tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43150500377518882312024-03-17T20:03:39.654-07:00For Keats' Sake!What do you hate about bad poetry? What do you love about good poetry? Music. Meter. Merciless fisking. It's all here!Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.comBlogger159125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-60735801586958099502012-02-11T13:33:00.000-08:002012-02-11T13:39:58.452-08:00Dappled Things in the new yearThe <a href="http://dappledthings.org/current/">new issue is out</a>, with poetry by Tim Murphy and Gabriel Olearnik, a story by my fellow Christendom grad John Jalsevac, and some lovely art by Leonor Cerón de García.<br /><br />And I think I can share this now: Katy Carl needs more time to take care of her son, who has reached the toddler-destroyer-of-worlds stage. So I'm taking over as Editor in Chief! Wish me luck.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-56576527828739724142012-02-06T13:52:00.002-08:002012-02-06T15:50:47.577-08:00Wislawa Szymborska, rest in peace<span style="font-weight:bold;">Nothing Twice</span> <br />by Wislawa Szymborska<br />translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak<br /><br />Nothing can ever happen twice.<br />In consequence, the sorry fact is<br />that we arrive here improvised<br />and leave without the chance to practice. <br /><br />Even if there is no one dumber,<br />if you're the planet's biggest dunce,<br />you can't repeat the class in summer:<br />this course is only offered once. <br /><br />No day copies yesterday,<br />no two nights will teach what bliss is<br />in precisely the same way,<br />with precisely the same kisses. <br /><br />One day, perhaps some idle tongue<br />mentions your name by accident:<br />I feel as if a rose were flung<br />into the room, all hue and scent. <br /><br />The next day, though you're here with me,<br />I can't help looking at the clock:<br />A rose? A rose? What could that be?<br />Is it a flower or a rock? <br /><br />Why do we treat the fleeting day<br />with so much needless fear and sorrow?<br />It's in its nature not to stay:<br />Today is always gone tomorrow. <br /><br />With smiles and kisses, we prefer<br />to seek accord beneath our star,<br />although we're different (we concur)<br />just as two drops of water are. <br /><br />Szymborska was one of the few living poets on my radar when I was in high school. I can recall finding a few of her poems on Wondering Minstrels and pasting them into the cluttered Word files I squirreled away for inspiration. I was just thinking the other day that I should read more of her and buy her collected poetry... and I don't want to touch whatever Seraphic's friend <a href="http://seraphicgoestoscotland.blogspot.com/2012/02/nobody-in-west-knows-1.html">has against her</a> at the moment. The one thing she is, without question, is a shameless poet.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-65716226016580943742011-11-25T13:47:00.000-08:002011-11-25T13:49:57.172-08:00new Dappled Things, new siteGet it <a href="http://dappledthings.org/">right here</a>.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-76479343999749662652011-11-25T13:44:00.000-08:002011-11-25T13:46:14.698-08:00This Yelp review makes me so proud of my parish..."I really used to dislike conservative Catholic churches and wanted all conservative churches to change to become more liberal, but for Our Lady of Peace, I hope this very conservative church never changes and here's why....<br /><br />When you are experiencing a deep sadness you've never felt before, let's say your Grandmother (who you were close with) just passed away late at night and all you can do is cry, those same traditional conservative Catholics you can't stand will be up at 1:00AM praying the rosary for you at Our Lady of Peace.<br /><br />Our Lady of Peace is one of the few churches in all of Santa Clara County that really means what its says. When it says "We have a 24 hour adoration chapel and pray the rosary every hour on the hour" THEY MEAN IT.<br /><br />I went into Our Lady of Peace on a Tuesday night around 11:42PM after I learned my Grandma past away - low and behold there were a dozen people praying the rosary. Thank God they were there because I was too sad to say the words, but deep down I knew crying in church and allowing myself to mourn is what I needed to do.<br /><br />Mind you this is NOT my regular church, but when life takes out a piece of your heart late at night, Our Lady of Peace (as conservative as it may be) will be open to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, because no one should be denied the chance to see Jesus whenever they want."<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">And I really ought to be there for Adoration more often...</span>Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-26756749030927251322011-08-20T13:35:00.000-07:002011-08-20T13:41:52.318-07:00new Dappled ThingsYou can see some of it <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/current.php">here</a>, but I warn you, you will need the print version to read most of it. Subscribe today, it's a classy publication! In this issue, I like "An Elegy for Rose," which is a really well executed villanelle. The art is also quite lovely. (I like "Woman in Irish Coat.")Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-6812603908195270912011-08-03T14:29:00.000-07:002011-08-03T17:00:32.911-07:00Job search concludedI don't know if anyone is out there, but I have an update: it looks like I will be teaching Latin and Humanities at <a href="http://liveoakacademy.org/">Live Oak Academy</a> in San Jose! It is a Christian co-op school for homeschoolers, and it is about twenty minutes from the town I grew up in. I've spent six years now studying east of the Mississippi, and I never really thought I would return to the Bay Area to teach. Most of the jobs for Latin are concentrated in New England and the South. But it turns out that I had a connection here all along... a lady I met while doing pro-life work told me about the opening. I am feeling very happy about this, and I give heartfelt thanks to all of you who may have said some prayers for me. The past few months have been rough in some ways, and I have neglected the blog and my writing in general. Now I have a little certainty, and I feel very alive and optimistic. <br /><br />I am in Santa Fe right now. It is so beautiful, and it has been raining, which is always a grace in this part of the world. After I read the email offering me the teaching job, I went to Mass in the San Miguel chapel, where my parents were married and which is the oldest church in America. It was the Old Form Mass. Afterward I walked around the corner and had some ice cream. Hmmm, I just have a feeling that this year is going to be awesome!Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-69346834807955075602011-05-16T06:14:00.000-07:002011-05-16T06:20:01.734-07:00Graduation; Dappled ThingsThe latest <span style="font-style:italic;">Dappled Things</span> <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/current.php">is out</a>. I have a review of Nick Ripatrazone's <span style="font-style:italic;">Oblations</span>. Also, I have completed my M.A. in Classics at the University of Kentucky. Now I'm looking for a teaching job. Let me know if there's a school in your area wanting a Latin teacher!Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-53194512354534009772011-03-05T17:40:00.000-08:002011-03-05T18:42:59.939-08:00Rainy day sapphicsSapphics are one of the few classical forms that goes fairly naturally into English. One of the most delightful examples is this poem I found in an issue of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Formalist</span> when I was in college. I liked it so much that I hand-copied it into my notebook.<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sappho</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">by Erin Sweeten</span><br /><br />Sappho eats, but only tomatoes, pulled from<br />Grecian urns she's filled to the brim with water<br />overnight to capture the deep old chill of<br />predawn's arrival.<br /><br />Sappho sleeps, but only on mossy branches<br />autumn wind has broken from Mount Parnassus'<br />olive trees, old, shaggy and groaning under <br />goddesses gleaming.<br /><br />Sappho bathes, but only by sloshing water<br />over heated stones in a roofless room where<br />stars and gods of planets enjoy the view, her<br />body undaunted.<br /><br />Sappho walks, but only if lateness coaxes<br />owls and cats to show their enlightened eyes in<br />shadows laid aground by her hissing lamp up-<br />raised to the wildness.<br /><br />Sappho lives, but only at certain moments;<br />clouds become her curly, untidy hair re-<br />leased to wind; some branches, her elbows crooked for<br />rocking the muses. </blockquote><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEUigsYLx49iO1MKmpAJaNWME1pA85fKGNasYFmomKWxykiPW3A7PLAlxB-nkl3fI14NNu1qZcOVG6bDbmz0l_qBZScNZrfoyaviaUyAE-YQQOaIp0U_wJW9GCx_kkUyy_LdYh_-6fbDA/s1600/IMG_0662.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEUigsYLx49iO1MKmpAJaNWME1pA85fKGNasYFmomKWxykiPW3A7PLAlxB-nkl3fI14NNu1qZcOVG6bDbmz0l_qBZScNZrfoyaviaUyAE-YQQOaIp0U_wJW9GCx_kkUyy_LdYh_-6fbDA/s400/IMG_0662.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5580779775946772626" /></a><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Also discovered in my notebook, from high school (maybe freshman year college?):<br /><br /><blockquote>Sun rises from east hills like sleeping lions, stark sandy folds, bronze oaks in ravines, hot sky. Moon sets on west hills, green, tangled, dionysian, full of creatures, spillways of mist, apocalypse of fog.<br /><br />...They show a rough straw-golden pelt....dry gilt stubble<br />And the oaks so exquisitely crookt</blockquote><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Have recently ordered several poetry books by Nada Gordon, Kay Ryan, Monica Youn, Rachel Wetzsteon. <span style="font-style:italic;">Folly</span> is rather like those creatures of Hieronymus Bosch playing Dance Dance Revolution at Versailles.