{Explanation of *setting* for Wordsworth reading 6/21 as sent to Dave Rich}
As for the Fiesta setting...
I pulled the whole reading together Saturday afternoon. I'd been thinking about it for days but couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to do. I knew I didn't just want to read new poems (or old poems) because I knew that none of it amounted to very much & I didn't want to waste people's night (and mental/aural attention). While going through my poems & prose, I realized there where some things, both old & new, that I've tended to neglect, thinking they were distractions from the *real* work.
These neglected things--old & new--seemed suddenly to be the most vital but in desperate need of pruning. "Cell" (written as prose but heard by at least two in the audience as poetry) is an example of one such piece. In mid-reading I decided not read one other such piece (though I was going on a bit too long...) A few other such pieces (mostly prose) were in need of more than one afternoon of revision, though I've already gone back to them & will continue to do so this summer.
Then I got the idea to read only those translations of Lorca's Suite of Mirrors that seem to be as much about doubt as they are about belief. This (along w/ a certain measure of alienation from the world as given) seemed to be a theme of some of the neglected writing. That lead naturally--this chronology isn't quite accurate--to the selection from "Further Notes for Polis" (that Aaron Tieger thought might've been Lorca; I'm flattered). Creeley & Zac's poems fit the theme as well. Zac's poem offered a necessary bridge from the religious concerns of the poems to the imprisonment of "Cell" (though the "virus" idea is has serious religious implications). I could go on about why I selected each individual poem but you want to know about the setting--which came last.
I wanted to read the "infernal machine" passage of Lowry's _Under the Volcano_ but decided that would be too much so instead decided to evoke Fiesta (on the solstice!). The Zipper has long reminded me of the "infernal machine" & Fiesta's mix of the sacred & profane seemed right on for the fifteen pieces I'd planned to read. Why the "infernal machine"/zipper? They are nauseating. The pieces (esp. "The Cell" but others too) are nauseated. The idea of nausea & disquiet are of course linked in modern lit.: the former a favorite metaphor of the existentialists & the later is found in the title of Pessoa's prose. Nausea & disquiet vis-a-vis faith & the world-as-given were the emotions I wanted to create in the listeners. Fiesta & Lowry also evoke humidity--oppresive air--weather conditions appropriate to the feeling I wanted to created.
I wish I had a bit longer to develop the whole thing but am relatively happy w/ how it all came off.
...
slan leat,
j.c.
Saturday, June 28, 2003
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Like Mike County (mikecounty.blogspot.com--yes I know I sd I wld learn links & I will I will I will) I was unable to post yesterday because of changes to BLOGGERtm. I've also been experiencing difficulty w/ my internet connection from home so I've snuck into GHS to do some emailing & such.
I saved a note I'd meant to post yesterday but of course it's on my hard drive at home. It was about the reading I gave at Wordsworth Saturday, explaining the *setting* for the poems. I will post the explanation along w/ the pieces I read (w/ a setlist) sometime soon (hopefully today but given the connection problems, no promises).
Read book one of _Justine_ yesterday. Reminds me of Leonard Cohen. His songs not his prose.
Another observation: There's a lot of talk about the importance of *Alexandria* but I don't feel its whatness in the same way I've felt a city in other works (Glasgow, _How Late It Was, How Late_ for example). There are other pleasures in Durrell's novel, however, & I do like all the talk about the city's influence on the characters. It's something beyond them akin to fate.
I also read more of _The Descent of Alette_ yesterday. (Thanks Christina {xtina.org}; hope all around you are being good to you today.) I like it more & more but will not comment just now.
Aaron Tieger (fishblog.blogspot.com) jumped into the revision discussion. He's a non-destructive reviser. Talked about tinkering with words & commas--often having dozens of versions of single poem in which there're only small changes. But that isn't what he does so much now. Hm. Revision.
When I revised at the end of last week for the Wordsworth reading Saturday, I mostly cut things out and rewrote accordingly. I was definitely in the *mind* of the piece as I did so which felt good. But then again, most of the revision I did was of prose pieces (or what I thought of as prose pieces though some in the audience heard them as poetry).
***
A few days ago I said I would say more about *class* (picking up on a discussion begun this Sunday in Gloucester). I haven't eaten yet today & I think I should do so before I step into that particular minefield. But before I head off perhaps a few topics: education & money (esp. issues of having one but not the other), education as learning & education as job training (this is perhaps one corollary of the first), class & neighborhoods, class & whole cities/towns (i.e. when it is assumed you are of a class because of the neighborhood/street/ city/town/etc. in which you live), artists & experiences w/ class &/or money, class & class consciousness, blurry lines of class, telling the story of one's class/economic situation, listening to stories about another's class/economic situation, what-has-monitary-value & class...
