What Is Poetry? / Closing comments

This was the question asked of our English class... the following paper is both my final project and an attempt at an answer (how's that for alliteration?). Take it for what it's worth - and feel free to let me know how your definition of poetry is similar or different after perusing mine!

In other news...

Keeping a blog for this class has been really interesting, and as this is likely one of my final posts I want to reflect a bit on the experience. Overall, I really like this approach to submitting and presenting projects: it's much more in line with the new internet-based direction that education/higher learning is headed, and seemed quite appropriate for a class that was all about "making it new!" I also enjoyed commenting on others' blogs, and look forward to reading through my classmates' projects in the coming days. It's been fun, guys.

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“Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.“

~Muriel Rukeyser

           

What is poetry? This seemingly straightforward question has been a point of contention among writers, critics, and readers throughout the history of written language. The Oxford English Dictionary contains over eleven definitions of the term “poetry,” including in one of its entries the phrase “…[an] arrangement of language in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm…” (OED Online).  However, this definition only begins to scratch the surface.  Poetry is a slippery beast - at times, such as in Lyn Hejinian’s My Life collection, it wishes to be appreciated and experienced without over-analysis; in other instances, such as T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” it almost dares the reader to comprehend (or even identify) its obscure, frequent literary and cultural references. Additionally, modern poetry circles continue to challenge the traditional boundaries of the art form by publishing increasingly abstract and nonsensical works (Komunyaaka 11). How does one come up with “rules and regulations” for a topic that has been evolving since its inception? Such a task is likely hopeless. That being said, what follows are my best attempts to define the enigma that is poetry.

Poetry is an act of creation, an attempt to express an intangible emotion or experience through the spoken or written word. This creation can happen either in the singular or plural: an author can attempt to create a work without support, or can intentionally link a poem’s relevance, importance, and meaning to the input and interpretation of other people. At its core, though, poetry is ultimately about expression. In its very existence, its essence as an art form, it is grounded in a desire to articulate something of importance and share it with the world.

A central argument when discussing what defines poetry is whether or not it should be accessible to the reader on a literal level. To some extent, I agree with Yusef Komunyaaka’s thoughts in his introduction to the The Best American Poetry 2003 anthology on “over-experimentation muddling the text” of a poem. It is entirely possible for language in a poem to be distorted to the point where its meaning is lost on readers (Komunyaaka 17). In fact, this is perhaps one of the most common criticisms raised against the writings of modern/postmodern poets: is poetry significant if its content cannot be appreciated or understood by others? For example, parts of G.C. Waldrep’s Disclamor are certainly a challenge to analyze or make any literal sense of. Consider the opening lines of his poem “Semble:”

                                    “With all vigor of the saints.

                        In an upper story.

            A fine grain against the wrist like gold stubble.

                                                                        Is one way we defined time,

then.  In that cluster of hive-like houses.

     In the corridor of sprung beeves.

And were not ashamed,

            or not like that, not in the same way…” (75)

Waldrep clearly relates much of the importance of this poem to form - the actual content of this work is scattered at best, and when critically analyzed comes off as random and nonsensical. This leaves its physical layout on the page as one of the only angles from which it can be approached. However, Komunyaaka argues that this type of poetry may actually be destructive and that poetry in which the significance rests on form instead of content is “an attempt to undermine the significance of recent history” (15).  Such a declaration places him in the school of thought that a poem’s words should mean something. He believes a poem’s contribution to the world should be related to its content and cohesion, not solely structure.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, poets such as Lyn Hejinian feel poems can exist that “create nothing, that represent nothing,” because, she argues, this “nothing” is simply an emotion or thing beyond our capacity as humans to comprehend (13). Her statements, although tempting to accept as undeniably true, present something of a logical fallacy. How can one prove something has been created if the very definition of the created item states that its existence cannot be verified? This argument is not meant to dismiss Hejinian’s overall thoughts on poetry; on the contrary, I find much truth in her statements that poetry is not a “static art form,” that it is in constant interaction with its audience (12). However, the point still remains that poems cannot easily interact with readers when they simply come across as disjointed sentences, as was my experience when reading the opening lines of “The coffee / drinkers answered / ecstatically” from Hejinian’s My Life:

“The traffic drones, where / drones is a noun. Whereas / the cheerful pessimist / suits himself in a bad / world, which is however / the inevitable world, im- / possible of improvement. / I close one eye, always the / left, when looking out onto the glare of the street. / What education finally serves us, if at all. There is a / pause, a rose, something on paper. The small green / shadows make the red jump out. That is not a tele- / scope, nor do I have stars in my belly”       (“My Life” 74).

Another main point that Komunyaaka and Hejinian may disagree on is whether or not poetry can be created as an isolated unit. Hejinian’s mentality toward poems is grounded in the concept of reciprocal exchange forming the basis of a poem’s significance. This is achieved through interaction between the poet and readers of the poet’s work, between poems themselves (as alluded to in her introduction to The Best American Poetry 2004), or in some combination of these two approaches (13).

Komunyaaka, on the other hand, believes that a poem should be able to stand on its own without interaction. He seems to think a poem should say something concrete, that a poem’s author should play the main role in determining the poem’s content and significance. This does not mean the readers themselves are helpless; instead, they are invited to share the experience or emotion the author has begun to lay out for them. This belief is perhaps most evident in his explicit affirmation of Carolyn Forchè’s Against Forgetting anthology (Komunyaaka 13). The collection contains an incredibly diverse array of poems that run the gamut from concrete to abstract, but according to Forchè share a common theme of witnessing to unspeakable events and presenting this witness is in some way to the reader (Forchè 33). A fascinating example can be seen in the prose poem “Falling-Out Old Ladies” by Danill Kharms, one of the Soviet poets featured in the collection:

“Because of her excessive curiosity, an old lady fell out of the window and smashed into the ground.

Another old lady looked out of the window, staring down at the one who was smashed, but out of her excessive curiosity she also fell out of the window and smashed into the ground.