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-19642288855859694962011-02-27T11:55:00.000-08:002011-02-27T16:54:41.891-08:00Scott Cairns, Jonathan Potter, et al.<a href="http://imagejournal.org/page/news/an-interview-with-scott-cairns"><span style="font-style:italic;">Image</span> interview</a> with Scott Cairns.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Dappled Things</span> darling Jonathan Potter will have a <a href="http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/02/28">poem</a> read on "Writer's Almanac" this Monday. Congrats!<br /><br />This is a <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/02/a-multidisciplinary-feat-of-beauty-from-the-heart-of-montreal%E2%80%99s-poetry-scene/">nifty video</a>. A mix of improv'd poetry, dance and music. The dancers wore sensors which triggered the flights of projected words.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-49440854012021642612011-02-09T13:34:00.001-08:002011-02-21T20:36:40.557-08:00Dappled Things and Flarfy ThingsSo I'm assuming you have all seen the new <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/">Dappled Things</a> website and the fifth-anniversary issue, featuring, among others, James Schall, Joseph Bottum, Duncan Stroik, and Joseph Pearce. The new site is lovely and perhaps more "literary" in appearance. The front page also changes more often - right now you can find links to <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/le09/art01.php">Sarah Ortiz's</a> <a href="http://www.etsy.com/shop/sarahgortiz?ref=pr_shop_more">Etsy store</a> and to the website for the <a href="http://www.revisedromanmissal.org/">Revised Roman Missal</a>, which contains Matt Alderman's line art. I have high hopes for our little magazine, and I'm pretty excited about the issue we're working on now (watch for poems from <a href="http://www.shitcreekreview.com/issue3/II/TimMurphy_aCatholicSufi.htm">Timothy Murphy</a> and Pavel Chichikov). <br /><center>* * *</center><br />In the interest of sampling all things counter, original, spare, strange, I have recently become enamored of <a href="http://mainstreampoetry.blogspot.com/2008/12/you-turn-me-on-im-xbox-360.html">flarf</a> (warning: may lead to <a href="http://xkcd.com/856/">Trochee Fixation</a>). To be honest, I haven't done a careful analysis of flarf assumptions and politics, or figured out whether the parabens and hormones I am ingesting when I read the stuff are going to kill me in twenty years. All I know is that it tastes awesome, in that fake-Mexican-food-Chalupa-Supreme sort of way. But flarf is such a flaming snow-cone comet of hype and irony that I doubt I will be thinking about it in a few years. Anyway, I was reading the ol' <span style="font-style:italic;">Poetry</span> blog last week when I came across <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/02/form-and-nature/">this sneering reaction</a> to an <a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/02/2349">article</a> by Micah Mattix, a professor at Houston Baptist University and one of the poets we recently <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/current.html">published</a> in <span style="font-style:italic;">Dappled Things</span>. Basically Mattix says that <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/11/flarf-poetry-meme-surfs-with-kanye-west-and-the-lolcats/65543/">recent efforts to push flarf as the future of poetry</a> are misguided, since flarf is rooted in the same narrow ideology that gave us <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5661">Language poetry</a> and its cynical sycophant, the <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=239968">poetry of disjunction</a> (or "elliptical lyric"). Instead of writing flarf, Mattix says, we should write in "natural" poetic forms:<br /><blockquote>What is needed now is not more ideological poetry but a new discovery of the “fundamental and perennial rules” of poetry. Without rules, there is no order and, therefore, no recognition. In the end, it is this recognition that makes experiencing art worthwhile. Via complex forms, we recognize the paradoxes of our present existence, or our fractured, conflicting selves, our yearning for coherence, transcendence, and closure, and the infinite beauty of the Creator.</blockquote><span style="font-style:italic;">Harriet</span> went bananas over this, tittering at the idea of a "right-wing think tank" thinking about flarf (I admit that it is an amusing picture! but you don't have to be liberal to care about poetry), and asserting that Mattix "seemingly hasn’t read anything ever written about poetry or aesthetics." After the offended lefty knee-jerking subsides, the blog goes on to ask a good question: "But which forms, precisely, are “natural?” Which are not? And where (geographically, historically) do these “natural” forms come from?" Mattix <a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/02/2561">replied</a> with a longer dissection of the limitations of ideology, and concluded cryptically:<br /><blockquote>Beyond signification, hierarchy, self-reflexivity, closure, and ambiguity, what are other new discoveries in natural forms? To be honest, I am not sure, but this is really a question for poets.<br /><br />In some respects, asking this is like asking a chemist what new isotope he will discover next. Who knows? However, having mastered the rules of his science, the chemist works to discover new rules, new compounds, and, therefore, contributes to his craft.</blockquote> <br />Mattix's takedown of ideology is refreshing, and ultimately he seems to be calling for a dimension of freedom that modern po-biz lacks. But his coy refusal to give specific examples of natural form is maddening! Where are these splendid songs that take into account "the inescapability of meaning and significance" and "how people really use language" while recognizing the "inescapability of form" and how the rules of poetry "are the very rules of God, reflected in the material world and existing independently of matter only in God himself"? We do get a third-party quote praising Dante's terza rima for embodying Trinitarian theology, but that's all. I want more. <br /><br />It is strange to me that Mattix took flarf as his jumping-off point; it just seems like a trendy opening for him to talk about Maritain and poetic form. In fact, I think he has misjudged flarf. He supports his assertion that flarf is just another ideological spasm with a quote from flarf poet Rod Smith about "bad poetry" being just a label that the privileged use to maintain hierarchy. I myself criticized this statement in my <a href="http://forkeatssake.blogspot.com/2010/10/omg-i-think-i-like-flarf.html">little flarf essay</a>. But the flarf movement is not a monolith, and Mattix ignores the opinions of other poets like Sharon Mesmer, who cited, as inspirations for flarf, "a dissatisfaction with certain LangPo products, a crying need for humor, and the creeping realization that American poetry overall was a bit lacking in life," a lack of life stemming from an "over-reliance on theory." Flarf, of course, started life as a juvenile prank that turned into a mailing list. Any theories about its poetics came after the fact. Does Mattix want a poetry that captures the way people really speak? Flarf certainly captures the way people speak on the internet. <br /><br />The question of whether flarf has form is actually very interesting. Your typical "disjunctive" poem, of the sort that circulates like a smooth, die-cast token of avant bona fides, is marked by relentless change. Every sentence starts a new subject. It's like channel surfing, and my primitive human brain finds it perverse and annoying. A flarf poem, on the other hand, often concentrates obsessively on a word or phrase and develops its obsession using that stodgy traditionalist technique, comic timing! <a href="http://mainstreampoetry.blogspot.com/2003/02/pizza-kitty.html">"Pizza Kitty"</a> for instance: it was written using the results of a Google search for "pizza + kitty," and the two words recur over and over as in a sestina. If it had any agenda other than making me snort coffee from my nose, I missed it, sadly. Repetition is, of course, the essence of poetic form. Meter consists of certain repeated rhythmic patterns; rhymes repeat sounds; a sestina repeats the same six words in a fixed order; the Psalms repeat syntax in the figures of parallelism. The fact that flarf cobbles together phrases from the internet isn't remarkable. Collage has been important since the Modernists, and even existed in ancient times: look at the art of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cento_%28poetry%29">cento</a>, in which poets took lines from Virgil and Homer and rearranged them to make new poems. Sometimes this definitely took a subversive turn, as in the case of Faltonia, an early Christian poet who wrote the life of Jesus using the verses of pagan Virgil. <br /><br />Flarf is less ideology and more id. Just look at <a href="http://www.marscafe.com/write-now/poem.html">"Chicks Dig War,"</a> which, the Constant Critic says, "deserves all the nervous accolades being spilled like martinis onto its open flames." People have been comparing it to "Howl," but to me it also seems like a hyperactive development of <a href="http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2000/04/naming-of-parts-henry-reed.html">"The Naming of Parts,"</a> another poem about war, sex, information overload, and Mad-Libbing. (Dylan Thomas reading <a href="http://static.salon.com/mp3s/premium/thomas/dylan_thomas_collection/cd7_return_journey_to_swansea/15_naming_of_parts_reed.mp3">here</a>) It's queasy and hilarious and horrible, being a sort of vortex created by barbaric YouTube comments and letters to Salon.com. Its guilt-tripping misogyny touches a sore nerve previously stung by Wilfred Owen's <a href="http://www.poemtree.com/poems/GreaterLove.htm">"Greater Love,"</a> a beautiful, cutting, unfair poem. <br /><br />In the end, I can't say whether flarf is too "ideological" to count as one of Mattix's natural forms. I can only say that I process it as poetry and experience the sort of psychosomatic feedback which indicates that this is poetry in search of a reader. I can only say that it sticks in my memory, which is the sine qua non of strong poetry. Nada Gordon had <a href="http://ululate.blogspot.com/2009/08/flarf-memorable-novel.html">this</a> to say in response to a critic, and it's true in my case:<br /><blockquote>Even so, and even as an insider, my sense is that Flarf poems actually are memorable, although more perhaps because they are "bad" (In the sense of Eartha Kitt's "I Want to be Evil") or obnoxious or funny than because they are “good”: once you have heard titles like “Annoying Diabetic Bitch,” “Chicks Dig War,” or “Mm-Hmm” you will have a difficult time forgetting them even if you want to. They are mindworms.