2007 November : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

Archive for November, 2007

Was it really four years ago already that the new edition of The Poems of Marianne Moore was published? I remember standing in a bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with a new baby, worshipfully cradling that expensive hardcover. And then, rashly, buying it.
I dug it out today to re-read an obscure, previously uncollected poem from 1919 called “Radical.” It was first brought to my attention in this article by Steve. It is a youthful political poem that Moore later suppressed.

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11.27.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Rigoberto González

Poet Memoirists

I never took a creative nonfiction writing class, yet I wrote a memoir and now teach creative nonfiction (or, more specifically, memoir writing) at Queens College and for the Vermont College of Fine Arts. It’s actually my favorite writing genre to teach because the stories I come across are rarely disappointing—people are passionate about their pasts, and they have somehow come to terms with this avenue for expression. It’s not poetry with its demand for compression, it’s not fiction with its propensity for fabrication, it is memoir—flawed memory and the interpretation of truth.

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11.27.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (18)

Stephen Burt

the kids want more poems!

…as Major says below. Sometimes the kids, especially if they’re still in school, just want more time to read: today at the Beacon blog education writer Chris Mercagliano has more on that depressing NEA report about how much young people do and don’t read. (I had something about Adrienne Rich at the Beacon blog myself last week; if you are a Rich fan, let me know what you think.)
And sometimes the kids, especially if they’re, you know, grown-ups, or pretend to be grown-ups all day, and if (as I do) they write or teach for a living, want less chat about poems and more, you know, poems. Below the fold: a couple of poems from books a few years old, whose authors are by no means well-known (one is a domestic violence prevention worker in remote Native Alaska, the other late-career scholar of medieval manuscripts in Wales). Elsewhere I’ve tried to say why and how much I like them; today, I’m just going to offer the poems, along with a couple of phrases of gloss and assistance.

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11.27.07 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Major Jackson

More Academic Bashing: The Kids Want More

I admire David Mason’s article “The Limits of the Literary Movement” in the December ’07 issue of AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle. Mr. Mason rightly calls our attention to the injustice of off-handedly lumping poets according to whatever school of poetics they practice or are historically associated.
I, like him, have shuddered at the indiscriminate and uncritical dismissal or celebration of writers by those vaguely familiar with the poet’s work or the tenets of the school or movement under question.
At one end of the school yard, the classically prepped-out New Formalists get teased for their suspenders, bow-ties, and hoop skirts; the ever unpopular nerdy L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets are taunted by everyone for their pen-holders and corduroy jackets; the Elliptical poets swoon in black leather mini-skirts and lace-up boots; while the deceased or aging Beats, like the big brother who keeps getting left back in school, remain somehow cool in beret, ascot, and Gauloise in hand and are feted everywhere for their perennial defiance and adolescent petulance. Distinction gets lost when we brusquely assign writers to their corner of the schoolyard.

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11.27.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (12)

Christian Bök

Poetic Machines 05

———–
“I can do what you do, but I can never feel human emotions as such. I suppose that it does. Yes I think that this is too soft, but I’m not completely sure. This seems okay to me. What is not to like about it? Yes, I think that this is how I like it, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is alright, but I’m not completely sure. I think that he is there. Why don’t you ask him? I think that he is breathing. Why don’t you ask him? Yes, I think that this is him, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is near, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is hard, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is cold, but I’m not completely sure. I suppose that it does. Yes I think that this heavy, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I always have to carry it far. I can’t really speak for them. Yes, I think that is where we get off, but I’m not completely sure. The red one, I think. We are just having a little chat.”
First 20 Questions
in Sunset Debris
by Ron Silliman
(all answered by A.L.I.C.E)
———–

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11.26.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (7)

A.E. Stallings

Poetry and Prophecy

Poetry and Prophecy
For the ancients, the two were very much intertwined—prophecies were given in verse, and one word for poet in Latin is “vates”—prophet. Both poets and prophets were supposed to be enthused—en-god-ed—inspired by forces outside themselves. (Virgil’s works were even used in the Middle Ages for prophesy by the picking out of verses at random.) This notion now strikes us as pretty quaint. A poet is someone who struggles on his computer with ornery lines, sometimes making a living by teaching others how to wrestle with the same blank screen. The contemporary poet has largely eschewed any claim to the “vatic,” a mantle many poets a generation or three ago aspired to.