Then the third old lady fell out of the window, then a fourth did, then a fifth.

When the sixth old lady fell out of the window, I got bored watching them and went to Maltsev market where, they say, someone gave a woven shawl to a blind man” (Gibian 7).

Kharms lived in a brutal and repressive environment that was marked by nonsensical violence, and his work functions as poetry of witness by demonstrating an Absurdist response to the death and horrific events that were ever-present in his life.

 Perhaps the common ground all these editors and poets share is the opinion that poetry must contribute something of value to its audience. This contribution can take many forms: a poem can arouse strong emotions in a reader, it can educate them on a neglected social or political issue, or it may simply make them think about a topic in a new way. However, poetry at its most visceral is about the interchange of ideas. When artistic minds use creative language to make things happen, sharing feelings, experiences, and emotions with others, an exchange known as poetry is most definitely occurring. Is this process vague and intangible, indefinable even? Perhaps. However, it is clear that poetry is a powerful medium that will continue to function as a force in our world, and as put so beautifully by Robert Penn Warren, it remains “...a light by which we may see - and what we see is life.”

Works Cited

Gibian, George, ed. The Man with the Black Coat: Russia's Literature of the Absurd - Selected Works of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. Trans. George Gibian. Evanston, IL:  Northwestern UP, 1987. Print.

Hejinian, Lyn. Introduction. Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2004. Scribner, 2004. 9-14. Print.

Hejinian, Lyn. My Life. København: Green Integer, 2002. Print.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best American   Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.

"poetry, n.". OED Online. March 2011. Oxford University Press. 14 April 2011.

Waldrep, George Calvin. Disclamor. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2007.

Favorites from "My Life"

I just read an inspiring post over on Maddie Ruth's blog "Puzzling over Pound,"and it made me want to revisit Hejinian's "My Life" a bit. I'm still not sure what I really think of the book from a critical standpoint... the idea of analyzing it as a book of poetry in the normal sense is just as daunting as ever, and so instead I just want to share some of my favorite sentences/quotations from the book's "poems." If they seem like they shouldn't logically follow each other or connect in any way, don't be too alarmed - they don't make much sense to me when they're read in the context of the book either :) Enjoy!

Some good lines from "My Life:"(with corresponding page numbers)

"That single telephone is only one hair on the brontosaurus" (103)
"McDonalds is the world's largest purchaser of beef eyeballs" (75)
 "Patriots drive larger cars" (120)
"Potato a fat walnut, the potato with checkered grit, by potato I mean low sunshine" (143)
"Duck eggs taste 'eggier'" (62)
"A real living centaur trotted across Dante's brain and Dante saw him do it" (88)
"Water cannot be a mirror, nor any more like a mirror than the skin of the forehead" (31)
"The refrigerator makes a sound I can't spell" (50)

(untitled)

What is it about music that makes us feel?
Bring on the rhythm

and let it hit my soul, in that visceral way

that brings out something in me

I didn’t even realize existed until this moment

but now I NEED it, and not only that:

I need more and more of it

and more is never enough for long because

it all starts to make sense when you get that feeling.

It’s that release we feel

that has kept this artform alive forever

that has made people love, hate, create, destroy,

that inspires children to bang on pots and pans

that can bring tears of laughter or of joy.

That’s the thing about music:

You don’t just love it. You live it.

-Daniel Driver

"A Capella" poetry project

Here are some poems that I wrote after reading the "A Capella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry" anthology. They're inspired by some poetry-writing exercises made by Ann Hostetler (the editor of the collection / our professor), and were penned as part of an assignment given right before Goshen College's spring break this year. During that week off, I spent a few relaxing days in Onekama, Michigan, and the calm and snowy landscape made for a great creative environment!

"A Capella project"

(“poem with a line by ----.”)

Poem with a line by Jeff Gundy (from his piece “Where I Grew Up”)

Summer was always the best; summer nights, if we’re talking specifics.

I ran and ran through the city’s alleys,

found secret passageways to closed-off county parks.

tasted my first alcohol - the bitter-yet-sweet wine

burning, then slowly warming my flesh and limbs

in the eerie and silent light of a full moon in August.

No parents, no clothing, no rules.

It didn’t matter what tomorrow would bring

because it was 3 a.m. in the middle of summer and we were all young,

only a little afraid of God and the police.

(poem about music)

Praise Song

Sitting in the new, individualized

seats of the rebuilt sanctuary where

the fresh paint smell still hasn’t faded

I look up to the pulpit and see the words to a

song projected onto the wall, no notes written

Because “we can get them from the guitar.”

The microphones amplify simple harmonies

made up on the spot because anything sounds good

when all these songs are comprised of the same three chords.

I feel nothing

In this music.

Where is the old red book?

The blue hymnal with its four

lines of comfort and memories?

The songs of my youth have died

and now we have a hands-free style of

worship, so now we can clap clap clap along

awkward as only us Mennonites can be when

Modern culture replaces history and heritage.

(“father figure” poem)

My father’s hands

We’re in the kitchen of our first house

and it’s a good night for some homemade pizza.

Kneading the soft dough with his hands,

Dad makes it look far, far too easy.

Naturally, he’s an expert at it; those same hands

are the ones I’ve watched too many times to count

as they’ve taken an unformed lump of clay

and brought it to life - A bowl. A mug. A platter. A teapot.

He’d work for hours in the white garage,

his hands firmly anchored to his potter’s wheel.

Or behind the wheel: this time changing the brakes or the oil on the car

because “Why pay the mechanic’s labor

rate for something we can do ourselves?”

He devotes dozens of hours to that old Kawasaki

We found in a garage, rusty and dead. I couldn’t afford one that worked.

“It’ll run like a dream once we get the pistons free - I can just tell,” he said.

He was right. Those hands brought it roaring to life.

