Yearly Archives: 2019

145 posts

When “Anti-Poems” Are the Solution

poetry

Having trouble writing a poem? Try writing an “anti-poem.”

One of my Christmas windfalls brought The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara to my door. So far I’ve only read the introduction by John Ashbery. In it, Ashbery details O’Hara’s penchant for writing whatever, whenever. Frank also had a habit of losing his poems. They were that slapdash.

By way of evidence, Ashbery quotes a few lines from various O’Hara poems. Given the body of evidence (read: a lot), it was easy to do. We see O’Hara writing stream of consciousness. O’Hara having fun. O’Hara not O’Caring.

This is the New York School of Poets, strongly influenced by French poets like Rimbaud and Surrealists like never sat around King Art’s Round Table (“Get real, Sir Real!”). Ashbery himself was a card-carrying member (or should I say, “non-card-carrying” member, as rules were made to be broken and schools were made to be skipped).

Which brings me to this piece of advice. If you’re feeling blocked as a poet and overwhelmed by the self-imposed pressure of writing something meaningful and artsy, go New York (“New York” = “rogue”). Write an anti-poem.

Anti-poems, by my definition (which is all that counts, because I am now in “anti-” mode, a.k.a. some sweet kind of superpower), are poems that just hatch out of your head like Athena’s breech birth from the dome of Daddy Zeus (heads or tails, m’lord?).

What does that look like? Think of your composition book or computer monitor after you’ve done a free write, then take a minute or three to gussy it up. The result might look like this 2005 poem from Ashbery:

 

“Composition”
by John Ashbery

We used to call it the boob tube,
but I guess they don’t use tubes anymore.
Whatever, it serves a small purpose after waking
and before falling asleep. Today’s news—
but is there such a thing as news,
or even oral history? Yes, when you want to go back
after a while and appraise the accumulation
of leaves, say in a sandbox.
The rest is rented depression,
available only in season
and the season is always next month,
a pure but troubled time.

That’s why I don’t go out much, though
staying at home never seemed much of an option.
And speaking of nutty concepts, surely “home”
is way up there on the list. I feel more certain about “now”
and “then,” because they are close to me,
like lovers, though apparently not in love with me,
as I am with them. I like to call to them,
and sometimes they reply, out of the deep business of some dream.

 

Quite conversational, wouldn’t you agree? As for form? It is to laugh. Philosophical? In its way. Talky? Some might call it “prattle poetry.”

All that said, the New York Poets weren’t writing garbage and their work certainly appeals to broad swaths of readers, even those who are not poetry sorts. And you must admit, “rented depression” is rather nice, as are the final lines of the poem, where “now” and “then” are pressed into personification service, dreamy as it may seem.

Still, I find easy-looking poems, whether they were easy to compose or not, to be great sources of inspiration, especially when you are trying too hard, because the fact is, trying too hard can wreck a poem before it puts its shoes on. And winging it by taking a walk barefoot can sometimes wind you with the oxygen of ideas. Something to feel good about. Something to mine and refine.

Then you can call it poetry from the (fill in your state or country here) School. For me, that’d be the “Massachusetts School of Poetry.”

See how easy? Take ownership and pride. Then make like Ashbery and O’Hara: Write like you don’t O’Cara.

“The Nothing That Is…”

poetry

snowman

I write a lot of nothing here, but let’s put it more kindly: I often write how the poet’s job is to find something in nothing. As poster boy, Will Shakespeare will do. He wrote a lot of nothing, too, one pie-sized portion of it called Much Ado About Nothing.

When you think about it, every successful poem is much ado about nothing. The reason the reader relates is simple: He or she says, “Hey! I know that nothing, too!”

Man, I hate to give credit to existential viewpoints, but there’s always the sneaking suspicion that the universe is nothing but chaos, that there are no reasons to this madness, that mankind is left with the thankless job of cobbling his own useless order and code of conduct out of life, despite the mess. OK, maybe because of the mess.

No one knew better than good old Wallace Stevens. His life was a perfect example. Each day, the click-click-click of those black wingtips as he walked down the hard, shining floors of his Hartford, Connecticut, insurance company, sat behind his large polished desk, and performed his orderly job by mapping out mankind’s measurable follies for profit.

And each night when he stepped back into the windy world outside our windows? Like the Yellow Brick Road, people. Somewhere between Munchkin Land and Oz. Anything goes, from talking scarecrows to flying monkeys, because life isn’t Kansas anymore—in fact, never was.

Instead, Stevens saw a big, sprawling, populated nothing that no amount of insurance could protect us from, and if you like scary oxymorons, you might just win yourself a brief little broom of happiness and call it “a poem.”

One of my favorite examples of “nothing” as poem disguised in the charcoal eyes and carrot nose of everyday life? Wallace Stevens “The Snowman,” a perfect frozen dinner for the time of year here in the Northern Hemisphere:

 

“The Snow Man”
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

 

Rereading it, you find a lot of nothings and nots, bare places and beholds. Harsh? Maybe. But, being ever the contrarian, I can rephrase it this way: What good is life if we don’t behold the stark truths around us? Between stone teeth and corncob pipe, the snowman would tell us: “Not much.”

