her—here, in front of the Kenmore display

I smile at the midwestern women

as if my grandmother has just said something lovely about them

and shrug at my grandmother as if they

had just apologized through me

No one is fooled, but I

hold the door open for everyone

and we all emerge on the sales floor

and lose ourselves in the great common ground

of housewares on markdown.

April 16 - I'm Explaining a Few Things

After the bombing yesterday, I spent a lot of time last night reading poetry and drinking gimlets. I thought I might put in some Bertolt Brecht, Nazim Hikmet, Osip Mandelstam, Denise Levertov or Wislawa Szymborska, but I decided on Pablo Neruda. If you know the people I've mentioned, you can probably imagine that sitting at a bar and staring at my phone got real damn intense. (Btw, my phone is the internet, the internet is a book, but a drink is still a drink. Good.)

Reading poetry about different wars in different countries, different tragedies and different people, the common humanity of the participants comes through. It is both relieving and frightening.

I know you need to get back to work, and this poem is a little bit longer than usual, so let me give you a link to a more in-depth examination of the poem you can read if you desire. Here is something to note: Sometimes an image or experience is elucidated by metaphor, sometimes we need to have our faces firmly shoved into the reality poetry provides.

I'm Explaining a Few Things

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings—
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of the children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!

April 15 - Guide to the Ruins

Guide to the Ruins

by Howard Nemerov

One lives by commerce, said the guide.
One sells the available thing, time
And again: the ruins, the temple grove,
The gods with their noses knocked off.
One profits by the view.

It is a difficult trade, he said,
To give to the dishonored dead
Their stature and their stony eyes.
The vulgar paint has flaked away
Leaving the color of time,

The unimpassioned grey which is
Not now in commodious demand.
One gives, with broken Herakles,
A premium of legend, a pamphlet
To certify the chill.

What is it that one sells, the self?
I think not. One sells always time
Dissembled in heroic stone: such eyes
As look like cloud-reflecting lakes
In the old mountains of time.


And we’re back! Hello, hello, hello and how ya doin’? I got one of my favorite new books last week: Guide to the Ruins by Howard Nemerov. It’s not at all new; it was Nemerov’s second book and was originally published in 1950.

But it’s new to me, and I can’t stop smelling this old book. The dust jacket is barely there, the binding almost disintegrated. It’s great. I love getting the actual book of poetry, not some selected works mess.

Initiate rant: I think the publishing industry isn’t doing itself a lot of favors by putting out one greatest hits collection after another for poets, especially modern(ish) ones. Poems spanning an entire career show only the great mountains and valleys that a person may reach while writing. Does this mean that there weren’t aberrations, missteps and tangents that occurred as well?

I'm saying Pulling Teeth actually makes Welcome to Paradise and Basket Case better.

Think of it this way: how many bands have great songs never anthologized? I know they exist, but how stupid are the Pink Floyd and Radiohead greatest hits albums? Even if you’re not a fan of these bands, you can understand that their albums are often fashioned as a whole, not a series of tracks. Greatest hits albums cannot include the in-between sounds, the long silences, intros, instrumentals, and epilogues. It’s kind of inherent to what they are.

And that’s not entirely a bad thing. It works for music as a way of introducing folks to new artists (same as poetry), without drowning them in the complete oeuvre. If you like what you hear, you can go listen to the album it came from on Spotify or head down to Amoeba and buy it on CD or vinyl.

Poetry doesn’t quite have that option. The industry ain’t got the same amount of money as music. (I just had an image of a Billy Collins halftime reading at the Superbowl. He looked...so spice!) Because of this, most poetry books are out of print, or require a bit of doing to get. If I want something specific, like Nemerov’s second book, I go to Amazon and find it. Order it, and hope it isn’t full of weird notes and dong doodles.

Except if it's written by Long Dong Silver

I wish I could go to a bookstore and find a neat row of books to peruse (by Nemerov, hell I'd check out Long Dong's poetry too). Sadly, there are very, very few poets with whom this is a possibility. I don’t really blame publishers for not reprinting books. I’m sure there’s not a lot of demand or money in it, but it’s just the state of things.

Anyway, it’s too bad. I wish I had lots of small books on my shelf. Instead I have all these tomes. Artifacts of an art form, not the fruits of this year and vintages of the past, replete with bruises and a bit of cork here and there.

April 8 - The Cunning Optimism of Language

Oh man, sorry about no Sunday post. Once I got back from Long Beach, my day became a series of naps and episodes of Metalocalypse. But I’m back today, right? I decided to use a poem today that I came across in The Best American Poetry 2010. For anybody out there interested in learning about some of the poetry currently being written in this country, the yearly anthology series is a friendly place to start.

Today’s poem is by Bob Hicok, a former teacher at my alma mater (though I couldn’t get into his workshop due to underclassmen late-ass registration requirements). One of my favorite aspects of Hicok’s poetry is his ability to use humor in his verse without it feeling forced or tired. Anyway, here you go.

The Cunning Optimism of Language

by Bob Hicok

She made me Overlord of the Sewers.