Or fixing up our house: building new rooms, sanding and varnishing

And showing me how to paint a ceiling,

clean a carburetor, gut a fish,

Even though I know in the back of my mind

my hands won’t ever be able to do it the way his can:

with the deftness of a craftsman, finesse of a surgeon.

Or taking the bottle of Super Glue down from the top shelf

to seal shut the huge cracks on his fingers

that all the lotion in the world can never seem to heal.

My hands, too, get calloused and dry sometimes,

and it makes me proud yet sad in a way I can’t explain.

What does a man who lived a life of hands-on

expect from a son who thinks in medicine and molecules?

Mark Strand’s The Continuous Life: In With the New, Not Truly Out With the Old?

Mark Strand’s The Continuous Life (1990) was a significant work in many regards. Not only was it published in the same year he became Poet Laureate of the United States, it was also the first book of poetry Strand had written in ten years, since Selected Poems (1980).  Strand said in the late 1970s that he “didn’t like what [he] was writing” and “didn’t believe in [his] autobiographical poems” (“Mark Strand: The Poetry Foundation”). As a result, he departed from poetry after Selected Poems and spent the 1980s writing short stories and prose, critiques of art, and even several children’s books. In this regard, The Continuous Life was not only a reflection of Strand’s time off, but perhaps more importantly a potential opportunity to reinvent himself as a poet and author.

            At first glance, The Continuous Life offers quite a lot in the way of poetic diversity, including several types of literature: short poems, longer and less formally structured works, and multi-part narrative pieces that blur the lines between poetry and prose.  However, although Strand shows much variety of form, style, and subject matter in the book, he also continues to draw from many of the same themes and literary devices that his poetry was known for. In this way, the book is not so much a reinvention of himself as a poet as much as a demonstration of how he is developing and broadening his range as an author. Furthermore, the book is not only a return to the world of poetry, but a work in which Strand simultaneously embraces his writing style and pushes the boundaries of how contemporary poetry can and should be defined.

            One way Strand shows new methods of poetic expression is demonstrated in the short lyric poem Luminism. The poem is presented in a modern, first-person lyric style with no perceptible rhyme scheme and minimal meter, and written out almost matter-of-factly, a single stanza with line breaks that seem to aim mainly for continuity. However, this simple presentation is in marked contrast with the poem itself, as Strand writes with a nuanced and chosen language of aesthetic beauty and emotion that clearly marks the piece as poetry versus a simple retelling of a past event.

Throughout the poem, Strand displays remarkable conciseness in his descriptions and word choice. With his combination of his focus on the sunset’s brevity and his laconic writing, he perfectly reflects Ezra Pound’s ideas from the 1918 essay “A Retrospect” and “A Few Don’ts” of what an image in poetry should be - an “intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” free of superfluous words and phrases (“A Retrospect…”, 2011).  Luminism describes a memorable sunset that the author experiences with some friends in the city one evening and in doing so captures a beautiful moment in time, using the metaphor of a “golden fire” for the sun’s all-encompassing rays. The poem seems to focus on overall aesthetics and light in its descriptions and content, and reflects the essence of Luminism: an American landscape painting style of the 1870s, centered on the often sublime effects of light in landscapes. Strand seems to be using ekphrasis in this poem: he is translating a visual painting style into a verbal medium and maintaining his poetry’s stylistic trademarks while doing so (Merriam Webster, 2011). Luminism’s initial description of the sunset is one great example of Strand’s ability to be concise and beautiful at the same time:

 “Sunlight / Flooded the valley floor and blazed on the town’s / Westward facing windows. The streets shimmered like rivers, / And trees, bushes, and clouds were caught in the spill, / And nothing was spared…”  

Through this beautiful metaphor of sunlight as a flood, Strand urges us to pay attention and give due importance and respect to the brief fragments of beauty and power in our lives, no matter how fleeting or minute they seem. In this poem, Strand continues to use the concise and vivid language that his poetry is famous for. However, at the same time its focus on light and aesthetic beauty challenges his reputation as an author of poems with traditionally darker themes (“Mark Strand: The Poetry Foundation”). Additionally, this poem is an ekphrasic foray into translating the Luminist style of painting to the literary form of a poem. Luminism is an opportunity for Strand to try out new poetic devices, and while doing so he simultaneously explores a new function of contemporary poetry.

The prose poem Travel exemplifies another type of literature featured in The Continuous Life: the narrative. The work is utterly devoid of any rhyme or line breaks, and is written almost as a soliloquy. It might be a man’s entry into a diary, or perhaps simply a glimpse into his thoughts as he reflects on the past. In the piece, the speaker ruminates on a past lover, trying to match old memories of her with the cities in which they occurred. “When she kissed me, when she took off her clothes and begged me to take off mine, we might have been in Prague,” he muses. However, he has a very difficult time squaring things away in his mind, lamenting that “there was nothing to remind me of where I was” and later realizing that he “can’t be sure. So much has happened. So many days have lost their luster.” Perhaps the most powerful part of the poem is its abrupt ending, where it becomes clear that the speaker, still traveling, is saddened by his past: “None of the old merriment is here, none of the flash and vigor, none of the pain that kept sending me elsewhere.” The physical form and style of this prose poem may be different from many of The Continuous Life’s other poems, but its subject matter is well-trodden ground: loss, longing, and regret play their well-established roles as central emotions.

Orpheus Alone is another example of Strand combining classic themes with a new approach to presenting lyric poetry.  This work is the first of the longer, less structured poems in the volume, and appears after four shorter poems that focus on themes of loss and longing. In it, he maintains the thematic elements of the collection’s previous poems while introducing some of the new elements the book begins to explore.

The poem’s title is a reference to the story of the Greek mythological character Orpheus, who famously failed to recover his wife Eurydice from Hades and the Underworld. The piece itself is a hypothetical foray into Orpheus’ creative process and psyche after his failed expedition. In this presentation, Strand envisions an epilogue to the Orpheus myth. He tells of Orpheus writing three great poems and describes the content of these poems, as well as providing insight to the unique creative processes and emotions that drive the creation of each one. This is accomplished by describing in chronological order the fictitious poems that Orpheus writes.

