Yearly Archives: 2019

106 posts

When Primitive Means Enduring

poetry

robin

In some ways we are as advanced and as sophisticated as we think we are, but in many ways we remain, as Jane Kenyon puts it, “primitives.” That is, we are as the human race always has been and always will be.

In literature, the definition of “classic” is debatable, but one point seems to meet with agreement: time is not of the essence. Because, if a written work is a classic, it will read as new 500 years from now as it does today.

Shakespeare may not have been aware of this, but readers since his death are. His work traded in basic human emotions, and with that “primitive” stroke, gave many of his plays the gift of immortality.

In her poem “The Blue Bowl,” Jane Kenyon keeps it simple. She buries her cat the old-fashioned way—no coffin, no insurance policy, no service with words of any sort. Just sand and gravel. And a blue bowl, like a sword or talisman buried beside a Viking warrior.

The Blue Bowl
by Jane Kenyon

Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole.
They fell with a hiss
and thud on his side,
on his long red fur, the white feathers
between his toes, and his
long, not to say aquiline, nose.

We stood and brushed each other off.
There are sorrows keener than these.

Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.

The death of a pet will not haunt you like the death of a family member or spouse, no. But it will stay with you for a few days, making that final simile spot-on.

But robins are brown-vested Buddhists living in the present, not sentimentalists paying homage. Not to cats and blue bowls.

The poem is written. Life goes on.

Defining Poetry? Good Luck.

poetry poetry criticism

In his essay, “Notes on Poetry and Philosophy,” Charles Simic takes a shot at defining poetry. It is a moving target, to say the least. One that zig-zags. But that hasn’t stopped the poets and the philosophers from trying. Let’s listen in on an excerpt from Simic’s essay:

“Poetry is not just ‘a verbal universe that looks inwardly on itself,’ as someone said. Neither is poetry merely a recreation of experience. ‘It was and it was not,’ is how the old storytellers used to begin their tales. It lies to tell the truth.

“Mallarmé thought there were two kinds of language: parole brute, which names things, and parole essentielle, which distances us from things. One serves representation and the other the allusive, fictive world of poetry. He’s wrong. It’s not that clear-cut. If anything, it’s both. Poetry is impure. I don’t think Heidegger understands this either.

“The poem is an attempt at self-recovery, self-recognition, self-remembering, the marvel of being again. That this happens at times, happens in poems in many different and contradictory ways, is as great a mystery as the mystery of being itself and cause for serious thought.”

So, there. Some homework for you. Define poetry by giving it some serious thought. And good luck to you, because you’re going to need it.

As the prophet Peggy Lee once put it: Ain’t we got fun?

General Stores, Specific Poems

poetry reading poetry

store

In this Big Brother day of hidden cameras and mics, social networks designed to data-mine and influence, and cautionary tales in a Key of Orwell, it seems quaint to talk about voices around us. You know, the type you hear with with your own ears. When in close proximity. The old-fashioned way.

Those voices are often a song, a precept those who listen more than they talk have appreciated since time immemorial. Sometimes you hear them in a small diner. Sometimes at the movies while waiting for coming attractions to attract. And sometimes at the general store, an institution still found in small New England towns.

If voices be songs then poetry is not far behind. In that sense, the quiet poet, going about his or her business by placing a bunch of bananas and a head of broccoli in a basket, serves as conductor who must later pull these musical strands together. Here’s how Jane Kenyon did it up in New Hampshire:

At the Store
by Jane Kenyon

Clumps of daffodils along the storefront
bend low this morning, late snow
pushing their bright heads down.
The flag snaps and tugs at the pole
beside the door.

The old freezer, full of Maine blueberries
and breaded scallops, mumbles along.
A box of fresh bananas on the floor,
luminous and exotic…
I take what I need from the narrow aisles.

Cousins arrive like themes and variations.
Ansel leans on the counter,
remembering other late spring snows,
the blue snow of ‘32:
Yes, it was, it was blue.
Forrest comes and goes quickly
with a length of stovepipe, telling
about the neighbors’ chimney fire.