It was a quiet ceremony before bed, consisting of,

you are Overlord of the Sewers. I’m unsure

what my powers are, though clearly absolute,

I thought as we kissed good night. Waking

in this state, I found coffee tasted the same.

I’ve left a note to my underlings: make

everything better. I’m particularly curious

about raisin bread. How can raisin bread

be improved? Not the cheap shit

but the good stuff. This is love, I tell you,

the random bestowal of a title. Anything else

is fraudulent. Now you have something, sort of

like a tag, by which to gauge if your love is real.

As our beds will tell you, do not remove the tag

under penalty of law. Such stern cops, our beds.

Go to sleep, they tell us, make love, they tell us,

die. If your lover makes you Overlord, don’t ask,

of what? These are one-time offers, I fear,

just as the lightbulb that burned out

last night gets one chance to fail.

I have these minutes, all these chances to fail,

I must be many lightbulbs. It’s well-lit

except in the corners, this life.

I love the conversational tone of Hicok. It seems like a far cry from the vaunted language of some of the more stereotypically “poetic” poets. Hicok goes a bit of the Hemingway or William Carlos Williams route by using casual language to discuss events and themes are great importance, probably. There’s a certain mystery in everyday language here. Is it all tongue-in-cheek, or is there some larger matter beneath the crust of the raisin bread? Are you comfortable accepting both?

April 6 - Power

Power

Living    in the earth-deposits    of our history

Today a backhoe divulged    out of a crumbling flank of earth

one bottle    amber    perfect    a hundred-year-old

cure for fever    or melancholy    a tonic

for living on this earth    in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:

she must have known she suffered    from radiation sickness

her body bombarded for years    by the element

she had purified

It seems she denied to the end

the source of the cataracts on her eyes

the cracked and suppurating skin    of her finger-ends

till she could no longer hold    a test-tube or a pencil

She died    a famous woman    denying

her wounds

denying

her wounds    came    from the same source as her power

Today’s poem is by Adrienne Rich. It was a great loss when she died just over a year ago. Here’s a link to her page on Wikipedia. Usually, poets have sort of crap biographies on Wikipedia, but hers is pretty good. She’s a real interesting life to learn.

So let’s talk about this poem a bit before I head to Long Beach. It seems to me that one of the primary studies of feminism, and for that matter most -isms, is the relationship we as ethereal neural impulses and frail, flesh-bag bodies deal with the distribution and consequences of power.

How then to begin to talk about it, but to look to the past. The first line, “Living    in the earth-deposits    of our history,” rearranges the usual idea of history, as something we find buried in the earth, I’m thinking Pompeii, for example. Instead, “earth-deposits” are found in history. Using “deposits” also denotes that earth is not present in all of our history, but exists like geodes in the crust.

Then we move on to a backhoe, not something we use normally for archaeological excavation, more of a blunt-force trauma than a brush. Anyway, we can reasonably conclude that this is some situation of earth-moving associated with construction of something new to follow, or of simply sweeping away something old. This means that unearthing the bottle is incidental to what the backhoe is there for.

An amber bottle, not unlike the amber of prehistoric tree sap, which always reminds of Jurassic Park (now back in theatres!). A preservative of whatever is inside, be it a mosquito with dino DNA or a concoction of snake oil meant to cure what ails you, from the physical (fever) to the mental (melancholy).

This panacea held great power for the people buying it, despite the fact that, in all likelihood, it at best was either a mild sedative or did nothing allowing the body or mine (placebo effect) to cure itself. At worst, it would have only exacerbated the original problem or even caused altogether new ones.

Also today, the speaker reads about Marie Curie, the famous Polish scientist responsible for the discovery of radium, radon, polonium and numerous other scientific advances. Here’s how important she,and her French husband, Pierre, are: Curium is the ninety-sixth element on the periodic table. It’s one thing to have a random species of animal named after you, but an element? I mean, that’s big time. She’s up there with Einstein, California and Thor.

Curie made her discoveries prior to our understanding of the harmful effects of radiation, and as such eventually died from radiation poisoning. In fact, her notes, even her cookbook, are still kept in lead-lined boxes because they are still too radioactive for a human to handle without protection. On that note, “suppurating” means discharging pus or festering, that’s makes for an awkward handshake.

In order to maintain her public standing as a great scientist, she had to deny the danger of the discovery she had made. Perhaps because the male-run scientific community would have found a way to refute the importance of the work because she, as a woman, had made a mistake?

So what is power? Does it come from within or without? Are we powerful because others agree we are powerful? Maybe it is a more personal state. We can see from the pairing of the bottle with Marie Curie that there is power in the thing, or external, such as the bottle as artifact and in its own time as remedy as well as Curie’s international renown as a scientist and a person capable of refusing the tragic effects of radiation poisoning.

Power is also internal. It is not the amber of the bottle that was important to patients, it was what it preserved that mattered. Is the same true for Curie and her decimated mortal form?

This is both true and not true, I believe. Rather than get philosophical, let’s take a look at the actual text of the poem. Lines are broken midway by spaces while other words, which can exist independently, are forced together by hyphens to form something new. The language is at once separated and conjoined. OK, I have to catch a train to Compton. Ack! No time for proofreading, but I’ll check it on the light rail.