Gulf Coasting

Gulf Coasting

Today I found, on Gulf Coast's journal site, a poem by Zach Savich that begins:

I suppose I should
say something sensible:
poultice of vinegary
light argyled at
a wood-patched
kayak leaned on
a pyre of fencing.

The opening of this poem does not flash with an unusual or arresting image, but with a simple statement: "I suppose I should/ say something sensible." How often has one felt like this while sitting down to scribble out a poem or paragraph?

And how often does what follows in this poem happen, where "poultice of vinegary/ light" is what comes of sensibility? Poultice and vinegar are essentially opposites, figuratively for certain, but as a sensible action in poetry, sensible meaning "chosen in accordance with wisdom or prudence," this irony might be what makes the poem start strongly. And it is "poultice of," where after of can come anything. Why not poultice's opposite?

That’s all, plainly. Hard-
pressed balm of clouds
undocked, like ice
cubes out their plastic
tray, while my cornsilk-
fine binding down
breath swarmed round
posts at once smooth
and frayed. Each

The next section begins with a give-in: "That's all, plainly." We have been shown a kayak in the sun–a simple, wood-patched kayak, but it is not said "plainly" at all. Next simple image to be blown away sensibly...clouds. Next, an enigmatic concoction of line-breaks and "cornsilk-fine binding" that makes me question whether or not I enjoy the poem.

breath hard as Epsomic
scarves wrenched out
a conjurer’s throat—where are your doves, Magnifico?—
then wound with iron
filings, I watched young
waders in the apple pond.

Notice how the key images of the poem, in this section "waders in the apple pond" are constantly subverted by hyperbolic language. This can either be detrimental or beneficial for a poem. In this poem's case, I believe it oscillates between those two, where I prefer this section to the previous–the language is fresher, better, and outshines the preceding lines. Finally, the poem concludes:

One, painted gold,
launched from another’s
flanks, mica-chest sun-
stropped a moment
above the cardboard reeds,
wind rinse, odd
coordinates, life’s plain
hived sense done in
microtints, beyond me.

With this ending I ask the question, "Where am I?" which I think is the point. We can make the "sensible" interpretation of a speaker near a pond who notices a kayak, the light that hits it, clouds, the emotion of painful longing to join waders in a pond and their resemblance to apples, which are so symbolically rich, and lastly turning the eye onto the self to discover "life's plain/ hived sense" as it stretches beyond him/her.

We could reduce the poem to that, but would that interpretation be sufficient? Of course not. I enjoy working through this poem's subtleties and heavy use of irony, where some sections I find to be great and others not so much. Maybe next post a response to an essay on poetry's use of irony, calling on this poem to aid or defy it?

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Alan Brownjohn and Poems dot Com

Alan Brownjohn and Poems dot Com

Poems.com is a wonderful resource for time-strapped individuals to get a daily dose of contemporary poetry. Once called Poetry Daily (actually, still called that, just the website name has changed), its goal is to survey the landscape of contemporary poetry and put up a new poem, or poems as in today's spot, that the editors enjoy or think is worth showing. Occasionally, the poet may have passed away and the poem is from a new edition of their work, or a new translation might be posted. However, what makes Poems.com so refreshing is to see, day after day, new poems by living poets.

Today's poet was Alan Brownjohn, and he had four poems from his new book Ludbrooke and Others posted. Ludbrooke is a central character. All four poems are written in the close third person, one of which gets inside Ludbrooke's head after a day of trying to grab his suitcase from an airport baggage claim, where in his dream he "grab[s] at this symbol of himself."

Brownjohn has a brief biography on the website, which is another area where Poems.com helps to expose modern poets. He has a few books, was born in the 30s, and his picture shows him to resemble a man who says phrases such as, "but of course," and "yes, miss, the bacon please." Basically, he looks like a nice guy.

To go back to the poems quickly, I liked them because of the character they surround, this old Ludbrooke guy, who seems pretty interesting. The voice feels awkward, which we can assume to be very much like Ludbrooke's, but after getting over the seemingly "haughty-aire" the poems were fun to reread and poke.

This style of poetry book, where each poem surrounds a central character or characters, is interesting for its recent publishing success. I think of Tom Thomson in Purgatory that won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions that won the Yale Younger Poets prize, by Troy Jollinmore and Maurice Manning, respectively. Does the appeal to a more fiction-read readership help to explain this phenomenon? That might be for another post (or your thoughts on this one). Until then, happy poems.com reading, folks.

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Two Pieces, one Werewolf

Two Pieces, one Werewolf

One, a short article called "Minor Poets, Major Works".

The other, a poem with a werewolf in it.

