Author: joanne

Some heavenly solstice

Heart’s Compass

Sometimes thou seem’st not as thyself alone,
But as the meaning of all things that are;
A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
Whose unstirred lips are music’s visible tone;
Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
Being of its furthest fires oracular—
The evident heart of all life sown and mown.
Even such love is; and is not thy name Love?
Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
All gathering clouds of Night’s ambiguous art;
Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.

– Dante Gabriel Rossetti

For American Thanksgiving

XLVIII.

Unto my books so good to turn
Far ends of tired days;
It half endears the abstinence,
And pain is missed in praise.

As flavors cheer retarded guests
With banquetings to be,
So spices stimulate the time
Till my small library.

It may be wilderness without,
Far feet of failing men,
But holiday excludes the night,
And it is bells within.

I thank these kinsmen of the shelf;
Their countenances bland
Enamour in prospective,
And satisfy, obtained.

Emily Dickinson

“It is important to forget about what you are doing – then a work of art may happen.” – Andrew Wyeth

Animated poetry

In a conversation on the Poets & Writers Speakeasy forum, poet Wendy Babiak mentioned videos of poetry animations and short films, citing as a favourite “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins (animation by Julian Grey of Head Gear).

That’s one of eleven animations of his poetry commissioned by the Sundance Channel’s Action Poetry Series, which includes: “The Best Cigarette” (David Vaio/Will Hyde/FAD); “Budapest” (Julian Grey/Head Gear); “The Country” (Brady Baltezor/Radium); “The Dead” (Juan Delcan/Spontaneous); “Hunger” (Samuel Christopher/FAD); “No Time” (Jeff Scher); “Now and Then” (Eun-Ha Paek/Milky Elephant); “Some Days” (Julian Grey/Head Gear); and “Today” (Little Fluffy Clouds/Curious), which is my favourite animation, although I think “Walking Across the Atlantic” (Mike Stolz/Manic) is my favourite of these poems.

SamuelChristopher also animated “Angel,” which is from Hashisheen by Bill Laswell and read by Nicole Blackman, who I recognize from The Golden Palominos’ album Dead Inside.

Here’s are some other animations and short films based on poems:

Finally, the Poetry Foundation, in association with docUWM at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has a Poetry Everywhere series, which includes: “I started early…” by Emily Dickinson (Maria Vasilkovsky); “The Language” by Robert Creeley (Chad Edwards); “Mulberry Fields” by Lucille Clifton (Jason Walczyk); “Paradoxes and Oxymorons” by John Ashbery (Kate Raney); “Snowmen” by Agha Shahid Ali (Kyle Jenkins); “Some Words Inside of Words” by Richard Wilbur (Anna Wilson); “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden (Allison Alexander Westbrook IV); and “Tornado Child” by Kwame Dawes (Nicole Garrison).

Terza rima

I ran across Robert Peake‘s “The Silence Teacher” tonight, and was struck by how he made the terza rima work so well (as well as, of course, the rather heartbreaking subject matter). I’ve always felt terza rima sort of propels the reader forward by keeping the rhyme scheme going so you’re always in the middle of it (villanelles, too, though they feel more appropriate for subjects which spiral around a central idea, or move forward in iterations).

And while writing this post, I remembered quite a funny poem written in terza rima which I read some time ago, and, happily, Ploughshares will let you search their archives by keyword, so I could find it to share:

Let’s say God got in over his head,
Which really shouldn’t be much of a surprise

Since he couldn’t even be sure a thing was good,
Until he’d gone ahead with its creation.
You’ll remember He called us very good,

Which suggests His judgment is a bit in question

– Terza Rima for a Sudden Change in Seasons by Jacqueline Osherow

Modal Difficulty and Political Speech

The Slate article “The Poetry of Sarah Palin” put me in mind of Donald Rumsfeld’s poetry (compiled by the same Slate writer):

A Confession

Once in a while,
I’m standing here, doing something.
And I think,
“What in the world am I doing here?”
It’s a big surprise.

and Jean Chrétien’s:

A Proof is a Proof

What kind of a proof?
It’s a proof.
A proof is a proof.
And when you have a good proof,
it’s because it’s proven.

(which is a bit unfair as a criticism, since English isn’t his first language). It was online awhile back formatted as a poem, from memory as above (the quote isn’t from memory – it’s all over the damn place). I wish I could find the original link.

I’m not so much interested in the politics of these satirical pieces (which made me laugh despite how humourless I’m about to sound), but about what they say about the public conception of poetry. The underlying assumptions seem to be (a) that anything broken up into lines is poetry and (b) that poets talk funny, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. What the satirists are really saying is that these politicians talk a non-standard version of English from which they (the satirists) suffer a modal difficulty – and if they (the politicians) aren’t speaking in prose, well, what’s left? It must be poetry. There’s no third thing, right?

There’s a possible third thing: nonsense. (Ask me to define the difference between poetry and nonsense and I’ll have to refer to that old saw: I know it when I see it. I doubt I could come up with a definition which includes Wallace Stevens and Wesley Willis but excludes the above. I can only hope you all know what I’m talking about.) But these politicians aren’t speaking nonsense – what they’re saying makes sense if you can just ignore their bizarre sentence structure – so if it isn’t (quite) prose and it isn’t (quite) poetry and it isn’t (quite) nonsense, what is it?

Determine who will serve and who will eat

In honour of the upcoming elections in both of my countries (and in honour of Hayden Carruth’s passing), excerpts from some of my favourite political poems:

but death went on and on
never looking aside

– “On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam,” Hayden Carruth

The princess in her world-old tower pined
A prisoner, brazen-caged, without a gleam
Of sunlight, or a windowful of wind;

– “The Anti-Suffragist,” Eva Gore-Booth

This place is not my place,
      these ways are not my ways. I
                 do not understand their
consumer index; their life-style options; their bottom line —
                            weird abstract superstitions, and
        when I settled in to stay,
              it felt unclean

– “Blue Psalm,” Dennis Lee

Meanin home
against the beer the shotguns and the
point of view of whitemen don’
never see Black anybodies without
some violent itch start up.

– “1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer,” June Jordan

You squareheaded sons of bitches,
you want this God damn trench
you’re going to have to take it away

– “Ypres 1915,” Alden Nowlan

It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin’
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

– “Democracy,” Leonard Cohen

The deadline to register to vote in the U.S. is the end of this week or the beginning of next week in most states.

I’ve been told Canadians can register to vote at the polls, but I suspect Elections Canada would really rather you did it ahead of time.