The store is a bandstand. All our voices
sound from it, making the same motley
American music Ives heard;
this piece starting quietly,
with the repeated clink of a flagpole
pulley in the doorway of a country store.

Depending on the listener, this poem may sound antiquated or passing familiar. What’s sure is this: It in no way resembles pushing a cart through Target or, God save us, any big-box store with piped-in music (especially cloying in the Christmas season, which starts the day after Halloween).

No, you need the same type “bandstand” as could have been gathered round a generation or three ago. Small-town America. Mom & Pop stores. Small and independent businesses where the mega-stores won’t bother because, the zip-code Gods say, the money isn’t there.

So, if you’re collecting voices and cobbling together poetry, let that be a start. Go where the money isn’t and where the people are. Then listen. And write.

"At the Store" Jane Kenyon

The Canonization of Mr. Moose

poetry reading poetry

When it comes to God, there are a lot of “what if’s.”

Across the ages, people have wondered, “What if God is female?” and “What if God’s skin is black or brown?” and “What if God looks nothing like a human at all?”

In his poem “Adirondack Moosehead,” Jeffrey Harrison takes it to another level. After many a summer in an Adirondack cabin, he begins to wonder about the moosehead hanging over the great stone fireplace. In what ways could a moosehead, of all things, remind one of God?

Poetry-Writing Basic #1: Stare at anything — anything — long enough, and strange thoughts will begin to browse at the edge of your field. Let’s look at this particular narrator’s logic:

Adirondack Moosehead
by Jeffrey Harrison

The moose that once presided over games
of Monopoly and crazy eights,
that loomed above us, goofy and majestic,
into whose antlers we threw paper planes,
still hangs over the great stone fireplace
like the figurehead of a ship.

All these years he hasn’t flicked an eyelash
in response to anything we’ve done,
and in that way resembles God,
whom, as children, we imagined looking down
but didn’t know how to visualize. A moose
over the altar would have been

as good as anything—better than a cross—
staring down on us with kind dark eyes
that would have seemed, at least, to understand,
his antlers like gigantic upturned hands
ready to lift us off the ground—
or like enormous wings outspread for flight.

In stanza two, we see that the moosehead’s indifference to “anything we’ve done” first inspires the narrator’s comparison. Then he shifts to childhood, to a kid’s struggle to picture something so abstractly awe-inspiring as God looking down. The moosehead, then, provides a ready image riding (without legs) to the rescue: “staring down on us with kind dark eyes / that would have seemed, at least, to understand.”

And why not? The antlers look “like gigantic upturned hands / ready to lift us off the ground— / or like enormous wings outspread for flight.”

Look at something long enough—even a flea-infested moosehead—and certain Christian images (hands, wings) will begin to elbow their ways in. Like antlers. Like a glowing halo over his long-deceased head.

Bullwinkle would be proud.

"Adirondack Moosehead" Jeffrey Harrison

What Groundhog Day Means to Poets

blathering comma mine poetry

phil connors

When the movie Groundhog Day was released in 1993, it received mixed reviews. Since then, however, the film has been embraced by many as a dark-horse (woodchuck?) comedy with serious undertones.

It’s even been embraced by Buddhists, who see TV weatherman Phil Connors’s repeating day as a metaphor for reincarnation and striving to try, try, try again until you reach enlightenment.

But I come not to praise born again (and again, and again) weathermen, I come to show how Phil’s inability to escape February 2nd echoes the life of a poet.