O.K. that'll help when I come back to this train {wreck} of thought after eating. Anyone else want to chime in on any of those topics or others?
How about an on-line symposium on class & poetry?
W/ encouragement from Gerrit Lansing, I'm all for symposia. (Also would like one on polis: towards a green polis {Gerrit's idea}, polis vs. nomadism {Pierre Joris?}, etc.
O.K. time to eat.
slainte.
j.c.
I saved a note I'd meant to post yesterday but of course it's on my hard drive at home. It was about the reading I gave at Wordsworth Saturday, explaining the *setting* for the poems. I will post the explanation along w/ the pieces I read (w/ a setlist) sometime soon (hopefully today but given the connection problems, no promises).
Read book one of _Justine_ yesterday. Reminds me of Leonard Cohen. His songs not his prose.
Another observation: There's a lot of talk about the importance of *Alexandria* but I don't feel its whatness in the same way I've felt a city in other works (Glasgow, _How Late It Was, How Late_ for example). There are other pleasures in Durrell's novel, however, & I do like all the talk about the city's influence on the characters. It's something beyond them akin to fate.
I also read more of _The Descent of Alette_ yesterday. (Thanks Christina {xtina.org}; hope all around you are being good to you today.) I like it more & more but will not comment just now.
Aaron Tieger (fishblog.blogspot.com) jumped into the revision discussion. He's a non-destructive reviser. Talked about tinkering with words & commas--often having dozens of versions of single poem in which there're only small changes. But that isn't what he does so much now. Hm. Revision.
When I revised at the end of last week for the Wordsworth reading Saturday, I mostly cut things out and rewrote accordingly. I was definitely in the *mind* of the piece as I did so which felt good. But then again, most of the revision I did was of prose pieces (or what I thought of as prose pieces though some in the audience heard them as poetry).
***
A few days ago I said I would say more about *class* (picking up on a discussion begun this Sunday in Gloucester). I haven't eaten yet today & I think I should do so before I step into that particular minefield. But before I head off perhaps a few topics: education & money (esp. issues of having one but not the other), education as learning & education as job training (this is perhaps one corollary of the first), class & neighborhoods, class & whole cities/towns (i.e. when it is assumed you are of a class because of the neighborhood/street/ city/town/etc. in which you live), artists & experiences w/ class &/or money, class & class consciousness, blurry lines of class, telling the story of one's class/economic situation, listening to stories about another's class/economic situation, what-has-monitary-value & class...
O.K. that'll help when I come back to this train {wreck} of thought after eating. Anyone else want to chime in on any of those topics or others?
How about an on-line symposium on class & poetry?
W/ encouragement from Gerrit Lansing, I'm all for symposia. (Also would like one on polis: towards a green polis {Gerrit's idea}, polis vs. nomadism {Pierre Joris?}, etc.
O.K. time to eat.
slainte.
j.c.
Monday, June 23, 2003
The original Weiss post & response to my post has ignited further thoughts about class & such, first sparked by Mike County (mikecounty.blogspot.com) yesterday. Perhaps more to come. In the meantime thanks to everyone who came out to Gloucester from the Boston-area & to those who came across town. I'd like to say more but I'm preoccupied by thoughts of a response to the response.
slainte,
j.c.
slainte,
j.c.
Here's something I posted to the Buffalo Poetics list in response to a post by Mark Weiss about yuppies on the Fort (Olson's neighborhood). He responded to my note by insisting that Gloucester had been "yuppified" but conceeded that Gloucester is probably a nice place to live.
I know I'm a little behind on this thread, but I'd like to offer another
perspective on Gloucester, MA.
*There are "yuppies" in Gloucester but as far as I can tell they do not live
on the Fort. And there are far fewer young urban professionals & their
*shoppes* in Gloucester than in other nearby places like Newburyport, MA &
Portsmouth, NH.
*Perhaps you found no children on the fort because of the many grandparents
who live there.
Some year (perhaps this one) you should come to Gloucester on the last
Sunday of June when a statue of St. Peter is carried through the Fort while
these grandparents & their grandchildren throw confetti from second story
windows. {The celebration for San Pietro begins this Thursday: the sacred &
the profane are seldom closer!}
*Also, you perhaps did not find the Portuguese "slum" on the Fort because
Sicilian immigrants have been more visible in that particular area since the
early twentieth century. St. Peter's Fiesta, a Sicilian celebration, was
born in the Fort in the 20s. "Portugee" Hill is some distance from the fort.