First, Orpheus’ original poem is described - a poem that focuses on the physical beauty of Eurydice and his anguish over losing her. Orpheus dwells on “Her forehead where golden light of evening spread…” and dreams that his words can bring back the lover he so desperately misses.  Strand’s description of this poem is presented in a single, impressive sentence; it is more than 15 lines long, and his use of fragmented, detailed images effectively wrap the reader in the whirlwind of painful emotion that is engulfing Orpheus.

Next, the creative process surrounding his second poem is detailed. Orpheus writes this poem spontaneously - he has wandered aimlessly around the countryside in an attempt to forget Eurydice and recreate his world without her, and the poem comes forth with “…such speech of newness that the world [is] swayed…” In this second poem, Orpheus is trying to cast aside his feelings of loss instead of embracing them: he writes the poem in an effort to shake from his head “The image of love and put in its place the world / As he wished it would be…” However, Strand downplays this second poem’s importance, commenting that this second great poem is one that “…no one recalls anymore”.  By devaluing this second poem, Strand is telling us that denial is not the way to cope with these feelings. Instead, he presents a method for dealing with loss by introducing the creation of Orpheus’ third poem, which is described as the greatest of the three.

Interestingly, the content of this third poem is not mentioned at all; instead, Strand describes only the emotions accompanying the formation of the work, and does so with the incredible vividness that has often been an element of his poetry writing, according to critic Jay Parini ("Mark Strand's Life and Career"). The third poem, Strand says, comes out as a physical extension of a world “Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift, / So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope / Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.” In an interview, Strand describes the poem as “giving loss a contour or a form that makes the actual experience of loss bearable” ("Poetry Archive").  Orpheus Alone puts a new spin on Strand’s poetic theme of loss with the introduction of a hope for dealing with that loss.

The themes present across Luminism, Travel, and Orpheus Alone demonstrate that this volume should be looked at as more than a simple opportunity for Strand to expand his writing style. Yes, Strand chooses to try out a diverse array of poetic forms in this collection of works, but he also has clearly not abandoned the themes and content matter that his poetic career is known for, maintaining elements of loss, regret, powerful imagery, and a mastery of concise language. As such, The Continuous Life is just what its title claims: a continuation of Mark Strand’s life and career in which he embraces his past and current style while striving to move onward and explore new emotions and forms in his poetry.

Works Cited

Aaron, Jonathan. "Mark Strand's Life and Career." The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-

            Century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

            1994.  As excerpted on Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois. 1994.

            <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/strand/life.htm>.

“Ekphrasis.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2011. Merriam-Webster Online.           Web. 4 Mar 2011.

“Luminism.”Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2011. Merriam-Webster Online.

Web. 29 Jan 2011.

"Mark Strand." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Gale Biography In     Context. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.

<http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow ?displayGroupName=Reference&prodId=BIC1&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CH1000095816&mode=view&userGroupName=inspire&jsid=b40b90ce289ad04dca1b80cc108a62d7>.

"Mark Strand: The Poetry Foundation.” The Poetry Foundation: Find Poems and Poets.  

            Discover Poetry. Web. 5 Feb. 2011. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ 

            mark-strand>.

"Mark Strand – Poets.org." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.    <http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/102>.

"Orpheus Alone by Mark Strand - Poetry Archive." Poetry Archive. Web. 11 Feb. 2011.   <http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=9549>.

Parini, Jay. "Mark Strand." The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in

            English. Ed. Ian Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.  As

            excerpted on Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois. 1994. Web.

6 Feb. 2011. <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/strand/life.htm>.

Pound, Ezra. ““A Retrospect” and “A Few Don’ts.”” The Poetry Foundation : Find

            Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.

<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poetics-essay.html?id=237886>.

Concept or construction?

(Fair warning: those "sporadic ramblings" I allude to in the blog header? Here they come.)

The other day in English class, we got into some pretty heated discussions about the function of poetry and how its very essence is being defined and re-defined by different literary circles/groups/college English classes. This overarching question (what constitutes poetry? what makes it "good" or respectable or legitimate?, etc) was brought on in part, I believe, by trying to analyze some postmodern poetry using "classical poetry analysis" techniques and the frustrations some of us felt when trying to approach the works of someone like GC Waldrep or Lyn Hejinian, whose poems clearly defy many of the constructs or definitions of more traditional poetry.

Long story short, it got me thinking about postmodernism in other art forms (specifically painting) and a study I remember stumbling across in which critics were unable to differentiate between works by artists like Rothko and Pollock, and works created by 5-year-olds. I brought this point up in class, and received a response along the lines of "Well, maybe the significance of the paintings of these modern artists has to do with the artist's conceptual context of the work... the deeper ideas that influenced these works of art are what make them important..." Can this be implying that the physical painting is secondary to the artist's explanation of the ideas or concepts influencing the creation of the work?  It makes me wonder: is there a point where the importance of the creation process eclipses the significance of the physical, literal work of art (be it painting, sculpture, poem) itself? Furthermore, have postmodern writers like Hejinian already reached or surpassed that point?

I know that when I first approached Hejinian's My Life, I did so before doing background research on the concepts she has become known for. Without any context of the ideas behind her creative method, I had a terribly difficult time making heads or tails of the book's poems... and I still don't have concrete answers to any of the musings contained in this post, but here's something worth noting: the book's inaccessibility and the questions it raises are really making me think. That simple fact, in and of itself, might be enough for me to value My Life as a meaningful contribution to the world of literature (and as a work of art in a broader context). For now, though, the jury's still out on this one...

One of my favorite Mark Rothko paintings: "Yellow and Gold" (1956)

N+7: Langston Hughes' "A Dream Deferred"

Just for fun, here's a poem by Langston Hughes to which I have loosely applied the "N+7" technique, a style of poetry reimagination invented by members of the French writer's group OULIPO. You can read more about the group (and this specific poetic exercise) here.
 

