May 6, 2008 I’ve been enjoying pictures for sad children and came across a couple of literary-ish comics worth sharing since they reference a couple of my favorite authors and works.
First, David Foster Wallace:
Then T.S. Eliot and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":
Tags:
comics, david foster wallace, Humor, t. s. eliot
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May 6, 2008 "To be honest, to be kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy."
–Robert Louis Stevenson
from A Christmas Sermon
May 6, 2008 Patrick Sullivan Jr. (aka editweapon) is having a one-day only, 6-word story contest via Twitter. To participate, follow hashtags (so your posts with tags get indexed) and then post your 6 word story with the tag #6words. You can read current entries via Hashtags or TweetScan.
Tags:
stories, twitter
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May 1, 2008 "Four From the Forest Floor"
A Rhinoceros Beetle
Not dead, but dwindled,
The dinosaurs: he rears his
Snout and almost roars.
Overnight Mushrooms
These neighborhood shrines,
White as snow, show the clean hands
Of stolen labor.
A Millipede
It’s the thousand legs,
Smoothing his slither, that make
Him look like a snake.
Pseudoscorpion and Argentine Ant
Droll as a doll’s dream–
This mite-sized meet, chase, close–though
The kill’s genuine.
–Brad Leithauser
from Toad to a Nightingale
Tags:
brad leithauser, poetry, readings
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April 28, 2008 "Icarus"
I cannot count the strange animals
Falling through my eyes.
One is not one.
A different one,
Just this morning at sunrise,
Had escaped.
He wore the bright orange of a convict still.
In no real hurry,
He walked away from the sun
Into the mountains,
Orion’s rock face.
His back was on fire,
And when the fire became wings
He flew.
–Donald Revell
from A Thief of Strings
Tags:
donald revell, icarus, poetry, readings
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April 28, 2008 "We shall never understand We shall never be shaken off this world. Our understanding is inferior to our resourcefulness."
–Robert Frost
from Notebook 47
Tags:
robert frost, snippets
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April 28, 2008 "From what I knew of learning to write I asked Harold Bauer if it wouldn’t be possible to learn to play by playing tunes from the beginning without preliminary finger exercises. He cheered me with the assurance it would. Many second raters present were scandalized. Children are learning now without finger exercises. Think how much easier their education is to listen to."
–Robert Frost
from Notebook 26
Tags:
learning, practice, robert frost, snippets
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April 26, 2008 There is a fair bit of conflicting information out there defining the bref double. All definitions agree that there are fourteen lines composed of three quatrains and a closing couplet. All agree that line length is meant to be approximately the same throughout the poem, though not necessarily syllabically exact.
At question is the rhyme scheme. A number of sources (including Travis Lyon’s Forms of Poetry) propose this rhyme scheme:
axbc
xaxc
axab
ab
Where x are words that are not rhymed with the primary rhymes or themselves.
Turco’s Book of Forms has a different set of rules that allow for a few different schemes: the a and b rhymes must appear twice somewhere in the three quatrains and once in the concluding couplet, while the c rhyme must end each quatrain. That allows for possibilities such as the example given by Turco:
axbc
xaxc
bxxc
ab
Turco’s definition doesn’t address the non-rhyming words directly, which implies they could rhyme with each other, just not with the main a/b/c rhymes.
I’d need some math to figure out how many possibilities that leaves, but at least a few, such as:
axxc
bxxc
abxc
ab
or
axbc
xxac
xxbc
ab
etc.
I might be projecting, but Turco makes more sense to me, particularly having the final rhyme at the end of all three quatrains as an anchor giving the form shape as a whole.
Tags:
bref double, forms, poetry
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April 25, 2008 "The Illiterate"
Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.
His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?
–William Meredith
from Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems
Tags:
poetry, readings, william meredith
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April 24, 2008
April 24, 2008 "Embers"
Poor summer, it doesn’t know it’s dying.
A few days are all it has. Still, the lake
is with me, its strokes of blue-violet
and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.
This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt
to say, I exist. A rose can’t shut itself
and be a bud again. It’s a malady,
wanting it. On the shore, the moon sprinkles
light over everything, like a campfire,
and in the green-black night, the tall pines
hold their arms out as God held His arms
out to say that He was lonely and that
He was making Himself a man.