</blockquote>Poems don't achieve mindworm status unless they have "self-reflexivity of sound or meter, some sort of closure, ambiguity, and so forth." Flarf, or at least some flarf, must be legit even by Mattix's standards.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-55614697062033912732011-02-09T12:30:00.001-08:002011-02-12T14:37:01.148-08:00The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1rDCS91mh-8c_XghLAFbhMYTvFJXERQx6gDnCc1fOFoh4zyUCxnjcsbMBovBjvFT55QAWK43Lu2xboj7nlzcWacQFHXtZjSclnVRITAnBL8K2Z_GbwSBi-osxY6INjyVBnnbMbRo9zxc/s1600/the-place-that-inhabits-us-cvr.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1rDCS91mh-8c_XghLAFbhMYTvFJXERQx6gDnCc1fOFoh4zyUCxnjcsbMBovBjvFT55QAWK43Lu2xboj7nlzcWacQFHXtZjSclnVRITAnBL8K2Z_GbwSBi-osxY6INjyVBnnbMbRo9zxc/s320/the-place-that-inhabits-us-cvr.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547215043878759314" /></a>Is a poetry of place even possible anymore? As more and more of the countryside is eaten up by housing tracts, as television and recorded music continue to iron out regional accents and musical traditions, our attempts to display <span style="font-style:italic;">terroir</span> in art sometimes seem like boosterism. Everywhere I go in America, I find individuals who are bravely devoted to their local bands, beers, pubs, coffee houses, chilies, cheeses, churches, mountains, and hiking trails. And yet... and yet... I wonder if there is anywhere in America where the complex interplay of landscape, language, history, and culture could give us a poet like Garcia Lorca or George Mackay Brown or Seamus Heaney: greatness that is also local.<br /><br />I wonder about this because it is a greatness I look for and quietly long for, although it embarrasses me to admit it. The longing is complex; it is a combination of homesickness and poem-sickness. It begins as a childish encounter with your surroundings, and increases exponentially with an awareness of the foreign: British children's books, Bible stories set in exotic lands of election and exile. My awareness of place was also sharpened because my family flew to New Mexico every summer to visit my grandparents in Santa Fe. I exchanged my green suburban valley for a lofty desert plain, Martian-looking volcanic mountains, piñon trees, adobe houses, Indian pueblos, and austere and fiery cooking: <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV8kfLkjFUzgDDgfAgFQTP1WZEGpolZb8hOg_7z_vEfcgAM50grxJcn_kjeT-efaY63B1nmJRQucvu-LEHCf9cbIC1ZHqT0gerA-u98BcHg2M0Ap-BLpj-M_mEH2HMLTz2hrcndPptLus/s1600/IMG_0481.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV8kfLkjFUzgDDgfAgFQTP1WZEGpolZb8hOg_7z_vEfcgAM50grxJcn_kjeT-efaY63B1nmJRQucvu-LEHCf9cbIC1ZHqT0gerA-u98BcHg2M0Ap-BLpj-M_mEH2HMLTz2hrcndPptLus/s320/IMG_0481.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571447808622239650" /></a><br />vs.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA4S_zPrx_qcpurLXgpTE7vhzFMe8-KRtq2SJQsEdHUaExeMhTdm1OsCXWi-XMC7nxNhEkb3F0ubtTXMM5CIX73s4wk5U095plZxY5S_V5sXXbT2_pRwgk2l2CcY9M6bWhrHjn9RSjwXQ/s1600/IMG_1995.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA4S_zPrx_qcpurLXgpTE7vhzFMe8-KRtq2SJQsEdHUaExeMhTdm1OsCXWi-XMC7nxNhEkb3F0ubtTXMM5CIX73s4wk5U095plZxY5S_V5sXXbT2_pRwgk2l2CcY9M6bWhrHjn9RSjwXQ/s320/IMG_1995.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571447983703496962" /></a><br />California showed up in my poetry early on. I was nine (or was it ten?) when a long drive back from Oregon took me past Mount Shasta and then miles of orchards. The contrast of lemons and snow made me a little dizzy and I wrote a poem about a fairy lady who lived on a snowy mountain and was courted by a prince from the lowlands. I christened the imaginary country Ralay Calee, which at the time sounded wonderfully musical. The obvious echo of "Cali" skipped my mind. "California," of course, is a made-up name to begin with--it originates from a Spanish fantasy novel--so it intrigues me that I thought of my own home as a natural fairy-tale setting. As I got older, I wrote poems about exploring the creek near our house, about the summer and the trees, about the orchards and the city. I fell for Hopkins, who, crucially perhaps, is something of a wannabe regionalist--a fundamentally suburban poet who was deeply affected by place, to the point that each poem breathes the air of the place where it was written. North Wales in particular was his "mother of muses": his mature style was born there, and for the rest of his life a trip there would get his fitful creativity flowing again. When he struggled to describe what he wanted in a poem, he invoked old Anglo-Saxon rhythms; but also a kind of "starriness" and "quain" (I can't define it either!) derived from Welsh-language poetry. Sprung rhythm made verse "stressy," but Welsh <a href="http://forkeatssake.blogspot.com/2010/02/seven-chimes-of-poetry.html">chimes</a> made it "starry." An obsession with assonance is part of it--I have followed mine from Hopkins to Lorca to Dylan Thomas to Sylvia Plath, and I am not over it yet--but there is a certain elusive note which I (perhaps foolishly) think of as "Anglo-Welsh," in the bell-notes of <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/122/26.html">"The Candle Indoors,"</a> in the dark owl-notes of <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178966">"The Moon and the Yew Tree,"</a> and especially in the crazed virtuosity of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFbyq2cZHgE">"Author's Prologue."</a> Dylan Thomas also excels at an Elizabethan sort of virtuosity--see <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178631">"The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower"</a>--but "Author's Prologue" is different. And so strikingly hypnotic that, if you look to the right of the youtube video, you can jump directly to Sylvia Plath chanting away under its peculiar spell. (in "On the Difficulty of Conjuring Up a Dryad") <br /><br />Where was I? I really need to come back to the New World. <br /><br />Christian Wiman wrote a nice little piece on the Orkney Island poet George Mackay Brown. It begins thus: <br /><blockquote>For contemporary American poets a poetry of place almost always means a poetry of missing places. Whether because of itinerancy or the pace of change, American poets don't inhabit the same places they inhabited as children, much less the places where their parents and grandparents were children. Some tend in memory a kind of ambered past which no longer has anything to do with an actual place (think of Philip Levine's Detroit); others actively seek out sites on which to feed their feelings of dislocation and dispossession (Richard Hugo's drive-by elegies are an example). And if the proliferation of poems written about distant family history may be partly explained by current literary fashion, it's also a genuine expression of personal and cultural need, an attempt to inhabit some more permanent past, as if by rooting themselves in a place of their own making, American poets might grow more knowingly out of it.</blockquote><br />There are also poets like <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/tony-hoagland">Tony Hoagland</a>, who makes his living writing plangent-yet-prosy verse about the rootlesness of Americans: the title of his latest collection, <span style="font-style:italic;">Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty,</span> should tell you what you need to know. Hoagland always seems to be writing about "America," an undifferentiated blob-place consisting of a single endless interstate punctuated by fast-food joints. He writes about reality, certainly, but I for one can only read so many Hoagland poems before I become irritated and start wondering, "Why don't you turn off the TV? Why don't you find another form of Saturday recreation that doesn't involve going to the mall?" But my anger is misplaced--even self-righteous. Hoagland is writing precisely for the rootless, for people who have no spiritual traditions to help them resist the consumerist bacchanal. They may have gone far in their formal education, but they missed out on certain civilizing influences. How are they supposed to reject the world and its works and pomps? If they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry? <br /><blockquote>My parents were disconnected from their parents. We were middle class. There was no religion in my family. So there was an absence of ceremonial knowledge, there was an absence of inherited knowledge, there was an absence of family stories, and there was an absence of instruction. <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19684">(transcript)</a></blockquote><br />As an unhappy teenager, Hoagland clung to poetry for stability. And he says that poetry continues to hold him in place: "I am a very typical American: I'm de-racinated, I'm rootless, I have no root system. At least a very typical middle-class American, I suppose. Poetry has been that culture for me."<br /><br />Even when American poets settle down and choose one state as their home, they can sound commitment-phobic. This is the playful trope in Joan Logghe's poem, <a href="http://embracingthenorth.