The Poetry Cosmos

[ejp626]

Well, we have most of the other arts covered, so why not some love for poetry -- distinguishing it a bit from the What are you reading thread.

Through a confluence of forces, I have been inspired to write poetry again. The trigger was seeing Charles Simic give a reading in Chicago, but in the background I have wanted to be more creative and not simply be a consumer of culture (prodded by the creative types here I assume). I had two major creative periods: a 3 year sustained period during college (when I also kept journals like you wouldn't believe) and then the year after I got my Masters in English. I was involved in poetry workshops (even in grad school) but for some reason the second time around, my writing was definitely better after the workshops had ended. Anyway, at the Simic reading, I picked up some fliers for local magazines that were looking for poetry, so I brushed off a few and sent them in, but more importantly I have written a few new poems. Hard to tell if they will stand the test of time, but perhaps.

I will refrain from posting my work for the time being (though some were published in zines and small magazines, so I wasn't a poet just in my own head). I thought I would list some of the poets I've really liked and try to sort them into categories.

Probably the genre that interests me the most are poets writing on urban themes. Here are some I like:

Paul Blackburn (really underrated in my opinion)

Frank O'Hara (while a bit overexposed some of his pieces are wonderful)

Ted Berrigan

Weldon Kees

L.E. Sissman (I think this is the one I am thinking of)

Gwendolyn Brooks

Audre Lorde

Charles Reznikoff

I also like poets that use strong imagery and/or surrealist techniques. Here I would group:

Anne Sexton

Sylvia Plath

Charles Simic

Faye Kicknosway

John Berryman

Dylan Thomas

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

W. B. Yeats

Finally, in a grab-bag category there are poets that have something interesting going on with their inner voice. Almost all poetry is reflective, so I suppose it is how I react to the pieces. These are generally cerebral poets, though a few are very political poets that resonated with me at one time or another.

Philip Levine

Wallace Stevens

T.S. Eliot (not sure I would like as much now but a big influence when I was young)

Adrian Rich

Marge Piercy

Robert Creeley

Sharon Olds

Emily Dickinson

(It's really hard to decide where to put foreign poets, or indeed whether it is worth reading poetry in translation, since so much is lost in translation. Still, I would probably put Baudelaire and Rimbaud under the strong imagery category and Rilke in the inner voice category.)

I think this covers most of the poets I like enough to read for pleasure from time to time. I'm sure I forgot a bunch and maybe I'll update the list later.

Eric

Edited July 30, 2008 by ejp626

[AllenLowe]

WC Williams, Tzvataeyeva, Mayakovsky, Brecht, Cautullus - some of my favorites - not sure if I spelled them all correctly -

[Niko]

WC Williams, Tzvataeyeva, Mayakovsky, Brecht, Cautullus - some of my favorites - not sure if I spelled them all correctly -

don't know much poetry

funny, WC Williams would have started my list as well, Tzvataeyeva i don't know, Mayakovsky, Catullus (still disclaimer on spelling) were two of the few poets i checked out and liked quite a bit... but brecht i never got, he's so teacher-like and always has these cheap "catchs" (?"hooks"? what do you call them?) at the end of his texts (i did like bits and pieces here and there - but with brecht you never know who the actual author was) from his generation i much prefer gottfried benn...

a few weeks ago i was at a reading where several people between 50 and 60 from eastern germany were reading, they were pretty good, but with every single one of them it was evident they came from a world where brecht had been all over the place

looking at ejp's list, had been wondering this before: is there some sort of consensus that ferlinghetti is the one of the beat poets that stood the test of time (i just know the fine poem about the dog, not a good description)

[AllenLowe]

have you read Brecht's poetry and not just the stories? Many of these poems (particularly the earlier ones, translated to English by Mannheim, I think) are not in the least didactic -

speaking of Germans, must not forget Rilke -

Edited July 30, 2008 by AllenLowe

[paul secor]

Charles Reznikoff, Gilbert Sorrentino, Paul Blackburn, August Kleinzahler, Edward Dorn, Jonathan Williams, Robert Creeley, and Basil Bunting are some 20th century poets I've enjoyed reading.

