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

Weddings

I am working on a response to Jeannine’s comments about being able to hear a poem but my shock and sadness about California’s vote on Proposition 8 keeps getting in the way. I give you Alice Oswald‘s poem “The Wedding” which cares not at all what the biology of your lover may be.

Wedding

From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions…
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins it’s like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.

not rhyming but reading…

Mary’s cri du coeur prompted some scattershreds of thoughts I might expand on later, but for now, here’s the raw gleaning:

  • Recent poems by other people that I keep revisiting: Steve Kistulentz’s “Fuck Poem with Language from the Gospel of Mark”; Martha Silano’s “My Place in the Universe”
  • An older favorite that stole my breath in a similar way: Camille T. Dungy’s “The Preachers Eat Out”
  • A poem that, for me, demonstrates how line breaks really do matter even in unrhymed poems: John Brehm’s Sea of Faith. (I wanted to point someone else to it a couple of eons ago, and at the time the only online version I could find was one where the line breaks had not be reproduced and it made me itch. [My original notes, from — good grief, 1 November 2000 –“I recommend seeking out a copy of the printed anthology at the bookstore for the actual poem – I found it funnier with line breaks. (Why? Line breaks build in pacing. Pacing is key to comedy. Ask any clown…”)]
  • …and here’s me reading “Sea of Faith” on my cellphone a couple years ago…
  • …and here’s another poem by Brehm (“Getting Where We’re Going”) that I might use in a church service at some point.
  • Another poem Mary’s entry prompted me to look up was John Wieners’s “A Poem for Painters,” which — if I could save only one poem out of the entire Beat anthology, that would be the one. Its original ending takes my breath away every damn time, and I wrote a bit more about it for an online project….
  • …but at the moment I’m feeling more than a little at sea, because in hunting for an online posting of the poem, I came across three “new” last lines that aren’t in the printed version I own. They appear both in the excerpt in a profile of Wieners and in references to a recording he made of the poem. I dunno. My first reaction is that the new last three lines are too much, but that could be my shock speaking. But then again, Auden’s final renderings of “If I Could Tell You” and “A Bride in the 30s” make me nuts (and make me very glad indeed that both “Selected” and “Collected” editions of his work have been in print)…
  • …which brings up the old story about him disowning “September 1, 1939” (which is, I’m guessing, a major reason the “Selected” edition remains in print). And, yeah, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded in passing that even the greats had to wrestle with variations of failing better (especially after a drive across Tennessee just long enough for one to realize (finally) what-all’s not working with the 2000+ word draft one has been bleeding drop by stinking drop through one’s forehead over the past six days. What a stupid aggravating onion-y onion-esque process this is).

    • How do you classify a platypus? or Hybrid Forms

    Mary brought up an interesting point a couple of posts ago, about how to know a poem is a poem. In these days of prose-poems and flash-fiction, microfictions, visual poetry, and flarf (poems generated by Google searches,) how indeed do we define a poem?

    It made me think of my training for my first degree, in biology, which is really a science of classification. How do you classify an animal that lays eggs but feeds its young with milk? That has webbed feet and a beak but is clearly no bird?

    In my classes, it is sometimes difficult to explain to students, some of whom remain stubbornly attached to the kind of poetry they were exposed to as youngsters: typical 17th century, rhyme and meter, regular stanzas, etc. They just refuse to believe free verse is poetry, or they get frustrated when I show them a poem by a conversational poet, like Frank O’Hara, or, say, a prose poem from Matthea Harvey, or an almost broken-prose piece like Louise Gluck’s “Telemachus’ Detachment:”

    “When I was a child, looking
    at my parents’ lives, you know
    what I thought? I thought
    heartbreaking. Now I think
    heartbreaking, but also
    insane. Also
    very funny.”

    A genius of tone and unexpected line break, Gluck uses this character’s utterance to show how simple a poem can be.

    I use the analogy of a poetry toolbox. There are tools that poets use, that Mary mentioned: rhyme, meter, rhythm, metaphor, imagery, alliteration, line breaks, onomatopaiea…perhaps there are others – jumps in narrative, dream-like tone. But how do you know a poem is a poem? It usually declares itself when you read it out loud.
    I was introduced to prose poetry in my very first poetry book, which was my mother’s textbook for her first Freshman English class in college – Introduction to Poetry, by X.J. Kennedy. In the 1969 version, he includes a poem by Karl Shapiro called “The Dirty Word.” Later, in grad school, one of my teachers taught Baudelaire’s prose poetry. How did I know these were poems? Instinctually, I think, the way we learn everything. When I teach prose poetry to my students, I often use examples of haibun by Basho. His haibun combine prose and haiku in an elegant, sometimes disjunctive way. What makes these poems? Well, do they use tools from the poetry toolbox? Do they look like prose, but act/sound/read like poems? Does it lay eggs like a duck or alligator, but is warm-blooded and milk-giving, like a mammal? What are the defining characteristics of “poetry?” What is the poem’s DNA?

    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).

    Refrain

    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?

    two things…

    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).

    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