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/poem-from-joan-logghe-santa-fes-new-poet-laureate/">"Something Like Marriage"</a>: "I’m engaged to New Mexico. I’ve been engaged for 18 years. / I’ve worn its ring of rainbow set with a mica shard." We may enjoy living in an area, but we are always ready to cut it loose if a more tempting opportunity beckons. When I say "we," I mostly mean Americans with a strong family history of emigrating, which includes moving around the US. There are also Americans who dig in and stay put, sometimes never traveling 50 miles beyond their birthplace. Those of us with a family history of migrating tend to look at these people as stuck and probably bound for poverty. Something is always telling us to trade up, to get out before everything goes to hell. There may even be some good old-fashioned fear of death involved: just as contemplating marriage can make you vividly aware of "til death do us part," contemplating making a permanent home suddenly steeps your surroundings in the solemnity of death. I have a friend at UK who is married, has a new baby, owns his own house, and is firmly determined to live in Lexington for the rest of his life, barring some unusual catastrophe. I remember him driving past the university hospital and saying, calmly, "I'll probably die in that hospital." He even sounded pleased. <br /><br />In <span style="font-style:italic;">The Place That Inhabits Us</span>, one Ann Fisher-Wirth has a poem asking her family to scatter her ashes around Point Reyes. She sounds like she means it. A strain of hopeless, headlong love runs through the anthology, and occasionally it hardens and dignifies the poem's utterance, so that it seems backed by necessity. <br /><br /><center>I can imagine someone who found<br />these fields unbearable, who climbed<br />the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,<br />cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,<br />wishing a few more trees for shade.<br /><br />An Easterner especially, who would scorn<br />the meagerness of summer, the dry<br />twisted shapes of black elm,<br />scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape<br />August has already drained of green.</center><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqq4e8lWeeaDjrnbl_u_-eHkAIV0ouxTd9I2sPTwBFVVfgJTawHG3xUlujeT9k5UN5r8aVhIr1r5MgfbGAvwWXNIom-ZSSBbuhKp_7oUjY7nLWMOQiI7JTeQIPd-wF3jabAthvTpo_53s/s1600/Three-Oaks.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqq4e8lWeeaDjrnbl_u_-eHkAIV0ouxTd9I2sPTwBFVVfgJTawHG3xUlujeT9k5UN5r8aVhIr1r5MgfbGAvwWXNIom-ZSSBbuhKp_7oUjY7nLWMOQiI7JTeQIPd-wF3jabAthvTpo_53s/s400/Three-Oaks.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547216388726949618" /></a><center><span style="font-style:italic;">Three Oaks - Eyvind Earle</span> <br /><br />One who would hurry over the clinging<br />thistle, foxtail, golden poppy,<br />knowing everything was just a weed,<br />unable to conceive that these trees<br />and sparse brown bushes were alive.<br /><br />And hate the bright stillness of the noon<br />without wind, without motion,<br />the only other living thing<br />a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended<br />in the blinding, sunlit blue.<br /><br />And yet how gentle it seems to someone<br />raised in a landscape short of rain –<br />the skyline of a hill broken by no more<br />trees than one can count, the grass,<br />the empty sky, the wish for water.</center><br /><br />This is Dana Gioia's "California Hills in August." An understated poem, with rough four-stress rhythm, and a final stanza which reverberates deep in my heart. Or here's Adrienne Rich, taking a break from politics: <br /><br /><blockquote>I am stuck to earth. What I love here<br />is old ranches, leaning seaward, lowroofed spreads between rocks<br />small canyons running through pitched hillsides<br />liveoaks twisted on steepness, the eucalyptus avenue leading<br />to the wrecked homestead, the fogwreathed heavy-chested cattle<br />on their blond hills. </blockquote><br />In the same poem, speaking to someone absent, she sounds a familiar note of exile: "This is no place you ever knew me." A Californian could say that to the familiar ghosts of most of history's writers. California is neither Asia nor Europe, though it stands about halfway between them. On the coast, a sense of oceanic dizziness coexists with a particular, almost painful, beauty. The dizziness might be represented by Whitman's offering: <br /><br /><blockquote>Facing west, from California's shores,<br />Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,<br />I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the<br /> land of migrations, look afar,<br />Look off the shores of my Western Sea—the circle almost circled;<br />For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,<br />From Asia—from the north—from the God, the sage, and the hero,<br />From the south—from the flowery peninsulas, and the spice islands;<br />Long having wander'd since—round the earth having wander'd,<br />Now I face home again—very pleas'd and joyous;<br />(But where is what I started for, so long ago? <br />And why is it yet unfound?)</blockquote><br />This was included in a division of the book titled "Like One Eternity Touching Another," from a poem by Yehuda Amichai, describing the hills north of San Francisco touching the ocean. I think in a flash of a tiny valley where a salty wind raced through the long grass, <span style="font-style:italic;">shush, shush</span>, small dairy farms sheltered, a pond for cattle was a slice of sky, and the ocean reflected itself into that strangely bright air; and I ate the best strawberry in my life: red as a Chinese wedding dress, still warm from the sun. <span style="font-style:italic;">Hang on for dear life</span>, the Pacific seems to say. <br /><br />The Bay Area is one of the epicenters for Language poetry, which is notorious for making the reader do most of the work of determining meaning. This sort of disorienting and disjunctive writing is not much in evidence here. Few of the poems in this anthology deviate from the standard American style of colloquial free verse narratives. Some of them are more rhapsodic free verse, some of them are even metrical (Dana Gioia, Kay Ryan, Thom Gunn, and (oddly) Ursula LeGuin all appear), but there are perhaps two or three poems which really distort sense and syntax. Gertrude Stein might have had a field day "describing" the Golden Gate Bridge, if she hadn't ditched Oakland for Paris, but the charm of this anthology is precisely in the little jolts of recognition: I grew up there! I know exactly what that plant smells like! etc. This anthology isn't on the cutting edge of formal innovation. As I read, I often turned away from the poetry to consider the place--sometimes because the poem was good <span style="font-style:italic;">per se</span>, but often because, although mediocre verse, it pushed the right buttons. Some of the poems were both evocative and finished, though, like Kay Ryan's "Green Hills":<br /><br /><blockquote>Their green flanks<br />and swells are not<br />flesh in any sense<br />matching ours,<br />we tell ourselves.<br />Nor their green<br />breast nor their<br />green shoulder nor<br />the langour of their<br />rolling over.</blockquote><br />I like to read that over and over again, it is so weirdly musical; such a perfect little artifact. This slender anthology is giving me ideas for what I might write, and I think it is a worthy addition to the oak-mast and leaf-duff of California poetry, which is still relatively thin. I could say more: about Gary Snyder, the Beat legacy (if you can call it a legacy; more like a meteor trail), Czeslaw Milosz at Berkeley... I could quote lines and phrases: "the valley of the ghosts of orchards," "Altamont of my rib, aqueduct of your chest," "California, easy to lose, bound with rivers." There's too much to talk about. <br /><br />There was one poem, "Wild Fennel," which described a terrain so familiar that I was convinced the author (Catharine Clark-Sayles) had been walking near my family's house. She tells of walking at the feet of the "western hills" in the damp chill of early spring, stopping with her husband to watch the red-winged blackbirds "where they nest in last year's reeds." She reaches into the "fine feathery greenness" of wild fennel to sniff the sweet anise scent, and finds some tiny seeds that the birds have missed. She eats one and offers the other to her husband who takes it with "a look as old as Adam"-- a nice touch. The blackbirds, too, with their "metallic cries" and "flickering red patches" offered their own pleasant jolt of recognition: she records them saying "Here, here, I am, here" whereas I have always heard them saying "Oh my <span style="font-style:italic;">go-osh</span>," like so many Valley girls. I am far from home, and I don't know where I will be living even next year, but I know that a certain stretch of California, from the Russian River to San Luis Obispo, is the place that inhabits me.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX9nzFAm5J8-a3ApHeEjhB-A6ZNJqlr1jTUdbyZ8TbhZaAA7GRixFy633vpbXBwiUYE5zz4sN-xFeqwxSiISPqXk-1PHaWU8GPKyYebO9vjbCS7ZzTkT-eHKwSiFIyUggF_7a1xRsJWLM/s1600/IMG_2450.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX9nzFAm5J8-a3ApHeEjhB-A6ZNJqlr1jTUdbyZ8TbhZaAA7GRixFy633vpbXBwiUYE5zz4sN-xFeqwxSiISPqXk-1PHaWU8GPKyYebO9vjbCS7ZzTkT-eHKwSiFIyUggF_7a1xRsJWLM/s320/IMG_2450.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5572935630833698242" /></a>Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-67903671476324836852010-12-14T06:38:00.000-08:002010-12-14T06:41:41.425-08:00Finals Week - can't write anything til MondayI'll get back to the blog next week. Look for my review of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed.</span>Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-80014510776721543652010-12-13T07:58:00.001-08:002010-12-13T10:23:22.188-08:00Dappled Things is back... for the momentThe newest issue is finally <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/current.html">online</a>. You can read one of Steven Milne's poems <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/mqa10/poem16.php">here</a> (I <a href="http://forkeatssake.blogspot.com/2010/11/lush-new-poetry-in-dappled-things.html">gushed</a> about him back in November, remember?). His other poems are also wonderful, although you can only read them in the print magazine. I was also impressed by "Poem with a line from the Desert Fathers" (Sabrina Vourvoulias), which is a sinewy, courageous meditation on this <a href="http://orthodoxwiki.org/Sayings_of_the_Desert_Fathers#Abba_Joseph">astonishing little story</a>. The way she puts the key line is, "Why not become fire?" There is also a nicely-done <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/mqa10/essay01.php">critical essay</a> on the novelist J.F. Powers, and some book reviews that may interest you.