Poetry and Poetastry

[MJRH]

I'm surprised this thread doesn't already exist. Poetry is distinct enough from literature and what are you reading that it deserves its own forum for discussion, no?

Here is one by my latest fav, Brigit Pegeen Kelly.

Past the Stations

A washed corpse, the body of rain-drenched trees
That below my window darkens further. In
Remembrance. Grave blanket of dusk over it.
Cold sheet of mist over it. Death a bird shadow
On the sill. This is the plot of my consideration.
The copse below my window, the small wood
Without an oracle, with no significant episode.
It is a hand's breadth. It is a small ache.
The hand knocks at the window. The window opens.
The smell of wetted dirt and wild fruit steps
Up. Blood fruit: Blood apples. Bitter to the taste
And good. The hand reaches out and the sheet
Slips down. Sigh of silence and a cat passing,
Pale as a ghost, pale as peeled fruit, pale as
Its own pale claws looking for another find...
Like caskets, trees can be counted, together
Or apart. If you stand above the woods, the tree
Is one. It is many, if you walk below. Many,
If you step past the stations of your thought
And number your steps. Smaller and smaller.
The faculty of expansion decreasing. The faculty
Of breath decreasing. The rain withdrawing
With a whistling hush... Somebody thinks
Or somebody turns. Into what? Into what?

---

But, no need to keep things too serious.

When your souls, so you feel, are homogenous,
And you tire of amusements exogenous,
If she proffers a zone
Whereupon skills to hone--
Do confirm it's spelled er-, not aerogenous.

The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

Now I just know that you lot have plenty interesting to share...

[Acéphale]

The Emperor of Ice-Cream
by Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

[Mail-Moth]

MJRH : I used to be a enthusiastic reader of poems like the one you posted ; now I can't help but feel a bit suspicious about what sounds like the result of some recipe which craftily blends a fascination for the poetic potential of scientific discourse with an animistic sensibility, an impersonal "flux-of-consciousness+core sampling" approach with concrete references to the "what do I see through my kitchen's window, preferably in winter, preferably at dusk" thing. Of course I am simplifying, and I am not saying the result is bad - simply that all those poems end up being terribly similar. Which is, after all, pretty normal - a zeitgeist of sorts, and poets with their own strong voice have always been a rare breed.

Edit : I believe that what bothers me in this kind of poetry is that it seems to come down to a fascinated depiction of various states of things, profusely using metaphores as shortcuts between them. And that's it. No risks taken - a poetry meant to do no arm, for blank depiction is, after all, the safest way to go : you will hardly hurt anyone's feelings - or yours as a writer - or language - by stating that berries are red, and that the wounded deer in a tale left blood marks on the snow.

A poetry of extreme prudence, then. A politically correct, mild and somehow sedative poetry - seemingly so defiant towards the world's complexity that it doesn't dare telling anything about it except for folkright and wildlife sketches - the self, caught in that scrapbooking of sorts, constantly hesitating between an obscure feeling of belonging and the diluted mourning of loss : of its own meaning, or identity, or childhood... And it seems to me that those are the only things left to express when you won't allow yourself to venture into any kind of violence.

Acéphale : I love Wallace Stevens.

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician

It comes about that the drifting of these curtains
Is full of long motions, as the ponderous
Deflections of distance; or as clouds
Inseparable from their afternoons;
Or the changing of light, the dropping
Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude
Of night, at which all motion
Is beyond us, as the firmament,
Up-rising and down-falling, bares
The last largeness, bold to see.

Max Jacob (personal translations, be indulgent) :

War

The outer boulevards, at night, are full of snow ; the bandits are soldiers ; I am attacked with laughters and swords, I am robbed : I escape, only to fall into another square. Is it a barracks square, or the courtyard of an inn ? So many swords ! So many lancers ! It snows ! Someone pricks me with a syringe : it is a poison to kill me ; the head of a skeleton veiled with crepe is biting my finger. Vague street lamps are throwing on the snow the light of my death.