So behold the nothingness today and make something of it. It’s all you’ve got to work with, and the sooner you accept that and put a smile on it, the sooner you’ll make sense of your world.

“Go on. Get on, girl.”

poetry poetry readings

This week’s New York Times Magazine poem, selected by Rita Dove, is “One-Way Gate” by Jenny George. I immediately liked the poem, but I cheered even more when I read the brief bio stating that “Jenny George is a poet whose debut collection, The Dream of Reason, was published last year by Copper Canyon Press.”

“Debut” and “Copper Canyon Press” in the same sentence? Very, meet impressive! That’s a top-of-the-line poetry publisher, so breaking through is worthy of all available kudos (“All kudos on deck!” as was once said).

Now back to the poem. As it is, like us, set in January (take a look out your window if you need any reminders), and as it features lines where the speaker looks one way while the cattle look another, one can’t help but think of Janus, the Roman god famous for being two-faced.

Sounds bad, but is he any different from the rest of us, looking both to the past and to the future, regretting on the one hand and hoping on the other? Just don’t tell the Buddhists with their “PRESENT” pennants, will you?

Reading this poem, one can see why Jenny George might catch an editor’s eye. For one, her topic is unique. For another, she has an interesting facility with words and the underlying thoughts that marry them.

For a taste, let’s read “One-Way Gate” together and then run back through the gate because, unlike the cattle, we can.

 

One-Way Gate
by Jenny George

I was moving the herd from the lower pasture
to the loading pen up by the road.
It was cold and their mouths steamed like torn bread.
The gate swung on its wheel, knocking at the herd
as they pushed through. They stomped
and pocked the freezing mud with their hooves.
This was January. I faced backward into the hard year.
The herd faced forward as the herd always does,
muscling through the lit pane of winter air.

It could have been any gate, any moment when things go
one way and not the other — an act of tenderness
or a small, cruel thing done with a pocketknife.
A child being born. Or the way we move
from sleeping to dreams, as a river flows uneasy under ice.

Of course, nothing can ever be returned to exactly.
In the pen the herd nosed the fence and I forked them hay.
A few dry snowflakes swirled the air. The truck would be there
in an hour. Hey, good girl. Go on. Get on, girl.

 

In S1, I just love the simile, “It was cold and their mouths steamed like torn bread.” It’s one of those “stops-me” similes. What the…? Torn bread? But wait, I kind of get it. There’s slant rhyme and there’s “slant simile” (and if there wasn’t, I just made it up, so now there is.)

Torn white bread! Maybe circa 19 Wonder-Bread-Three. Like steam “tearing loose” from the mouth in the winter air. Get it?

Then, at the end of the stanza, the herd is seen “muscling through the lit pane of winter air.” Not as high on the Wowzer Scale, but still very nice indeed.

S3, which follows the middle stanza’s more philosophical turn, brings us back to concrete details. It’s one of those deadpan, “life is just so banal, but…” finishes. Nothing spectacular or catchy,  instead going for effect through the sheer simplicity of moving dumb beasts that are juxtaposed to a one-way gate of fate. These poor beasts don’t know the quarter of it (or should I say, the “quarter pound with cheese” of it?).

All that banal stuff only heightens the impact of those parting words: “Hey, good girl. Go on. Get on, girl.” Alas, the time to “get on” comes for all of us, eventually.

Our truck will be waiting someday. As will a market in the sky….

Why “Kids These Days” Doesn’t Fly

poetry reading poetry

ice car

You’ve seen it before: adults shaking their heads saying, “Kids these days,” as if kids these days are any different from kids those days (pick a century, any century, in a country, any country).

No. The more we change, the more we stay the same. Isn’t that part of the definition of “classic,” a work that remains resilient and salient no matter how long ago it was written?

Exhibit A is Shakespeare comma William. No one reads his plays, scrunches their nose, and mutters, “People those days.”

Why? Because Shakespeare’s plays are undeniable classics, which tap into universal human traits that (listen for it!) do. not. change.

So, the next time you catch yourself thinking that the world is going to Hell in a hand basket (and where does this weird expression come from?), stop thinking so much. Please.

And the next time you hear someone complain about the so-called “millennials” or Generation X (Y, Z, it’s all one to Me), run interference, why don’t you, and remind them that it’s all the same song playing over and over again on the Cosmos’ spinning turntable: “Variations on a Key of Kid Commonalities.”

I was reminded of all this when I came across Thomas R. Moore’s poem about a bunch of teenagers who drive their Plymouth on a frozen lake winter nights, doing doughnuts and sliding around at high speeds.

Are they stupid? (Yes.) Are they just asking for it by tempting fate? (Yes.) Yet, in this case, they’re part of what is now fondly called “The Great Generation”— the one that lived through the years of World War II.