<br /><br />We are currently putting the finishing touches on the Christmas issue, which will be a celebration of DT's fifth birthday, and hopefully the new website will be ready by then. Despite this good news, though, <span style="font-style:italic;">Dappled Things</span> has been suffering in this economy (as have we all), and donations have slowed down so much that the journal is <span style="font-style:italic;">in danger of folding</span> in the next year. If you feel so moved, please <a href="http://www.dappledthings.org/donate.html">send DT a Christmas present</a> via PayPal, or send a check here: <br /><br />Dappled Things Magazine<br />2876 S. Abingdon Street, C-2<br />Arlington, VA 22206 <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Dappled Things</span> is the only Catholic litmag in English today. We fill a niche, we meet a need... but there's more to it that: <span style="font-style:italic;">Dappled Things</span> has drawn on some of the liveliest circles of young Catholic writers and given them a forum for their most purely imaginative efforts. Paper architecture, dystopian fiction, holy/unholy sonnets - all of this is leading somewhere, and I want <span style="font-style:italic;">Dappled Things</span> to keep taking me there. <br /><br />I have copied Bernie's message for anyone who didn't get it through email:<br /><br /><blockquote>Dear Friends of Dappled Things,<br /><br />As many of you will have noticed, there has been a long delay in releasing the Mary, Queen of Angels 2010 edition online. The reason is that we have a brand new website in the works and were aiming at releasing that edition once the site was ready. So the good news is that the issue is now online. The bad news (no, not the news mentioned in the subject line, read further for that) is that the new website has given us more trouble than we expected, so we are publishing this issue still under the old format, hoping to have the Christmas edition up in just a few weeks to inaugurate the new design.<br /><br />Let me add that the Mary, Queen of Angels edition is truly an exceptional one. Here's what one reader wrote to us after receiving the print edition of it: "I have to say this issue is really something else . . . . 'After' is . . . one of the best [poems] (DT or otherwise) that I've ever read . . . . If DT isn't on everyone's radar, the world is blind." Click here to read the poem online.<br /><br />In this issue you will also find:<br /><br /> * The dramatic, haunting photographs of Rick Westcott;<br /> * A wonderful reconsideration of the unjustly forgotten Catholic novelist J.F. Powers;<br /> * "I've, like, got to get there, like, now" a delightful rant by the inimitable Eleanor Bourg Donlon on language, unintelligibility, and irreverence;<br /> * Reviews of award-winning graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang's new book of stories, The Eternal Smile; and of House of Words by Jonathan Potter, a beautiful book of poems which is the first title from Korrektiv Press, a promising new venture by the writers of Korrektiv.org;<br /> * "Achilleus Now," an insightful feature essay by Robert T. Miller on his experience teaching great books and how old books still matter to young students;<br /> * Great new stories and poems that you can only enjoy as a subscriber to our marvelous print edition.<br /><br />Please stop by the site to enjoy all of this wonderful new work. And if you like what you see, please consider making a donation to Dappled Things. Despite the enthusiastic messages that we regularly receive about the magazine, the response to our just-launched annual fundraising appeal has been dismayingly slow. Unless this picks up soon, Dappled Things will have to close down shop in the new year (this is the bad news from the subject line). As the only Catholic literary magazine in English that is currently in print, we think this would be a loss to our culture and the Church. If you agree, please don't let this happen. Stop by the website today and make your secure donation by credit card via PayPal. Or you can send a check, payable to Dappled Things Magazine, to the following address:<br /><br />2876 S. Abingdon Street, C-2<br />Arlington, VA 22206<br /><br />Don't assume that someone else will do it. Please contribute today as you are able.<br /><br />Wishing you a lovely Gaudete Sunday,<br /><br />Bernardo Aparicio Garcia<br />President, Dappled Things<br /></blockquote>Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-81043340141687666602010-12-12T09:23:00.000-08:002010-12-12T10:41:38.727-08:00Sundry Sunday LinksBob the Ape has made a <a href="http://trousered-ape.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html#1470519209829791919">poem</a> out of one of my posts! After six years of scribbling for St. Blog's, I've finally arrived. Thanks a million, Bob!<br /><br />Dylan has <a href="http://dylanissimus.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/the-golden-beak/">joie de vivre</a>.<br /><br />"If you're close enough to read this, you must be a New Critic." <a href="http://poetsbumperstickerco.blogspot.com/">Poetry bumperstickers!</a> For <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=171211">AWP</a>! Most of them are obnoxious (<span style="font-style:italic;">really</span> obnoxious) in-jokes, but I can't help but laugh at some of them. Oh, and I'D RATHER BE SCANNING QUANTITATIVE METERS, kthanxbye.<br /><br />I want <a href="http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/in-passing-selected-poems-1974-2007/1878166">this book</a> for Christmas. I'm such a sucker for chiming Anglo-Welsh chamber music.<br /><br />An <a href="http://www.cprw.com/the-dark-pool/">article</a> on the wild, untameable holiness of prosody. I don't agree that meter is <span style="font-style:italic;">never</span> imitative (I've certainly speeded up verses to express quick motion), but I think Rothman makes a good point: "...prosody has nothing to do with the referential functions of language. Rather, verse draws its power from an utterly different faculty, <span style="font-style:italic;">the number sense</span>, which orders experience not by construing it into propositions but instead by categorizing and counting, <span style="font-style:italic;">an activity that does not require linguistic syntax.</span>" In other words, more poetry critics ought to know music theory.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-20548273222075794092010-12-05T08:35:00.000-08:002010-12-05T09:18:33.592-08:00Wind and Window Flower<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRWLguawbGj6qWQJHrQKxwzUBb9SG0bRcAGgwnNiFoqI8aJ_IIrnoLTpIW7lI9Da1hFZR2Up2tov8Mrfp0aVv9O-Jkfaq-Qyjlk7c7O4tRPztCGRF5nzow5lXMVE6F53Rta0_LSE1leHY/s1600/lgfrost2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 310px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRWLguawbGj6qWQJHrQKxwzUBb9SG0bRcAGgwnNiFoqI8aJ_IIrnoLTpIW7lI9Da1hFZR2Up2tov8Mrfp0aVv9O-Jkfaq-Qyjlk7c7O4tRPztCGRF5nzow5lXMVE6F53Rta0_LSE1leHY/s400/lgfrost2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547242711329429554" /></a> <center><a href="http://www.canadianrockies.net/craigrichards/"><span style="font-style:italic;">Photo credit</span></a></center><br />I've never lived anywhere cold enough for frost crystals to grow on my windows, and lacy window-frost has always seemed like a trope to me. Sort of like nightingales. But this is why Google Image search was invented! <a href="http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=frost+on+window&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=_MH7TMugNcWAlAeZ2qyOBQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQsAQwAA&biw=1280&bih=565"> Ecce pruina.</a><br /><br />Suddenly obsessed, I went to <a href="http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/frost/frost.htm">this page</a> which is maintained by a physics professor from Caltech. As I suspected: "Window frost was more common in the past, when houses still had single-pane windows." I'm crazy about this site. It seems that frost, hoarfrost and rime all denote specific ice formations... I'm especially awed by the "frost flower," which appears to be made of cotton candy. Had no idea that water could do that. Apparently it results from water slowly freezing out of wood...<br /><br />True to the Caltech spirit, there is <a href="http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/designer1/designer1.htm">also a page</a> devoted to the art of growing one's own snowflakes in a vapor diffusion chamber.<br /><br />And yes, this is a <a href="http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/Wind_and_Window_Flower">poem about frost</a> by Robert Frost. Happy Advent!Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-56892983771768956882010-12-04T13:02:00.000-08:002010-12-04T17:24:55.736-08:00C.S. Lewis and the perils of poetryAll C.S. Lewis ever wanted to be was a great poet, and when he realized that he never would be, he resigned himself to producing marvelous prose. As a hopeful young poet myself, I find his longing poignant and frightening. How he must has slaved at that unreadable epic of his... but all the industry in the world won't get you the muse or the duende. <br /><br />Is it too psychologizing and unfair to assume that his poetic failures had something to do with his hatred of Eliot? For years, the two men nursed a dark dislike for each other; only gradually did they lower their defenses and discover how much they had in common. It is clear to me, though, that Lewis's total scorn for modern poetry didn't do his own poetry any favors. Beyond even that, he was apparently impatient with even the most traditional sorts of poetic apprenticeship. In other words, he just didn't think like a poet; in some ways, he was too intelligent. There's a certain amount of stupidity that goes into good poetry. <br /><br />The following "confession" was meant to be satirical, but as you will see, it is Dame Irony's revenge:<br /> <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">A Confession</span><br /><br />I am so coarse, the things the poets see<br />Are obstinately invisible to me.