Comments on: FREE POETRY

By: D. A. Powell

D. A. Powell — Sat, 31 May 2008 06:17:27 +0000

Hi Bill,
I don’t think that universities are under any obligation to hire their faculty locally. A department or program should draw the best faculty in that program or department’s field, irrespective of the faculty members’ places of origin.
Maybe to be fair, I should have said that the Free Poetry series is being put out by Martin Corless-Smith, who happens to teach at Boise State University. But I wanted to give the school proper credit for hiring someone who is providing service to the literary community by publishing the work of others.
National or regional identity may or may not be an aspect of a poet’s work useful to the critique of his or her oeuvre. It is perhaps even less interesting to think that a publishing project should define its list first and foremost by its zipcode. “Every artist’s strictly illimitable country is himself” said E. E. Cummings. He was referring to Ezra Pound, a poet who, incidentally, was from Idaho. But I’d hardly call Pound an “Idaho poet”–not because it isn’t true, but because he seems to draw from so many other places. Including St. Elizabeth’s.

By: Boyd Nielson

Boyd Nielson — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:58:55 +0000

Dear Steve,
Quite right. Thanks for the clarification. And the Halsey isn’t downloading for me either.
Dear Bill,
Wait, you mean that Corless-Smith isn’t from Idaho?
I do hear though that Boise is going to endow a new Idaho poetry chair in honor of Ezra Pound. There’s also going to be two new dueling theology chairs, one named after C. Van Der Donckt and the other after B.H. Roberts. The latter will be open only to British ex-pats from Utah.

By: bill knott

bill knott — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:35:50 +0000

… the U of Montana can’t find any
Montanan poets for its faculty and has
to hire New York poets,
and here’s Boise State U with this Britpo . . .
are there any homegrown poets at any
college or U anywhere?—
are there any poets who actually LIVE where
they teach?
Perloff and Bok may hail this rootlessness
as the new ideal,
ergo . . .

By: bill knott

bill knott — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:01:11 +0000

… are any of these chapbook poets
actually FROM Boise or Idaho?
if Boise State U is publishing these non-Idaho poets,
where do the poets from Idaho go
to get their work published?

By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:36:54 +0000

Yes, Oppen is everywhere now – now that he’s 100! Just received a new tome, George Oppen and the Fate of Modernism by Peter Nicholls. I haven’t gotten yet to the part that reveals the fate of modernism, but the book draws a lot on unpublished notes and drafts – if you like the daybooks and prose, you’ll have to check it out. According to the dust jacket, at least, Oppen’s poetix attempts “to avoid what he regards as the errors of the modernist avant-garde and to create instead a designedly ‘impoverished’ aesthetic which keeps poetry close to the grain of experience and to the political and ethical dilemmas it constantly poses.” Your mileage may vary.
Anyway, the Hooker has a lengthy prose introduction which actually cites Oppen; Hooker says that O. “confirmed my feeling for imagism as a root of modern poetry, and as a technique for transcending momentary perception, and for building sequences and long poems.”

By: bill knott

bill knott — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:00:17 +0000

… Boise State can’t find any poets from
Idaho, they have to import this stale hyphen Brit?
the lines Boyd Neilson quotes are blah to me , , ,
“How can you not enjoy poems like this?” he
admonishes: his tone of hectoring impatience is what
makes so many people hate poetry . . .
“We’ll understand English /
when we understand why eloquence does not owe allegiance.”
Steve calls that “great” and since Steve is Steve
and everybody’s afraid of him,
none will refute him . . .
to me it’s worthless verbiage, more bellybutton lint from the endlessly boring
navel inspections poets indulge themselves in . . .
the poems quoted by Powell are much better than this Halsey,
in my opinion . . .
ten thousand Steves can try to stuff Oppen down
my ears and i still won’t swallow . . .

By: bill knott

bill knott — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:30:50 +0000

. . . does Boise State have any poets
from Idaho on its faculty?
*
and in answer to Boyd Nelson’s rhetorical
question,
how can I not enjoy poems like this?
: well, it’s pretty effortlessly actually . . .
*
i don’t like Oppen either for that matter…

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:01:09 +0000

“Elegance does not owe allegiance”: that’s right, it’s Halsey (your quotation makes it unclear who you quote, alas), and it’s great. Matt Hofer at the Univ of NM turned me on to Halsey a few years back– I’ve been meaning to read him at length and with patience, and the chapbook makes a good spur.
It’s also NOT DOWNLOADING from the Boise State site (I get errors through Firefox), though the Jeremy Hooker downloads fine. Do those lines from Hooker sound like a slightly smoother Oppen, or is it just me? (Is Oppen everywhere now? Hooker hasn’t sounded like Oppen earlier, to me, and Hooker has been publishing for a while.)
No coincidence by the way that Corless-Smith includes some of the rarely-seen-over-here senior UK avant-garde, since, I believe, he is British (and avant-garde) himself. Worth watching.

By: Boyd Nielson

Boyd Nielson — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:12:24 +0000

And the best part, really, is that you don’t even need to have a good home. Hence I got mine.
If you can’t wait for your hard copies (and you should) you can, I think, download them from: http://www.boisestate.edu/english/mfa/freepoetry.htm For me the Swensen, Monk and Halsey have been really notable. How can you not enjoy poems like this?
A Looking-Glass for Logoclasts: In Coherence
Wretched until written words fallen into unknown order.
This exercise book’s called the Coming Forth By Day.
This pocketbook’s full to the brim.
‘If your choice London trifle with the Muse
self may perhaps unawares away.’
Inchoate in coherence among is or us
indeterminable butterflies intermittent briefly
dark as the language which La Belle foretold.
Immortal lions cribbed by Virgil. We’ll understand English
when we know why elegance does not owe allegiance.
Or this duet of John Dee and Edward Kelley?
JD: Such thumping, shuffing, cluttering and fimbling
EK: Skriking, strowting, roushing and thumbling
JD: This was a jolly man when he was king of England
EK: A Commission was out to attach him for coining of money
JD: Here is his going into France
EK: Here is his going into Denmark
JD: The children fall down dead
EK: And I begin to write.