First, a quick word about the article: neat. It works as a review by Ed Park of Garret Caples's book called Quintessence of the Minor: Symbolist Poetry in English, the first in Wave Books' pamphlet series, which Park says is about as thick as "a program for a lengthy wedding." The title seems a little stuffy, but Park seemed to have really liked it.

In the article, because it is on the poetry foundation's website, you get tons of hyperlinks to obscure writers, and that is a plus. Some of them have awesome names like Trumbull Stickney, who had an unfortunately short life. I encourage you to spend five minutes and check it out.

Now, onto important business. Werewolves! Richard Brautigan was a writer who became famous in the sixties for his prose, but also wrote poetry, which I did not know until about five minutes ago, and I don't know much more about him as of writing this other than he has a short poem titled "A Boat" that goes:

A Boat

O beautiful

was the werewolf

in his evil forest.

We took him

to the carnival

and he started

crying

when he saw

the Ferris wheel.

Electric

green and red tears

flowed down

his furry cheeks.

He looked

like a boat

out on the dark

water.

Great poem? I think it is trying to have fun comparing the strangeness of a mythical creature to our amusement parks and carnival rides, and it works. I like it for its off-handedness and those "Electic/ green and red tears" flowing down "furry cheeks" most.

"A Boat" functions well as an example of Symbolist poetry, which Mr. Caples might like.
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Old and Young Anthology Talk

Old and Young Anthology Talk

The Google search for "Anthology of Contemporary Poetry" will give you around 220,000 results. Of these, The new young American poets: an anthology interested me the most.

Once, I found a small anthology titled Over the Mountain: Writers After 50, or something close to that, and liked the idea of the book because it was interesting to read poets--some I knew, some not so much-- who were all over-the-hill and presumably with all of those lessons behind them the youngsters still had to write through. I had found it tucked away at a used bookstore in Muncie, IN and bought it with change, leaving the store with a smirk like I'd won in a game where I didn't have to try.

Unfortunately, I cannot remember anything from that anthology; the poems just didn't connect for me, and instead of rereading it, the book is packed away in a southern Indiana storage locker where it may or may not become a party house for centipedes. So the question for that anthology: was I too young to grasp everything?

I don't think so, but with each year we become better readers (if we read) and more mature (presumably). Maybe in 25 more years that anthology will rock my world.

Seeing "new young American poets" in a title caught my attention for a few reasons: one, I thought, hey, that is me kind of, and two, what are these poets doing and working through that will one day, if they stick with poetry, put them in an Over the Mountain-ish anthology?

A third reason with a different focus was the anthology's editor Kevin Prufer, who has a pretty cool book called National Anthem (especially the first half). A sample poem of his can be found if you click here. He is witty in a visceral way, as opposed to the slight-of-hand, light-bulb moment form, so people get shot, buildings fall, and empires die, and what can't you like about that?

I've just started reading some of the sample content online that can be found here. I'm not sure if I will buy it, but if you have it and give it a thumbs up, let me know. Till then, I will see what can be found inside it and brought into a future post, which will be without so much delay next time.

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Holy Site

Holy Site

In the previous post I gave a link to the poem "Holy Site" by Sarah Wetzel that appears in Boxcar Poetry Review's fall issue, saying it was the coolest thing I'd read that day. Well, a few days later it has pulled me back and I wanted to figure out how and attempt that nearly impossible why. Your help is encouraged.

The poem, not surprising considering the title, is concerned with religion. Though religion is merely an undertone, not an overstatement, which is the ruin of certain religious poems. Doubt and deception, the key tension in religious poetry, seems to be this poem's engine. Here is the first half of the poem:

She tells the boy it's a water tower.
Concrete gray and green, it rises forty feet
on iron legs; egg-shaped, lank and wrapped, the body curves
like a turned bell. The roof rusted through,
it holds water, though only four feet deep, the rest
pours from the metal shell. No one remembers
the year it was built, but its been standing there
a long time. At night, the boy hears the concrete
fall in wet chunks, a low wind whine
through its wide cuts...

The poem begins with telling, and what is being told seems suspect. When I read the first line, I question its truth, the use of the verb "tell" instead of something more direct, perhaps with less possibility of doubt, like "show." From the beginning I am curious to discover what this boy is truly hearing at night and seeing in the day, which later reveals to me that I am complicit in a very interesting phenomenon.

...And he can barely
sleep. In summer, the boy swims
in its dark water. He goes all the way under.
She never stops him, though the water infested
with bird shit and invisible worms
will tattoo itself by winter in small red Os
on the inside of his wrists. And she doesn’t
repeat the whispers: it’s a messiah’s cup, a chalice
disguised as a tower, the water tinged brown
by something other than iron. The barbed wire
fence, the steel barriers, the danger signs
all a hoax. So that no one comes...