<br />For twenty years I’ve stared my level best<br />To see if evening -- any evening -- would suggest<br />A patient etherized upon a table;<br />In vain. I simply wasn’t able.<br />To me each evening looked far more<br />Like the departure from a silent, yet a crowded, shore<br />Of a ship whose freight was everything, leaving behind<br />Gracefully, finally, without farewells, marooned mankind.<br /><br />Red dawn behind a hedgerow in the east<br />Never, for me, resembled in the least<br />A chilblain on a cocktail-shaker’s nose;<br />Waterfalls don’t remind me of torn underclothes,<br />Nor glaciers of tin-cans. I’ve never known<br />The moon look like a hump-backed crone–<br />Rather, a prodigy, even now<br />Not naturalized, a riddle glaring from the Cyclops’ brow<br />Of the cold world, reminding me on what a place<br />I crawl and cling, a planet with no bulwarks, out in space.<br /><br />Never the white sun of the wintriest day<br />Struck me as <span style="font-style:italic;">un crachat d’estaminet</span>.<br />I’m like that odd man Wordsworth knew, to whom<br />A primrose was a yellow primrose, one whose doom<br />Keeps him forever in the list of dunces,<br />Compelled to live on stock responses,<br />Making the poor best that I can<br />Of dull things… peacocks, honey, the Great Wall, Aldebaran<br />Silver weirs, new-cut grass, wave on the beach, hard gem,<br />The shapes of horse and woman, Athens, Troy, Jerusalem.<br /><br />I think most people who like this poem like it for the catalog at the end, with its nouns as bright as enameled roundels on a medieval chalice. But sadly, Lewis spends the preceding stanzas playing laborious Salieri to modernism's scabrous Mozarts. He was normally a perceptive critic, and it shouldn't have taken him twenty years to admit that the sun could rest on the horizon like a sick man after the doctor has "put him in the dark of ether." Couldn't he translate the Latin <span style="font-style:italic;">occidens</span>? Eliot was certainly subject to the "stock response" of west-evening-death; he just expressed it in it a fresh way. To which Lewis seems to reply: "Don't get fresh with me, kid. I know what a sunset looks like." How he could bear to re-read that laboured, dissipated simile of the ship "whose freight was everything" leaving mankind forever? <span style="font-style:italic;">Forever</span>? <span style="font-style:italic;">Everything? Three</span> modifiers for "leaving behind"? <span style="font-style:italic;">Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.</span> <br /><br />The chilblain on the cocktail shaker's nose is at least funny as parody, and the rhythm of "Waterfalls don’t remind me of torn underclothes" is jolly; but in this stanza he falls victim to the main hazard of trying to parody surrealism: he dredges up images that are actually rather apt and satisfying. Waterfalls will now remind me of torn underclothes because of you, my dear Lewis. If the hokiest poetaster can say "scarf of mist" or "bridal-veil falls," surely a comparison to ragged cloth shouldn't stump even poetic beginners. As for the moon as a "hump-backed crone," one wonders again where Professor Lewis's Latin was when he was writing this, as <span style="font-style:italic;">gibbus</span> (a "gibbous moon") is Latin for "hump." (I would be shocked if he slammed Virgil for personifying Mount Atlas as an old grey-bearded giant.) The metaphor he offers instead, the eye of the Cyclops, seems much more shocking. And again, the whole counter-image is a depressing, long-winded retreat from the pungent images that we are meant to laugh at. The moon is a "prodigy," which isn't an image at all. A prodigy is merely something extraordinary or ominous, and it summons no clear visual image whatsoever. Not content with this vagueness, Lewis changes "prodigy" to "riddle." Then comes the Cyclops' eye, "glaring from the Cyclops’ brow / Of the cold world," and I want to break something because HOW can the cold world be the brow of the Cyclops? If the cold world is earth, there is no freaking way that our round planet can be the moon's eye-socket. If the cold world is the moon, there's no way it can be both eye and brow. If the cold world is Space...<br /><br />All right, I feel better now that I've taken a box-cutter to the sofa. <br /><br />The impression you get from this poem is that C.S. Lewis could not deal with metaphors or similes, which would be a grave defect in an admirer of Homer, or of pretty much any poet, ancient or modern. That would be a false impression. It is lovely to turn to his prose and breathe in the subtle wood notes of a description like this one from <span style="font-style:italic;">That Hideous Strength</span>: <br /><br /><blockquote>Perhaps the winter morning sunlight affected him all the more because he had never been taught to regard it as specially beautiful and it therefore worked on his senses without interference. The earth and sky had the look of things recently washed. The brown fields looked as if they would be good to eat, and those in grass set off the curves of the little hills as close clipped hair sets of the body of a horse. The sky looked further away than usual, but also clearer, so that the long slender streaks of cloud (dark slate colour against the pale blue) had edges as clear as if they were cut out of cardboard. Every little copse was black and bristling as a hairbrush, and when the car stopped in Cure Hardy itself the silence that followed the turning off of the engine was filled with the noise of rooks that seemed to be calling "Wake! Wake!" </blockquote><br /><br />When I first read that perfect, homely simile, "every little copse was black and bristling as a hairbrush," and almost tripped over the numinous cry of the rooks, which whisks you up to the sublimity that a lesser writer would have labored in magenta and cerulean to induce, I was thrilled and shivery. Notice that he doesn't say that the trees were like virgin pillars in the green halls of Diana. He says they resemble a hairbrush. He also says that the clouds are like cardboard, which doesn't seem so distant from those tin-can glaciers. I want to revise my earlier assessment of the poem: it's not that he thinks the modernist images are weird, it's that he thinks they're ignoble. His prose, however, seems to quietly resolve this anxiety.<br /><br />What gets to me the most about Lewis's poetry, and most suggests that his efforts in verse were more careless than he knew, is the sheer sloppiness of the prosody. A.N. Wilson mentions the terrible enjambments and unscannable lines that mar <span style="font-style:italic;">Dymer</span>, that still-born epic; and "A Confession" launches itself in iambic pentameter, absorbs Eliot own pentameter line, and then collapses into tetrameter: "In VAIN. I SIMply WASn't ABle." Or maybe there is a rest after "vain"? But the next line is definitely tetrameter: "To me each evening looked far more." The stanza concludes with a baggy alexandrine that looks like "The Wreck of the Deutschland" in cargo pants. But wait... was this supposed to be a return to iambic pentameter?<br /><br />LIKE the dePARTure from a SIlent, yet a CROWded, SHORE<br /><br />Or maybe another tetrameter?<br /><br />Like the dePARTure from a SIlent, yet a CROWded, SHORE<br /><br />I would be very surprised if any two people scanned this poem in the same way. It's obvious to me that Lewis's mind got way ahead of his iambs, and you can see him powering through their little hurtles with more haste than grace. I've seen this tendency in every poem of his I've read. (Count the stresses in that last sentence: Lewis would have had no qualms about sticking it willy-nilly into a poem!) If he had something to say, he was usually better off working it into a book or article; but he craved the megaphone of verse. The poems betray their prose fervors: <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">On a Vulgar Error</span> <br /><br />No. It's an impudent falsehood. Men did not<br />Invariably think the newer way Prosaic<br />mad, inelegant, or what not.<br /><br />Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot<br />Upon the church? Did anybody say How<br />modern and how ugly? They did not.<br /><br />Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot<br />With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay,<br />Were these at first a horror? They were not.<br /><br />If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food<br />All set us hankering after yesterday,<br />Need this be only an archaising mood?<br /><br />Why, any man whose purse has been let blood<br />By sharpers, when he finds all drained away<br />Must compare how he stands with how he stood.<br /><br />If a quack doctor's breezy ineptitude<br />Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightway<br />All that I can't do now, all that I could?<br /><br />So, when our guides unanimously decry<br />The backward glance, I think we can guess why. <br /><br />This seems a mere appendix to some essay on modernity. There is not much here that would not be more convincing in prose.<br /><br />Now, you should never turn your back on Lewis. Like the sea, he is capable of lifting a freak wave and knocking you out. I would be grateful ever to write something so good as this:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The True Nature of Gnomes</span><br /><br />Paracelsus somewhere in his writings tells us<br />A gnome moves through earth like an arrow in the air,<br />At home like a fish within the seamless, foamless<br />Liberty of the water that yields to it everywhere.<br /><br />Beguiled with pictures, I fancied in my childhood<br />Subterranean rivers beside glimmering wharfs,<br />Hammers upon anvils, pattering and yammering,<br />Torches and tunnels, the cities of the dwarfs;<br /><br />But in perfect blackness underneath the surface,<br />In a silence unbroken till the planet cracks,<br />Their sinewy bodies through the dense continuum<br />Move without resistance and leave no tracks.