*Recently, the culture of Gloucester (at least as I see it as a high school
teacher here) has been far more influenced by the arrival of Brazilian
immigrants than by a (non-existant) invasion of yuppies.
*As for fishing, my brother-in-law is a fisherman, though one who like many
others has been forced to supplement his income with other employment. If
you're looking for fishermen in Gloucester try the Jodrey State Fish Pier
(from the Fort go further into the inner harbor). Also, it must be said that
overfishing & the resulting regulations--not yuppies--*have* changed
Gloucester. In fact (much to the dismay of many pro-tourist politicians in
town) the decline of the fishing industry has not meant a yuppie invasion on
the scale many other seaside towns have experienced. As Olson predicted, the
A. Piatt Andrew bridge which extends route 128 into Gloucester irrevocably
changed the city. Gloucester citizens were "isolatos" no more...or at least
less so. But this change was already underfoot when Olson was writing.
*There is an excellent independent bookstore (The Bookstore) not far from
the Fort. (I met Olson's Danish translator there one summer day. I think I
also met the list's own Aaron Vidaver there too.)
*Dogtown, which comprises a significant portion of the interior of the
"island," will never (knock on wood; forgive the hubris) be filled with
cul-de-sac developments. Though you are likely to run into more off-road
cylists, Dogtown is still an excellent place for a walk. (Bring the Maximus
Poems poems with you ye Pilgrims...and perhaps Marsden Hartley's "Dogtown
Doxology" if that's your thing). Ravenswood is also quite wonderful.
*Gerrit Lansing lives in Gloucester!
*My wife (www.ironstonewhirlygig.blogspot.com) might disagree w/ me about
this, but winters are hard in Gloucester--though, again, not because of the
yuppies. Not a lot happens here during the winters. But because of Jim
Behrle, Bill Corbett, etc. there are many exciting events & people in Boston
(a 50 minute drive or hour train ride from Gloucester). Yesterday, a half
dozen Boston-area poets came out to our apartment here in Gloucester for
food, drink, walks, music, & poetry.
If anyone wants to come to Gloucester let me know.
jcgloucester@hotmail.com
slainte,
j.c.
I know I'm a little behind on this thread, but I'd like to offer another
perspective on Gloucester, MA.
*There are "yuppies" in Gloucester but as far as I can tell they do not live
on the Fort. And there are far fewer young urban professionals & their
*shoppes* in Gloucester than in other nearby places like Newburyport, MA &
Portsmouth, NH.
*Perhaps you found no children on the fort because of the many grandparents
who live there.
Some year (perhaps this one) you should come to Gloucester on the last
Sunday of June when a statue of St. Peter is carried through the Fort while
these grandparents & their grandchildren throw confetti from second story
windows. {The celebration for San Pietro begins this Thursday: the sacred &
the profane are seldom closer!}
*Also, you perhaps did not find the Portuguese "slum" on the Fort because
Sicilian immigrants have been more visible in that particular area since the
early twentieth century. St. Peter's Fiesta, a Sicilian celebration, was
born in the Fort in the 20s. "Portugee" Hill is some distance from the fort.
*Recently, the culture of Gloucester (at least as I see it as a high school
teacher here) has been far more influenced by the arrival of Brazilian
immigrants than by a (non-existant) invasion of yuppies.
*As for fishing, my brother-in-law is a fisherman, though one who like many
others has been forced to supplement his income with other employment. If
you're looking for fishermen in Gloucester try the Jodrey State Fish Pier
(from the Fort go further into the inner harbor). Also, it must be said that
overfishing & the resulting regulations--not yuppies--*have* changed
Gloucester. In fact (much to the dismay of many pro-tourist politicians in
town) the decline of the fishing industry has not meant a yuppie invasion on
the scale many other seaside towns have experienced. As Olson predicted, the
A. Piatt Andrew bridge which extends route 128 into Gloucester irrevocably
changed the city. Gloucester citizens were "isolatos" no more...or at least
less so. But this change was already underfoot when Olson was writing.
*There is an excellent independent bookstore (The Bookstore) not far from
the Fort. (I met Olson's Danish translator there one summer day. I think I
also met the list's own Aaron Vidaver there too.)