The next section of the poem rewards skepticism by creating a larger mystery, where the mother-figure does not "repeat the whispers" of those around her. What has been told to the community, that the structure is a water tower, is false and it is perhaps something much more. This section of the poem goes further than object-relation validity for a community, but more largely shows what can happen when rumors grow: they become myths, and eventually they can grow into religion, or grow to support a religion already in place: see this image for the iconic toast. I can see a spoof of the first line of this poem even: "She told him it was toast." And I realize, that with my skepticism of the first line, I am among the crowd who "whispers."

...What good
would it do? Even if pilgrims appear
with an antidote, even if a single dose could cure
the fatigue and fever, it wouldn’t be enough.

The end of this poem is what has continued to intrigue me. Here, the poem deflates rapidly after the question is posed, as if the rhetorical nature of it was a needle touching a balloon's skin. The speaker of the poem who places us closest to the mother-figure in mind, though closest in action to the boy, is frustrated. The larger comment seems to be, even if a rational answer "an antidote" were given to explain away the mysteries of an object, it would be fruitless; the boy seems doomed to be the object of the next round of myths about the water tower: Why was he sick? What had he done? Is this a punishment?

"Holy Site" does more than present an interesting relationship of mother-figure, boy, and water tower, but comments on human nature, one that is curious, skeptical, and ready to make connections that even an "antidote" will not cure. So what do you think? How do you respond to this poem's message?

*side note, the piece of toast with an image of the Virgin Mary sold for over 20,000 dollars.
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Boxcar

Boxcar

Today I stumbled onto some solid poems in an online journal I, well, also stumbled onto. Boxcar Poetry Review knows what it is doing, based on my, um, hour of reading that I feel only barely, but does, give my statement weight (after all, to hold anyone on the web for an hour is pretty impressive...I could have easily gone here).

So often journals seem good intentioned but haphazard, especially when putting everything on the internet with its irksome formatting. The most frustrating thing to me is to start investigating an online journal and then, suddenly, it crashes, or a link explodes, or a poem turns into mush. (A side-note essay on the difficulty with e-books for poetry can be found here.)

Boxcar assembles a print anthology every year or two, which is a good thing considering how often poems published there get "Best of The Net" nods: six in 2010. It is published quarterly, and the fall issue is up and ready for your reading pleasure. After clicking on a poem, you see that they are numbered at the top from 1-12. My favorite poems are numbers 11, 12, and 5, in that order, with 11 and 12 close to a tie. Each poem has a different style, showing that Boxcar has a wide palette that doesn't favor just one or two types of "good" poetry.

Looking through an interesting inter-journal contest they have, I think I might write about this poem in the next post, because it is the coolest thing I've read today. Enjoy your Boxcar ride...toot toot (had to).

The "So What" Test

The "So What" Test

Do you ever read mission statements? If not, I encourage you to start with The American Poetry Journal's.

"The APJ seeks to publish work using poetic device, favoring image, metaphor and good sound. We like alliteration, extended metaphors, image, movement and poems that can pass the “so what" test. The APJ has in mind the reader who delights in discovering what a poem can do to the tongue and what the poem paints on the cave of the mind."

The APJ is a journal I would occasionally find sitting outside the Natural Bridge office and read between classes or during the class break. I would finish a few poems in the ten minutes, leave my seat, and often return to class happy; the poems were pretty good and I wanted to go home and write something of my own. Instead, I wrote in the margins of my notebooks and tried to pay attention when my pencil stuck.

Before submitting poems for the editors' eyes I always read the journal's mission statement, if it exists. Most have similarities that say something close to "we value what is good" and leave you to guess what that might be for them, unless they are awesome enough to give a link to a sample poem or story and you judge their judging for yourself. APJ lets the reader in on something editors want work to pass: the "so what" test.

The "so what" test is simple: can your work stand up to it. More importantly, can it stand up to your judgment--if you shrug your shoulders after you read your own work, an editor will do more than shrug, they will use the big red lighter that hides in a secret drawer to set off the building's sprinkler system and drown themselves in the puddle that forms on your crumpled submission. OK, so they don't do that, but I know some who want to, usually after reading something I send them.

Everything aside, a journal's mission statement is really only saying this: can it pass the "so what?" stage. If it can, you are in good shape. And to begin understanding what types of writing pass this test, the most important thing to do is read what is being published and supporting journals with subscriptions that you think are getting it right ...the ones that pass your "so what" test.