How shall I compare thee to a winter’s day, then, one that starts with Sonny & Cher on a clock radio singing, “I’ve Got You, Babe” at 6 a.m.? Like so:

a poet writes every day
a poet wakes to see the same poems every day, and the more he tries to change them, the more stubborn they become against transformation
a poet calls on pick-a-Muse-any-Muse and gets Sonny & Cher (the 10th and 11th Muses) instead
a poet knows the drill because he’s been there before (note the hard hat)
a poet sends “finished” poems into the world
the world sends “unfinished” poems back to the poet
a poet recognizes each day as yet another “No Reply At All Day” from markets
a poet reads good poetry
a poet says of good poetry, “Looks easy. I can do that!”
a poet writes good “finished” poetry, sends it into the world, waits through months of “No Reply At All Days,” and receives “unfinished” poetry back from the world
without comment
a poet writes a line he considers brilliant only to stumble upon the same idea in a poem he’s never read before
until he reads it
and thinks, “Great minds think alike, you lousy thief!”
a poet builds “I Got You, Babe” habits:
like black coffee
like riffs upon riffs of background Bach
like byzantine marketing systems
a poet, realizing reader-fee markets won’t go away unless you boycott them, only sends work to non-fee markets (if he can still find them)
a poet, realizing poetry markets will dry up without resources, ponies up reading fees until he realizes he is a poetry market, too, drying up slowly
a poet rationalizes
every day
again
and again
and again
else he’s no poet
finally, and most importantly, a poet believes, with persistence, that his day will come
it’s called February 3rd
and when it comes, he will seize the day
as his own.

Time Passes, So Have a Drink!

poetry

Time passes. A theme for the ages. Put into poetry, however, one sees the poignant, or sad maybe, or pitiful maybe, or endearingly universal maybe truth of it all.

This is what one thinks upon reading Gavin Ewart’s tribute to the common man, who just wants more time to show up every day where everybody knows their name. A pub. A tavern. A bar. To drink away what they do not want to lose. Time.

In “Yorkshiremen in Pub Gardens,” Ewart uses end rhyme to measure time: ABABCC. There’s something about rhyme that brings us back to when we were kids “screaming for a teddy or a tinkling / musical box.” Mother Goose, you see. The Golden Age of Me. When time was not of the essence because, happily, we were immortal and had no need to forget with a draught that all is for naught:

Yorkshiremen in Pub Gardens
by Gavin Ewart

As they sit there, happily drinking,
their strokes, cancers and so forth are not in their minds.
Indeed, what earthly good would thinking
about the future (which is Death) do? Each summer finds
beer in their hands in big pint glasses.
And so their leisure passes.

Perhaps the older ones allow some inkling
into their thoughts. Being hauled, as a kid, upstairs to bed
screaming for a teddy or a tinkling
musical box, against their will. Each Joe or Fred
wants longer with the life and lasses
And so their time passes.

Second childhood: and ‘Come in, number eighty!’
shouts inexorably the man in charge of the boating pool.
When you’re called you must go, matey,
so don’t complain, keep it all calm and cool,
there’s masses of time yet, masses, masses…
And so their life passes.

Second childhood. A Shakespeare theme shaken in a snowglobe and settled into a new landscape of poetry. All the world’s a stage but also a pub populated with men glad for the entrances and ignoring the exits.

At least until they’ve downed another ale or three.

end rhyme "Yorkshiremen in Pub Gardens" Gavin Ewart

Opposition in the Poetry Classroom

poetry poetry prompts teaching poetry

Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine has an assignment for his students called “The Opposites Game.” He gives them a famous line of poetry and asks that they create a “new” poem by changing each word to its opposite.

As a teaching exercise, you can see how this could prove an interesting prompt for student creativity. Only, as is the case in the video below, sometimes the opposite of a word doesn’t surrender easily.

Will this prove a weak point in the assignment? Hardly. It’s the strength of the assignment, because it scatters student thoughts in multiple directions.

For instant, for his video example on youtube, Constantine chose an Emily Dickinson line and spread it out like so:

My
life
had
stood
a
loaded
gun

As you might guess, the exercise goes smoothly until the last word. What is the opposite of gun, after all? His students argue, divide, pledge allegiance to opposing words. And for Constantine, the story of “The Opposites Game” becomes a poem of sorts of its own.

As a teacher, you can show this film and stop before Constantine shares all of his students’ choices for antonyms. Turn the process over to your students and write their ideas on the board. Finally, play the remainder of the film to see how many matches you find.