*Dogtown, which comprises a significant portion of the interior of the
"island," will never (knock on wood; forgive the hubris) be filled with
cul-de-sac developments. Though you are likely to run into more off-road
cylists, Dogtown is still an excellent place for a walk. (Bring the Maximus
Poems poems with you ye Pilgrims...and perhaps Marsden Hartley's "Dogtown
Doxology" if that's your thing). Ravenswood is also quite wonderful.
*Gerrit Lansing lives in Gloucester!
*My wife (www.ironstonewhirlygig.blogspot.com) might disagree w/ me about
this, but winters are hard in Gloucester--though, again, not because of the
yuppies. Not a lot happens here during the winters. But because of Jim
Behrle, Bill Corbett, etc. there are many exciting events & people in Boston
(a 50 minute drive or hour train ride from Gloucester). Yesterday, a half
dozen Boston-area poets came out to our apartment here in Gloucester for
food, drink, walks, music, & poetry.
If anyone wants to come to Gloucester let me know.
jcgloucester@hotmail.com
slainte,
j.c.
Friday, June 20, 2003
I believe it was Michael Carr who pointed out to me that I'd planned to post daily at exactly the wrong time.
Here's an aborted post from Tuesday night:
I've graded finals for three of five classes. Not that you care. Or, rather, some care hoping that I'll write/talk about something else soon. Yeah I'm playin' the woe card. W'oh!
Tonight I need to grade the fourth group of finals & calculate term averages for the fifth class (who'll take their exam tomorrow).
*
I just got a call that one of my students won a prize in a local poetry contest. Don't worry. Neither she nor I had to pay to enter, though she did need a sponsor. When I talk to her tomorrow, I'll ask Tammi if I can post her poem here.
*
I've borrowed Descent of Alette from Xtina. I'm excited.
I also plan to re-read Ulysses . {Happy belated Bloomsday. Read about Amanda's Bloomish walk about Cambridge at ironstonewhirlygig.blogspot.com! A covert homage to Leopold?}
Two other city books--Justine by Durrell & Calvino's Invisible Cities--have come w/ (separate) recommendations. {Thanks Ben Webster & Mark Lamoureux.) That
It stops just like that. I knew I wanted to say a lot more about Talking to Ben (at a Somervlle Diner) & Mark (at Charlie's) but I knew I didn't have the time. I retuned to the essays. Finished 'em all. Finished grades. Though in an hour or so, I'll ride my bike down to GHS to finish cleaning my room & to learn the book buying process from the retiring Program Leader (read: Department Chair). {I don't think I'll get (or want) the job but I'm applying nevertheless.} When we're through, I hope to convince Dennis to accompany me to the Blackburn Tavern for a pint or two.
Over the last four years we've *wasted* hours {when we should have been grading} talking about Joyce, Hamlet , Jansenist Catholicism, foreign policy, County Cork, Dorchester MA, etc. etc. Recently, we've briefly discussed his difficulties w/ the poetry of the last 100+ years. It is one significant area which we can't really talk about. Beyond Eliot we have no common reference points. So I hope to start w/ Eliot & go from there. He's been wonderfully eccentric mentor & I'll miss him next year.
I've often asked questions on this blog that I've been disappointed not to get answers to. {Responses from Brenda, Behrle & M. Carr have been great though.) In retrospect I realize that they were probably boring questions. {I've confessed to a few of you that I read a half-dozen to a dozen blogs (for a few minutes between 2pm & 6pm) to provide friendly and/or lively relief from grading & bureaucratic tasks. I'm sure blogs serve a similar function to many others out there.}
To return to the matter: {Words. Words. Words.--as the prince sez} Mike County recently asked for comments & experiences w/r/t revision esp. destruction vis-a-vis revision.
I too enjoy revision. Seven or so years ago Amanda wrote a poem to me in which I was a kind of Prufrock saying something like "I must make revisions." {I don't remember the context. I'll have to ask her about it. I do remember though that in the poem I wanted to revise oral speech.} I admire spontaneity in others & am a big fan of a book called The Culture of Spontaneity (thanks Gerrit; perhaps more on the book later). But I am not spontaneous.
I do, however, like to improvise w/ given materials. When I'm secure in a context that is--like a musician knowing the song, etc.--I find pleasure in responding to changes w/in the context, re-arranging, recombining aspects of the context,etc. Revision is like that for me. There are phrases, motifs, sounds, ideas, & I'll move them around seeing how each movement affects the whole--amplifying or foregrounding a kool sound may obscure the idea, or {joy! joy!} may make it clearer. This is the sort of revision I do when the original material is not yet a poem but contains some seed--or seeds--a riff or two, say. When the text I come back to seems to have life of some kind--some kind of internal organization {planned or unplanned} that makes it a something--then I sort of have to re-enter that something or the poem's best left alone.
