Sweet!
The Untranslatable Words Database. This is relevant to my interests… since I think poems are essentially ways of translating the untranslatable. Diffident, roundabout, side-eyeing, complicated, inadvertent ways of translating.
I’m thinking these would be great writing prompts.
There is a word in Japanese that means missing something.
Go.
A debate on the qualities of Adrienne Rich’s poetry, and an even bigger debate on the nature of political poetry.
Ange Mlinko’s review of Adrienne Rich’s Later Poems is here.
And Carol Muske-Duke’s spirited defense of Rich is here.
I don’t totally disagree with Mlinko’s assessment of Rich’s poetry: it is cool, careful, intellectual. But it also cares intensely about women’s experience of the world. I was lucky to read Rich in college, and while I didn’t fall in love with her writing, I took away something perhaps more valuable: a sense of respect for women’s intellects. Rich was serious: she took her thoughts seriously and she opened up the possibility that I could take my thoughts seriously as well. I can’t overstate how important this was for me as a twenty-something-year-old woman.
Did I think Mlinko was trashing Rich? Not as much as Carol Muske-Dukes did. But Muske-Dukes gestures towards perhaps a bigger issue: what she sees as a particular style of writing poetry – “indeterminacy” or “playfulness,” manifesting as apolitical poetry.
It’s a debate that certainly resonates for me. Even as my admiration for women poets was cemented by Adrienne Rich and the anthology No More Masks, I was aware that my own poetry was hardly ever explicitly feminist in either subject or theme. As a college student, I wrote about rejected love, and depression, and family drama. My own assessment of my work was that it was all too inward, too minor. Those women poets who wrote to all women were my heroes; I felt I didn’t measure up.
Twenty years later, I think it’s time for me to stop feeling like a failure.* I mean, I’ve been a feminist for as long as I’ve had a coherent thought in my head; everything I write comes out of that viewpoint. Feminism means I get to take my thoughts seriously; but it also means I get to take my sensitivity and my ambivalence seriously.
I am thinking of two poems that found a home in a small literary magazine** this past year. Both were about the experience of being a teenage girl. Yes, I did the emotional work of writing about difficult memories. But I also did the intellectual work of making those fragments into poems – bringing to bear whatever skill I have to make them accessible, well-shaped, and true. These two kinds of work are both necessary to the creative endeavor; each is pointless without the other. And sometimes, finding ways to talk about the political turns out to be the same as finding ways to talk about the intensely personal.
*About this, anyway.
**Shameless promotion of a very nice journal.
(Actually, there’s only one way to look at neon mesh fingerless gloves. FABULOUS. Am I right?)
A little Onion humor from The Onion Book of Known Knowledge.
Poetry, literary form that would be much more effective if poets simply came out and clearly specified: (1) how they were feeling, (2) the potential sources of their emotional state, and (3) any ameliorative actions that should be taken, if necessary. By following these three guidelines rather than obscuring their point with abstract symbolism and airy metaphors, poets would not only be able to communicate their feelings more quickly and efficiently, they might also manage to feel a little better in the process; indeed the fact that poets avoid confronting their feelings directly might be the source of the problem.
For example, Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” would have been much more productive for her and her readers if she had stripped away all the imagery involving shoes and the Holocaust and simply written: “Hello, my father died when I was 8 and that has caused me a lot of psychological problems throughout my life. Also my husband, Ted Hughes, recently had an affair and we are now separated, so that has been a difficult thing for me, too.”
The Onion Encyclopedia on the father of American poetry:
Whitman, Walt (b. May 31, 1819 d. Mar. 26, 1892), 19th-century American poet whose poems evoked the great, benevolent spirit of America, a country that is and always has been incredibly tolerant and supportive of eccentric gay poets.
One more:
Suburb, levee put in place to prevent the unchecked spread of culture.
And lastly,
Quip, joke made by people who attended an Ivy League college.
– From The Onion Book of Known Knowledge, 183rd Imperial Edition (A Definitive Encyclopaedia of Existing Information in 27 Excruciating Volumes).
😀
In honor of National Poetry Month, I wanted to share some of my favorite poems – poems that have stuck with me for years, that I never get tired of re-reading. Some folks have works of religious or spiritual guidance; I have poems. How shall I live? is the question. All these poems answer: With as much kindness and wonder as you can.
I did a little research on the ethics of posting other people’s poems to one’s amateur poetry blog. Ahem. The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry states
an online resource (such as a blog or web site) may make examples of selected published poetry electronically available to the public, provided that the site also includes substantial additional cultural resources, including but not limited to critique or commentary, that contextualize or otherwise add value to the selections.
What I have to say about these poems is “I love this” and “This makes me happy” and “Smiley-face.” So in fairness, I don’t think I should reproduce them here; follow the links instead.
