The Best American Poetry

"Last Will and Testament" [by Kimberly Steele]

Last Will and Testament

Life is a molehill of unreadable documents and death
is a stapler. If you live long enough, your footsteps
will trace out a giant Rorschach test. You can give
this to posterity. But, really, let’s face it: perception
is secondary—sight, merely a pair of training wheels,
taste, an open clamshell robbed of its meat. Don’t look
toward smell or sound—a powerless rotting carcass,
a broken carburetor. As for touch? Well, everything
touches, but only a few things I’ve heard of can feel.
Just once, I would like to grasp onto a peppermint
red and tell someone about its loud edges. Or savor
a harmonious physics equation, trace the pattern
of its oblique angles. I want to resurrect Saint Paul
and give him a vagina, then sit back and watch him
react. If you live long enough, you’ll have fixed
opinions about these sentiments, and, of course,
chaos theory. The overwhelming pity is that your
ink blots will seem just like everyone else’s, scattered
by the will of the breeze, and if you ever end up
knowing anything at all, it will certainly turn out
to be something you never wanted to know, at all.
Your children will still stop at the crosswalk and look
both ways for speeding cars. On second thought, let Paul
keep his testicles—why waste another good twat?

-- Kimberly Steele

Nyet

The head of the Office of the Independent Counsel was just about to go insane, because he wanted so badly to possess a copy of a certain satirical quarterly publication.  

 

Indeed, you might even say he was Starr craving MAD.  

Mannequins

These photos, taken in Ithaca by Richard Rand, seemed so suggestive to us, and so evocative of certain noir films of the 1950s, that we thought we would base an informal challenge on them. To wit: write a brief plot summary of a movie from which these are stills; preferably under 125 words, in the form of a comment. The winner as judged by one of our heroic fellow window-shoppers will earn bragging rights and a toast at Cafe Loup.

"Shearing Day" (by Laura Orem)

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full.
One for the master, one for the dame,
And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Seems like a lot of wool for one sheep, but you'd be surprised. This week, Nathan, our shearer, came to give Ike and Izzy their annual haircuts. It's amazing to watch him - he flips them onto their butts, pulls out the electric clippers, and in about fifteen minutes releases a very relieved sheep with about half the volume of when he started. There's a specific technique to shearing: the idea is that the fleece should come off essentially in one piece. Then, the wool is gently washed to remove the lanolin, carded (this means combing the tangles out), and spun. Washed but uncarded wool is called "locks"; carded but unspun wool is "roving"; and spun roving is "yarn."  At the York County Fair each summer, there is a contest called "From Sheep to Shawl," in which teams of four or five members shear, wash, card, spin, and knit wool into shawls in a given time frame, usually about four hours. It's one of the most popular events at the fair.

Shearing day is fun. Everyone has a good time, and the sheep, although a bit astonished, feel much better afterward. Ike and Izzy are Babydoll Southdowns, which is considered a small breed (they weigh about 175-200lbs), and their fleeces fill up a king-sized bed sheet each. So "three bags full" isn't an exaggeration. I thought I'd share some before and after shots with you.

The "before" shot - Dinner before Nathan arrives


Once on their butts, the sheep freeze
and let Nathan go to work.




Almost done - the fleece is coming off in one piece


Voila! A complete fleece and a relieved sheep.


The "after" shot - until next June

Cracks in Everything: Parenthood and the Writing Life (by Tess Callahan)

"Ring the bells that still can ring,/ Forget your perfect offering./ There's a crack in everything./ That's how the light gets in." – from Anthem by Leonard Cohen.

In her comment on yesterday’s post, Poem as Fissure: Geophysics and the Value of Frailty, poet and artist Laura Orem wrote that she keeps these lyrics in her art studio as a reminder. A reminder of what, I wonder? To avoid sealing up the cracks, as if that were possible? Perhaps even to embrace them? And what are the cracks, anyway?