I remember reading somewhere (believe it was in John Berendt's book on Venice) that Ezra Pound's wife/companion wouldn't allow people to visit him late in his life unless they were able to quote some lines from his poetry. As I sit here, I realize that I can quote very few lines from the above poets, so I wonder how well I've read their poems - not well at all, I fear.

[Niko]

have you read Brecht's poetry and not just the stories? Many of these poems (particularly the earlier ones, translated to English by Mannheim, I think) are not in the least didactic -

speaking of Germans, must not forget Rilke -

guess i indeed know the stories much better than the poems (though i have seen a number of them...) will give them another chance...

[ejp626]

Charles Reznikoff, Gilbert Sorrentino, Paul Blackburn, August Kleinzahler, Edward Dorn, Jonathan Williams, Robert Creeley, and Basil Bunting are some 20th century poets I've enjoyed reading.

I remember reading somewhere (believe it was in John Berendt's book on Venice) that Ezra Pound's wife/companion wouldn't allow people to visit him late in his life unless they were able to quote some lines from his poetry. As I sit here, I realize that I can quote very few lines from the above poets, so I wonder how well I've read their poems - not well at all, I fear.

While I am all for breaking away from the restrictions of rhymed poetry, I do wonder if the (sometimes studied) casualness makes it difficult to memorize, or make it feel worth the effort to memorize a poem written in a conversational style. Ironically, though O'Hare was the king of the I-go-here, I-do-that style of poetry, I do have a handful of his lines committed to memory, including the one about the blade of grass.

[David Gitin]

Delighted to see this discussion of poetry. Some of the folks mentioned were friends of mine (sadly they are gone).

If it interests you, check out http://davidgitin.com ?

[Larry Kart]

From memory:

The flowering plum

out the front-door window

sends whiteness

inside my house

-- Charles Olson,

excerpt from "Maximus Poems"

Also from memory, though I had to look to see where the dashes go and what words are capitalized, what I think of as Emily Dickinson's Bix poem:

I would not talk, like Cornets—

I'd rather be the One

Raised softly to the Ceilings—

And out, and easy on—

Through Villages of Ether—

Myself endued Balloon

By but a lip of Metal—

The pier to my Pontoon—

I would not paint—a picture—

I'd rather be the One

Its bright impossibility

To dwell—delicious—on—

And wonder how the fingers feel

Whose rare—celestial—stir—

Evokes so sweet a Torment—

Such sumptuous—Despair—

Nor would I be a Poet—

It's finer—own the Ear—

Enamored—impotent—content—

The License to revere,

A privilege so awful

What would the Dower be,

Had I the Art to stun myself

With Bolts of Melody!

[ejp626]

looking at ejp's list, had been wondering this before: is there some sort of consensus that ferlinghetti is the one of the beat poets that stood the test of time (i just know the fine poem about the dog, not a good description)

I think Ferlinghetti will stand the test of time, as will some of Ginsberg's work. All things considered, I would say that probably the Black Mountain school, operating at around the same time and a bit later than the Beats will hold up better in 50 years time than the work of the Beat poets. I would consider Ed Sanders a Beat poet, and I've tried several times to read his work and I just don't care for it at all.

There are certainly a huge number of poets I've left off the list, but for now this covers most of the ones I would be likely to pull out just for fun. I should give WC Williams more attention I suppose, but he just never sticks with me. One poet who really does require that extra effort but then it pays off is Wallace Stevens. I took a seminar course on Stevens in grad school and it totally changed the way I thought about him, for the better.

[Willard]

Cindy Tebo: "Tanka series from a series of paintings by Henri Matisse "

"I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things."

~ Henri Matisse

a certain bareness

in autumn fields

but in the dry rustling

of what remains

there is music

--------------

splotches of people

passing on a bridge

this morning's blur

I never knew smoke

could be so blue

----------------

with starched white collar

and choker necklace

the piano teacher

plays each note precisely

like a surgeon

-----------------

a sensuous garden

with all the lushness

of life's green

I would love to compose

just once such a thing

------------------

stems cut short

to make you fit

in a pitcher

all the wildness of flowers

stolen from the fields

Edited July 30, 2008 by Willard

[ejp626]

Ok, this is probably my favorite poem written during my undergrad years. It usually got a good reception and readings and was published in the poetry zine Gyst, so it isn't just all in my head.