Dreck Deferred: a loosely constructed N+7

by Langston Hughes (and Daniel Driver)

What happens to dreck deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a Rajkot in a superalloy?

Or fester like a sorority--
And then run?

Does it stink like a rotten mechanic?
Or crust and suicide over--
like a syrupy swelter?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy loan shark.

Or does it explode?

Candlemas, Vermont

link to the Google Book of G.C. Waldrep's Disclamor - poem appears in full (page 24)

"Candlemas, Vermont" is a short piece that appears in the first portion of G.C. Waldrep's Disclamor (2007), a collection of postmodern poetry our class has been discussing. The first thing I'm struck by in this piece is its form: more specifically, its relative lack of form in comparison to many of the other poems featured in the volume (notably the "battery poems"). After reading so many pieces in this book where the physical imagery of the poem is an integral, if not essential, element of the work, "Candlemas" is a refreshing change of pace. It is written almost conversationally, and flows effortlessly from start to finish, strikingly different from the suddenness and severity present in such Disclamor poems as "Bergson's Arrow" or "Nihil Obstat." In the piece, the author seems to be remembering a past event or memory, possibly with an old (or current) love interest. He details their walk through a path of pine needles and unexpected discovery of a patch of Indian pipe corpse plant.

In its reminiscent nature, and also in its narrative-like form, "Candlemas, Vermont" reminds me a lot of "Travel," a piece from Mark Strand's The Continuous Life (1990).  It's worth noting that Candlemas, Vermont seems to be a fictional place (at least from what I can gather with the assistance of Google). In this regard I tend to approach the piece as an amalgamation of fiction and reality - there are certainly parts of the poem that I don't read as literal (such as its location) but there are also scenes that are so strikingly detailed and described, such as the speaker's description of the corpse plants, that they suggest very real experiences.

My favorite theme from the poem is also an exact quote contained within: "... the prospect of finding that for which one had not known one was searching..." This theme of unexpected discovery is one that I've experienced firsthand while reading through Disclamor, as I am beginning to realize in a new way the importance a poem's layout/physical structure can have on its overall meaning or effect on the reader. This, perhaps, has been Disclamor's greatest effect on me: it has begun to show me how form is one of the most effective methods contemporary poets can use in their writing to "make poetry new!" as my teacher so often says.

G.C. Waldrep and "Battery Smith-Guthrie"

"Battery Smith-Guthrie" (link to Google Book; the poem can be read in its entirety in the preview)

I just finished reading the better part of G.C. Waldrep's Disclamor, and I gotta be honest, it's a little intimidating to try and approach it with a critical eye. This collection of postmodern poetry, published in 2007, is loosely focused around a series of 9 "battery" poems, written by Waldrep on-location while visiting military batteries along the coast of California. I was assigned the piece "Battery Smith-Guthrie" to look at for my English class, but it's my first time attempting to review anything even vaguely postmodern - so bear with me...

The poem begins with references to the Miwok, a group of Native Americans indigenous to Northern California. The culture of the Miwok is similar to that of many other Native American in regards to its focus on mythology: animal and human spirits are the basis for their religion, and in the poem a story featuring Coyote, the Miwok ancestor and creator God, is intertwined with segments of Waldrep's own poetry and samplings of graffiti present on the battery itself.

I really like the way Waldrep draws attention to the power of images in "Battery Smith-Guthrie." In the second stanza, he says "The purpose of images / is to attract other images..." and later states "Like attracts like. "One" is never large enough, nor "two."." This is followed with a stanza demonstrating his claims in action: the verbal images of graffiti on the battery, written in all caps in the context of the poem, have grown over time, attracting others' additions. This presentation of the montage of verbal imagery as graffiti on the batteries is a theme evident in all the poems in this cycle: for me, it's Waldrep's way of demonstrating the power of words and images and how they in turn can attract the images of others.

Waldrep also shows the power that physical images of words can have in the actual form of his poetry: many of the collection's poems use a non-traditional layout, and I find this to be a very important aspect of them as pieces of artwork and literature. My friend John over at The Poetry Party hits on this with a little pseudo-scientific experiment on removal/editing of form in a "battery" poem, and I find that taking away Waldrep's spacings and line breaks somehow detracts from the actual pieces (albeit in a way that I can't really make tangible or fully describe if asked to). Maybe that fact, in and of itself, proves my point about the form's importance: it defies logical (analytical) explanation, and is a testament to the visceral power images can have.

“Orpheus Alone”: Continuing to Explore Themes of Loss and Longing in Mark Strand’s The Continuous Life

"Orpheus Alone" on the Poetry Foundation website 

“Orpheus Alone”: Continuing to Explore Themes of Loss and Longing in Mark Strand’s The Continuous Life

            “Orpheus Alone” is the fifth poem in Mark Strand’s book of poetry The Continuous Life (1990). Not only was it published the same year as his designation as Poet Laureate of the United States, it was also the first book of poetry Strand had written in ten years, since his 1980 book Selected Poems. During the 1980s, Strand seemed dissatisfied with himself and his work, saying about this period that he “didn’t like what [he] was writing” and “didn’t believe in [his] autobiographical poems” (“Mark Strand: The Poetry Foundation”). As a result, he departed from poetry and spent his time writing short stories and prose, critiques of art, and even several children’s books. In this regard, The Continuous Life was not only a reflection of Strand’s time off, but perhaps more importantly a potential opportunity to reinvent himself as a poet and author.

            The Continuous Life is made up of several types of literature: short poems, longer and less “rigid” works, and multi-part narrative pieces that blur the lines between poetry and prose. “Orpheus Alone” appears as the first of the longer, less structured poems in the volume, and comes after four poems that focus on themes of loss and longing. Its title is a reference to the story of the Greek mythological character Orpheus, who famously failed to recover his wife Eurydice from Hades and the Underworld. The poem itself is a hypothetical foray into Orpheus’ creative process and psyche after his failed expedition. In this way, Strand envisions an epilogue to the Orpheus myth. He tells of Orpheus writing three great poems and describes the content of these poems, as well as providing insight to the unique creative processes and emotions that drive the creation of each poem.