Cohen’s Anthem speaks on many levels – globally, politically, and environmentally – yet it hits me in a personal way. Everyday I wake up with an idealized version of how my day will go, the perfect offering. I see myself having a nice conversation with my kids over breakfast. We hear the wren singing outside, and see - far below the house - the rush of the river, flush from rain. We aim to do our tasks in the morning, then head to the lake after lunch. This morning’s plan is for me to write this post, and for them to play piano, do some summer reading, and practice their online math program. I’ve been up here in my office for about an hour now, (granted, most of that was spent listening to various renditions of Anthem on YouTube), and have yet to hear any notes from the piano. Hm…

Just as I am about to go down to investigate, I hear my son’s footsteps trudging up the stairs. His sister has been on Webkinz all morning, he reports, and has not let him do his math. This, from the boy who claims to be allergic to algebra. Boo hoo. Nevertheless, I am required to make the trip downstairs to say the obvious: No computer games until the other stuff is done. 
 
On the way down, I hear the fan running in the empty bathroom. The shower door is ajar, lights on, wet towel and pajamas on the floor. Am I surprised?  Then, I peek into the bedrooms. Every so often a bed is actually made without my asking; today isn’t one of those days. I make my way down to the kitchen. Cereal bowls half filled with milk adorn the table. I make my usual lame announcement that the maid is off duty today. My kids only groan. Has anyone thought to brush teeth? I don’t bother asking. I give them a new set of orders. Forget piano and math for the moment. For now, I tell them to take care of their rooms, their clothes, and their teeth. I tell them I will check back in a few minutes, and throw in some warnings about deductions from their allowance.

Then, back upstairs to this blog post. Where was I? Ah, yes, cracks. My perfect vision of a productive morning and relaxing afternoon is already splintering. What gets me most is the bickering: She took a book off my shelf without asking! He hit me with the dog’s chew toy!  A lifelong conflict-avoider, I am turned inside out by these run-of-the-mill quarrels. I try not to show it. I tell them it’s normal for siblings to fight sometimes, and they know how to work it out. They have plenty of practice.

Finally, I hear my daughter’s notes on the piano, and before long, my son’s footsteps as he stomps up the stairs again. He has forgotten the password to the online math program. “Can’t you just hit remember?” I say. It’s another trip down the stairs because I, too, have forgotten, and must look it up. “We’re not going to make it to the lake, are we?” he says. “And it’s all her fault.”

I imagine the Anthem lyrics refer to bigger cracks than my petty grumbles; true fractures in the realm of death, divorce, illness, and war. But these distractions and disruptions are the little splinters that make up my day as a parent. Okay, Leonard, where’s the light? By my calculation, I should be sunburned by now, except that we are still in the house, not at the lake, and our prospects of getting there are dwindling.

Maybe my perfect offering was too contrived. Maybe my kids won’t make big leaps in math this summer. Maybe my blog posts won’t be brilliant. Maybe it will take awhile longer before my children load the dishwasher without being asked, (I’m not giving up on that one, though!) Maybe the cracks are the spaces where we actually encounter each other in the most raw and honest ways. Idealized pictures, with their soft, faded edges, are never as engaging as the real thing.  Any image I may form of who my daughter and son might become, and how they will relate to each other, will surely be wrong, so I try not to speculate. We only have the moment at hand, this sunny afternoon and the desire to be out in it after so many weeks of rain. Enough of math, piano, and blogging. Let’s ring the bells that still can ring. We’re off to the lake to enjoy this singular day, cracks and all.

But before we leave, put away your snacks!

"We should take great care to preserve this ancient Sumerian city,"

Tom said, urgently.

Did you hear about the orator

who was painfully aware of his own mortality?  Every chance he got, he seized the dais.

"Nostalgia" [by Kimberly Steele]

Nostalgia

Out of all my previous lives, I think I miss jousting the most.
I can taunt the minivans that catapult past my driveway,
but soccer moms internalize rage, and even cab drivers
find no sport for their trouble. If you’ve ever lain awake
wondering how to snag the next thrill, you’re not alone—
there’s no shame in thirsting for combat. Take a serious
lesson I once learned watching a beggar woman get (merely)
tapped by the front bumper of a Jaguar XK—her breasts
bouncing under her ramshackle coat; the driver too hurried
to claim his trophy. Just enough time left to laugh.