–Henri Cole
from Blackbird and Wolf
Tags:
henri cole, poetry, readings
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April 23, 2008 One last bit of Hopkins… another too appropriate not to share.
"Carrion Comfort"
NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins
from Poems: (1918)
April 22, 2008
 |
 |
[RIP]
"If We Had Known"
If we had known all that we know
We never would have let him go.
He never would have reached the river
If we had guessed his going. Never.
We had the stronger argument
Had we but dreamed his dark intent.
Or if our words failed to dissuade him
Unarguing love might still have stayed him.
We would have lured him from his course.
And if love failed, there still was force.
We would have locked the door and barred it.
We would have stood all night to guard it.
But what we know, we did not know.
We said good-bye and saw him go.
–Robert Francis
Tags:
poetry, readings, rip, robert francis
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April 22, 2008 
[photo by photographer padawan]
This is one of the first "adult" poems I memorized and one of the few I’ve never forgotten. Recent events reinforce what I’ve often said before… this poem has depth and complexity far beyond what is usually accorded to it in its frequent appearance in various anthologies. Of course the most fundamental idea of the poem is simple, but read carefully. And savor the incredible language, in the mastery of which Hopkins has few equals.
"Spring and Fall"
MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins
from Poems (1918)
April 22, 2008 Last night I found out about another local teen suicide victim… another friend of my children… another child I knew. That’s two in as many days, three in as many weeks. And that on top of a string of senseless accidental deaths that seems to stretch back as far as forever.
It’s not just heartbreaking in the abstract anymore, it’s not just "a tragedy." I’m heartbroken. I’m worried. I’m at a loss.
As a very fortunate survivor (saved by a series of unlikely events) and one who has continued to struggle with suicidal impulses, I understand so completely that it would sicken these children, so convinced that their pain is unique and unbearable. And yet I also don’t understand at all, because in the 20+ years since I tried I’ve struggled with some part of the desire to try again almost every day and I’ve never been able to really make sense of it. My understanding comes from somewhere deep inside beyond or below rationality. Except for the brief honeymoon period as I made my recovery– a brief bloom of ecstatic awareness that I imagine survivors of all kinds of near death experiences can understand– the pull towards the ultimate denial of self pulls almost unceasingly. And in the rare moments that it doesn’t, the absence is conspicuous. When you become so accustomed to fighting against something and that something goes away, you might think you just steam off in the desired direction, like a boat breaking free of a rope. But my experience is that I no longer know how to operate properly or what it means to go where I want to go under my own steam. I’ve become defined by the constant struggle.
What these children don’t get is that they are children. I’m not minimizing the suffering they feel… nothing makes me more resentful even now than someone who tries to convince me that the pain I felt– the despair– was somehow illusory or unreal. What these children can’t feel is that life comes in stages and a good part of their life hasn’t even begun. They don’t understand that they are children still and that things can and will change so much for them so soon. That is an understanding beyond logic and intellect, tragically most needed at an age when it is impossible to understand that there really are a lot of things that you can only learn through time… through existing longer.
And I worry about my children because I know how thoroughly I fooled my own parents, partially subconsciously. I talk to my children more directly and more often. I talk to my children about these issues directly. But I know that they could– as I did once– walk right past me on an ordinary day, tell me they are tired from practice and want to take a nap, and almost casually close a door that will never open again.
Last night I finally just let out a howl, some kind of primal scream of anguish for these children, for my children, for me… and for the me that is not me (or maybe it’s the real me I glimpse in mirrors out of the corner of my eyes) that nauseatingly understands. And understands nothing.
Tags:
despair, Psyche, suicide
2 Comments »
April 21, 2008 
[photo of Keats' Tombstone by Carlo Tancredi]
A comment at lunch today that made me realize I don’t talk much about formal or classic poetry. Reading this blog gives the impression that my poetic interests lie with a relatively narrow band of contemporary and free verse. It’s actually quite the opposite!
The poetry that I count on and come back to most– the poetry that has been with me since the beginning– is almost all formal. The few poems that I have memorized and never forgotten are formal poems. If I had to list "favorite poets" generically, then the Top 10 might not have any free verse poets at all.