            The poem, being the first longer work of The Continuous Life, gives Strand a chance to focus on the themes of longing, loss, and beauty that are present in the rest of the book. He uses “Orpheus Alone” for precisely this, doing so by describing in chronological order the fictitious poems that Orpheus writes. First, Orpheus’ original poem is described - a poem that focuses on the physical beauty of Eurydice and his anguish over losing her. Orpheus dwells on “Her forehead where golden light of evening spread…” and dreams that his words can bring back the images of his lover that he so desperately misses.  Strand’s description of this poem is presented in a single, impressive sentence; it is more than 15 lines long, and his use of incredibly long sentences and fragmented, detailed images effectively wrap the reader in the whirlwind of painful emotion that is engulfing Orpheus.

Next, the creative process surrounding his second poem is detailed. Orpheus writes this poem spontaneously - he has wandered aimlessly around the countryside in an attempt to forget Eurydice and recreate his world without her, and the poem comes forth with “…such speech of newness that the world [is] swayed…” However, Strand downplays this second poem’s importance, commenting that this second great poem is one that “…no one recalls anymore.” Perhaps Strand does this because the poem is written from a place of denial. Orpheus is trying to cast aside his feelings of loss instead of embracing them, and by devaluing the second poem Strand is telling us that denial is not the way to cope with these feelings. Instead, he presents a method for dealing with loss by introducing the creation of Orpheus’ third poem, which is described as the greatest of the three.

Interestingly, the content of this third poem is not mentioned at all; instead, Strand describes only the emotions accompanying the formation of the work. He does so with an incredible vividness that has often been an element of his poetry writing, according to critic Jay Parini ("Mark Strand's Life and Career"). The third poem, Strand says, comes out as a physical extension of a world “Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift, / So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope / Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.”  From language such as this, it is abundantly clear that Strand is choosing to use “Orpheus Alone” to further the same themes of loss and confusion that he alludes to in the first four poems of his book. In an interview, Strand describes the poem as “giving loss a contour or a form that makes the actual experience of loss bearable” ("Poetry Archive"). However, the poem does not give explicit answers for dealing with loss; instead, it tells us what not to do. We should not try to hide our dark feelings, Strand is saying. Death, loss, and the inevitable aftereffects accompanying these experiences are meant to be expressed! “Orpheus Alone” shows us the power that such expression can have, and by describing this power in Orpheus’ story, Strand encourages us as readers to further explore with him the themes of loss and longing – two of the overarching themes upon which The Continuous Life focuses.

Works Cited

"Mark Strand: The Poetry Foundation.” The Poetry Foundation: Find Poems and Poets.  

            Discover Poetry. Web. 5 Feb. 2011. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ 

            mark-strand>.

"Orpheus Alone by Mark Strand - Poetry Archive." Poetry Archive. Web. 11 Feb. 2011. <http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=9549>.

Parini, Jay. "Mark Strand's Life and Career." Modern American Poetry, University of         Illinois.  1994. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.              <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/strand/life.htm>

Mark Strand and The Continuous Life: A Biography

Mark Strand and The Continuous Life: A Biography

            Mark Strand’s writing is highly regarded by critics and fans alike, as evidenced by his many awards and distinctions, which include the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for the collection Blizzard of One and his appointment as Poet Laureate of the United States in 1990. Over the last 40 years, Strand has written both poetry and prose, and has also served as editor and translator for various poetry collections (Mark Strand). He has also taught at many prestigious American universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins, and is currently working at at Columbia University in New York City as Professor of English and Comparative Literature (“Mark Strand –Poets.org”).

Strand is considered by many literary critics to be among the most influential and prominent of contemporary American poets. Born on April 11, 1934, in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada, Strand grew up in he United States and lived in many different American cities due to the nature of his father’s profession as a salesman (“Mark Strand”). In his adolescence, Strand was very interested in painting. He had aspirations of becoming a professional artist, studying painting at Yale and receiving a B.F.A. in 1959. He also earned his B.A. at Antioch College in 1957, but around this time his interests shifted, and he began to concentrate instead on poetry. Following his graduation from college, he spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar studying 19^th century Italian poetry, and subsequently earned a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa (“Mark Strand: The Poetry Foundation”).

Since the completion of his formal education, Strand has been an active American poet, publishing over 15 collections of original works between 1964 and the present. His work is known for its elements of absence, and he often wrote in his early years on darker themes such as death and evoked feelings of general uneasiness (“Mark Strand –Poets.org”). The speakers in his poems are frequently in a state of unrest, and struggle with self-identity and the meaning of their place in the world. There is a sense of “apprehension and foreboding” in Strand’s earlier work, according to Thomas McClanahan, and this sense has continued somewhat throughout his writing career. However, his later works have grown to embrace and affirm life and are somewhat broader in their scope of emotions (“Mark Strand”). Strand’s poetry is also recognized as having frequent elements of surrealism: many of his poems, especially his more recent work, are set in dreams or use dream-like imagery. Finally, Strand is often noted for his use of precise and vivid language, writing with a clarity that has been described as “reminiscent of the paintings of Edward Hopper” (Parini, "Mark Strand's Life and Career").

Strand’s 1990 work The Continuous Life, published the same year Strand was named Poet Laureate, marked his return to poetry after a ten-year break, as he spent the 1980’s concentrating on short stories and books for children (“Mark Strand: The Poetry Foundation”). The collection does indeed reflect an increase in Strand’s diversity, with a wide scope of subjects and themes and the inclusion of more humor, as well as several longer narrative works that are more prose than poetry (Aaron, "Mark Strand's Life and Career"). It also demonstrates Strand’s overall development as an author, and notable reviewers’ comments on the book were overwhelmingly positive, praising a new depth and breadth in Strand’s writing. Perhaps Michael Dirda put it most bluntly in his review of the collection: "These are terrific poems. Mark Strand's not the poet laureate for nothing" (“Mark Strand”).