I got what was for me good advice from Duncan's writings about process. Six or seven years ago I read Duncan's prose maniacally & w/o discipline. I was drinking it in not interested in discriminating between this & that. At the time it was a necessary (drug-like) distraction from problems w/ exhausting, deadend jobs & very high rent. I remember Duncan carving a middle ground between first tho't best tho't & tinkering-as-revision which I'd learned at Emerson (not that it was taught overtly) in my late teens. As I remember it he talked about re-entering the genius of the poem so revision was re-envisioning the poem. There is something Platonic about this that appeals to my mind molded by fears of & belief in a hidden God.
O.K. enough.
Paul Metcalf's Will West!!! For an excruciatingly revealing description of the physical & mental processes of pitching read the first chapter. Fans. Mechanics (of the arm & the ball's flight). The mind's ear/eye. Race & ethnicity. Us/them. Single moments blown open so history (personal & otherwise) comes pouring in. Precise & painful.
If fans/supporters watched baseball like Metcalf & futbol like Eduardo Galeano, I'd feel much less conflicted about my passion for those two sports.
slainte.
Here's an aborted post from Tuesday night:
I've graded finals for three of five classes. Not that you care. Or, rather, some care hoping that I'll write/talk about something else soon. Yeah I'm playin' the woe card. W'oh!
Tonight I need to grade the fourth group of finals & calculate term averages for the fifth class (who'll take their exam tomorrow).
*
I just got a call that one of my students won a prize in a local poetry contest. Don't worry. Neither she nor I had to pay to enter, though she did need a sponsor. When I talk to her tomorrow, I'll ask Tammi if I can post her poem here.
*
I've borrowed Descent of Alette from Xtina. I'm excited.
I also plan to re-read Ulysses . {Happy belated Bloomsday. Read about Amanda's Bloomish walk about Cambridge at ironstonewhirlygig.blogspot.com! A covert homage to Leopold?}
Two other city books--Justine by Durrell & Calvino's Invisible Cities--have come w/ (separate) recommendations. {Thanks Ben Webster & Mark Lamoureux.) That
It stops just like that. I knew I wanted to say a lot more about Talking to Ben (at a Somervlle Diner) & Mark (at Charlie's) but I knew I didn't have the time. I retuned to the essays. Finished 'em all. Finished grades. Though in an hour or so, I'll ride my bike down to GHS to finish cleaning my room & to learn the book buying process from the retiring Program Leader (read: Department Chair). {I don't think I'll get (or want) the job but I'm applying nevertheless.} When we're through, I hope to convince Dennis to accompany me to the Blackburn Tavern for a pint or two.
Over the last four years we've *wasted* hours {when we should have been grading} talking about Joyce, Hamlet , Jansenist Catholicism, foreign policy, County Cork, Dorchester MA, etc. etc. Recently, we've briefly discussed his difficulties w/ the poetry of the last 100+ years. It is one significant area which we can't really talk about. Beyond Eliot we have no common reference points. So I hope to start w/ Eliot & go from there. He's been wonderfully eccentric mentor & I'll miss him next year.
I've often asked questions on this blog that I've been disappointed not to get answers to. {Responses from Brenda, Behrle & M. Carr have been great though.) In retrospect I realize that they were probably boring questions. {I've confessed to a few of you that I read a half-dozen to a dozen blogs (for a few minutes between 2pm & 6pm) to provide friendly and/or lively relief from grading & bureaucratic tasks. I'm sure blogs serve a similar function to many others out there.}
To return to the matter: {Words. Words. Words.--as the prince sez} Mike County recently asked for comments & experiences w/r/t revision esp. destruction vis-a-vis revision.
I too enjoy revision. Seven or so years ago Amanda wrote a poem to me in which I was a kind of Prufrock saying something like "I must make revisions." {I don't remember the context. I'll have to ask her about it. I do remember though that in the poem I wanted to revise oral speech.} I admire spontaneity in others & am a big fan of a book called The Culture of Spontaneity (thanks Gerrit; perhaps more on the book later). But I am not spontaneous.
