The Best American Poetry

Musings [By Lera Auerbach]

I am in the middle of writing a book – collection of random thoughts, musings, daily fragments. Here are some of them:

On self:

Wondering wanderer in search of wonder, always lost, never found, profane and profound; round and round circling sounds in the maze of the page, musical sage, child of the times, enchanted by rhymes, seeking connection in all forms of art, forgetting her part in everyday matters (invoices, letters), not knowing left from right, hiding alone in a secluded hut, dying from a papercut.

. . . . . . . . 

On art:

If there is consensual love, there must be consensual art, but great art is never consensual – it rips you apart, uses you for its creation, and then leaves you like an empty useless shell. You may resent it, but you can't help loving it all the same. You may deny your lover, but you can't deny your calling.

. . . . . . . . 

On work:

I never know what to say when asked about my occupation. It's such a strange word! How can one occupy a profession? And does it imply that you are taking forcefully someone else's space to which you have no right? Suddenly, your job takes the form of a war zone and you stand alone and lost, staring at a hostile blank page.

. . . . . . . . 

On age:

Young people are unashamed of big words or concepts. Avoiding them is a sign of maturity; scorning them is a sign of an old age. You are as old as the skeptic within you.  

. . . . . . . . 

On books:

My grandfather always requested that I wash my hands before touching a book. He worshiped his library. To bend a page was a sacrilege worthy of spanking. “It’s only a book. It’s not going to break,” I would object. “Write your own books. Then see if they are breakable,” he would answer.

. . . . . . . . 

On progress:

There is no progress in art. Art denies Darwinism. Stravinsky is not better than Mozart and Mozart is not better than Bach. Picasso is not better than Rembrandt. There is no progress – only linguistic or stylistic changes reflecting the times.

Virginia Quarterly Review Inaugurates Poetry Posters with David Lehman's "Poem in the Manner of the 1960s"

The Virginia Quarterly Review writes to tell us that every Friday they will be offering up a poem that’s appeared in an issue of VQR in mini-poster form.  David Lehman's "Poem in the Manner of the 1960s," from the Spring 2012 issue, inaugurates the series. Click on the image below to visit the VQR site so you can print a high-resolution version of the poster and subscribe to VQR's RSS feed for future updates: 

-- sdh

Infidelities

 So the London Review of Books comes in the mail and you turn immediately to the page that would be the inside back flap if the LRB were a book rather than a tabloid-shaped effort at an intellectual broadside.

The inside back cover has the classifieds and the LRB has the world's finest personals. The first each week is from an outfit that calls itself Infidelities and boasts that it is not only discreet but "bespoke" -- "A personal professional bespoke individual service," a phrase with as many adjectives as a poem by Robert Lowell, and which provides new eviudence of the astonishing rise of "bespoke" as a word of choice.

But the week's best personal is a little further down in the list: 
<< Aspiring priest seeks guardian temptress for daily confession in Gothic music hall. johndonne@wiltonsmusichall.com >>

It could be a coded message directed to a Guardian reporter with a liking for Gothic architecture from a witty sonneteer, the author of a book on Augustine's Confessions, who played Sky Masterson in a college production of Guys and Dolls. Or maybe not. Try reading Donne's "The Extasie" or "The Sun Rising" with this advert in your brain. -- DL

"An atmosphere of dread. . ."

My friend S. subscribes to the London Review of Books for the personals, which are superior not only to those in American journals but also to the other ads on the page ("Memoir Writing in Southern France!") and to the articles with their elderly rubbish about Islam and the limits of modernity, the John Edwards scandal, revisionary atheism, and what would have happened if Celine and Vita Sackville West had been lovers under the rule of Sharia. Glum stuff.

How much more pleasurable to encounter a notice that begins in boldface, "There's usually an atmosphere of dread," and continues, in unhighlighted print, "when I show up at a party. Not so the next one, when you accompany me as both my groom to be and my designated driver. Easily drunk, garrulous F, 41, prone to molesting the teenage sons of suburban dinner party hosts and crying over the petits fours. WLTM sober expert in public apology to 50."

Or, "I'd sooner indulge my dangerous hi-fibre diet obsession than contribute yet another churlish whimsy to this column. Yet I am alone, and need to smell a lady's head. Man, 54."

Obsessions with obsessions, with the power of smell and with the value of sobriety, are as common as the "whimsy" and the artful use of an exclamation point: "Reformed trapeze-performing reprobate (F39) seeks creative, sane(ish), trampy-looking (but non-smelling) boy for sober fun!" 

And then there's the lure of France ("Narrow Dog to Carcassonne") and the delightful specificity ("seeks 56-ish M") or lack thereof ("possible female equivalents, 50 to 75, may discover more"). The succinctness of a T-shirt ("Celibacy sucks. Let's get it licked. James, 46") is as unattractive as sincerity ("seeks tall man 50-62ish with big heart and expansive mind"), and what's with this "ish" business?

There are a lot of eligible teachers out there. "School teacher, 36, seeking spectacle-wearing sci-fi reader, can be a Gamer if he makes time for kite flying." And if sometimes the advertiser resorts to shock effects ("I pride myself on being very well lubricated"), hyperbole, in the best ads, collapses beautifully. "Let your mind be dazzled, your senses tingled! I am a geography teacher in West Hartford. M, 57."

-- DL