-- Kimberly Steele

Poem as Fissure: Geophysics and the Value of Frailty (by Tess Callahan)

The title here comes from a comment made by poet Debra Wierenga on yesterday’s post, Michael Jackson's Enablers and Ours: “I like the idea of poem as fissure, the artful crack in the mask through which authentic feeling becomes palpable to the reader.”
We’ve created a culture that worships strength - physical, social, psychological and professional - but is it possible that a degree of fragility is vital to our wellbeing? French geophysicist Xavier Le Pichon says yes. Featured recently on NPR, Le Pichon is famous for his comprehensive model of plate tectonics, or the large scale motions of Earth’s lithosphere.

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/fragility/

The earth’s surface is made up of constantly moving plates shifting against one another. You might suppose that a solid, steel-like lithosphere would make for a more stable structure, but the opposite is true. The pressure, tension, and sublimation between the shifting plates - much of which occurs beneath the ocean floor - is one of the reasons the planet can sustain life. The earth’s seemingly stable surface and molten interior are in constant dialogue, sometimes manifested as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis.

The human parallel is striking. The more ductile our outer surface, or ego, the more seamlessly we can flow with the subterranean shifts in our awareness and understanding. Poetry is one conduit. The poet accesses the deep, unseen currents and invites the reader to follow. Nature is another portal, as are music and art. But if our ego is too stiff and rigid, like the dense rock surface of the San Andreas Fault, we cannot make the tiny, ongoing adjustments to our own inward movement. The ego and the soul become disjointed, causing pressure to mount until the correction comes in one cataclysmic jolt.

The character Oliver in my novel April & Oliver exemplifies this. He has a created such a fixed, closed outer reality that he has left no room for the influence of more subtle, interior energies, such as insight and intuition. In fact, he is afraid of the power of those blocked off magma chambers, which harbor the musical sensibility he has long buried. Disowning one’s power is a dangerous thing, however, and the seismic adjustment for Oliver will be, by necessity, catastrophic.

The metaphor is illustrated by this poem taught to Le Pichon by his mother. Can it be a coincidence that the boy who memorized this poem in childhood went on to become an expert in plate tectonics?

Le Vase Brisé (The Broken Vase)
by Sully Prudhomme

The vase where this verbena’s dying
Was cracked by a lady’s fan’s soft blow.
It must have been the merest grazing:
We heard no sound.  The fissure grew.

The little wound spread while we slept,
Pried deep in the crystal, bit by bit.
A long, slow marching line, it crept
From spreading base to curving lip.

The water oozed out drop by drop,
Bled from the line we’d not seen etched.
The flowers drained out all their sap.
The vase is broken: do not touch.

The quick, sleek hand of one we love
Can tap us with a fan’s soft blow,
And we will break, as surely riven
As that cracked vase. And no one knows.

The world sees just the hard, curved surface
Of a vase a lady’s fan once grazed,
That slowly drips and bleeds with sadness.
Do not touch the broken vase.

Painting: The Broken Pitcher by Bouguereau

The artful cracks in our masks are the seams through which compassion can enter in and issue out. It took me a long time to get my novel right; every day I sat down and drank tea with my old friend, dejection. But failure and loss can be powerful teachers. Six months after sending my revised manuscript to the last agent I was ever going to try, I made a decision to purge my house, donating old clothes and children’s toys, and throwing away cartons of old manuscripts – first drafts, teacher’s comments, everything. I saved nothing. I had not given up writing, just the dream. Two weeks later, the agent called and asked to represent the book. Two days after that, she sold it. I’m not suggesting cause and effect, only that the fissures created by so much failure allowed me to release old energy, like a long exhalation, and invite in the moment at hand.

'Hung' and the gluten-free Neruda cranberry-walnut bread

Tonight, HBO will premiere Hung, its latest attempt at a half-hour sitcom since it forgot Eastbound & Down was as good as Sex and the City. Hung is about Ray, a high-school athletics coach, a middle-aged divorced dad, most of whose house has recently burned down. He's strapped for cash, his kids and ex-wife more or less hate him. Desperate, Ray attends a make-your-dreams-come-true motivational speech in which he's urged to find his essential talent to achieve success. Or in the words of the speaker, to "identify your own tool." If you take that phrase and the show's title, are you surprised when I say the show is about Ray and his gigantic penis?