I Feel Like an Elizabeth (the first)

Times like these

I push my head deeper into the pillow

Hope that tomorrow will be less treacherous

That which must be done

will be done

That which may not be

will not be

And I squeeze my body tight

so that it will not give it all away

Ignore desire

Press down until even my dreams

have been driven away

and I wake with bruises

I, resigned, proceed through the routine

Meet all with smiles, with a false heart

Still waiting for that final release.

[Willard]

WHISKY'S RISKY but it gets you FRISKY

the sober man ignores the thistle

decides instead to wet his whistle

heads straight for the nearest bar

& soon he's roaring slàinte mhath*

keep English Ale or Irish Porter

make mine Scottish Fire Water

it's proof against the Highland weather

loosens lips so you can blether

you'll become a champion talker

after a dram of Johnnie Walker

through your alcoholic haze

gaze on bonny tartan braes

watch the haggis roamin' free

plucky beasties though they're only wee

see Venice and die but just feel peaky

when you set eyes on gude Auld Reekie

toast this Athens of the North

drink like a fish in the Firth of Forth

there's pickled herring and black bun

made in Scotland by the ton

there's loch and burn and ben and glen

heather and broom I ken I ken

all these are braw but one thing's siccar

best of aw's that golden liquor

a single malt a single malt

gives you a jolt like a thunderbolt

Davy king

Edited August 25, 2008 by Willard

[Bright Moments]

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of Circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of Chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

--William Ernest Henley 1875

[BillF]

The Railway Children

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting

We were eye-level with the white cups

Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles

East and miles west beyond us, sagging

Under their burden of swallows.

We were small and thought we knew nothing

Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires

In the shiny pouches of raindrops,

Each one seeded full with the light

Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves

So infinitesimally scaled

We could stream through the eye of a needle.

- Seamus Heaney

[Larry Kart]

Wind (to Morton Feldman)

Who'd have thought

that snow falls

It always circled whirling

like a thought

in the glass ball

around me and the bear

Then it seemed beautiful

containment

snow whirled

nothing ever fell

Nor my little bear

bad thoughts

imprisoned in crystal

beauty has replaced itself with evil

And the snow whirls only

in fatal winds

briefly

then falls

it always loathed containment

beasts

I love evil

-- Frank O'Hara

[Larry Kart]

There are meaningful, or at least deliberate, spacing things in that O'Hara poem (a number of lines that aren't flush left) that I can't reproduce. BTW, phrases from this poem are the text of Feldman's superb and mostly wordless "Three Voices."

[AllenLowe]

beautiful poem, Larry, thanks for posting, I always liked Ohara - my wife's godmother, who used to be the painting-restorer at the Museum of Modern Art, knew and worked with him way-back when - crazy, tragic death too, as she related, when he got run over by a dune buggy -

[AllenLowe]

by the way, Larry, saw you mentioned Charles Olson some posts back - his simple statement "an object is its own meaning" was, for me, the key that unlocked contemporary forms from music to literature - idea, I think, was to stop looking for self-imposed layers of meaning and to simply see/hear what the author/composer was saying - kind of like "he has nothing to say, only a way of saying it" (either Robbe Grillet or Beckett, sorry, can't remember) - it's all a mantra I find necessary to repeat whenever something, at first glance, puzzles me -

[connoisseur series500]

I enjoy poetry but haven't read much of it over the last few years. I'll take this thread as a motivation to get back into it.

I've always regarded Robert Lowell as the model to follow as far as my personal work is concerned, but there are so many great poets.

Also enjoy TS Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, Richard Wilbur, James Wright, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Delmore Schwartz, Karl Shapiro, Hart Crane, John Donne, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson, William Wordsworth, EA Poe, Walt Whitman, Homer, Larkin, plus a bunch of others I can't name from immediate memory. I respect WC Williams but don't dig him that much.

I also love the world war one poets: Brooke, Sassoon, Ivor Gurney, Wilfred Owen. Beautiful stuff.

[paul secor]

from "Visiting"

Sparrows scream at the dawn one note:

how should they learn melody

in the street's noises?

- Charles Reznikoff

from "Heart and Clock"

I eat and am happy;

I am hungry - and sad;

that so little means so much

means that among the little

I am such.