I do, however, like to improvise w/ given materials. When I'm secure in a context that is--like a musician knowing the song, etc.--I find pleasure in responding to changes w/in the context, re-arranging, recombining aspects of the context,etc. Revision is like that for me. There are phrases, motifs, sounds, ideas, & I'll move them around seeing how each movement affects the whole--amplifying or foregrounding a kool sound may obscure the idea, or {joy! joy!} may make it clearer. This is the sort of revision I do when the original material is not yet a poem but contains some seed--or seeds--a riff or two, say. When the text I come back to seems to have life of some kind--some kind of internal organization {planned or unplanned} that makes it a something--then I sort of have to re-enter that something or the poem's best left alone.
I got what was for me good advice from Duncan's writings about process. Six or seven years ago I read Duncan's prose maniacally & w/o discipline. I was drinking it in not interested in discriminating between this & that. At the time it was a necessary (drug-like) distraction from problems w/ exhausting, deadend jobs & very high rent. I remember Duncan carving a middle ground between first tho't best tho't & tinkering-as-revision which I'd learned at Emerson (not that it was taught overtly) in my late teens. As I remember it he talked about re-entering the genius of the poem so revision was re-envisioning the poem. There is something Platonic about this that appeals to my mind molded by fears of & belief in a hidden God.
O.K. enough.
Paul Metcalf's Will West!!! For an excruciatingly revealing description of the physical & mental processes of pitching read the first chapter. Fans. Mechanics (of the arm & the ball's flight). The mind's ear/eye. Race & ethnicity. Us/them. Single moments blown open so history (personal & otherwise) comes pouring in. Precise & painful.
If fans/supporters watched baseball like Metcalf & futbol like Eduardo Galeano, I'd feel much less conflicted about my passion for those two sports.
slainte.
Monday, June 16, 2003
I'm in the midst of grading the first of five finals I'll be giving over the next three days.
Bad essays on the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a story by Danny Santiago called "The Somebody".
They're bad not because the students can't write better essays but because it's late June & GHS doesn't take finals very seriously at the administrative level--not to say that administrators say they don't take them seriously. But when grades are due in the computer only eighteen hours after the last two exams are given I'll bet you can imagine what kind of half-assed assessments are given. It's not that I want to make kids miserable. Ask 'em. But intense study--not that everyone's into that ...--yields fruit. There's a pleasure in it.
I hear you. Of course, you're right. No jest. You're right. It's not for all kids. Or all adults. There are other pleasures. Other ways of living proceeding, etc. But I like to think that I give kids the option of persuing lit. & writing that they might get into. I prefer not to control all of it: open the field, show 'em around, but then turn 'em loose. But then I expect to see some evidence of what they've gathered while wandering the pasture, swimming, climbing, what-have-you.
When I've taken students to Boston in the past & turn them loose to eat (& explore in small groups) for a few hours, they almost inevitably hand-out in the nearest BK, Wendys, McD's, etc. (If I'm near I go to Falafel King of xtina.org fame.) A few have ventured forth to buy flowers & such things. They give me hope. It's much the same w/ reading & writing. I'll take 'em to a field of knowledge, show 'em around & turn 'em loose. Most hand around near the cliches, slogans, & such. No {alarms & no} surprises but it's still depressing.
So these essays I'm reading which were meant to be reflective & exploratory are mostly outlines-in-disguise that adhere faithfully (fundamentally) to the "five paragraph essay" learned in 9th grade & before. It's a fine scaffold perhaps but after 180 days I'd hoped for better.
Some are quite good. But it's good to take a break to clear one's mind. No?
slainte.
*
{Listening to Beck's Sea Change, the Mountain Goats' Tallahassee, & the Clash hits Vol. 2 {the only clash I have on CD not vinyl; some of 'em need *up*?grading}
Bad essays on the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a story by Danny Santiago called "The Somebody".
They're bad not because the students can't write better essays but because it's late June & GHS doesn't take finals very seriously at the administrative level--not to say that administrators say they don't take them seriously. But when grades are due in the computer only eighteen hours after the last two exams are given I'll bet you can imagine what kind of half-assed assessments are given. It's not that I want to make kids miserable. Ask 'em. But intense study--not that everyone's into that ...--yields fruit. There's a pleasure in it.
I hear you. Of course, you're right. No jest. You're right. It's not for all kids. Or all adults. There are other pleasures. Other ways of living proceeding, etc. But I like to think that I give kids the option of persuing lit. & writing that they might get into. I prefer not to control all of it: open the field, show 'em around, but then turn 'em loose. But then I expect to see some evidence of what they've gathered while wandering the pasture, swimming, climbing, what-have-you.
