Sometimes, some beautiful times, it feels as if poetry drips, heady, from the interwebs.
Books I wish I had in my hands right now:
And if you don’t have them either (order!) at least we can all want together.
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
How do you know it’s a poem?
Joanne saved me by pointing to Reginald Shepherd’s discussion of difficulty in poetry. I’m relieved to know I’m one of a crowd that asks “Why is this a poem?” I have the modal problem.
I’ve spent a lot of energy reading poems and berating myself for disliking them when instead (I think) I was simply frustrated by being told it was a poem although it exhibits no traits I would considered poetic.
(I’ve even done this on the IntarWebs and disconcerted and hurt people who write things I don’t consider poems because I could not articulate my own difficulty. I’m a little ashamed.)
How do you know it’s a poem?
They do exhibit at least one trait: these things which may or may not be poems are usually lineated. (I am leaving out prose poems here because I do not know what to do with them. Correction: I know what to do with them: I call them “vignettes” and consider them prose. This does not make them less powerful or moving.)
But how much poetic device does a lineated group of words require before it becomes a poem? If we throw in metaphor and simile and call ourselves done we have cheated the prose fiction writers, and the prose non-fiction writers, who use both of those to tell us stories made up and of ourselves.
Do we require rhyme or onomatopoeia?
How do you know it’s a poem?
The Portuguese and Spanish had monorhyming stanzas. That made it pretty obvious when someone was speaking a poem.
How do you know it’s a poem?
In English I am at a loss to know, if I’m not looking at it, unless the poem is end-rhymed. There’s nothing else for my ear. No measure, no indication. Meter will out, yes, but it doesn’t give you the anticipation or the closure.
Actually, it isn’t the rhyme per se, it’s the repetition of sound. Because a ghazal would sound like a poem in English, with that repeated word/phrase ending the second line in each couplet. It would probably sound like one long line to the ear. (Plus there would be the excitement of when you could chime in and chant along.)
How do you know it’s a poem?
Sometimes, when I have worked to set aside my definition of “poem” I have been able to enjoy a piece for what it is, rather than what I am hoping for.
And yet I sit down to read poems for a reason, with a visceral need to feel the way a poem makes me feel, with anticipation, with yearning. At that feverous pitch, it is difficult to respond well to pieces that don’t sing.
How do I know it’s a poem?
I know it by its repetition, be that assonance, alliteration, consonance, meter, refrain. By something unnamed that surprises me with its music.
I have so much difficulty finding poems like this. Sing me names, please? And tell me, because I genuinely want to know:
how do you know it’s a poem?
First, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2008 Halloween Poetry Reading is in progress. Hop over there to hear my dulcet tones (among others. Ann K. Schwader has a lovely, expressive alto…). 🙂
Second, if you live in or near Atlanta (or have other reasons to spend time there), you might consider applying for one of the free one-day McEver poetry workshops there. You’ve got until November 10 to request an application. The experience and skill level of the participants can be across the board (i.e., be prepared for complete first-timers as well as experienced critiquers), but the workshops are very well-run and I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve attended. (I found Thomas Lux very entertaining. He’s very opinionated.)
McEver himself sounds like my kind of guy, in terms of his insistence that commerce and art do belong together: I think this is a transcript of an interview with him and Lux. (A good deal of my income comes from corporate work, so I’m invested (you could say) in hearing about people for whom town and gown are not separate realms.) During my past visits, my local contacts expressed surprise that the workshops were being held at Tech; my own perspective is that Georgia Tech is on its way to becoming the Stanford of the southeast US (Stanford may be better known for its math and science programs, but its English department is top-tier as well).
There are some authors whose letters I happen to enjoy more than their formal creative work. William Maxwell is a prime example of this. I haven’t read enough of Ted Hughes’s work (poetic or epistolatory) to determine whether he too falls in this category for me, but this excerpt from Richard Eder’s review in last Friday’s New York Times grabbed me:
<blockquotEarlier, while Plath was still alive and [she and Hughes] were together, there is his unstinting reassurance, rejoicing in her successes and praising her work. Above all, after her death there is his searing defense of her shattering “Ariel” poems. To Donald Hall, an admirer who nevertheless found “Ariel” too sensational to be first-rate poems, he wrote:
“Whatever you say about them, you know they’re what every poet wishes he or she could do,” Hughes wrote. “When poems hit so hard, surely you ought to find reasons for their impact, not argue yourself out of your bruises.”