Mary Oliver – “Wild Geese”
Li-Young Lee’s “The Gift”.
Ted Kooser manages to be accessible and still a subtle, inventive, and original voice. And the guy just comes off as awesome in interviews. “After Years”
I’ve already talked about Tennyson’s work – “The Splendor Falls”
And a new favorite, Mark Strand’s “The Night, the Porch,” courtesy of Knopf’s Poetry Month emails.
This Octavio Paz poem was posted all over the walls of my college when Paz won the Nobel in 1990. I took one of the copies* and memorized the poem just through constantly reading it. And I can’t find it online anywhere in its intended format (aside: Internet, we need to talk about the impulse to center-align poems that shouldn’t be center-aligned. NOT OKAY.) So I’m breaking the rules because I think reading Paz is good for the soul. Thank you, Internet Diety of Obscure References (aka, Google Books).
*I hope that was kind of what you intended, anonymous Paz-sharing member of the administration.
Madrigal
Más transparente
que esa gota de agua
entre los dedos de la enredadera
mi pensamiento tiende un puente
de ti misma a ti misma
Mírate
más real que el cuerpo que habitas
fija en el centro de mi frente
Naciste para vivir en una isla.
English translation:
Madrigal
More transparent
than this water dropping
through the vine’s twined fingers
my thought stretches a bridge
from yourself to yourself
Look at you
more real than the body you inhabit
fixed at the center of my mind
You were born to live on an island
I love that Paz recognizes this quality of soul, of being “born to live on an island.” I’ve often felt that way. But really, the whole poem is just perfect – the spare image, the haiku-like turns, the surprising conclusion. This poem is a thing I have loved for over twenty years, which is pretty incredible.
Happy National Poetry Month, all. May you find many poems to love.
It was in my English textbook, tenth grade. We didn’t even cover it in class. I found it by skimming forward in the book, because I was bored. I don’t remember what I was supposed to be focusing on.
I only remember the feeling of transported joy. The poem seemed to me a perfect thing. It said something I had always wanted to say. It encompassed a feeling that I couldn’t really describe, but that I also looked for in the fantasy novels I was fond of. The feeling you get from the paintings of the Hudson River School. The idea that the world is full of the sublime – in its full meaning of “beautiful” but also frightening or awe-inspiring.
The Splendor Falls
The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugles; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Our echoes roll from soul to soul” – there in the middle of this fantastical lyric is this serious statement about us, the little humans who haven’t even appeared in the poem up till now. What a hopeful assertion – that the echoes of us “grow forever and forever.”
You approach the poem with a sense of dread and disappointment. The poem hates you, rightly, for underestimating it. You get a snack. Come back. The poem makes you tired. You try to take a nap. But you can’t really sleep. You read the first couple of lines again. You realize that it starts much too blandly; it needs to start where the action is. You look up a single interesting line in another failed poem and type it at the bottom of the page. You go back to the middle and type, “something about this friendship dynamic. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Stop trying to describe everything. Please change this title, it’s awful.”
You go back to the first line. Phrase it differently. You must continually crush the desire to write a book report or convince the reader of your point. You must give up the idea that you even know what the point is. You pick out the two or three most vivid images or feelings. They make you think of something else… something you’ve thought for a long time, something you’ve been afraid to say. Fear! The fear feels good. You can’t lecture your reader when you’re afraid. You follow the fear. Now a whole cascade of things is happening. Time kind of collapses.
Now the poem has a completely different shape; you’ve said some things that you really like. The danger is that now you’re kind of in love with the poem, but it’s infatuation rather than true love. So you have to resist looking at it for a while. When you finally have some distance, the cliches stand out like plastic bouquets in a field of blown grasses. Oh! I hate that I wrote those cliches! You delete them with a feeling of righteous, destructive glee.
It goes on like that: keep reading the poem over and over; skim over the good lines and keep fiddling with the weak parts. Sometimes you realize that what you thought were good lines were actually clever lines masquerading as good lines, so now you have something else to fix.
At some point, the poem is at its peak. Unfortunately, this is also a very fragile moment. Because now you have to stop working on it. If you keep re-writing it, it will start the return trip to banality. Also known as “work-shopping” a poem.
So that’s revising – which is another word for “writing,” which is another word for “re-creating.” It’s an adversarial process, but adversarial in the sense of Jacob wrestling with the angel.
Anne Carson is a delight, as always. Here’s the New York Times interview; her new book is Red Doc>. The bracket is part of the title.
Carson is the human equivalent of the Garfield Randomizer. She is to poetry what David Lynch is to film. And of course the band Sigur Ros had to somehow be involved.