A Sentimental poem

O river harbour of dark greenery. It passed along the quay of stones, the boat loaded with my friends ; one only held to me his affectionate hand. I have friends enough to fill this mountain with ants, enough to fill with triremes an ocean - and with oarsmen. O river harbour of dark greenery ! The boat carried less than ten of them, they were hidden under the sail that protects the most frail, they were protecting against me. One only held to me his affectionate hand, and he is not the one that I favoured, he's the one I willingly forget.

[AKA*NYC]

horrible translation of one of my favorite holderlin poems:

Human Applause

Isn't my heart holy, more full of life's beauty,
since I fell in love? Why did you like me more
when I was prouder and wilder, more full
of words, yet emptier?

Well, the crowd likes whatever sells in the
marketplace; and no one but a slave
appreciates violent men. Only those who
are themselves godlike believe in the gods.

[Rayuela]

I don't read much poetry

A Shropshire Lad
A. E. Housman

2.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.


Poem in Three Parts
John Ashbery

1. Love

Once I let a guy blow me.
I kind of backed away from the experience.
Now years later, I think of it
Without emotion. There has been no desire to repeat,
No hang-ups either. Probably if the circumstances were right
It could happen again, but I don’t know,
I just have other things to think about,
More important things. Who goes to bed with what
Is unimportant. Feelings are important.
Mostly I think of feelings, they fill up my life
Like the wind, like tumbling clouds
In a sky full of clouds, clouds upon clouds.


Lying Down
Robet Desnos

To the right, the sky, to the left, the sea.
And before your eyes, the grass and its flowers.
A cloud, the road, follows its vertical way
Parallel to the plumb line of the horizon,
Parallel to the rider.
The horse races towards its imminent fall
And the other climbs interminably.
How simple and strange everything is.
Lying on my left side
I take no interest in the landscape
And I think only of things that are very vague,
Very vague and very pleasant,
Like the tired look you walk around with
Through this beautiful summer afternoon
To the right, to the left,
Here, there,
In the delirium of uselessness.


Epistemology
Richard Wilbur

I.
Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

II.
We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, 'You are not true.'


Edit - AKA*NYC I am buying something Holderlin right the fuck now, thanks for posting that. If you have any recommendations for English translations they'd be much appreciated.

[MJRH]

MJRH : I used to be a enthusiastic reader of poems like the one you posted ; now I can't help but feel a bit suspicious about what sounds like the result of some recipe which craftily blends a fascination for the poetic potential of scientific discourse with an animistic sensibility, an impersonal "flux-of-consciousness+core sampling" approach with concrete references to the "what do I see through my kitchen's window, preferably in winter, preferably at dusk" thing. Of course I am simplifying, and I am not saying the result is bad - simply that all those poems end up being terribly similar. Which is, after all, pretty normal - a zeitgeist of sorts, and poets with their own strong voice have always been a rare breed.

Edit : I believe that what bothers me in this kind of poetry is that it seems to come down to a fascinated depiction of various states of things, profusely using metaphores as shortcuts between them. And that's it. No risks taken - a poetry meant to do no arm, for blank depiction is, after all, the safest way to go : you will hardly hurt anyone's feelings - or yours as a writer - or language - by stating that berries are red, and that the wounded deer in a tale left blood marks on the snow.

A poetry of extreme prudence, then. A politically correct, mild and somehow sedative poetry - seemingly so defiant towards the world's complexity that it doesn't dare telling anything about it except for folkright and wildlife sketches - the self, caught in that scrapbooking of sorts, constantly hesitating between an obscure feeling of belonging and the diluted mourning of loss : of its own meaning, or identity, or childhood... And it seems to me that those are the only things left to express when you won't allow yourself to venture into any kind of violence.

I'd missed your edit till now...

I agree with your criticism of her work, and think what it comes down to is the degree to which you're interested in pure form--I'll read anything well-written, and she is a great poet, even though there is something too prudent about the content of her poetry, prudent is a good word. But its craftsmanship is excellent, and that's a part of what I'm interested in. I guess a shorter way of saying that is I don't always mind the ivory tower, intellectualism for its own sake... maybe I'm too young yet

Also worth noting is your observation's obverse: aside from those who take an almost clinical approach to poetry, being serious without seeming to commit to any principles, there are those who are politically correct because they use humour and irony to ridicule themselves and others for not being able to commit to any principles! Which ridicule of course doesn't excuse their own weakness (Faust's been posting a lot of pertinent David Foster Wallace in the Quotes thread, on irony).