While looking up the online version of Eder’s piece, I came across today’s article on this year’s Nobel Prize winners in physics. Michael Turner’s “You have to look for symmetries even when you can’t see them” is begging to be turned into a poem.
Joanne’s post about political poems reminded me of the first Alan Dugan poem I encountered, in my junior year of high school. It was On an East Wind from the Wars and remains one of my favorite of favorites.
And when I think of Alan Dugan, I often think of Jack Gilbert, who is of the same generation, whose work I also first encountered in high school, and whose The Abnormal Is Not Courage is also a touchstone poem (I’ve copied or typed it out for friends on at least two occasions, and used it for a reading at a Unitarian Universalist service).
There is a Wikipedia entry devoted to the east wind. I am inordinately amused by this.
You will witness a love of country, not
Driven by greed but true and enduring,
For it is no unworthy reward to be famed
Writing in praise of my native land.
Observe: you will see names exalted
Of those of whom you are supreme lord,
And you can judge which is the better case,
King of the world or king of such a race.
Any guesses what poet? Or what king he is addressing? Or even what country is home to this incredible race of people?
I was ignorant of it myself before I began reading a history of Portugal. Perhaps it is unfair of me to assume you too are unfamiliar with this poem, but I am writing to praise Luiz Vaz de Camoes and his epic poem of Portugal titled “Os Lusiadas” or, in English, “The Lusiads,” referring to the people of Lusitania. (Also, I come to praise the translator, Landeg White, for his enthusiasm, extensive endnotes, and excellent rhyming couplets.)
de Camoes had an interesting life; he lived in the 16th century and published “Os Lusiadas” in 1572. (White points out that the poem was approved by the Holy Office as containing “nothing scandalous nor contrary to faith and morals.) de Camoes sailed for India as a young man, was shipwrecked in Cambodia (Cambodia!) losing all but the first three cantos of the poem, and was forced to borrow money to purchase passage back home.
I was hoping for a tour-de-force of West meets East, of lush descriptions of what India, Africa, and Cambodia looked like to a 16th-century Portuguese man. Not quite. de Camoes was writing at the end of the golden age of Portuguese naval superiority; he was interested in looking back on the great deeds of his people, such as Vasco da Gama “discovering” India in 1497, not in painting the places da Gama went.
Either way, I was surprised by the opening phrase—“Arms are my theme”—because White’s endnote says this is a reference to the “Aenead”. de Camoes’ poem is rife with Greek/Roman gods; in fact, one of the major plot points of the story is a war between Venus and Bacchus over the success of the da Gama’s fleet reaching India.
Furthermore—back to that offhand comment about the holy censor offering no censure—it is explained in great detail that Venus and Bacchus and Jupiter and Tethys and the nymphs and naiads are just expressions of the greater, Christian god. Again, my ignorance; I had no idea that these two, separate beliefs had been reconciled in this way.
At the time of its writing, I’m sure that the Greek/Roman gods lent a grandeur to the poem, made it clearly epic, but today those were the points I found most disappointing. de Camoes sings when he is describing the hardships and actions and pride of his countrymen, even, for example, the strange life and fate of Inez de Castro.
Like other great Iberian epic poems, “Os Lusiadas” was written in a monorhyming stanza, meaning that all lines in the 8-line stanza rhymed with each other. White, as translator, has kept only a final rhyming couplet in the octets. I realize English is a horrid language in which to attempt extensive monorhyme but I had hoped. However, the couplets were both impressive and effectual. First, White had some excellent rhymes (Aeneas and genius); second, they were sufficient to make each stanza feel like its own bit, not too much to take in at once, in the long poem, and also offered propulsion, since no tidy end was ever the end.
Yet what man could for long avoid
The gentle web which love spins,
Between human roses and driven snow,
Gold hair and translucent alabaster?
Or who be unmoved by the pilgrim beauty
Of a face such as might be Medusa’s,
Transfiguring every heart she inspires
Not to stone but to volcanic desires?
Hello, little iambs and all other readers new to Vary the Line. Here you’ll find commentary on the poetry scene in five different cities, close reads, and other zany discourse.