When I've taken students to Boston in the past & turn them loose to eat (& explore in small groups) for a few hours, they almost inevitably hand-out in the nearest BK, Wendys, McD's, etc. (If I'm near I go to Falafel King of xtina.org fame.) A few have ventured forth to buy flowers & such things. They give me hope. It's much the same w/ reading & writing. I'll take 'em to a field of knowledge, show 'em around & turn 'em loose. Most hand around near the cliches, slogans, & such. No {alarms & no} surprises but it's still depressing.
So these essays I'm reading which were meant to be reflective & exploratory are mostly outlines-in-disguise that adhere faithfully (fundamentally) to the "five paragraph essay" learned in 9th grade & before. It's a fine scaffold perhaps but after 180 days I'd hoped for better.
Some are quite good. But it's good to take a break to clear one's mind. No?
slainte.
*
{Listening to Beck's Sea Change, the Mountain Goats' Tallahassee, & the Clash hits Vol. 2 {the only clash I have on CD not vinyl; some of 'em need *up*?grading}
Thursday, June 12, 2003
I have all but finished grading assignments for three of the five classes I have left.
Am working on number four.
Just graded journals in response to ...
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
The Stranger
The Fall
Siddhartha (2 more)
The Importance of Being Earnest (2; yeah I know it was first performed in 1895 & so is not a twentieth-century play but the kids like Wilde)
Good Morning, Midnight (Jean Rhys!)
Shadow of a Gunman (again; why that one of all the O'Casey?)
I'm sure I'm forgetting others.
Oh another student's project focused on
Yeats (10 poems), Langston Hughes (10 poems; I almost wrote just "Hughes" but that'd bring Ted to mind considering the project was to focus on Europe...I allowed students to pick one Euro & one North American poet), & misc. European modernist artists (five).
In the new Elicitor the GHS lit mag, there's a clever parody of faux-Irishness that includes a character named William B. Yeats. (I forget what the B. stand for but I know it's not Butler.)
Only eight more journals to grade. Then the Hamlet soliloquies & medieval lit. exams.
A few of the journals have been quite good. No. Really.
Hope all is well with all.
Slainte.
Am working on number four.
Just graded journals in response to ...
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
The Stranger
The Fall
Siddhartha (2 more)
The Importance of Being Earnest (2; yeah I know it was first performed in 1895 & so is not a twentieth-century play but the kids like Wilde)
Good Morning, Midnight (Jean Rhys!)
Shadow of a Gunman (again; why that one of all the O'Casey?)
I'm sure I'm forgetting others.
Oh another student's project focused on
Yeats (10 poems), Langston Hughes (10 poems; I almost wrote just "Hughes" but that'd bring Ted to mind considering the project was to focus on Europe...I allowed students to pick one Euro & one North American poet), & misc. European modernist artists (five).
In the new Elicitor the GHS lit mag, there's a clever parody of faux-Irishness that includes a character named William B. Yeats. (I forget what the B. stand for but I know it's not Butler.)
Only eight more journals to grade. Then the Hamlet soliloquies & medieval lit. exams.
A few of the journals have been quite good. No. Really.
Hope all is well with all.
Slainte.
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Blogger was down for updates so I've failed in my attempt to post daily.
Last night read nine student journals on a twentieth-century European novel, play, or poems.
Read responses to ...
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Cherry Orchard
Murder in the Cathedral
Siddhartha (3)
Shadow of a Gunman (though the student called it Tale of a Gunman)
Things Fall Apart
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Thirty or so left to grade.
~
Went to sleep re-reading The Amerindian Coastline Poem & listening to Tallahassee by The Mountain Goats.
~
Missed dinner with Amanda, Gerrit, Gerrit's nephew Gerrit, Timotha, John, and Patrick in order to read & grade journals.
~
School day begins now ...
~
slainte
Last night read nine student journals on a twentieth-century European novel, play, or poems.
Read responses to ...
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Cherry Orchard
Murder in the Cathedral
Siddhartha (3)
Shadow of a Gunman (though the student called it Tale of a Gunman)
Things Fall Apart
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Thirty or so left to grade.
~
Went to sleep re-reading The Amerindian Coastline Poem & listening to Tallahassee by The Mountain Goats.
~
Missed dinner with Amanda, Gerrit, Gerrit's nephew Gerrit, Timotha, John, and Patrick in order to read & grade journals.
~
School day begins now ...
~
slainte
Sunday, June 08, 2003
Fountains of words
fall against the window
every one
different from
the other, and,
wanting to taint oblivion,
I organize them
Nothing is true.
*
Fanny Howe, from The Amerindian Coastline Poem
~~~
I'd like to go on rereading this book on and off for the next day or so. I love rereading. I love texts that ask to be reread.