Yes, this is the essentially one-joke premise of Hung. Ray becomes, in the words of one character, a "man-whore," servicing women for money. But that character is more interesting than Ray. She's Tanya, a poet. A poet who's also in the identify-your-tool class, and whose own get-rich-tediously idea is something she calls "lyric bread": "a croissant folded around Maya Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman', or a raisin loaf with Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' swirled in." She also suggests a "gluten-free Neruda cranberry walnut bread." Says the motivational leader: "Food for the body, food for the soul: I like it!" Ray, who is dubious, advises her to "laminate the poems" so they don't melt in the bread. 

Tanya and Ray unite because Tanya, who had a one-night fling with Ray some time ago, knows his "tool" truly is something special, and says she's "hoping to give women more than they've been seeing for centuries." In other words, says Ray, you "want to be my pimp." Correct, says Tanya.

Tanya is played by the wonderful Jane Adams, whom you may recall as one of Niles' girlfriends on Frasier. Adams has huge eyes and a low voice and redeems a lot of the lousy penis jokes. Looking at advance reviews of Hung, I find my Entertainment Weekly review leaves me in the minority. Other reveiwers are more impressed with the show, and find in it metaphors for and comparisons to a deflated economy.

It occurs to me that the ideal reviewer for Hung may be Nin Andrews, who would bring her own special talent to bear on Hung. It would also be interesting to hear how other poets react to Tanya and her poetry bread. Let me know if you watch. And if you'd buy "lyric bread." 

--Ken Tucker

Rob Casper Presents a Poem by Lisa Jarnot

There's nothing like holding a new issue of jubilat for the first time. Until that moment, the issue -- and all the work that goes into it, from selecting poems to conducting and revising interviews to ordering and proofreading -- seems unfinished. But what a feeling, to see and touch the end result! This week I had such an experience, with jubilat 16. It was a thrill to see how well the cover, by poet and jubilat editor-at-large Terrance Hayes, turned out -- it was based on a hand-out he gave for a panel presentation on Wallace Stevens, and ties in well with both Srikanth Reddy's piece on Stevens and digression and our first-ever forum, on African-American Experimental Poetry (which we'd been talking about doing for years -- so exciting to see it in print). j16 also includes many poets I've admired, published in our pages for the first time -- poets like Brenda Ijima, Ange Mlinko, Alice Notley, and Ed Roberson. We managed to include some wonderful found pieces/reprints, too, like a selection from 20th Century visionary Buckminster Fuller's book I Seem to Be a Verb and selected aphorisms from the 13th Century German philosopher Albertus Magnus.

Contributing editor Brett Fletcher Lauer (who is my co-worker at the Poetry Society of America, and a poetry editor at A Public Space -- he's a brilliant poet, too) was responsible for the latter reprint, as well as another new section for the magazine: a trio of responses to Jack Spicer's "Magic Workshop" questionnaire (which the famed Bay Area poet used to select students for his private classes). As Spicer wrote by way of explanation/instruction, "This questionnaire is in no sense designed to indicate whether you can write poetry . . . [but] I must have some guide as to which of you would most benefit from a workshop of this particular content. Some of the questions will seem bizarre or pointless, but it would be useful if you would answer them all as precisely as possible." Christian Hawkey and Matthew Rohrer both contributed their precise, and delightful, answers, as did Lisa Jarnot -- the below is by Jarnot, whose work I have admired for years, and it is also her first time in the magazine!

Jack Spicer Magic Workshop Questionnaire

I.
With the gums gone marching
are they gone. And though the nose is next to nothing,
the eye is marching gone.
And now the downside
Of the radiator on the downside of the floor
is it, the even row of it
fit to raise
a din of children.
You will count the teeth of mongoose
You will stay in the midst of them,
You will know the mongoose, you will hear them
in the narrow mongoose dawn.