Bibliography of Mark Strand’s Published Poetry Books

    * Sleeping with One Eye Open. New York: Stone Wall Press, 1964.

    * Reasons for Moving: Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1968.

    * Darker: Poems, including "The New Poetry Handbook”. New York: Atheneum,                         1970.

    * The Story of Our Lives. New York: Atheneum, 1973.

    * The Sargentville Notebook. Providence: Burning Deck, 1973.

    * Elegy for My Father. Vancouver: Windhover, 1978.

    * The Late Hour. New York: Atheneum, 1978.

    * Selected Poems, including "Keeping Things Whole". New York: Atheneum, 1980.

    * The Continuous Life. New York: Knopf, 1990.

    * Selected Poems. New York: Knopf, 1990.

    * The Monument. New York: Ecco Press, 1991.

    * Dark Harbor: A Poem, long poem divided into 55 sections. New York: Knopf, 1993.

    * Blizzard of One: Poems. New York: Knopf, 1998.

    * Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More, with illustrations by the author. New York:

Turtle Point Press, 1999.

    * Man and Camel. New York: Knopf, 2006.

    * New Selected Poems. New York: Knopf, 2007.

Works Cited

Aaron, Jonathan. "Mark Strand's Life and Career." Modern American Poetry, University of           Illinois. 1995. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.            <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/strand/life.htm>.

"Mark Strand." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Gale Biography In     Context. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.

<http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow ?displayGroupName=Reference&prodId=BIC1&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CH1000095816&mode=view&userGroupName=inspire&jsid=b40b90ce289ad04dca1b80cc108a62d7>.

"Mark Strand: The Poetry Foundation.” The Poetry Foundation: Find Poems and Poets.  

            Discover Poetry. Web. 5 Feb. 2011. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ 

            mark-strand>.

"Mark Strand – Poets.org." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.    <http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/102>.

Parini, Jay. "Mark Strand's Life and Career." Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois.        1994. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.        

<http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/strand/life.htm>.

Respecting the Image: Elements of Modernism in Mark Strand’s Luminism

Respecting the Image: Elements of Modernism in Mark Strand’s Luminism

In a traditional sense, luminism refers to an American landscape painting style of the 1870’s, focusing on the (often sublime) effects of light in landscapes (Merriam Webster, 2011). This definition is clearly reflected in Mark Strand’s poem Luminism, as a good portion of the work reads like a textual representation of a Luminist painting, expressing the beauty and spirituality of light in nature. The poem is presented in a modern, free-verse style, with no perceptible rhyme scheme. It is written out almost matter-of-factly, a single stanza with line breaks that seem to aim mainly for uniform length of line and continuity. However, this simple presentation is in marked contrast with the poem itself, as Strand writes with a nuanced and chosen language with elements of modernism that clearly marks the piece as poetry versus a simple retelling of a past event.

Throughout the poem, Strand displays a conciseness in his descriptions and word choice. In the combination of his focus on the sunset’s brevity and his laconic writing, he perfectly reflects Ezra Pound’s ideas of what an image in poetry should be - an “intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” free of superfluous words and phrases.

The piece describes a memorable sunset that the author experiences with some friends in the city one evening. The poem focuses on describes his reaction to its fleeting nature and an accompanying mysterious “cry” whose meaning is left to the reader to ascertain. In his description of a sunset, Strand captures a beautiful moment in time, using the metaphor of a “golden fire” for the sun’s all-encompassing rays. He draws specific attention to the juxtaposition between the sunset’s brevity and its importance. Even though the moment of the sunset was brief, it has lasting effects in his mind, as he compares its power to a kind of sharp, recurring dream. We’ve all experienced this well-known phenomenon: that same powerful dream you have over and over, its details more clear each time you suddenly wake up from it.

His friend Philip’s cryptic commentary on the sunset midway through the poem is also striking: this moment, this segment of the sunset they experience, is just “… one in an / Infinite series of hands…” says Philip, clearly in awe of the instant. The metaphor of hands as the sun’s rays may conjure up a religious image for some: God is reaching down to Earth in this sunset, bathing all of creation in His divine light. However, there is no overt mention of religion in the poem, and overall the work itself does not have decidedly religious tones. Rather, it seems to focus on overall aesthetics, especially the representation of light, and a mysterious contrast between the moment of sunset and what happens soon after this event.

Strand does not come back to the sunset in the latter portion of the poem; instead, he finishes with commentary on an unnamed cry that rises up and begs to be explained by saying “…I had no idea what it [this cry?] meant until now.”  Many questions rise from this final musing. Do any of us know what this cry means?  Is this cry joyous or melancholy? This portion is such a departure from the earlier section that it’s hard to know what to make of it. What purpose does this final contrasting passage serve? Perhaps by focusing on the subtlety of the cry, the cry that came “so lightly [the poem’s subjects] might live out [their] lives and not know” its effect, Strand is simply asking us to heed its importance. It’s very hard to hear, but is something that has the potential to “touch us as nothing else would.”

Through his verbal portrait of a sunset, Strand urges us to pay attention to and give due importance and respect to the brief fragments of beauty and power in our lives, no matter how fleeting or minute they seem. In doing so, we may eventually come to an individual understanding of the significance of these events, much like the realization the speaker comes to at the end of the poem. Similarly, modernism’s focus on effectively distilling and encapsulating images is demonstrated by Strand in his use of concise metaphors and bold yet simple statements and observations.

Works Cited

"luminism." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2011. Merriam-Webster Online.            29 Jan 2011 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker>.