<br /><br />Gravel, marl, blue clay--all's one to travel in;<br />Only one obstacle can impede a gnome--<br />A cave or a mine-shaft. Not their very bravest<br />Would venture across it for a short cut home.<br /><br />There is the unbridgeable. To a gnome the air is<br />utter vacuity. If he thrust out his face<br />Into a cavern, his face would break in splinters,<br />Bursting as a man would burst in interstellar space.<br /><br />With toiling lungs a gnome can breath the soil in,<br />Rocks are like a headwind, stiff against his chest,<br />Chief 'midst his pleasures is the quiet leaf mould,<br />Like air in meadowy valleys when the wind's at rest.<br /><br />Like silvan freshness are the lodes of silver,<br />Cold, clammy, fog-like are the leaden veins<br />Those of gold are prodigally sweet like roses,<br />Gems stab coolly like the small spring rains.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">(first published in Punch, October 14, 1946)</span>Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-8260517167870647052010-11-28T17:25:00.000-08:002010-11-28T21:02:20.634-08:00my apology for poetry<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgugiDX3gjFe0uzon8-pZy3rREwTSC5HHVi2h3jV7NhwMi5c5Y2f7rotEu3T7i7HN0ANHFVF3v6Ddsf9tf6JZu8CuF1E3bIyCrfL-poZiQFhVmxmpWaHZkP142LBeoQXO61ZtIYbwxTB_Y/s1600/crazy-brain-II-final.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 290px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgugiDX3gjFe0uzon8-pZy3rREwTSC5HHVi2h3jV7NhwMi5c5Y2f7rotEu3T7i7HN0ANHFVF3v6Ddsf9tf6JZu8CuF1E3bIyCrfL-poZiQFhVmxmpWaHZkP142LBeoQXO61ZtIYbwxTB_Y/s400/crazy-brain-II-final.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544790536048967570" /></a><a href="http://invisiblenotes.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html"><center><span style="font-style:italic;">Crazy Brain II - Peter Ciccariello</span></center></a><br /><br />How in this swank parade of fragments, erasures, selflesh, no one knows; interrogations and extraordinary renditions, surrendering to information, to mind as screen, surfing channels, survival of the flittest, self a locus where <span style="font-style:italic;">voces</span> cross always. Voice is Latin for word. Where are the women in the litmags? Why aren't we submitting?<br /><br />Because I am at home, taking care of my two metaphysics. Particular friendships are dangerous. Also the unobservable virtual unicorn particles. I am afraid they are right. The beginning of fear. The worse the better. The night the day.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-8468488629655880212010-11-27T21:01:00.000-08:002010-11-27T23:31:14.954-08:00Degrees of Separation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfUcZCL7YCepKe_pfgaUuY7NT2e95dl4NDcYIhMXwOSMfrYwmIOlcAWd1RQeZmtCuFbm7M4SA7U4VwyZsrx2MUWSNY6wYTSGQPao-LsH6lGgE2k-SZ28ZtmMklPZvvLx7_6TC-Q4OGdF8/s1600/auden21.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 301px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfUcZCL7YCepKe_pfgaUuY7NT2e95dl4NDcYIhMXwOSMfrYwmIOlcAWd1RQeZmtCuFbm7M4SA7U4VwyZsrx2MUWSNY6wYTSGQPao-LsH6lGgE2k-SZ28ZtmMklPZvvLx7_6TC-Q4OGdF8/s400/auden21.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544472722135648450" /></a><br />I met a man once in Manhattan who had known Auden. Not as remarkable, perhaps, as meeting someone who had known the secretive Greta Garbo, but I'm a West-coast girl and have only been twice to New York. Over tea, he gave me a new simile for the poet's face: "like a waffle iron," he said, which I found vivid. And Auden met Yeats once, and thought he was "pure evil." And it is a little known fact that Yeats once met Hopkins in Dublin, though it was a dull evening and they didn't have much to say to each other. <br /><br />I don't like the idea of talking to famous people - it makes me dizzy. I'm afraid I would talk gibberish; or worse, fall completely silent. Though Seamus Heaney visited Lexington just before I began studying here, and I <span style="font-style:italic;">do</span> kick myself for missing him. Oh well. I can continue folding my paper snowflake.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIF4RhZXeI0-kf7pneyrKTk5DO6cC5Tz_EwwjC0_puGMjrCacwS70PMnOgur3q1cpk7Y2okJs7pKlaB65GcrMSIxPJVPz-SQ5jbgB3vVOFlUEH8xfgLF0jnRF_8dGymLY5OmEZ239D5EY/s1600/Seamus-Heaney-001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIF4RhZXeI0-kf7pneyrKTk5DO6cC5Tz_EwwjC0_puGMjrCacwS70PMnOgur3q1cpk7Y2okJs7pKlaB65GcrMSIxPJVPz-SQ5jbgB3vVOFlUEH8xfgLF0jnRF_8dGymLY5OmEZ239D5EY/s400/Seamus-Heaney-001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544474769709034162" /></a><br />Hopkins' grandfather, as it so happens, studied medicine with Keats. Whew. After that I can't go on. Everything goes misty. What other poets can I wiki-walk over to? Hmmm... my mother and <a href="http://www.danagioia.net/">Dana Gioia</a> were in a class together in the seventies. I met <a href="http://www.pinkmochi.com/eriksrant/">Erik Keilholtz</a> in San Francisco once; he had given a lecture on Fra Angelico. Erik was friends with surrealist poet <a href="http://www.pinkmochi.com/eriksrant/archives/000806.html">Philip Lamantia</a>, who was friends with all the Beats.<br /><br />I wonder dreamily if I can connect myself to Virgil somehow. I did meet Cardinal Arinze once. He is hilarious. He also knows Pope Benedict, who knew John Paul II, who knew... and etc., etc. Every pope either knows the old pontiff or knows other cardinals who knew him. This is the easy part. Virgil, on the other hand, knew the Emperor Augustus. Is Constantine the first link between popes and emperors? I assume they weren't talking before the whole "In Hoc Signo Vinces" incident.<br /><br />But what I'd rather imagine is that Virgil used to get his breakfast sometimes in a <span style="font-style:italic;">thermopolium</span> near the Palatine Hill, and he had a bit of a crush on the cute guy who worked there, one Quintus Fabius, who later opened a new shop <span style="font-style:italic;">trans tiberim</span>, or as they now say, in Trastevere, where he made friends with a Jewish scribe, whose grandson briefly worked for the poet Statius... and so on for centuries... and the farmer from Bracciano, just north of Rome, met a girl from Gubbio, and they got married, and their son, who was studious, became a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome, and one of his students fought in the Second World War, survived, and took charge of Zubboli's Books in Assisi, and when I dropped in in 2007 and asked if he had any Vergilio, he said no, but we do have some Ovidio. And he smiled wryly through his white beard and sold me the Metamorfosi di Publio Ovidio Nasone. <br /><br />Who are you connected to?Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-72971344890956788282010-11-21T08:25:00.000-08:002010-11-21T09:24:51.735-08:00New Pavel Chichikov! new links!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWy6PF6eAhUyPS1W_ea_XT-A3dXn4vLcpf9HdNAZyg_dbhpuuoiZL_CJFt3NnpvccP3b9tlVZ2u_XmrXBzdLX597whvBiXxrsjquxihTvCAMKrXg_viYk71DLiEAMTnQwHEzOSgS_Z-rI/s1600/pavel.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWy6PF6eAhUyPS1W_ea_XT-A3dXn4vLcpf9HdNAZyg_dbhpuuoiZL_CJFt3NnpvccP3b9tlVZ2u_XmrXBzdLX597whvBiXxrsjquxihTvCAMKrXg_viYk71DLiEAMTnQwHEzOSgS_Z-rI/s320/pavel.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542040684156586642" /></a>A <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Here-Babylon-Poems-Pavel-Chichikov/dp/0967190126/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1289620404&sr=1-3">new book</a> from <a href="http://users.erols.com/fishhook/">Pavel</a>! Must get this now! <br /><br />I ran across Pavel's poetry when I was in high school, and I've been reading him ever since. If I ever get over my spider/moth phobia and make friends with the insect kingdom, it will be his doing.<br /><br />He also has a <a href="http://pavelreads.com/">podcast</a>. Maybe I should get me one of those.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I updated the links in my sidebar today. Are there any that you guys think I should add? This is your moment to agitate for your favorite arts-related blog!<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Optime valeatis.</span>Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-81795093269227772322010-11-20T10:16:00.000-08:002010-11-20T11:58:28.138-08:00lush new poetry in Dappled ThingsI just got the newest issue of <span style="font-style:italic;">Dappled Things</span> in the mail... it looks lovely, as always. Alas, the website has not been updated yet, so if you don't subscribe, you'll have to wait a bit. I am still gleeful that we have published the poems of one <a href="http://stephenmilne.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/hello-world/">Stephen Milne</a>. Perusing his website, I marvel at the way <span style="font-style:italic;">all</span> of his poems hit a certain baseline of interest and pleasure, a rare feat for a contemporary poet (or for any poet, really). I am tempted to wonder if this is because he is English, which seems like an embarrassingly retrograde thought... but maybe British poets haven't heard of the false dichotomy between anecdotes in colloquial language on the one hand and High Experimental Word Salad on the other. Or maybe it's just because he's <span style="font-style:italic;">good</span>. This is poetry in love with place, in love with visual detail, in love with history. It seems to take its cue from those crunchy, countryside-loving poets whose names begin with H: Hopkins, Heaney, Hughes, Hill. Check out <a href="http://www.bluspels.net/hopkins_at_bovey_tracey.htm">"Hopkins at Bovey Tracey"</a> for a taste.<br /><br />We are also publishing a nice essay by Robert T. Miller on teaching the <span style="font-style:italic;">Iliad</span>. Miller is a law professor at Villanova University and a friend of James Matthew Wilson, who wrote (and is still writing?) one of the most thoughtful critiques of contemporary poetry and criticism that you're likely to find: parts <a href="http://www.cprw.com/Wilson/colonnade1.htm">I</a>, <a href="http://www.cprw.com/Wilson/colonnade2.htm">II</a>, <a href="http://www.cprw.com/Wilson/colonnade3.htm">III</a>.