I resist that kind of disordered listing because while all the different poems I like fit in the very broad rubric of poetry, I believe that for the most part, English poets through the Victorian era were engaged in a fundamentally different project from the Romantics and their ilk… who were themselves engaged in a project more different than similar to the poetic renaissance of the 50s and what has come from them.
Good new formal poetry still appears occasionally, but its time has passed in the same way that good straight-ahead and bop-ish jazz musicians still emerge despite the heyday of that music being over and the context mostly forgotten. I realize that this is partially the same argument made against the "School of Quietude"– an argument I respect but can’t share.
It’s quite possible that my attachment to these earlier formal poets is a sign of critical weakness and insufficient acumen, that I’m stuck in the past, and/or that I’ve just never matured as a reader. I don’t worry much about it. If someone feels they’ve gotten all they can from a classic poem and "moves on" from them, that’s OK by me. I feel like the lucky one!
I haven’t posted a lot of formal poems here or talked about them because I’ve assumed that a lot of it goes without saying. Most of the poems are readily available… and I may be discovering new things about them, but they are not necessarily new to anyone else. I may not talk a lot about them, but I may post from that pool more often.
Tags:
formal poetry, poetics, poetry
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April 21, 2008 "Home Movies"
Coupled, link and manacle, forged from heat and stone,
House teetering on a bed of crumbling sand stone.
Intertwined, sweating in the hammock, smelling grass…
For years now that lawn a lot, paved with scree and stone.
Nesting in the Christmas wrap, last bits of credit,
The stale sweets sent from home taste of candy and stone.
Denali in the mirror, shivering with bass,
Your forgotten necklace, cold filigree and stone.
Not content with murmurs from the empty room,
Roll tape, tell me what I can demand from stone.
Tags:
ghazal, KindOfNaPoWriMo, NaPoWriMo, poetry
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April 19, 2008 I discover music at my own pace, relying mostly on the serendipity of social connections and recommendations… which means I’m usually late, but not as often disappointed.
So, I was surprised to learn that Panic! at the Disco is now just Panic at the Disco and, after enjoying their “new” album Pretty. Odd., I was also surprised that it is getting pretty roundly slagged for being a little too Beatles-like.
The comparison isn’t misguided since they are paying obvious homage to Sgt. Pepper, but musically what I hear is the kind of music that My Chemical Romance romance would make if they idolized Jeff Lynn and E.L.O. rather than Queen and The Smashing Pumpkins.
“You could ’cause you can so you do” will be in my head for a while!
Tags:
Music, panic at the disco, video
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April 19, 2008 Just heard via email that poet, novelist, and short story author Rebecca Kavaler has passed away. Here’s a poem of hers that I’ve seen shared in a few places.
"The Animal Within"
Homage to Sir Thomas Browne
We, who supposedly contain all Africa and her prodigies,
are revealed for what we are only in the dying
when this flesh, once apostrophized as too too solid,
has proven renderable as any carcass and in the process
manufactured hollows where hillocks of cheeks once smiled,
then weeded out the overgrowth of hair to uncover
a tenderness-evoking curve of skull,
a property we had thought
only of the newly born.
The mirror reflects no longer a unique face but the template
of the race: uncles, aunts, cousins far removed, some ancestor
who left no trace in family history yet surfaces now like
a species long thought extinct hauled up from the ocean’s depths
and when that dissolves what is left
but the animal within
which we made so much of.
–Rebecca Kavaler
from The Animal Within
Tags:
obits, poetry, readings, rebecca kavaler
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April 18, 2008 "Atomic Pantoum"
In a chain reaction
the neutrons released
split other nuclei
which release more neutrons
The neutrons released
blow open some others
which release more neutrons
and start this all over
Blow open some others
and choirs will crumble
and start this all over
with eyes burned to ashes
And choirs will crumble
the fish catch on fire
with eyes burned to ashes
in a chain reaction
The fish catch on fire
because the sun’s force
in a chain reaction
has blazed in our minds
Because the sun’s force
with plutonium trigger
has blazed in our minds
we are dying to use it
With plutonium trigger
curled and tightened
we are dying to use it
torching our enemies
Curled and tightened
blind to the end
torching our enemies
we sing to Jesus
Blind to the end
split up like nuclei
we sing to Jesus
in a chain reaction
–Peter Meinke
from Poetry Magazine, Vol. 142 (1983)
Tags:
pantoum, peter meinke, poetry, readings
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