Individual Poet Project: Intro

Over the past month or so, our class has been working on a variety of poetry-themed projects. One of these was the Individual Poet Project, in which each of us as students selected a contemporary American poet and basically immersed ourselves in his/her life and work, focusing specifically on one (non-compilation/"selected works"-type) book by that author.
The project evolved in its details as we progressed, and ended up consisting of four papers:
1. An analysis of a shorter poem from the selected volume of poetry
2. A biography of our chosen author.
3. Another poem analysis, this time focusing on the poem relates to the overall book and its themes.
4. A final, more detailed review of the volume.

To fulfill the details of this assignment, I'll be posting slightly revised versions of all four papers on this blog for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Poets Against The War

The poem I chose from the “Poets Against the War” database is by Jean Gerard, and is titled “Chasing a Grain of Rice”. What strikes me most about the poem is how it doesn’t focus on anything war-related for almost the entire poem, retelling and describing the night’s events with an almost factual tone, but reminds us in the final stanza that war is continually in the back of peoples’ minds. In this poem, it is manifested as a woman mindfully eating the last grain of rice in her dinner bowl. Is this because she knows there may be a time in the near future when there will be none? The end of this poem brings up many questions, but particularly strikes me because it gives such a vivid snapshot of someone’s daily life and the often unseen psychological effects war can have, in the “little things” and ways it can interrupt parts of everyday life for so many people. 

Some misguided ramblings about poems of self-inquiry...

(From an assigned discussion forum comparing Countee Cullen's "Heritage" and T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.")

For me, the most immediately noticeable literary element that these two poems share is their use of repetition and questions. Cullen’s poem has the obvious italicized section that is repeated, and he also asks questions, both within the italics (What is Africa to me?, most notably) and in several other places. Eliot repeats the phrases “how should I presume?” and “do I dare?” among others, and also asks many questions. Additionally, these two both display a very scattered, almost disjointed style, changing focus and subject within their poems with amazing abruptness. Eliot goes from talking about dining utensils to perfume to eating a peach to trousers to mermaids etc…. In much the same way, Cullen goes from the human body to jungle animals to Christianity. Also, I find their presentation similar in regards to intended audience. I could imagine both of these poems as silently formed in the speakers’ heads: it could even be argued that they’re not necessarily intended to be presented to an audience.

Also, just for what it’s worth, I want note that the concept of comparing these two poems side by side is not a new one: I actually found an analysis of the Cullen poem by critic David Kirby in which he calls Heritage a “black version of Waste Land.” But asking which poem feels more “American?” That feels like a copout to me… Cullen’s poem literally refers to Africa, but is American to me in its composition. I find it difficult to quantify the tone I get from Heritage, but it kind of feels like a young, modern African-American is searching for his roots and contemplating his place in the world through the text. Eliot’s poem also features a narrator who doubts himself and is searching his mind for some answers, but it doesn’t necessarily strike me as more “American” or “modern” than Heritage. 

Langston Hughes and the "New Jazz"

(Written in response to Langston Hughes' famous essay The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain):

Hughes' essay on "The Racial Mountain" was very eye-opening to me. I'll admit - I wasn't sold at first on his claim that saying "I want to be a poet - not a Negro poet" meant in essence "I want to be white;" however, as he defended this stance I became more and more convinced of the truth of his statement. Hughes was in essence saying that by conforming, black artists face quite a mountain, and I do tend to agree with him. Particularly striking was his commentary on music: he says in the essay that he often tries to embrace jazz in his writings - but is jazz the "inherent expression of Negro life in America" that he claims it is? Perhaps at that point in history (the mid-20's) it was... and I couldn't help but wonder if that statement could apply to certain sub-genres of rap/hip-hop being the expressive outlet of today's black culture? Artists like Mos Def, Talib Kweli, The Roots, Nas, Common, etc. say many poignant things and provide what (for me anyways)  is amazing and sometimes genius social commentary, offering critiques and reflections on black life in modern America. So yeah, I'd argue that hip-hop (in this way that Hughes was referring to it, at least) is the new jazz, actually!
Here's an example for you all: pay close attention to some of his lyrics...

Mos Def - Mathematics (with lyrics)

Thoughts on a 9/11 poem

Adam Zagajewski (bio), a Polish poet, had the poem "Try to praise the mutilated world" published on the back page of The New Yorker immediately following the September 11 attacks. Here's a journal entry I wrote in response:

Adam Zagajewki’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” is a 9/11-themed poem that I really connect with. When reflecting on it, the aspect that stands out to me and speaks to me the most is the simplicity he uses when framing the world. His imagery evokes memories of beauty and good from my own life, and I get an overwhelming sense of calm after reading the poem. Yes, he seems to be saying, the world has been broken. It has been mutilated. However, for all this bad, there is equal good. In fact, he may be saying there is MORE good than bad. I think it’s incredibly significant that he talks about the “gentle light” and ends the poem by saying that it “strays and vanishes / and returns”. Light is so often used metaphorically in religion, and for me it really gives the poem an almost spiritual feel. Yes, the light always returns – in spite of the difficult events we all live through, the unspeakable atrocities and horrors that we can’t even comprehend in our own sheltered lives. This is a declaration of the triumph of the light: it will always be present! What does the poem say to me? That there is good in this world, there is beauty, there is light; and if nothing else, it is worth remembering that this light, although it sometimes seems impossibly far away, always returns.

Also, I think it's a "declaration" in the sense that i don't sense ambivalence on his part; rather, it seems like absolute wisdom from one who's lived through the bad and seen the good. The poem doesn't ask questions - instead it makes a declaratory case for its point of view.

Introit

Hello and greetings to everyone out there in cyberspace! For my Modern and Contemporary Poetry class, I've started a blog that will serve as a place to organize some of my responses to various topics, discussions, and questions that I've been assigned to ponder. Whether you're along for the ride in a mandatory context (i.e. as a classmate of mine), or are just browsing this blog out of sheer boredom, I invite you to join me in reflecting on some exciting poetry - and to chime in whenever you get the urge.