After that? Easy. Create your own opposites games by simply scouring around the poetry books that surround you. Put a line on the board, especially one with a tricky word like Emily’s, and turn ’em loose. It’d be a great daily warm-up during a poetry unit. (Not that I sequester poetry into “units.” I prefer to pepper poems over the course of the year.)

Nota bene: Not a teacher? You know what they say to doctors: “Physician, heal thyself!” Meaning, as a writer, you can play the game yourself. (“Poet, create thyself!”)

It will not only have you reading good poetry, it will have you thinking of endless variations on a theme of opposition.

“How antithetical of me,” you’ll say afterwards. “I’m such a contrarian sometimes. And we’re not even talking politics here!”

That’s the refreshing part, isn’t it? Because the opposite of politics is….

Writing While Reading: A Healthy Habit

poetry reading poetry word choice writing

When I read poetry books, I often keep an open notebook beside me so I can copy down a few words or lines that teach me the craft of good poetry. It’s better than highlighting a book, because the act of handwriting gives the brain a better work-out than mere coloring.

Yes, the words are out of context, but this is a supplementary-type exercise. Make no mistake—I reread poems that speak to me many times over. But I also like the warm-up activity of just rereading a few wondrous words working wonderfully together.

What does that look like? As I just finished Jenny George’s The Dream of Reason, I’ll wrap up with my third and final post devoted to this book by sharing examples from her book—a few Jenny George gems. Even out of context they shine!

a small lie has flowered between them

Each day the same
scandal–this body.
These teeth and hands.

Briefly the trees hold the light in their arms.

then winter came
enclosed the lake in glass, and sealed
the dark cavern of our questions

The earth’s low vapors burning into light–
air shimmering with insects.

like the moon’s unlit side,
the side without grammar

the dark is full of purring moths

the bat…a leather change purse
moving across the floor boards

Another morning: raw sun on the snow
…the sun burning a white hole in the sky

I stuffed their ears with the wooly sound of sleep.

The fields are wrung dry
and laid out like a flag.

At night the stars fall from their Bethlehems…

Their hides growling and prehistoric,
fed on the rich darkness

The small stones of their hooves in the stony field

These tiny people, thoughts thrumming like mice.

A quick net of starlings
drops to the furrows.

My tooth was loose, a snag in the clam of my mouth

A jay made a hole in the air with its cry

In the sky a cloud goes on naming and unnaming itself.

Often it’s as simple as an unusual word pairing that works—the stuff good poetry is made of. Reading a journal of notes like this before writing your own poetry limbers the creative cranium nicely. You need to think of everyday things in unusual ways, after all. Or so it says in the job description of a poet.

Maybe the habit’s a foolish thing, a “hobgoblin” (forgive me, Mr. Emerson) of this little mind. But I like it. So there it is.

Happy Hump Day, friends!

Poetry in Strange Places (e.g. a Farm or Abattoir)

poetry poetry books

Last week, via her poetry column in the New York Times’ Magazine, Rita Dove introduced me to the poet Jenny George, who published The Dream of Reason (Copper Canyon Press) just last year.

Being the sort to pass along good news when I read it, I shared George’s poem “One-Way Gate” on these pages—a poignant piece about cattle being taken away for slaughter.

It’s unusual to come across a poet who writes the plight of farm animals raised to become a Quarter Pounder with Cheese at McDonald’s. When I got my hands on Jenny George’s collection a few days ago, I found many more on the theme of dignity for the common cow and pig.

Who speaks for them, after all? And who thinks of poetry as being a vehicle for their voices? Not this guy. Until now, that is.

To supplement last week’s poem, then, here are two more from The Dream of Reason:

“The Sleeping Pig”
by Jenny George

It is easy to love a pig in a nightgown.
See how he sleeps, white flannel
straining his neck at the neckhole.
His body swells and then deflates.
The gown is nothing to be ashamed of, only
the white clay of moonlight smeared
over his hulk, original clothing, the milk
of his loneliness. The flickering candle
of a dream moves his warty eyelids.
All sleeping things are children.

