Comments on: PS 4: this is not a poem, it’s just how I paced myself

By: Christopher Woodman

Christopher Woodman — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:15:45 +0000

I’m so glad you came back to this, Eileen.

I thought it was wonderful, in fact, and just wondered what you, the poet, might do with it if you wanted to make it into a poem that could stand on its own two feet anywhere in the world quite alone. Because what made it so effective was the situation in which it was delivered, obviously, and you just can’t package that situation with the poem in a book or a periodical. Indeed, as it stands you’d also have to package yourself with it to get the full effect, and giving up your life to be sandwiched in a book or a periodical would be a terrible waste!

So what would you have to do to make it a poem that anybody could read and enjoy on its own? You don’t have to do that, of course you don’t–you can just leave it.

And then there comes that moment when Eileen Myles’ work is famous enough that someone could publish it and everybody would know it was just right as it was. Like so much of Picasso.

Or a found letter on the street, precisely, but if the letter was picked up by Picasso and found scrunched up under an old leather bicycle seat in his studio it would be worth gaping at by millions.

And by me too–my heart beats faster just thinking about the Musée Picasso in the Marais!

Christopher

By: Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:45:11 +0000

I’m trying to wrap my mind around your questions:

a.) if you’re a poet what do you do with it?

“It” being the thing I declared not a poem? I think you read it or not and find pleasure in it or not. I felt it contained some things that butted against some of our ongoing conversations so I felt it was an engaged artifact.

b.) if you’re a reader how do you judge if you don’t know Eileen and you don’t know the start?

The start being what this thing is apart from say that classroom, my project or this blog. I think it’s meaning is entirely contextual – I mean for my purposes. But like a found letter on the street it could become something for someone else but that part’s not my business.

By: john

john — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:54:49 +0000

this would have been the summer of
‘79 or ‘80 age 16 or 17 and we were playing
an outdoor party at someone’s house when
we got rain delayed and the bass player
had to leave for a junior symphony
concert so i who had never played bass
played bass and we played an improv-Dada
set though we didn’t know the word
Dada we started playing “Cortez the
Killer” and the singer and our friend
Brian just did word association
taking turns one word at a time
for the lyrics then the drummer who
never sang sang a verse of “Catch
the Wind” before we segued into a raging
punk version which we’d never played
before and when we played “All Along
the Watchtower” the lead guitarist
lay on his back and made feedback
and i decided to stop playing and
just tell a story about my dad and his
dad who had died when i was 3 and i
was telling the story off-mike talking
and gesticulating and nobody could hear
me and all the other high school kids
looked at us like we were annoying
but one cool kid who played hockey and
got into an ivy league school was
leaning back in his chair laughing hard
he was a good-looking guy

the silence of being drowned out
by technology i did another piece like
that in college too but i knew Dada then

after we were done the host’s band came
on and played Eagles covers which i
disdained though i was friends with the
people in that band and respected them
as musicians and now i even like the
Eagles too the other day i even heard
“Hotel California” come on the radio
after “I Wanna Be Sedated” it struck
me as funny times have changed

Thoreau Ives Cage now Eileen Myles
talk about silence and practice it
too one of my favorite things to do
as a musician is lay out listening
to yes listening to the world is yes
a spiritual as well as an aesthetic
practice and i’m always grateful
for my ears and thinking of the sounds
of the world as your band is lovely thanks Eileen

By: Sandy Kirkley

Sandy Kirkley — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:32:53 +0000

Good for you..taking time to do that! My daughter benefited so much from art therapy. She continues in that for others now..as she has and is very sensitive to photographic expressions.I happen to know she is a “writer” also, which she does not admit.Keep up your concerns for others! Thanks, Sandy P. Kirkley/Marietta, Ga.

By: Christopher Woodman

Christopher Woodman — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 06:06:40 +0000

I like it very much, Eileen. However you arrived at it it’s a beautiful and encouraging girl of a start for a bunch of kids, for a poetry reading, for a meditation on silence or a Harriet dance.

So two questions:

a.) if you’re a poet what do you do with it?

b.) if you’re a reader how do you judge if you don’t know Eileen and you don’t know the start?

Same observation about the wonderful, indeed perfect little poem by little Jasmine Garcia—and you don’t say it’s a translation, Simon, so I guess she’s one of your bilingual class.

Great work, to have modelled for her such hope.

I’ve taught children too, and been overwhelmed by what with a tiny bit of encouragement they can do. I’ve also watched children who have been encouraged by their parents to keep going in art, as if their genius somehow could carry over into adulthood. But of course we human beings have to lose it all before we can discover it again, and such children usually end up feeling failures.

I would say chidlike qualities inhabit all great poetry, but that a great deal of our contemporary sophistication is childish.

By: John Oliver Simon

John Oliver Simon — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:02:09 +0000

And it’s interesting as such. Not everything is there to be argued with. Everyone in the poetic blogosphere waiting to pounce! Noise and silence are not necessarily opposites. Here’s a sixth-grader’s poem about noises, mostly:

Teachers talking to kids that don’t listen
Walls full of words
Houses changing colors and dancing
Eyes falling and getting wet
Pencils that are dancing
while writing on people’s hands
Trees growing with money
instead of things to eat
Phones ringing ring ring ring
Women cooking with lots of cream
Kids eating ice cream
Men reading some rules
Boards that have written “Don’t ask”
Points going up and down
Kids trying their best
People with names

—Jasmine García

By: Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:23:48 +0000

Well it really was pretty much what I said to the kids to introduce them to silence. So I took notes when i was preparing in poem form which I often do – like when i teach I write my notes in beats or whatever. So it just seemed like a fun in between thing to post. It seems like some posts say things and some are just wanting to be around.

By: John Oliver Simon

John Oliver Simon — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:13:57 +0000

This was your poem or the kids’ poem, Eileen? Some of it sounds very kid-poem, and some sounds like an adult voice.