Comments on: Today

By: Margo Berdeshevsky

Margo Berdeshevsky — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:40:05 +0000

Seen, and appreciated,Terreson. And thank you for Goethe. To which I only (might) whisper Corinthians. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels…”

margo

By: Terreson

Terreson — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:00:29 +0000

The blog has skipped off the main page and so I hope you see this, Margo B. When you speak up in that succinct way of yours I stop and the back straightens.

That is how I see the case of poetry too, the reaching out with hands part especially. Always have. Permit me to compliment your lines from Williams with lines of Goethe’s:

“Though most men suffer dumbly, yet a god
Gave me a tongue to utter all my pain.”

Terreson

By: Margo Berdeshevsky

Margo Berdeshevsky — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:23:22 +0000

“It is difficult/ to get the news from poems,/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there.”(WCW)
Had been trying for a few days to think of what I might add to your well-considered thought above, Terreson. Camus, dark eye, though he cast, was essentially devoured by his time. I read others, and write, ever with the hope not to be devoured by this, “our” time. And so, back to Williams for his above–pithy words. Because, in the beginning, and the end, what we have are the words. As swords, as memorials, or, as hands, to reach out with–

margo

By: Terreson

Terreson — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:45:49 +0000

Within hours of the events eight years ago NPR’s Terry Gross was interviewing Billy Collins who, as I recall, was Poet Laureate that year. From memory, she asked Collins how poetry can make sense of such a thing. Again from memory, he replied that poetry cannot. By extension I took him to mean poetry will never be able to approach the disaster. At the time, as stunned as practically everyone else in the world was, I thought he was right. Sometime later I remembered a thing Camus said about artists and the present Age. I decided Collins was wrong, or, rather, that he missed the point. Here is Camus:

“In order to dominate collective passions they must, in fact, be lived through and experienced, at least relatively. At the same time he experiences them, the artist is devoured by them. The result is that our period is rather the period of journalism than that of the work of art. The exercise of these passions, finally, entails far greater chances of death than in a period of love and ambition, in that the only way of living collective passions is to be willing to die for them and by their hand.”

Since then I view a certain class of poetry differently. That, say, of an Akhmatova, Melville’s Civil War poetry, The War poets of WW1, poetry coming out of present day Palestine or Iraq or Iran or Afhganistan or Columbia or an American inner-city, and all the way up to and including Pinsky’s poem and any other poem addressing 9/11. I’ve also decided that Camus was not entirely right either, only partially so. It is probably right that ours is more an Age of journalism than of art. It is certainly true that artists must live at the hands of collective passions, “at least relatitively,” in order to dominate, or maybe instead get inside them. But on an instinctive level the act of such poetry itself is an attempt to make sense of something, however incomprehensible, to give it a name and a recognizable face and a body. Thank you Camus.

Terreson

By: Joel Brouwer

Joel Brouwer — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:57:24 +0000

Thank you, Margo. I didn’t know that Mueller poem and I’m glad to. Your comment makes manifest an intractable problem. Sometimes, perhaps particularly in times of great sorrow, we (humans) have a natural wish to feel ourselves part of a “we” (nation, family, tribe, etc.) But as you suggest, every “we” purchases its sense of belonging at the dangerously high price of creating a “them.”

By: Margo Berdeshevsky

Margo Berdeshevsky — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 07:30:52 +0000

I like the Pinsky poem, Joel, though, each to her favorite way to ponder…mine will have no date ascribed to it, but will fill my thought for even longer, with a large (and small) claim. It’s Lisel Mueller’s “The Blind Leading the Blind,” available here:

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2007/02/10

It says so much of what I feel when I think of (that) or any such a day. It was never about only “us.” There were/are two of us in this cave. And more.

margo

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:50:58 +0000

Even if not mentioned by this particular blogger (or in the "weird list" he points to), at least one of the poems you mention is certainly on the Poetry Foundation's radar: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177383

By: Oscar

Oscar — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:44:24 +0000

Strange that Martín Espada's "Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100" or "Not Here" aren't included. "Alabanza"'s focus on the dead whose names we may never really is in the finest tradition of political poetry. It's also a poem that works both in a studio reading and in the open air. "Not Here" makes reference to how Chilean poets were affected by their 9/11, see John Oliver Simon's comment. I'm wondering why these two poems wouldn't be on the Poetry Foundation's radar.

By: Kevin Cutrer

Kevin Cutrer — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:29:03 +0000

I agree that this poem took some nerve, and it’s effective because of that. The title itself probably sends many readers in the other direction, thinking, “not another one.”

By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:30:18 +0000

Here (click) are some curgina (curginas? curginae??) for you!