The “nightgown” is a bit confusing until you reach line six, where you realize it is “the white clay of moonlight / smeared over his hulk, original clothing, the milk / of his loneliness.” Then the image pays off. As does the final line, a truism that covers even pigs sleeping in lunar nightgowns.

From the farm we move to the abattoir, which for the small farmer is the farm itself. It’s a strange and still place for a poem. Let’s see how George negotiates the challenge:

“Ears”
by Jenny George

The pig is already dead.
It hangs from the ankle,
slumped as light
through a heavy curtain.
Draped onto the slab.
One ear folded like a lily
under the ample head,
pressed nearly in half,
silent origami.
The other ear,
large as a trumpet flower,
turned open as if to receive
the sound of a distant thing
approaching—
a train through fall fields,
an insect in forgotten rafters
droning its thin scarves of sound.
The one ear
bent shut, weighted
under the pig’s last greatness.
The other, supple horn,
listens outward, catches
the squeal of the gate hinge.

There are some lovely similes and metaphors here, especially ones related to the dead pig’s ears. And those “thin scarves of sound” — not only a nice metaphor, but a neat sound device!

Most impressive to me, however, is the final line, specifically the word choice of “squeal” — a word associated with pigs — for the sound of the gate’s hinge.

Simple, unassuming, powerful. What poetry does. And in the strangest places, too.

Put That Monkey Mind to Good Use!

poetry

Sometimes you set a purpose and then the world repurposes it. This is known as the Robert Burns effect: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” Translation: Shift happens.

Jon Loomis’s poem “At the Lake House” is a great example of shift happening. Note how stanza one starts innocently enough with a description of sound coming over the lake. The common chainsaw (vs. loon).

And our poet is ready to write, too, ancient Chinese-style, about nature, but then comes the monkey mind, here known as stanza two, where thoughts of the poet’s late father interrupt uninvited:

At the Lake House
by Jon Loomis

Wind and the sound of wind—
across the bay a chainsaw revs
and stalls. I’ve come here to write,

but instead I’ve been thinking
about my father, who, in his last year,
after his surgery, told my mother

he wasn’t sorry—that he’d cried
when the other woman left him,
that his time with her

had made him happier than anything
he’d ever done. And my mother,
who cooked and cleaned for him

all those years, cared for him
after his heart attack, could not
understand why he liked the other

woman more than her,
but he did. And she told me
that after he died she never went

to visit his grave—not once.
You think you know them,
these creatures robed

in your parents’ skins. Well,
you don’t. Any more than you know
what the pines want from the wind,

if the lake’s content with this pale
smear of sunset, if the loon calls
for its mate, or for another.

Sure, Loomis could have cut to the quick and started with those thoughts of his dad, making stanza two the new stanza one, but I rather like the way the course he chose better reflects life.

Of course that quick jump off the rails isn’t the only shift the poem offers. The big one comes closer to the end, where shifts tend to congregate. In stanza seven, the narrator says of parents: “You think you know them, / these creatures robed / in your parents’ skins.”

Ah. The pay-off. The bigger, more abstract picture providing dramatic rabbit punch to the smaller, more concrete play of distraught mother insulted by overly-frank, dying father. We adult children do have a tendency to feel a bit superior, don’t we, to act like we have our parents’ number to the point where we can parody their set and dated ways?

But, no, Loomis says, bringing us full circle to the lake he started with in stanza one. We know them no more than we “know / what the pines want from the wind.”

Humble pie and the strange ways of the world never tasted so good, did it? We even get the common loon in the finale, mocking my opening joke about common chainsaws. (And how prescient is that, I ask you?)

The moral of this poem is the common saying (related to chainsaws and loons) that my father often intoned: “Never assume. When you do, it makes an ass- of -u- and -me.”

And that includes assumptions about your parents, thank you. Their secrets are deep, plentiful, and more common than you think. Maybe someday your monkey mind will turn up a few. Be ready. Have pen in hand.