(i’m back and, momentarily, no longer mad nor sad at anyone. thanks, some of you, for the non-posted/able comments. as i already wrote one non-public-commenter, my posterior actually isn’t that great, but, my negative capability really IS stunning.)
so, having posted ass, i now reassess the correct/necessary use of this forum.
in some ways, especially as way of transition, my derriere really is a short lyric poem (let me compare/count the ways):
1. adorno’s definition of the lyric as subjective expression of a social antagonism;
2. frye’s characterization of the lyric as the genre in which the poet turns his back on his audience;
3.”there’s no ideal form that does for any two of us, i think.” (lowell to wcw)
4. somebody’s the lyric (lament) as always being personal–founded on a PREMATURE(!) fear that poetic creativity is waning in its author, but really that fear is the loss of potency, both SEXUAL and POETIC.
(me: the lament so personal….it is greek.) AND
5. me, also: what i need to and have been in my way (not) talking about behind YOUR back (dear reader) is this forum as both argument for and against the entanglement of poetry and life– why are we ever denying (comment about chess) (shitty posts) that they are inextricably linked?–why this blog if not this blogger being both (one time) creator of poem and poem itself?
listen:
“life beats art, so to speak, and sense beats eccentricity, and the way things really are beats the most beautiful unreal visions, half truths one can fix up by leaving out and indulging oneself.” (note that AND)
(or so wrote the man who saw the eland at the table to the woman who KNEW BEST);
AND
6. i am, by the way, currently involved in an emotional/intellectual/andyes,sexual threesome, (and i’m not talking me, robert lowell and elizabeth bishop here) i.e.my old way of writing (living) wore out for me. i wanted more of the good prose writer’s realistic direct glance. and really, who CAN help us from our NOTHING to the ALL?
oh, i work by my enthusiasms, only as long as they hold on
out.
Paul’s letter to Phillipians is somehow germane (and better in King James translation, of course, but still): “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Nice to have a posterior poetics, at last!
Seriously. Take your pants off!!!
Somebody should do an anthology of asses in literature. (Not counting the Bible, Mr. Moody: I’ve checked out every one there and they’re all donkeys.)
For example … Ulysses, Episode 15 — Circe:
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE (Raises high behind the celebrant’s petticoats, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body.
***
And Michael … calm down!
Hi Olena,
Could you say more about this: “i wanted more of the good prose writer’s realistic direct glance”? I’m interested in this impulse and how it might desire to exist inside and outside of poetry. It reminds me a little bit, too, of Brenda Shaughnessy’s comments in a jubilat interview about what happened after her first book — i.e., artifice/masquerade/ornateness began to fall away. What are the values/uses/pleasures of artifice/indirectness and realism/directness as you see them? Or if those are faulty poles, how do you see it?
thx!
becca
ps. sorry for the “emotional/intellectual/andyes,sexual” harassment commenters have given you around here. It’s annoying enough to witness, so I can only imagine how it might feel to think you need to respond to it in some way. Which, I guess, you don’t.
pps. I also just like to see you disrupting people’s expectations of high seriousness for a forum like this.
Joseph, you have no idea how hard I’ve tried to “calm” myself. I’ve gone cold turkey and everything. I mean, did you not hear about the “emotional/intellectual/andyes,sexual threesome”??? Now about those pants…
Tori said, “Sugar, give me sugar.” The cake said, “Eat me.” I say, “It’s hot and warms my pushaw.”