- Charles Reznikoff

"A Classic Case"

The moon's a little arch

pasted on black cardboard

just outside his bedroom

window,

lovely Major Hoople.

I swear the room is warm,

the night is cold, the bedspread

turned down has a comfortable

feel,

lovely Major Hoople.

Tomorrow he'll get up, put on

his fez, and stand behind

his gut, the sagging furniture

his friends,

lovely Major Hoople.

Yow! That world

of yours is crumbling away,

the rotary lawn sprayers and The

Neighbors,

lovely Major Hoople,

when will the possess

your useless yard and send

you out to work, to

work!

lovely Major Hoople.

- Gilbert Sorrentino

"The Once-Over"

The tanned blond

in the green print sack

in the center of the subway car

standing

tho there are seats

has had it from

1 teen-age hood

1 lesbian

1 envious housewife

4 men over fifty

(& myself), in short

the contents of this half of the car

Our notations are:

long legs, long waist, high breasts (no bra) long

neck, the model slump

the handbag drape & how the skirt

cuts in under a very handsome

set of cheeks

'stirring dull roots with rain' sayeth the preacher

Only a stolid young man -

with a blue business suit and the New York Times

does not know he is being assaulted

So.

She has us and we her

all the way to downtown Brooklyn

Over the tunnel and through the bridge

to DeKalb Avenue we go

all very chummy

She stares at the number over the door

and gives no sign

Yet the sign is on her

- Paul Blackburn

"old song"

Take off your clothes, love

And come to me.

Soon will the sun be breaking

Over yon sea.

And all our hairs be white, love,

For aught we do

And all our nights be one, love,

For all we knew.

- Robert Creeley

"Where Galluccio Lived"

Get all of it, boys,

every brick,

so the next big storm blows out

any ghost left with the dust.

In that closet of air the river

wind gnaws at

was where the crucifix hung;

and over there

by the radio and nails,

that's where Galluccio kept

with his busted leg

in an old soft chair

watching TV and the cars

go past.

Whole floors,

broken up and carted off ...

Memory stinks

like good marinara sauce.

You never get that garlic smell

out of the walls.

- August Kleinzahler

"short order"

I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,

she said.

yes, yes? I asked.

She's young and pretty, she said.

and? I asked.

She hated your

guts.

then she stretched out on the couch

and pulled off her

boots.

I don't have very good legs,

she said.

all right, I thought, I don't have very good

poetry; she doesn't have very good

legs.

scramble two.

- Charles Bukowski

Finally - a comment on the value of poetry in modern society:

"What the Chairman Told Tom"

Poetry? It's a hobby.

I run model trains.

Mr. Shaw there breeds pigeons.

It's not work. You dont sweat.

Nobody pays for it.

You could advertise soap.

Art, that's opera; or repertory -

The Desert Song.

Nancy was in the chorus.

But to ask for twelve pounds a week -

married aren't you? -

you've got a nerve.

How could I look a bus conductor

in the face

if I paid you twelve pounds?

Who says it's poetry, anyhow?

My ten year old

can do it and rhyme.

I get three thousand and expenses,

a car, vouchers,

bit I'm an accountant.

They do what I tell them,

my company.

What do you do?

Nasty little words, nasty long words,

it's unhealthy.

I want to wash when I meet a poet.

They're Reds, addicts,

and delinquents.

What you write is rot.

Mr. Hines says so, and he's a schoolteacher,

he ought to know.

Go and find work.

- Basil Bunting

edit - as Larry Kart mentioned previously, the spacing in the poems is lost when they're posted.

Edited August 26, 2008 by paul secor

[ejp626]

Some musing on a couple of poets. I have a list of books that caught my eye from the Guardian books section (I don't read through this as much now that I only get it electronically) and slowly have been working my way through. Anyway, one of them was a book of poetry by Tobias Hill: Nocturne in Chrome and Sunset Yellow. He has a good eye for detail and generally writes on urban themes, which I appreciate. At the same time, I look at his first two books of poetry and see a fair bit of repetition and some lazy writing. I see a poet whose early work was not dissimilar to my early work. But he has gotten some major breaks (and is almost the flavour of the month as far as UK poets go) -- but of course he also worked in the trenches to make his own luck to a certain extent. What I find interesting and perhaps heartening is that there is a significant improvement from his first collections to Nocturne. The central poem is a 12-part invocation to London (one for each month) that I think is quite good. I never wanted the life of an interrant poet, but I do occasionally wonder how well I would have written if I had really tried to make a career of it. (And sometimes the big breaks don't lead anywhere. I had a friend in college who won the Hopwood award for short stories four years running -- basically unheard of -- but as far as I can tell, he has vanished off the grid.)