Anyway, thanks to all for the contributions! AKA, I've been staying away from Holderlin precisely because he's a poet who seems to refuse to translate, but echoing Rayuela, do you have any rec's for decent translations? A cursory search turned up nothin'

===

Novalis - Hymn to the Night III

Once, when I poured out bitter tears, when, dissolved in pain, scattered, and I was standing alone at the barren mound which hid the figure of my life in its narrow, dark space--alone, as no one could be more alone, driven by unspeakable anxiety--strengthless, with just one thought left of need.--As I looked around for help, could not move forwards and not backwards, and hung onto the fleeting, extinguished life with infinite craving:--then came from blue distances--from the heights of my old blessedness, a twilight shiver--and with one stroke my birth's bond ripped-Light's chains. There the earthly splendor fled and my sadness with it--misery flowed into a new, unplumbed world--You, Night-inspiration, heaven's sleep, came over me--the region liften gently up; over the region my released and newborn spirit floated. The hill became a cloud of dust--through the cloud I saw the transfigured features of my beloved. In her eyes rested the forever--I took her hands, and my tears were a glittering and unrippable bond. Years by the thousands flew off to the distance, like storms. In her embrace I wept overjoyed tears at the new life.--It was the first and the only dream--and only since then I've felt an unchangeable, eternal faith in the heaven of Night and its Light, the beloved.

===

I lent my volume of one of my favourite poets, Moishe Nadir, to a friend, but as soon as I get it back, I'll post some here.

[galia]

Anna Akhmatova

Сжаты руки под темной вуалью...
"Отчего ты сегодня бледна?"
- Оттого, что я терпкой печалью
Напоила его допьяна.

Как забуду? Он вышел, шатаясь,
Искривился мучительно рот...
Я сбежала, перил не касаясь,
Я бежала за ним до ворот.

Задыхаясь, я крикнула: "Шутка
Все что было. Уйдешь, я умру".
Улыбнулся спокойно и жутко
И сказал мне: "Не стой на ветру".

Dark my veil. Hands clenched painfully, tightly.
"Why so white-faced?" "To think, just to think!
It was I made him to drink; of the biting
Wine of sorrow I forced him to drink.

"How forget? Out he staggered with failing
Strength, and face oddly twisted and grim.
I ran down without touching the handrail,
To the gateway I ran after him.

"'Please don't go!' I gasped out. 'I was only
Jesting... Please!.. Or I'll die...' With a blind,
With a terrible smile, almost tonelessly,
He brought out 'Do not stand in the wind'"

[AKA*NYC]

michael hamburger's holderlin translations are where it's at. there are two volumes: holderlin selected poems and fragments (penguin) as well as hyperion and selected poems (continuum).

another good one:

In my boyhood days ...

In my boyhood days
Often a god would save me
From the shouts and from the rods of men;
Safe and good then I played
With the orchard flowers
And the breezes of heaven
Played with me.

And as you make glad
The hearts of the plants
When toward you they stretch
Their delicate arms.

So you made glad my heart,
Father Helios, and like Endymion
I was your darling,
Holy Luna.

O all you loyal,
Kindly gods!
Would that you knew how
My soul loved you then.

True, at that time I did not
Evoke you by name yet, and you
Never named me, as men use names,
As though they knew one another.

Yet I knew you better
Than ever I have known men,
I understood the silence of Aether,
But human words I've never understood.

I was reared by the euphony
Of the rustling copse
And learned to love
Amid the flowers.

I grew up in the arms of the gods.

