Poetry and Ambition - Donald Hall

The United States invented mass quick-consumption and we are very good at it. We are not famous for making Ferraris and Rolls Royces; we are famous for the people's car, the Model T, the Model A - "transportation," as we call it: the particular abstracted into the utilitarian generality - and two in every garage. Quality is all very well but it is not democratic; if we insist on hand-building Rolls Royces most of us will walk to work. Democracy demands the interchangeable part and the worker on the production line; Thomas Jefferson may have had other notions but de Tocqueville was our prophet. Or take American cuisine: it has never added a sauce to the world's palate, but our fast food industry overruns the planet.

~Donald Hall in "Poetry and Ambition"

I've been contemplating poetry a lot recently, because I realize my works tends towards concise, dry, flavorless sentences without the Gusto! and panache of more enthusiastic artists. I can't describe a world with the brittle ice of a Morgenstern (Night Circus), or define a depth of character like a Dostoevsky, but I long for some of the beauty present in great poetry. 

And I know that I'm falling into that trap that Donald Hall presents here so exquisitely: the McDonald's of art. Granted, I'm not selling, and everything I write in journal, online, or in my practice doodles is just that: practice, and so I don't feel like a sellout. But this is the American way, isn't it? Find something that works, and mass produce it? The first movie did well; let's make six. 

One of the poets I've been enjoying this week was named Elizabeth Bishop. She told an interviewer that she was prepared to wait forty years for a finished poem, since no artist can afford to rush. Now, I've saved all of my poems (and creative works in general) so I may return and tinker with them often, tuning up the wince-worthy weaknesses and fleshing out the skeletons of unfinished works, breathing life into the dusty husks of old poetry and prose - but could I manage forty years of patience?

Actually, I believe I might be capable of just such a thing.

I understand that level of contemplating, that hunt for perfect tonality and melopoeia that rolls off the tongue like a song. Isn't that the original form of literary expression, passed from generation to generation? I think I want a return into the epics, where a minstrel prays the muse will strengthen his art, as he strums a story of heroic deeds.
It amazes me how terrible some of my work can be, but I continue knowing that if one gem appears from a field of folly and ugly stone, or if I can persevere through such a shameful valley, the other side will be the greener for it.

I abhor the concept of the McProse, the McPoem, and fear the slippery slope that concludes in such a thing. But practice calls, and I've still years of such to go, and so much still to learn. Until such time as I'm ready, I suppose I'll be flipping words like burgers, and frying lines, and I'll be doing so in a flurry. 

Huginn and Muninn

Louise Gluck was my poet of the day, brought to me by Simic's commentary. Simic is quite extreme with her writing, saying it's either brilliant or falling horribly flat: lacking in wisdom, wit, or even significant artistic merit. These are powerful words regarding a Pulitzer prize winning poet, and in the poems Simic describes as cliche and banal, I still see poetry far exceeding the quality of my own. I have no long-term desire to be a poet, but it provides a ready comparison that humbles my learning journey.

Yet it is heartening to hear that even the great poets of the last twenty years can falter and fall, writing poetry that lacks depth and direction. No one writes perfectly every time, and it leaves me wondering how many failed attempts great poets leave behind their successful endeavors. 

But Gluck writes some very interesting poetry, evoking powerful imagery in only a few concise phrases, such as this one:

It is coming back to me.

Pear tree. Apple tree. 

I used to sit there

pulling arrows out of my heart

(Louise Gluck)

It's a short poem, but it's beautiful, dreadful. 

Tomorrow (the 8th) is the day my little brother died. It's a day of Huginn and Muninn, those ravens that follow our wheel around us on our journeys through life. It is also Saturday, the Shabbat, and I hope to, if not finish, draw close to finishing the Renegade, by Simic. I'm glad it is the weekend, I'm glad the world is wrought anew in white, and I'm glad of friends.

The name of my little brother was Jonathan, which means the Lord has given. We often follow that phrase up with 'the Lord taketh away', and so God has. My parents could not conceive for years following that, and when they finally did, my little brother Samuel (God has listened) was born- appropriate in view of the story of Hannah. Good night - happy weekend. Enjoy the snow (if you have it)

Composition

Why the mountains beneath the sea? They are birds in a cave, in a cage, was the sky not made for thee? I'm worried, reaching into a hive of bees, looting nectar from venus' barbed maw. Well? I'm a flying hawk who cannot land, cannot see, legs broken, heavy beneath, but with the wind brushing my hair? I don't care, really I don't care, tell me not to care. The beautiful hair, I cannot run. Nothing for to run no more. I'm flying.

