the what of His countenance

William Billings’s As the Hart Panteth is a wild ride of a hymn that is once again in heavy play on my car stereo. I looked up the lyrics tonight, since His Majestie’s Clerkes were singing something other than “light” during an iteration of a phrase I’d learned as “the light of His countenance.”

Turns out there are quite a few variations-interpretations of that verse. It’s “help of His countenance” on the CD, but BibleHub shows an array of others. They include:

my Savior
my salvation
the health of my countenance
his presence
his saving intervention
the salvation of his countenance

As it happens, I am more in need of comfort than precision when I sing along to Billings, so “help of His countenance” and “light of His countenance” are in fact the best of the lot where I am concerned. I was struck anew tonight by the association of light with God’s presence; in “Praise, O My Heart, to You,” which is another hymn I turn to for solace, the first verse includes the statement “you are … my field of sky with stars that never set,” and the final sentence is “I will sing praises to you while life fills my flesh with breath; as long as life shall stream from you within me, I will sing your light.”

The mention of stars in turn brought to mind Richard Hundley’s art song “Astronomers,” which I first heard at a group recital at Glimmerglass Opera (sung by Rosemary Barenz, if I’m remembering right). It’s a very short song that blends fact, fiction, and poetry: according to several sources, the name of the female astronomer in the lied is a tribute to Hundley’s grandmother; the dates, however, are not hers. The epitaph celebrated in the song does indeed correspond — with two key word changes — to a memorial plaque in Pennysylvania ; the declaration on the plaque was adapted from a poem by Sarah Williams.

And here, too, the version that first dazzled me — the soaring song I heard in Cooperstown — is the one that remains most “true” for me.

Williams’s original (1868?): I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.

On the Brashear crypt (1920?): We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night

Hundley’s lyric (1959): We have loved the stars too deeply / to be afraid of/ the night.

Nourishment

I flipped open Annie Finch‘s A Poet’s Craft with another purpose in mind but I was stung by the title of chapter 2: “Poetry as Nourishment”.

In a way, it explains why I rail so against not finding what I want in poems. I need that nourishment.

As analogy, it also encourages me: try to enjoy new types of food.

Which brings me to Diane Ackerman’s “At Belingshausen, the Russian Base, Antarctica”.

Building materials, blue ice, even bulk paper: not edible.

And yet, in the end, it was edible, it was poetry that nourished me, half for what it was and half because I let myself like the brussel sprouts. [Note: I actually do like brussel sprouts; their choice just felt iconic.]

I could wish Ackerman’s poem was really a sonnet, instead of a fourteen-line piece. I could wish that the middle six lines rhymed in some, even slant, way. But it was tastier to decide that “oak” and “echoes” had rhyme possibility. And to let the need for rhyme go because I knew it was coming back at the ending. At the end, I was full of multiple interpretations of the conceit. At the end, the cherry on top was an oft-used sentiment presented fresh and crisp and full of music.

Appreciate

I read more poetry last month than I think I did in all of 2015.

I didn’t enjoy much of it.

I want to like most poetry more than I do, and I’m trying to unpack my assumptions and standards and guilt. I have a goal: appreciation.

I feel guilty for not liking contemporary poetry as much as other people do. That makes picking up new books rather fraught. And I have no idea why I’m able to put down prose or walk away from a painting without feeling like less of a human being—but not a poem other people are raving about.

There are things I want in a poem in order to enjoy it or to want to continue reading it: music. Reach out to me with assonance, consonance, alliteration, meter and I’ll listen. I’m not saying that’s the only way to make a poem but that is what I enjoy and that is what makes me get into the space of a poem, what makes me want to rail against it and revel with it. Music plus intelligent observation is the fun in poetry.

Certainly there are things I like in prose and things I don’t, but those are less about format and more about content. I would be content to read about most anything in a poem if there were music.

So I come round to my goal: how does one learn to appreciate a piece of art?

Sandy Longhorn writes of “the value of sticking with readings that don’t particularly set one’s hair on fire” and I’m curious what that is and how it works. And why you would want to study something which brings you no pleasure. How is it that prolonged exposure teaches appreciation?

When I read Jane Hirshfield’s The Beauty last month, I was surprised at my own enjoyment. Hirshfield’s poems are beautiful for their surprisingly metaphors—which I found only worked once or twice per poem for me—not any sonic texture. How was I able to appreciate them? Or does perhaps surprise rate as high as music in my standards?

And is that the trick to appreciation? To let my standards go? And if I do, how do I evaluate or experience the art itself?

hearing about here-ness

Heard during yesterday’s commute:

STAMBERG: The show, it’s called “You Are Here,” is up at L.A. Louver Gallery in Venice until February 13. It’s the work of a dedicated artist who wrote this about what painting means to her. It’s almost a poem.

CAMPBELL: (Reading) It’s about tracking ghosts. It’s about selling diamonds to poets. It’s about that slippery little idea of a connection that is deeper than butter and as long as water.

Jane Hirshfield on Revising Poetry

Last summer, I attended a lecture on “Writing Poems, Writing Books” at Vanderbilt University by Jane Hirshfield, an American poet whose honors include election to Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2012 and work in seven editions of Best American Poetry. Her most recent books are Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015)1 and The Beauty: Poems(Alfred A. Knopf, 2015)2.

The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield

The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield

Below are my notes on the questions she asks herself while revising (with some paraphrasing, and her copious explanatory comments left out since I can’t write that fast!).