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I Have News For You

I Have News For You

The mid-term elections are over, and if you are reading this then you are likely somewhat upset by the fact of corporate financing or outside influence or constitutional understanding in various persons. Therefore, let's just look at a poem by Tony Hoagland from his latest book, written as a clever litany with a twinge of cliché in parts and superb imagastic bang in others. The poem begins, with formatting issues in certain parts for blogger, so I would suggest a quick look at the poem in its original form after reading:

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation
of their thought process.

These lines are fun by poking fun at "people" who do these things, which we have probably done in some way, maybe in the exact way, and he has too, which makes it more fun.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

Here Hoagland wants to continue having fun with his reader and establish a firm, comedic tone. The "sinuous feeder roots" point to our need for contact to fulfill our emotional needs: with people in this example, but also with poetry or other artistic mediums, and the irony of this is exemplified with the mysterious town where this need doesn't exist and the mixed metaphor throw in, seemingly, at the last second to close this section of the poem.

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;

thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

Super-icky "moon" "you" rhyme notwithstanding, the point is explicit: we complicate our lives endlessly and pointlessly, and doing so wastes time and energy, or is even dangerous, in that after being at that "Starbucks Golgotha" past midnight you will want to go home and poke yourself with Q-tips.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

The poem closes without much flare, and bringing us into this simple image is meant to prove that this was really all we needed in the first place. I finish this poem and say, "Well, yeah, sure speaker Hoagland, there are people who are content with that, but are they like that all the time?" I'm skeptical at how easy the poem tries to run away from us at the end (like from this guy). I read the poem again, notice what is attractive and what feels trite, and don't believe that there are people "unlike me and you," because we are all people, all worried about what is outside that window that lets the "sweet breeze in."

Process over Destination

Process over Destination

Brenda Hillman's 2006 essay "Cracks in the Oracle Bone: Teaching Certain Contemporary Poems" is concerned with, among other things, imagination--how imagination is a very good and necessary gift to exercise not only in writing but in reading as well.

To say a poem is difficult to get into is to say, perhaps, you are approaching it too directly or are too concerned with the poem's endgame, too concerned with where you are at the end of the poem. "Process is more important than destination," Hillman argues, and I have to agree, especially when reading poems that utilize multiple shifts--in time, in person, in tone, etc.--rather than following a classic "then next" structure. Compare the two poems posted below, extracted from her essay.

Let the eagle soar,
Like she’s never soared before.
From rocky coast to golden shore,
Let the mighty eagle soar.
Soar with healing in her wings,
As the land beneath her sings:
“Only God, no other kings.”
This country’s far too young to die.
We’ve still got a lot of climbing to do,
And we can make it if we try.
Built by toils and struggles
God has led us through.

and

TEXAS

I used the table as a reference and just did things from there
in register, to play a form of feeling out to the end, which is
an air of truth living objects and persons you use take on
when you set them together in a certain order, conferring privilege
on the individual, who will tend to dissolve if his visual presence
is maintained, into a sensation of meaning, going off by itself.
First the table is the table. In blue light
or in electric light, it has no pathos. Then light separates
from the human content, a violet-colored net or immaterial haze, echoing
the violet iceplant on the windowsill, where he is the trace of a desire.

Such emotions are interruptions in landscape an in logic
brought on by a longing for direct experience, as if her memory of experience
were the trace of herself. Especially now, when things have been flying apart in all directions,
she will consider the hotel lobby the inert state of a form. It is the location
of her appointment. And the gray enamel elevator doors are the relational state,
the place behind them being a ground of water or the figure of water. Now,
she turns her camera on them to change her thinking about them into a thought

in Mexico, as the horizon when you are moving can oppose the horizon inside
the elevator via a blue Cadillac into a long tracking shot. You linger
over your hand at the table. The light becomes a gold wing on the table. She sees
it opening, with a environment inside that is plastic and infinite,
but is a style that has got the future wrong.

One poem (A) is straightforward and requires very little imagination (give a quick look to the essay link for the author); one poem (B) demands imagination, and this is where close readings of poems that at first seem difficult can provide excitement in discovering what is underneath the surface, which is not a chance operation but clearly controlled and purposeful. For a much better discussion of this poem than I can paraphrase here, search the bottom of Hillman's essay.

Process over destination. The how before the what. Imagination required, necessary, and completely worth the effort. Reading poems like "Texas" can be off-putting if you are not equipped with the right mindset: how does this poem perform? Before asking what is to be understood at the end, ask yourself how was I made to get there, and doing so will make reading poems like this a lot more enjoyable, because trust me, I know how frustrating it can be when the reading-angle isn't changed from poem A to poem B.