Today my reading was all over the literary sphere. I read poetry by Sylvia Plath (so incredibly talented, so intensely macabre); a long essay regarding ADHD and educational differences; Jane Kenyon poetry; a little fantasy novel, some mystery/sci-fi; some comedy; some news. Mostly poetry. I'm fairly certain my technique for learning poetry is flawed in nature, but for a beginning it is a fascinating endeavor. I'm simply gorging on poetry, consuming entire novels of poetry in hours, or less, and writing all my favorite lines and images.
It is a gluttonous abuse of reading speed that ill-considers the delicate work spent in craft. My apologies, artists. I must consume. I constantly feel as though I'm running shy on time, as though I must capture every adventure, every moment, and drag them deep into my soul.
I have a friend who learned countless orchestral instruments, hoping to compose. He said that most, many of the greatest composers died young, and he understood why. It is the same with me. I understand the drag of perfection, the standard against which I compete and never shall beat. And I understand how far I must travel. I'm running a race where every other entrant started hours before me. How will I ever catch up? I'll never stop.
Everyone might write better yet, might think, see, intuit, understand better now. But not forever, not for long. It is almost my time to compose.

Life is a broken-winged bird ~ Hughes

Today was Maya Angelou day. As a poet (though I'm not one yet), I appreciate the visceral roots from which her poetry derives. She's fiery, angry, ardent, singing, and screaming loud as a caged bird for the plight of her people and others similarly caged. Other times, she's passionate with the power of love.

the free bird thinks of another breeze / and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

but a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams 

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream 

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing

we grow despite the horror that we feed on our own tomorrow

poignant as rolled eyes, sad as summer parasols in a hurricane

I also read some more cummings. I can understand the countless years of study and practice of poetry. I'm impatient, so I'm reading hundreds, maybe a thousand poems a day (slight embellishment. I think I actually read ~200-300 today at least), and although I rarely linger long on any single one, for analysis or careful dissection, just now, I'm learning what I sought.

Today, I noticed a trend of birdsong in my reading of poetry. Maya Angelou frequently references birdsong as a motif of freedom; cummings in a similar fashion; Wendell Berry often as a naturalistic leaning or as a chord in the agrarian song-life; Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda and Emily Dickinson all include birdsong in quite a number of their poems as well, from what I recall. Those in the city view it as freedom from it; though in the country as their lot and pride - an exemplar of their chosen life. Sometimes, it is even contrasted with more obnoxious bird calls, such as the crows cawing. 

What to write today?

You cannot drop what's never held. The sleep-silent window mirrors - if the future, it won't tell - but leaves insipid tastes. The past's present, present's past, and heaven's hammer strikes the tolling bell, persistent as the permanence of time. Truly, when gazing into the sun, shadows fall behind. Upon a vitrine, framed to dusty fate, does it still beat? Mornings, when eastern sun streaks through yon window, even abandoned glass shines, reflecting grainy lines, beating light against the wall. Then, scraping open this grumpy display, wiping away the grime of time, you're perched on the mantle now, heart of mine, or under. Pulse with the rhythm of fire. 

The beginning of writing stories is upon me. I'm not sure to what capacity this writing, here, will be accomplished in the coming month. But we'll see. I made a bet with myself, so I shall continue. I always win, and lose, against myself. This will be no different. Back to reading Maya Angelou to close the night. 

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

~ Langston Hughes

Sometimes

Who am I? Sometimes

While magnolia tides shimmer with the smiles of the sea

A scimitar moon sings with the power of wheat;

tiny boats like snowdrops through the ocean drift

cupped in the mighty waves

the sky's eyes breathe fire and my heart's kindling -

jaguar of my spirit stirs 

and leaps

into the running water seams of these twilight weaves

whose wolf howls and owls hoot thrice

wherefore art thou now, oh brother, oh love?

quick, before too long

locking dried petals into a walnut box

redolent of east autumn sunrise

and dizzying honeyed saffron

treasure of memories, gift to the lady of waters

this burden is heavier floating free

Today was Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda day. I admit a fascination and love for Pablo Neruda, and an indifference towards Walt Whitman. Oh, Whitman definitely possesses a turn of phrase and a knack for vital, almost blood-thirsty writing that lacks in my own. But somehow he manages to make poetry long-winded, almost tedious. There is something impatient in the reading, or too patient in the writing. Maybe I read too nearly to Pablo Neruda, whose writing inspired me greatly.

Some lines I wrote down as I read them:

cold flower heads are raining over my heart

ay, love is a journey through waters and stars, through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain

carnal apple, woman filled, burning moon, dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light

full of the voltage of the sea's movements

...to that form that love carved in the guitar

so that the waves can complete themselves in the sky

It seems like every poem is charged with their own "voltage" like the sea's motions.  Again I wish that I could read the original works and understand the nuance of his language. I understand enough Spanish to know that I know too little. 

It's been a day of distance, of separation. I can't remember if I've ever suffered a headache, but what I sometimes experience is strange nauseating "distance vision". Everything, from the pen in my hand to the doorknob only paces away or the book I hold in my hand, everything appears as though it were far, far away, well beyond reach.  That's what today has felt like, as though seeing things, I could not interact with them. Difficult days (S: looking at you), unusual environment, unsolvable problems, confusing imagery, brokenness of people, losing - I can't seem to win, or even compete in the game, sometimes. None of these are my problems, and I can't seem to help with them. It is a devastating separation. This is such a day (when the chinks in my legerdemain make clear the smoke and mirror).