Questions to Ask While Revising a Poem

  • What does the poem actually say on the page? Is it saying what it wants to say? Is it confused?
  • Does it follow its own deepest impulses, rather than my initial idea?
  • Does it go deep enough?
  • Would saying less be stronger?
  • Does the poem know more than I did when I started writing it? Did I discover anything?
  • Is there music? Does it need a more deeply living body of sound? Is the music helping its meaning?
  • Does the visual shape of the poem [lines, line breaks, stanzas, etc.] serve its meaning?
  • Is it true?
  • Is it ethical?
  • Does it feel?
  • Is there anything that doesn’t belong?
  • Do any digressions serve the poem?
  • Are the poem’s awkwardnesses and smoothnesses in its own best service?
  • Are there places that would be confusing to an outside reader or where I’ve assumed non-general knowledge or mind-reading?
  • Are there any cliches in words, images or ideas?
  • Is the poem self-satisfied?
  • Is it predictable?
  • Is it precise?
  • Does it allow strangeness? Is the strangeness it allows accessible?
  • Is the grammar correct? Does wrong or non-standard syntax serve the purpose of the poem?
  • Are the transitions serving the poem? Are the ideas and rhetorical gestures in the right order?
  • Does the diction [ornateness/simpleness] fit the meaning?
  • Is it in the right voice [first person/second person/third person]?
  • Do each of its moments move it forward?
  • Should it go out into the world or is it the seed for another poem?
  • Is it finished?

 

1 Buy Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015)1from your local bookstore or online at Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Chapters Canada; IndieBound; or Powell’s.

2 Buy The Beauty: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015) from your local bookstore or online at Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Chapters Canada; IndieBound; or Powell’s.

Truth. Sort of.

During the wedding featured in the NYT’s January 9 “Vows” column, the groom’s sister read Taylor Mali’s How Falling in Love is Like Owning a Dog.

I am charmed. Even though my own dog has never managed to get the hang of bringing things back. (She will enthusiastically chase after sticks and walnuts and the like, and she has been known to bring possums and turtles into the house, but it’s never the same thing back to the same place. Then again, I’ve been told that’s my own m.o. as well. That can be for a different poem on a different day…)

the day after Halloween

Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”

I was actually thinking about this very poem a few days ago, while writing a note to my friend Tony, who was the narrator of Darrell Grant’s Ruby Bridges Suite when my church performed it this past June. I don’t think there’s a public recording available of that movement (yet, anyway), but it is stirring stuff. I was thinking of Tony’s voice bringing the congregation to its feet as he read Grant’s adaptation of Angelou’s words (Angelou’s poem quoted here):

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

… Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

In the meantime, what is online is Connye Florance, singing as Ruby’s grandmother — “Hold My Hand“:

For the world, child, is not fair
Danger follows everywhere
Lift your eyes, child
You will see
God is watching

[I quote from more of the suite in this entry from that week. Tennis to poetry to church — it is all related.]

The Words You Need

A few months ago I purchased an issue of Sou’wester because they were celebrating poems by women and I really wanted to read that.

The issue opens with a poem by Alison Pelegrin, whose work I admire, and I read it through very excited by it, enjoying it, and thinking, just wow am I going to enjoy the rest of the issue if it’s like this.

It was not like this. And I skimmed the remainder of the issue.

Months later, I re-read Pelegrin’s poem and I wonder, what gave me such a rush last time? Definitely the use of anaphora/refrain, I love that, and it still sings. I think there was something about the particular words themselves, “may you find the words you need”, that resonated with me.

What are the words you need? Once my sister complained that I sent her too many cheerful mix tapes. I’ve thought about that for years and only now—the words I need?—do I realize that I made and sent all those tapes because I needed cheering, I need someone to make that effort to help me stay upbeat. I can’t fault her for not noticing; I didn’t, until this year. But it’s made me look at my own actions differently. Isn’t that what poetry is supposed to do?

While Pelegrin’s titular phrase still eats at me, I find myself less interested in my insults stinging, or being fluent in birdsong, or surrendering to cherry blossoms, no matter how beautiful those images from the poem are. I need the words I need. These aren’t them. They might be them were they divorced from their current company in the poem, I can’t say.

But the longer I stare at the poem, the longer I am certain there are words I need, badly, and I do not have them. I do not know if they are words I am meant to share or if they are words I am meant to hoard. But I am looking now. I am examining dictionaries side-eyed. I am interrogating nonfiction, breaking it into chunks to see what the phrases do distended and distorted and alone. My every breath may be a prayer, as Pelegrin adjures me, but I am too fired up, too dedicated, too much on a quest to appreciate her “silence in the shadows of flowering trees”.

Favorites Fade

This week I’ve had the honor to share some poems with an online community (other than this one). Given the proximity of my birthday, I thought, I shall share favorite poems and promptly went to my bookshelf and took down the stack of books I had specifically put together a few years ago to have when I wanted to read poems that sang to me.

The first one was easy. I pull that one out all the time. It struck me how much of it was free verse, honestly, but the repetition was still there, barely, and the closing couplet was as strong as ever.

I was dismayed to flip through some of the others and be confronted by more free verse than music, though. So I grabbed a poem whose whole purpose was music. And sighed in relief because it is still singing.

I had wanted to use Carrie Jerrell’s “The Poet Prays to the 9mm under the Driver’s Seat” because that, too, still sings, but it’s a song I couldn’t figure out how to preface with a trigger warning, because it seemed like the sort of thing, because of its excellence in embodying its subject, to need one. So I put Jerrell’s book back on the shelf.

This morning I picked up half a dozen books, flipped through, following the dog-eared pages that signified past pleasure, and nearly lost it. Because I had lost it: these poems no longer sang. There was still wit, and some of them, even the beloved one that has been a touchstone for a decade, still resounded in a line or two, but the emotion that had made me bend the page was no longer there.

No longer there in the poem? No longer there in me?