II.
In the snow endlessness
Snow, and sea salt
He lost his sounding snow.
The color white. He walks
Over an antelope skin carpet made
of snow.
Without eyes or thumbs
He suffers all the snow
But the snow flakes quiver
In the snow and in the endlessness
How is it that a wound
His snow is left.
Snow, and sea salt and snow
In the snow blown endlessness.

III.

Blue-rooted heron, spring lake
frog song, like me no traveler
Taking buoyed rest, loose-winged water-bird
And dumb with music cheeping.
I stand upon the waterfront, like him no traveler
traveling, dangling on traveled wings.
I caw and take my rest.
They will not hunt us for
The flesh of the hunter is hunted and is dumb.
The sound of an arrow, the sight of a hunter
is hunting a  life without wings.
So let us die for death alone is motion
And death alone will make these herons fly.
Dead wingless flycatching ocean
hybridized to die.

-- Lisa Jarnot

Tess Callahan, Guest Blogger June 28-July 4

 This week we welcome Tess Callahan as our guest blogger.  Callahan's debut novel, April & Oliver, (excerpt here) was released this month by Grand Central Publishing. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, Agni, Powells.com, Cottonwood, The Stylus Anthology, Boston College Magazine and New York Newsday. Her essay for the NPR segment "You Must Read This" will be aired this summer. She earned an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College. Welcome, Tess.

In other News . . .
We're pleased to welcome back Eleanor Goodman, who will post over the next few weeks from London.  Eleanor writes fiction, poetry, literary criticism, and translates from Chinese. She has lived in Shanghai and Beijing, and now resides in Boston. Find out more about Eleanor Goodman here.

Pitch your movie plot.  More here.

Michael Jackson’s Enablers and Ours (by Tess Callahan)

After Michael Jackson’s rush to the hospital on Thursday, his attorney, Brian Oxman, told CNN, “The people who have surrounded him have been enabling him. If you think the case of Anna Nicole Smith was an abuse, it's nothing in comparison to what we have seen taking place in Michael Jackson's life.”

Famous people attract leeches. We only have to look at the sad cases of Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley. Yet, enablers don’t generally walk into our lives unbidden. We gravitate toward those who confirm our comfortable illusions and intractable habits. Let’s not kid ourselves; we all do it.

In my novel, April & Oliver, published this month, both main characters surround themselves with enablers. For April, it’s the more conventional kind. She has a habit of hard living and dangerous men because, frankly, feeling numb is what seems normal to her, and living in a rough environment is one way to maintain that. Her cronies at the bar and assorted male counterparts are surely not going to say, “Hey, do you think this lifestyle is good for you?” Why would they when they get part of the payoff? 

For Oliver, the enabling is more subtle. He is a successful law student happily engaged to a sensitive, caring person who is also a super-achiever. The hitch is that Oliver has, for the sake of convenience, snuffed out an essential part of himself - his music. Music was his portal to the full measure of life experience, with all its rapture and pain, but it became too much for him, so he buried it. His fiancé is an enabler in the sense that she sees nothing truncated about him. She is unaware of the touchstone that once kept him grounded and open to life. All of the external measures say he is fine, so it must be so. He’s not, of course. When his life again collides with April’s, turmoil erupts because they do not uphold one another’s illusions. Rather than enable, they call each other on their inconsistencies, and sparks erupt.

Who is the better friend, I wonder, one who comforts and affirms, or one who says, when needed, “What the hell are you doing with your life?”

In an article in yesterday’s New York Times, “His Moves Expressed as Much as His Music,” Alastair  Macaulay writes that Jackson’s kinetic genius on the dance floor, praised by Fred Astaire, mutated over time into something more choreographed and precise, but less spontaneous. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/arts/music/27assess.html?_r=1&ref=music

The quality that diminished over time, Macaulay asserts, is vulnerability, which the later Jackson apparently felt compelled to hide. That vulnerability was his poetry. Authentic poetry can only issue from a place of raw honesty, and how is that possible without genuine friends with whom to be honest?