Ultimately, taste is so subjective, particularly with regards to poetry. I think there is slightly more agreement over what makes a good or bad novel (though still not a lot of agreement). This leads me to Louise Gluck. She just came through Chicago and was reading her new work from a forthcoming collection. So this is definitely hot off the presses. But I was not interested in the subject matter (small town life from her childhood), and the writing was so plain that it was essentially as if she were reading prose poem after prose poem. This might be a case where the poems work better on the page than read aloud. I decided to check out some of her books anyway. I am pretty sure that a long time ago I read her The Wild Iris, which won the Pulitzer, and I wasn't that gripped with it. I'm reading it again and still don't see what the big deal is. On the other hand, I'm finding her collection Meadowlands very good and am not sure what I think about The Seven Ages. She's a poet who consciously tries to have a different theme for each collection. I connect with some and not others.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

One of the most irritating things in the world (to me) is companies' penchant for putting you on hold and playing you crap music - my telephone company plays Thunderclap Newman's "Something in the air".

In recent weeks I've twice had to phone a firm - I forget which - and instead of music, they've played a recording of someone reciting (his own?) poetry - light and amusing stuff mostly. This is a GIANT step forward; particularly since my preference is for comedy poetry.

Ogden Nash is my favourite and this never fails to make me giggle.

VERY LIKE A WHALE

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for

Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.

Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,

Can’t seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.

What does it mean when we are told

That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?

In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience

To know that it probably wasn’t just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians.

However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity,

We’ll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.

Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.

Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold?

In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are a great many things,

But I don’t imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.

No, no, Lord Byron, before I’ll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;

Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof woof?

Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the very most,

Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.

But that wasn’t fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,

With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they’re the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.

That’s the kind of thing that’s being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson;

They’re always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,

And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm.

Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I’ll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we’ll see which one keeps warm,

And after that maybe you’ll begin to comprehend dimly

What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Another comedy writer I like a lot is Thomas Love Peacock. He wrote satirical novels in the first half of the 19th C, but there are a few classic poems included.

This one, "The war song of Dinas Vawr", is from his novel based on the Taliesyn legends, "The misfortunes of Elphin (1829). A friend in Brighton, an undertaker by profession, used to recite this as his party piece, putting on a brilliant imitation of the accent of Lord Montgomery of Alamein, to hilarious and highly satirical effect.

WAR SONG OF DINAS VAWR

The mountain sheep are sweeter,

But the valley sheep are fatter;

We therefore deemed it meeter

To carry off the latter.

We made an expedition;

We met a host, and quelled it;

We forced a strong position,

And killed the men who held it.

On Dyfed’s richest valley,

Where herds of kine were browsing,

We made a mighty sally,

To furnish our carousing.

Fierce warriors rushed to meet us;

We met them, and o’erthrew them:

They struggled hard to beat us;

But we conquered them, and slew them.

As we drove our prize at leisure,

The King marched forth to catch us:

His rage surpassed all measure,

But his people could not match us.

He fled to his hall pillars;

And ere our force we led off,

Some sacked his house and cellars,

While others cut his head off.

We there, in strife bewild’ring,

Spilt blood enough to swim in;

We orphaned many children,

And widowed many women.

The eagles and the ravens

We glutted with our foemen;

The heroes and the cravens,

The spearmen and the bowmen.

We brought away from battle,

And much their land bemoaned them,

Two thousand head of cattle,

And the head of him who owned them;

Ednyfed, King of Dyfed,

His head was borne before us;

His wine and beasts supplied our feasts,

And his overthrow, our chorus.

MG

[Niko]

spent a few hours in bukowski's birth town (andernach) for the first time on saturday... he sure would have turned out a different writer if his family hadn't moved on to LA (when he was two) (one of the most depressing, smallish towns to be found around here)