Sample quote:
I made up ice bats, there is no such thing.
Well, there should be, Anne. There should be.
^Here’s what showed up when I image-googled “Red Doc.” The angle bracket is necessary. Which in itself sounds like an Anne Carson statement… Anne Carson is everywhere. And I am happy about it.
Here, have a weird photo while you read about difficult art…
As I was thinking about the idea of accessibility in poetry, I came across this. Harold Bloom breaking down the types of difficulty:
“Hart Crane is a difficult great poet, but very good, even great, poetry need not be overtly difficult. A. E. Housman is a clear instance, and there are many others. There are also difficult poets who at first look easy, but are not. Walt Whitman proclaims his accessibility, but his best poems are subtle, evasive, Hermetic, and call for a heightened awareness of the nuances of figuration.
Difficulty in great poetry can be of several, very different, kinds. Sustained allusiveness, as in the learned poetry of John Milton and Thomas Gray, demands a very high level of reader’s literacy. Cognitive originality, the particular mark of Shakespeare and of Emily Dickinson, requires enormous intellectual agility as the reader’s share. Personal mythmaking, as in William Blake and William Butler Yeats, at first can seem obscure, but the coherence of Blakean and Yeatsian myth yields to familiarity.
I think that poetry at its greatest – in Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Blake – has one broad and essential difficulty: it is the true mode for expanding our consciousness. This it accomplishes by what I have learned to call strangeness. Owen Barfield was one of several critics to bring forth strangeness as a poetic criterion. For him, as for Walter Pater before him, the Romantic added strangeness to beauty: Wallace Stevens, a part of this tradition, has a Paterian figure cry out: “And there I found myself more truly and more strange.” Barfield says: “It must be a strangeness of meaning“… ”
from “The Art of Reading Poetry” in The Best Poems of the English Language (emphasis Bloom’s)
I hope you’ll forgive me for relying on these quotes of Bloom’s and Keillor’s, but they do synopsize well, as two ends of the spectrum. And it’s not a coincidence that Bloom is writing from inside the academy whereas Keillor is a humorist, radio host and popular author.
Here’s the thing: I agree with both of them. I wonder what they would have to say to each other if they were in a room together. I would like it if they would both show up and have a great big intellectual throw-down in my comments section.
Until then, happy writing.
Here's poetry-advocate Garrison Keillor:
America is in hard times these days, the beloved country awash to the scuppers in expensive trash, gripped by persistent jitters, politics even more divorced from reality than usual, the levers of power firmly in the hands of a cadre of Christian pirates and bullies whose cynicsim is stunning, especially their perversion of the gospel of the Lord to blast the poor and the meek and subvert the tax system in favor of the rich, while public institutions are put into perpetual fiscal crisis, meanwhile newspapers dwindle in sad decline, journalism is lost in the whirlwind of amusement, and the hairy hand of the censor reaches out — what mustn't be lost, in the dank time, is the passion of young people for truth and justice and liberty — the spirit that has kept the American porch light lit through dark ages of history — and when this spirt is betrayed by the timid and the greedy and the naive, then we must depend on the poets. American poetry is the truest journalism we have. What your life can be, lived bravely and independently, you can discover in poetry.
People complain about the obscurity of poetry, especially if they're assigned to write about it, but actually poetry is rather straightforward compared to ordinary conversation with people you don't know well which tends to be jumpy repartee, crooked, coded, allusive to no effect, firmly repressed, locked up in irony, steadfastly refusing to share genuine experience — think of conversation at office parties or conversation between teenage children and parents, or between teenagers themselves, or between men, or between bitter spouses: rarely in ordinary conversation do people speak from the heart and mean what they say. How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart? It's there in poetry. Forget everything you ever read about poetry, it doesn't matter — poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. All that I wrote about it as a grad student I hereby recant and abjure — all that matters about poetry to me now is directness and clarity and truthfulness.
from Good Poems for Hard Times (emphasis mine)
Accessibility. It's either a dirty word or a delightful word, depending on your point of view (and perhaps your relation to academia). I've been kicking around the idea of accessibility, especially as it relates to why people avoid poetry.
I suspect that a vast swath of Americans come away from high school or college exposure to poetry both scarred and skittish. There's an idea that poetry is essentially coded, oblique, elusive, and snobbish. Self-referential to a fault. Requiring a Cliffs Notes. That it's only for insiders.
You know, that's sometimes a fair assessment. I can't blame anybody for avoiding those poems. I'm sometimes tempted to avoid them myself.
But meanwhile, there's a huge amount of poetry, past and present, that does consider its – if you will forgive the marketing term – its "target audience." Wonderful poetry, whose hoped-for audience is the average thoughtful reader.
Ted Kooser's "Selecting A Reader."
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.