The purpose of addiction, whether to painkillers, alcohol, abuse, or overwork, is to numb ourselves. And, why not? Isn’t life painful without the occasional crutch? But when occasional becomes chronic, the wall we erect against pain can only fissure. The French geo-physicist, Xavier Le Pichon, known for his comprehensive model of plate tectonics, has written nimbly about the necessity of those cracks in our lives through which pain enters, and through which we can achieve genuine compassion for others. The absence of those fissures, geologically or psychologically, can only lead to quakes. More on that tomorrow. For now, I am going to give some thought to my own subtle addictions, the enablers I invite in, and the way I enable others. Is it OK to throw up my hands and say a loved one works too much because he wants to? Or does live and let live have its limits?

 

Week in Review (by Sally Ashton)

Summer’s here. It officially arrived the day I began posting, last Sunday, and today it’s in full swing, nearly 100 degrees here in Silicon Valley (and remember, 3 hours earlier than BAP city). I live 20 miles from the town of Santa Cruz, home of all things alternative AND a coastline of beautiful beaches, and the highway traffic over the mountains to get there is backed up all the way. Sizzlin’.

It’s been a fun week. The Best American Poetry blog is a great place to be with so much going on. Of my postings, I enjoyed the tractor band link the best. It completely cracks me up and makes me happy simply remembering it. I also love the comments people take the time to leave on everyone’s postings, and hope more readers will remember it’s such an easy thing to do.

It’s been a sad week. The ongoing tragedies and repression in Iran. The unmarked tragedies in less politicized countries and a dreadful feeling of helplessness tinged with a sense of American complicity I often feel. And here, the loss of several entertainment icons: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and of course Michael Jackson, each representing such unique aspects of American identity, the faces of pop culture. The disparity between the loss of these 3 and what’s at stake globally is ridiculous, and yet these deaths at home give many of us pause, representative as they are of times and places in our lives that pass with them.

Just like life, isn’t it, some relatively small passage of time marked by a season, shaped by happiness and sorrow, accomplishments and losses, things we understand and things we never will.

I began the week thinking about hats. Here I’d like to offer a hats off to David Lehman, host, who among other things in the course of June celebrated a birthday and announced 3 new books for the fall (woot!!!), all remarkable accomplishments. Another hats off to Stacey for her skillful and cheerful management of the blog and all my posting errors.

Hats back on. It’s summer. Stay cool.

-Sally Ashton, listening to “Sweet Georgia Brown” on the tractor.

(chugg-chugg, chugg-chugg, hit it!)

 

"Whiskey" [by Kimberly Steele]

Whiskey

We have remained such close friends,
intermittently, that I sometimes regret our bad blood.
I admit, I am mercurial; he promises
sweet nights—those spent between old lovers
who catch up for hours, then put one another to bed
before waking up to a strange room and severed loyalties.

For days I enjoy the solitude: peripheral vision,
comprehending what I read in a book,
driving my car cautiously, with somewhere to go.
But when our distance finally defeats me,
his pure joviality and constant forgiveness
inspire a longing so sharp,

I call on my old friend,
who greets me without hesitation,
as though we never fell out of favor;
and it fills me with such blinding gratitude
that he maintains the loving faithfulness to
stay with me throughout the night.

-- Kimberly Steele

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURA

(sorry!)

"Uncle Milton, we can't ship this formicarium overseas without filling out these papers for US customs," Tom said, importantly.

"Intimacy on a Sunday Afternoon" [by Kimberly Steele]

Intimacy on a Sunday Afternoon

After examining all the ways to contemplate
something (like a blueprint, or your leaving)
I spend several minutes discussing my options
with a small bathroom mirror,
beneath which lies a medicine cabinet,
beneath which lies a perfect rectangle
of glossy paint (whiter than the rest)
beneath which lies drywall, termites,
and possibly mold. I mention A. Einstein,
who stole secrets from God and was baffled
by women. I consider the years he spent
learning equations he did not understand,
to prove intuitions that nobody else did.
I cite T. Edison and telephones, B. Gates
and Windows, and how easily I could reach
you now, if you weren’t so hard to touch.
I think about effort and interference,
progress and stasis. And when I have lit
on a strategy — a way to feel knowledge today —
I sit in a comfortable chair someone else
put together, before a writing machine
whose programming I do not understand,
or pull out some paper someone else
manufactured, and reach for a pen
whose ink I am unable to duplicate,
and I give you this.