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-15465506698185965952010-11-18T15:54:00.000-08:002010-11-18T16:09:50.039-08:00Poetry "Do"s and "Don't"sVerbal fashions which may or may not be real. Because I'm feeling silly.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-icvTPOLZJMho6QVAaxpgR4uOYybw_rU-rNByIQqefPplP7M0olpCFvi7_wjNJydRnFE2E4VAFPmzxE0lhg6ILj3K96Usyd2ijS-GTcFirZSiH6h8Hcid-0GSQCvRxauLXjNn8Xebw3w/s1600/poem+yesno.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 315px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-icvTPOLZJMho6QVAaxpgR4uOYybw_rU-rNByIQqefPplP7M0olpCFvi7_wjNJydRnFE2E4VAFPmzxE0lhg6ILj3K96Usyd2ijS-GTcFirZSiH6h8Hcid-0GSQCvRxauLXjNn8Xebw3w/s400/poem+yesno.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5541046272429143362" /></a>Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-3217131290966479382010-11-16T11:10:00.000-08:002010-11-16T11:18:57.433-08:00The Aeneid and ZombiesChaucer <a href="http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/2010/10/aeneid-and-zombyes.html">is back</a>! And he has thought up even more middle English horror novels for your entertainment:<br /><blockquote>In thys sequel to the moost-loved epique of classical tymes, the howlinge soule of Turnus gooth nat to helle but rathir infecteth the manye deade left from the horribel werres that the booke doth narrate. Zombie Pallas, Zombie Mezentius on hys Zombie horse Rhaebus, and Zombie stag-of-Tyrrus-that-Ascanius-accidentallye-killede, all lumber wyth muchel gore and litel speede Aeneas-toward. Aeneas hideth wyth the men of Troye in a shoppinge mall, in which he saith to them “Peraventure oon daye yt shall do us goode to thinke upon thes tymes,” and hys men saye to hym, “Peraventure oon daye ye shal get a newe lyne.” And then thei shal maken good battel ayeinst the Zombies, bewieldinge the many wepens that are redily founde yn an anciente Etruscan shoppinge malle. Many a zombie is slayne wyth a club of golf, a baseballe bat, or a smalle terracotta figuratyve sculpture. At the ende of the greate tournement ayeinst the undeade, Aeneas sheweth his hardinesse and knighthede by backinge ovir the last of the zombyes wyth a truck, commetinge upon which deede of chivalrie he saith: “Hic sunt lacrimae rearended!”</blockquote><br />More terrible macaronic puns await.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-13439257567662865132010-11-16T10:48:00.000-08:002010-11-16T11:01:16.716-08:00AE Stalling's "Anti-Muses"I was very sad indeed when this post disapeared from <span style="font-style:italic;">Harriet</span>, but I found it again on <a href="http://donshare.blogspot.com/2007/09/anti-muses.html"><span style="font-style:italic;">Squandermania</span></a> and decided to repost the whole thing here. Enjoy!<br /><blockquote>Like the Muses, they are attracted to talent and promising projects, and the presence of several at once probably means you are on to something big. Still, they can frustrate or even destroy the most inspired tender new poem, and send the poet into despair, alcoholism, or flash fiction. The more we know about them, the better.<br /><br />Their mother is <span style="font-style:italic;">Amnesia</span>, “Forgetfulness.”<br /><br />They are goddesses, 13 in number:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Typo</span><br />She who holds the alphabet under her terrifying mis-spell.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Blabē</span><br />The Anti-Muse of computer (typewriter, fountain pen, goose quill) malfunction<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Keno</span><br />The Anti-Muse charged with the terrifying void of the blank page. As her symbol is Zero, she also governs poetry royalty checks.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Krisis</span><br />The Anti-Muse of unsympathetic, snarky and condescending reviews. Yes, it is possible to dismiss an entire book of poetry on the grounds of capitalized lines.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tripsichorē</span><br />“She of two left feet.” If your rhythms clunk, your lines lurch, your sonnet does not scan, this Anti-Muse may well be to blame. Mind you, if everything you write goes da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, you may be under the sway of her equally evil twin, the jackbooted Metronomē.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Errato</span><br />Not to be confused with her half-sister, Erato. She is the (Anti-) Muse of false revision. Also, she whispers the name “Cortez” when you should be writing “Balboa”.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Anecdotē</span><br />She governs rejection slips and rigged book-publishing contests and all impediments, real and imagined, to publication. She also inspires poets to versify pointless incidents from their everyday lives.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Telephonē</span><br />Her name means “voice from afar,” thus “interruption”. Sometimes this Anti-Muse manifests herself as the shrill ringing of an annoying device. Sometimes it is a small child calling for a cookie from across the length of the house. Her seat of worship is Porlock.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pezo</span><br />She is the Anti-Muse of Prose disguised as Verse by Line-breaks.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chimaera</span><br />Represented with the head of a warthog, the body of a Slinky, the wings of a bat, and the tail of a beaver, she holds sway over all mixed and misbegotten metaphors.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Polyhohumnia</span><br />The Anti-Muse of verbiage, 1000 words that create no picture. She also governs graphomania in all its manifestations, and the related ekdotomania, the compulsion to publish a new book every year.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hyperbolē</span><br />The goddess of blurbs.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ann-Athema</span><br />A total lack of subject matter, thus a curse on confessional poets with nothing to confess. Suddenly the poet starts writing poems about sitting down at his desk with his leisurely morning coffee, looking out the window, and writing a poem ("Morning Coffee"). See also Anecdotē."<br /></blockquote>Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-21224408616654917082010-11-10T13:48:00.000-08:002010-11-10T13:56:49.492-08:00the poetry of old textbooks<span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">A First Latin Verse Book</span>, circa 1890. </span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">First Exercise</span> <br /><br />1. Rome was falling.<br /><br />2. Fire in the city.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Second Exercise</span> <br /><br />1. Vergilius, the poet, made most-beautiful songs.<br />2. The beautiful mother comes, the beautiful girl comes.<br />3. A bird comes, the messenger of light.<br />4. The horsemen come out of the wood.<br />5. The horsemen hurry through the waves.<br />6. The wind carries the swift ships.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Third Exercise</span> <br /><br />These-things remain to-us.<br />Buried bones.<br />The waves of the sea.<br />Lay-aside tears now.<br />Let others relate these-things.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Fourth Exercise </span><br /><br />The wind carries the swift ships over the waves of the sea.<br />The husband crosses the ocean: the wife returns to the city.<br />A year ripens the grapes on the sunny hills;<br />     A year carries the stars in fixed succession.<br />The wind carries the swift ships over the waves of the sea.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315050037751888231.post-37041489758425047962010-11-08T06:57:00.001-08:002010-11-08T07:54:26.575-08:00Name that Rhetorical Device! and some linksAs I look at my post on "Fern Hill" again, I see that I was trying to express how the word "sea" is contained in "easy" and "mercy," so that it seems to emerge of necessity. "easy...mercy...sea." Mer-sea. Ain't I clever! But I have been tallying up instances of this device for a while. Does anyone know if it has a name? Here are three examples:<br /><blockquote>Her earliest stars, earl-stars, stars principal, overbend us - Hopkins<br /><br />Omnipresence, equilibrium, brim. - Seamus Heaney<br /><br />egret, killdeer, bittern, tern. - Robert Hass</blockquote><br /><br />Interview with <a href="http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/v12n1/v12n1prose/stallingsinterview.php">AE Stallings</a>, and three <a href="http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/v12n1/v12n1poetry/stallingsthree.php">eery new poems</a>. <br /><br />I would really like to read what <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-15/opinion/shapiro.chile.mine.poets_1_miners-jorge-teillier-poets?_s=PM:OPINION">Victor Segovia wrote</a> when he was trapped in the mine.<br /><br />Coolest poet name <a href="http://maisonneuve.org/blog/2010/10/26/reviewing-interview-sonnet-labbe/">ever</a>. And she gives good review-writing advice.<br /><br />The <a href="http://poetryproject.org/featured-content/some-poems-from-recent-issues-of-6x6-vis-a-vis-a-poem-by-joe-ceravolo.html">new musicality</a>.<br /><br />If you haven't seen the ongoing poetry articles in the Atlantic Monthly, here is the series so far: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/10/the-righteous-skeptics-guide-to-reading-poetry/64824/">1</a>,<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/10/what-makes-a-poem-worth-reading/65215/">2</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/11/flarf-poetry-meme-surfs-with-kanye-west-and-the-lolcats/65543/">3</a>.<br /><br />And a little treat from <span style="font-style:italic;">My Mom the Style Icon</span>: a <a href="http://momstyleicons.blogspot.com/2010/05/and-winner-is.html">dress with an Alan Ginsberg poem on it</a>.Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02275790985990503744noreply@blogger.com6