“The Plymouth on Ice”
by Thomas R. Moore

On frigid January nights we’d
take my ‘forty-eight Plymouth onto
the local reservoir, lights off
to dodge the cops, take turns

holding long manila lines in pairs
behind the car, cutting colossal
loops and swoons across
the crackly range of ice. Oh

god did we have fun! At ridges
and fissures we careened,
tumbled onto each other, the girls
yelping, splayed out on all fours,

and sometimes we heard groans
deep along the fracture lines as
we spun off in twos, to paw, clumsy,
under parkas, never thinking of

love’s falls nor how thin ice
would ease us into certain death.
No, death was never on our minds,
we were eighteen, caterwauling

under our own moon that
warded off the cops and
front-page stories of six kids
slipping under the fickle surface.

What Moore is tapping into here is not your garden-variety stupidity, however. It’s more stupidity’s lovingly-cherished second cousin twice removed: invincibility.

This theme begins with the final line of the fourth stanza: “… never thinking of / love’s falls nor how thin ice / would ease us into certain death.”

And why are these teenaged crazies not thinking? Simple. They hold in their hands not just a steering wheel or a “long manila line” but a magic talisman: youth. They’re invincible because they’re eighteen and because they’re caterwauling

under [their] own moon that
warded off the cops and
front-page stories of six kids
slipping under the fickle surface.

This is how it goes and goes, from time immemorial. Youth gets its own moons, ones that ward off the law, front pages of newspapers, and that fickle dude known as Dr. Death.

Remember those days? Of course. Because kids these days are just like the kids you knew in your day. Questionable at best, but laughing through life’s lottery as if their numbers will never come up.

As Hemingway put it on the last page of The Sun Also Rises: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Well, if you’ve made it far enough to write a poem about it, yes.

Poetry Myth or Truth? You’d Be Surprised.

blathering comma mine humor marketing poetry poetry

  • Myth or Truth? Buying a poetry collection in the Kindle version may save you money, but it’s just not the same experience as reading the poems in book form.

Truth: Based on wide-ranging experience (once), I found that trying to read poems on an electronic device was an antiseptic experience at best, one which took from the overall aesthetic pleasure of reading poetry. Worst still, some of the formatting was wonky. Imagine writing a poem that uses white space and stanzas in a unique way, only to see it eviscerated by the indignity of ether.

  • Myth or Truth? The translation of a poetry collection you choose is everything.

Truth: Some purists go so far as to say you should never read poetry in translation. For the real experience, it must be read in its native language. To me, that’s going too far. Imagine the poets we would miss if we were that inflexible. That said, the difference between translations of the same work is often immense, and researching “the best translation of such-and-such work” online is of little help because it is so subjective. It’s better to know thyself. Do you prefer translations that are loyal to the exact word, or to figures of speech? Catching the flavor, the connotations, and the syntax is no small feat, and boy does it affect your reading of a work.

  • Myth or Truth? Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice” rule can not only make you the next William, but the next Carlos Williams.

Myth: There is practice and there is practice. Do we all agree on a definition to the word? And do we all set egg timers each time we sit to write? And really, if a dogwood practices being a dog for 10,000 hours, is it going to become man’s best friend? All bark and no bite, I’m afraid. Pretty flowers in the spring, though.

  • It is possible there is an undiscovered William Carlos Williams out there who has submitted poetry for 10,000 hours and come up empty-handed, at least as far as the big-bopper markets go.

Truth: Talent will not always out. Like translations, it is subjective, and unknown names are like salmon leaping whitewater upstream. Busy editors can be drowned by the din of the river—the river of established names.

  • Myth or Truth? When someone buys a Kindle version of your book and it leaps to the Top 100 in Poetry slash American slash Contemporary, you feel like the company you keep (read: Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, and a bevy of female Instagram poets-of-the-moment).

Truth: Seriously. You had to give this some thought?

  • Myth or Truth? It is more difficult to read a poetry collection cover-to-cover than it is to read a novel cover-to-cover.

Myth: After a few experiences and whether or not I did it chronologically or chrono-illogically, I’ve learned that reading entire poetry collections is not “more difficult,” it is just “different.” Sometimes parents call the unique child in their brood a “difficult” child. That is a rather selfish job of labeling, reflecting more on the parent than the child.

  • Myth or Truth? Deciding how to spend a Christmas gift certificate to either Barnes or Noble is an inexact science because sometimes you order books that you will never read.

Truth: Whims, they’re called. Or, channeling Ken Kesey: Sometimes a Great Notion. Some books look damn interesting in theory and then, once they find a home on your shelves,  “nest,” happily remaining there because you can find no reason to disturb them. “Who was that person who ordered these things way back when?” you wind up asking yourself, as if your book ordering is done by a doppelgänger. Still—pretty spines, don’t you think?

  • Myth or Truth? Myth or Truth columns are random and unable to conclusively determine whether something is a myth or a truth.

Truth. No, Myth! No… Ah, just enjoy the ride, why don’t you.