[Macro]

^ fantastic and simple, not an easy task.

one of my all-time favorite little machines:

THE WORLD AND I
(laura riding)

This is not exactly what I mean
Any more than the sun is the sun.
But how to mean more closely
If the sun shines but approximately?
What a world of awkwardness!
What hostile implements of sense!
Perhaps this is as close a meaning
As perhaps becomes such knowing.
Else I think the world and I
Must live together as strangers and die -
A sour love, each doubtful whether
Was ever a thing to love the other.
No, better for both to be nearly sure
Each of each - exactly where
Exactly I and exactly the world
Fail to meet by a moment, and a word.

[Fade to Black]

poem i wrote just now -


Crazy Horse

My childhood friend
Went to school in San Francisco
When I was at Michigan
I visited him sometimes on a break
One time we were at the Crazy Horse
I got a lapdance from a girl
Whose name began with an M
Afterwards I waited for him outside

He used to drive fast down the streets of San Francisco at night.

[Fade to Black]

Another one, from summer 2010. Written in Leeds, UK -

Armageddon Watchers

The sky looked unusually normal considering
what was scheduled for a few hours from
here, as they sat in his father’s pickup
he could not help but think of how
absurd the whole thing seemed
yet the right string of words
could not quite hold hands
and leap past his breath
to give the present
tense resonance.

The man pulls
up to the station
telling his son to go
in for two sodas and a
juicy fruit pack, only for
today, he says to himself, so
it will be. when he sees the boy
skipping back out a door held open
he then drifts off the face frozen halfway
between peace and closer still towards regret.

She lets him kiss her where he said he wanted
feeling without much pleasure or resistance
he asks her what’s wrong she shakes her
head and pulls him deeper in, stroking
his hair to let him know that the
drop running down her cheek
was not really there but a
skip later she stirs and
says to him not now
not here, not yet.

[Czx]

^I like how the construction looks. Been messing around with it in my writing myself inspired by Polish futurists, it's fun. The one that got me the most was a poem comparing humans body with a machine built that way to resemble the inside of human body, quite intricate writing really, can't find it now unfortunately.

Fernando Pessoa
I'd like to be able to like liking.
Just a second . . . Grab me a cigarette
From the pack lying on the top of the nightstand.
Go on . . . you were saying
That in the development of metaphysics
From Kant to Hagel
Something was lost.
I agree entirely.
I really was listening.
Nondum amabam et amare amabam - St Augustine.
What odd associations of ideas we sometimes have!
I'm tired of thinking about feeling anything else.
Thanks. Excuse me while I light up. Go on. Hagel . . .

[Acéphale]

WEGGEBEIZT vom
Strahlenwind deiner Sprache
das bunte Gerede des An-
erlebten — das hundert-
züngige Mein-
gedicht, das Genicht.

Aus-
gewirbelt,
frei
der Weg durch den menschen-
gestaltigen Schnee,
den Büßerschnee, zu
den gastlichen
Gletscherstuben und -tischen.

Tief
in der Zeitenschrunde,
beim
Wabeneis
wartet, ein Atemkristall,
dein unumstößliches
Zeugnis.

***************************

ERODED by
the beamwind of your speech
the gaudy chatter of the pseudo-
experienced-my hundred-
tongued perjury-
poem, the noem

Hollow-
whirled.
free
the path through the men-
shaped snow,
the penitent's snow, to
the hospitable
glacier-parlours and -tables

Deep
in the timecrevasse,
in the
honeycomb-ice
waits a breathcrystal,
your unalterable
testimony.

-- Paul Celan
(English translation by Pierre Joris)

[trentk]

Criminal immensity
break vase of immensity
ruin without boundaries

immensity that down and whelms me
I am fleece
the universe is felon

madness alar my insanity
talons to immensity
immensity to talons me

I am alone
about the bling will read these lines
in that of interminable tunnels

I down in deep immensity
immensity devolves to she
she's blacker than demise

the sun is black
the beauty of to be is bottom hollows of a cry
definitive of night

this that loves in light
the shudder sheet of which she's glazed
is desire of the night

- Georges Bataille

[trentk]

This isn't strictly poetry, but nevertheless worth reading us for those of us enthralled with black. Francois Laruelle's On The Black Universe.

http://www.recessart.org/wp-content/...-Universe1.pdf