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11.26.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (17)

Ange Mlinko

A Note on Christian Wiman’s Reading of Basil Bunting

After more or less admitting that I think exhortations to political poetry are essentially religious, I finally get my hands on a copy of Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet. There, in a brief on poetry and religion, Wiman writes, citing Tillich, “Art needs some ultimate concern.” At every turn, it seems, poetry is turned into a vehicle: for the avant-garde, for political engagement, for meaning against the Void. All these different appeals have one thing in common: they are teleological.
Teleology
Noun ( pl. -gies) Philosophy
The explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes.
Theology The doctrine of design and purpose in the material world.
ORIGIN mid 18th cent.(denoting the branch of philosophy that deals with ends or final causes): from modern Latin teleologia, from Greek telos ‘end’ + -logia (see -logy ).
The great thing about Ambition and Survival, though, is that Wiman can’t quite get with the program. He trusts his nonteleological ear too much.

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11.25.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (4)

Major Jackson

“My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love”

Today was one sensuous experience after another. After a NY Knicks basketball game in Madison Square Garden, (my first and they won against the Chicago Bulls!) I visited the Whitney Museum to absorb more of the great Kara Walker, whose 3rd floor exhibit “My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love” seemed very much a retrospective of her last decade’s work. Kara’s work compellingly revisits (revises?) antebellum narratives of American slavery, desire, freedom, violence, repressed sexual and racial mores and attitudes which underlie conversations and beliefs around black womanhood, race relations, art, representation, and history.

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11.25.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Stephen Burt

prosopagnosic poetics, or facing up to oneself

What do these three things have to do with one another?
1. Lat week I gave a reading in a black box theater on the campus of a great university in a small state. I liked the students a lot– I even liked all their questions (Q&A periods are inherently flattering to the answerer). One student wanted to know (I paraphrase) whether I considered myself a performance poet, or felt any connection to slam conventions, since (she thought) I read with such drama and verve. I told her I was flattered– and I was– but I didn’t think of my own work as connected to performance poetry at all. Why do I remember that particular question?
2. I received this weekend a new book of poetry by a Michigan writer who also writes essays and stories: the new book of poetry has to do with becoming a stepmom in a blended family– I recommend it highly to anyone with a particular interest in that topic– but the accompanying material revealed that the author is also at work on a book about living with prosopagnosia, the medical condition in which patients– whose vision and cognition are otherwise fine– cannot recognize people by their faces. Why does this strike me as an appropriate disorder for a poet to have?
3. It’s Thanksgiving! My wife and my son and I (but not our cats) are at my parents’ house, where, by nightfall, we will have met a few dozen of our relatives, including some people we see once a year at most, and perhaps some people I’ve never seen. What does that have to do with poetry? What does a black-box theater have to do with a prosopagnosia memoir-in-progress? And what do they all have to do with Martin Buber? Read on and find out…

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11.22.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (6)

A.E. Stallings

No Contest

I, as probably several of my fellow-bloggers here, published my first book as the result of a contest. In fact, the manuscript had been making the rounds for years, ever a finalist, never a bride. By the time it did win, and the $1000 check arrived, I had probably spent–who knows–twice? that on entry fees, copying, and postage. But what to do? It seemed the only way to publish a first book.
That appears to be changing…

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11.22.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (12)

Archive for November, 2007

Ange Mlinko

Marianne Moore and Revolution

Rigoberto González

Poet Memoirists

Stephen Burt

the kids want more poems!

Major Jackson

More Academic Bashing: The Kids Want More

Christian Bök

Poetic Machines 05

A.E. Stallings

Poetry and Prophecy

Ange Mlinko

A Note on Christian Wiman’s Reading of Basil Bunting

Major Jackson

“My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love”

Stephen Burt

prosopagnosic poetics, or facing up to oneself

A.E. Stallings

No Contest

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