What do I do on such days? I've no solutions. Sometimes, I write until the pages bleed through and, closing my eyes, I wait until my blindness dissipates. Sometimes, I stare at my hands and wonder if they are mine, or if that changes things. Sometimes, I wish. Sometimes I win anyway.

If day has to become night, this is a beautiful way (more cummings)

What if mountains filled the valleys into flatness eternal? No sunsets over the cresting hills from the rich troughs of the valley. Driving down the back roads and up hills towards distant learning, a didactic repose, the trees form a tunnel of red-yellows, and leaves layer the road in a carpet for kings, regal red. I'm not the king these trees shed into death for, nor he who resurrects green come spring.
I'm not a naturally forthright personality. Up through high school, I lived under the impression that all sympathy I'd experienced, outside my family, was counterfeit. Not just sympathy, but curiosity. When someone asked, "how are you doing?" I responded "I'm doing well", because it is the quickest, surest way to countermeasure interrogation missiles. And that's how I saw them. Not as loving queries or curiosity, but as time wasting inquiries of the vein, "it's really pouring outside, eh?" That's hardly even a question at all.
I started writing about the same time the fortress of my personality cracked as jericho from friends hooting and trumpeting about the walls. Even so, I still naturally conceal myself behind these characters. Even in my journal, my private writings, I don't allow my writing to expose my inner dialectics. This has changed, gradually, but what is there to fear so much from these things?
I was walking around today, touching the bark of the trees and running my fingers along the leaf-veins and needles: sugar maple, japanese maple, white fir, quaking aspen, dogwood, cherry, apple, hazelnut.  Mixed, the days are, uncertain of the season. Or maybe uncertainty is the season, from ghoulishly beautiful silver days of striated (nimbus) clouds and stormy popcorn (cumulus) clouds, or sunny cloudless skies wide as the eyes of eternity. A diffidence in days I mimic in my musings.

1. It dived like a fish, but climbed like a dream
2. Whatever we lose (like a you or a me), it's always ourselves we find in the sea
3. (and feeling:that if day  
has to become night  


this is a beautiful way) 
- ee cummings

I've been on an ee cummings frenzy lately. I went to the library and powells, and waltzed my way through as much poetry as I might manage: Frost, Cummings, Wendell Berry, Keats, Yeats, Carl Sandburg, Maya Angelou. I think my next free weekend I'll likely do the same. I'm dragging myself inch by inch into a poetic world, but my self fights every step. I don't interact with writing in an intuitive manner. I'm not an intuitive person, which inhibits my art a great deal. I'm a Bean, not an Ender.  If someone enters the room and leaves, I already cannot remember what they wore, what their hair color was. I'll remember everything they said, and the effects on my mentality of the gestures they made, even when I cannot remember the gestures. I'll remember each analysis of conversational pathing I invented as they spoke, each deft manipulation. I'd remember how often they smiled, but not whether they had braces or not, so intrinsic my disability.
Hence, my weakness with poetry and poetic inventiveness. You must integrate yourself in intuitive leaps and bounds into the world encompassing. You must spirit your mind away, and linger only with the heart sometimes. You must feel beyond the boundaries and fly into the dreams of colors and shapes, the very platonic forms behind reality. Poetry is phantasmagoria, shadow shapes on the wall - what do you see?

Alabaster and Birch

If the world were etched in alabaster, tinged only as bleached bones, might I know the difference? Could I imagine colors if none such existed? Are there rainbows of reds, if only my eyes could distinguish those tiny stripes, dissecting each hue into a new dimension of flushes and shades and brushes beyond what my vision perceives. What of touch or smell? Smells of fear, love, sweat and must, salt and sulfur, metallic and rust - what layers doth my nose not pierce, my fingers not feel as I trace each digit across lightly grained wood and the ridges and tales seeping into stone like palm lines and annular rings, storying of fires and storms, sunny seasons and pressures of the earth and waters. Might I touch a stone and find my heart broken from its tragedies and travails. Might I unravel the dreams of trees?


http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20732

I was reading various artists of poetry this morning, and stumbled across this piece by Carl Sandburg. Honestly, I think this piece is a bit brilliant. The poetry embedded carefully in exquisite prose is a marvel, and his execution of color and imagery carries me deep into the forest, the wilderness itself.


A surreptitious delight shrouded in brilliant white, a calvacade of birch, upright and majestic, and slippered in lava leaves. Wind brushes along the path, sweeping ember sparks into the air, crinkling autumn stirred aloft for brief moments of twisting flight, as eddies of breeze whirlwind the fallen leaves from the path and deposit them besides. Promenade por Paradiso. Smells of birch and lichens blend with redolent tastes of pine and violets, and the sound-song sings of the crinkling leaves beneath yellowing maple trees. Is this a temple or a time, this chill forest fire, blazing burrs of Autumn rattling my bones. When the moon's yellowed as ancient parchment, the sky's denim blue covers these sanguine woods, fae light conceives a primal world, precious as eve's garden, and no less silent.