-- Kimberly Steele

The Mad Hatter Reviews BAP 2008 [with Lauren MacArthur]

Q: There are only two hats mentioned within all seventy-five 2008 selections. What are they?
A: Ciaran Berry, Electrocuting an Elephant  (“…like extras from one of the first westerns with their hats and moustaches, their say-nothing expressions…”) and Mary Karr, Recuperation from the Dead Love through Christ and Isaac Babel (“He wore a white Y on his baseball cap. Night was a waterfall down this face.”)

Q: 17% of Wright’s selections hail from which publication?
A: The New Yorker

Q: 4 of the poets have the same last name.  What is it?
A: Young

Q: Of those 4 poets with the same last name, 3 have first names beginning with which letter (all monosyllabic)?
A: “D.”

Q: Which three poems have hard objects in their titles?
A: “Museum of Stones”; “Rock Polisher”; “Skull Trees, South Sudan”

Q: Which three poems specifically name a gender?
A: “Handy Men{“; “Men”; “Evening Man”

Q: In his prologue, Charles Wright quotes an author: “Fail. Fail More. Fail Better.” Name the author.
A: Samuel Beckett

Q: Which poet does he quote saying that poetry “is a matter of ‘soul making’.”
A: Keats

Q: Fill in the blank.  Wright wrote:
“There are very few bad poems being published.   Very few.”    On the other hand, there are very few really good ones, either, ones that might make you want to stick your fingers in the ____________ saying, Take me now, Lord, take me now.   The way I felt about Lowell and Roethke and Berryman back in my green time…
A: Cuisinart

Q: Wright said that there are three halves to poetry, What are they?
A: Language, Technique, Emotion

-- Lauren MacArthur

Prose Poem: Fact or Fiction (by Sally Ashton)

I thought I’d hop into a recent discussion begun here which proposed to consider the prose poem as a medium, a la Marshall McLuhan, rather than as a poetic form and was based on a quote to that effect made by Michael Hamburger. The rationale given in support of Hamburger’s charge was that by definition a medium is an extension of a human trait that by its expression changes or diminishes the original from which it sprang, and that “springing” has more to do with creating a means toward an end—freeing French verse-- rather than being an end in itself, the prose poem.

 By way of example, Hardy’s poem “Darkling Thrush” was offered. If one were to de-lineate this rhymed and metrical gem into a prose poem text block, the argument went, the poem no longer holds together; it loses its music and its power in the ensuing changes made to shape and reform it as a prose poem. I agree whole-heartedly on that count.

 However, the logical extension to thereby discredit the prose form seems dependent on a rather large subsequent leap. One might similarly offer a Rembrandt self-portrait alongside a Picasso self-portrait with similar effect.

 

Look what’s “lost” if we trade Rembrandt’s formal expression for Picasso’s, if Rembrandt were to have used Picasso’s looser brush stroke, or vice versa. Hamburger had compared poems by Baudelaire, both prose and verse, and found his prose poems lacking by comparison. But isn’t appreciating one tradition over another, or perhaps in this case one poet’s facility, finally more about personal taste than objective critical judgment of overall formal value? For instance, an earlier Picasso self-portrait:

 In the cases of painting and poetry, the medium according to McLuhan would be, well, the medium. Paint and necessary tools in the former case, shaped language in the latter. In both cases we might assume that the makers’ intentions are artistic expression. It is the vision, style, talent, and to large degree the artistic milieu that forms and reforms the differing expressions. I would argue that Hardy fulfilled his artistic intention in “The Darkling Thrush” through his formal choices within the medium of language, as did Rembrandt and Picasso within their medium of paint. To undo any of these artworks, to “amputate” them from their original expression and intent fails to provide a useful perspective of the medium.