~~~
This seascape fits exactly with
the geography of my mind:
whatever is close is dangerous
*
from The Amerindian Coastline Poem
~~~
At ironstonewhirlygig.blogspot.com Amanda mentioned our drive from Lanesville to Rockport (the two northern most parts of Cape Ann, the former actually being part of Gloucester though very different in character from downtown, West Gloucester, East Gloucester, Magnolia, Annisquam, etc.). Along this drive the outermost rocks of Folly Cove were particularly alluring today. & though the seascape did not match my mind, looking at it I was able to recall times past when that seascape has fit my mind's geography. I wish for those times to return.
~~~
I have another class-worth of short essays & comic strips on Kafka's Metamorphosis to grade before tomorrow morning.
Teaching the book went well considering the novella/long-short-story was a last minute replacement after I was forced to ditch my plans to teach Catcher in the Rye because we'd run out of books. It lead to many interesting discussions about dreams, alienation, revulsion, & family dynamics. I hope I will be able to teach the book again. {I had no idea GHS owned it until I came upon it while desperately searching for interesting titles in the catacomb-like English Department Book Room.}
Next year, I probably will not be teaching tenth graders anymore, but I will probably be teaching a senior Great Books class in which I can use Metamorphosis & for which--judging by the lack of "great books" in the catacombs--I will be xeroxing & asking students to purchase a few books. Ah, but that's next year. Another week & finals to go in this one. Much work still to do.
slan leat.
fall against the window
every one
different from
the other, and,
wanting to taint oblivion,
I organize them
Nothing is true.
*
Fanny Howe, from The Amerindian Coastline Poem
~~~
I'd like to go on rereading this book on and off for the next day or so. I love rereading. I love texts that ask to be reread.
~~~
This seascape fits exactly with
the geography of my mind:
whatever is close is dangerous
*
from The Amerindian Coastline Poem
~~~
At ironstonewhirlygig.blogspot.com Amanda mentioned our drive from Lanesville to Rockport (the two northern most parts of Cape Ann, the former actually being part of Gloucester though very different in character from downtown, West Gloucester, East Gloucester, Magnolia, Annisquam, etc.). Along this drive the outermost rocks of Folly Cove were particularly alluring today. & though the seascape did not match my mind, looking at it I was able to recall times past when that seascape has fit my mind's geography. I wish for those times to return.
~~~
I have another class-worth of short essays & comic strips on Kafka's Metamorphosis to grade before tomorrow morning.
Teaching the book went well considering the novella/long-short-story was a last minute replacement after I was forced to ditch my plans to teach Catcher in the Rye because we'd run out of books. It lead to many interesting discussions about dreams, alienation, revulsion, & family dynamics. I hope I will be able to teach the book again. {I had no idea GHS owned it until I came upon it while desperately searching for interesting titles in the catacomb-like English Department Book Room.}
Next year, I probably will not be teaching tenth graders anymore, but I will probably be teaching a senior Great Books class in which I can use Metamorphosis & for which--judging by the lack of "great books" in the catacombs--I will be xeroxing & asking students to purchase a few books. Ah, but that's next year. Another week & finals to go in this one. Much work still to do.
slan leat.
Saturday, June 07, 2003
I just finished grading the last of the personal essays written by my GHS juniors.
{To get these finished I've had to miss the BoPo Marathon's first three days. Tomorrow I'll miss the last day because of graduation.}
I have to admit I'd intended to say something cogent about teenagers' writing but am speechless. I'm overwhelmed by the experiences & observations of these sixteen & seventeen year-olds. Pain of betrayal. Thrill of transgression, followed by self-hatred. Self-mutilation followed by self-discovery. Hallmark-ish triumph over very real adversity. Crises of faith. An Affirmation of faith. A Quiet (pain-filled) sermon against smiley-faced hypocrisy. Various solipsistic existential crises by very intelligent & self-important students.
Reading over forty confessions of sorts has made me very nervous. I'd planned to read some Fanny Howe tonight--from The Amerindian Coastline Poem--& I may just do so before falling asleep, but first I need to clear voices out of my head not add another one.
I quite like the cover of Fanny Howe's 1975 book. It shows the Atlantic Coast from northeastern Quebec (the part the curls above New Brunswick & Nova Scotia) down to northern New Jersey. The map extends east to western Newfoundland & west just short of the Great Lakes. New Brunswick & Nova Scotia are in the vertical center of the cover. I feel particularly close to these two provinces & hope to spend a few weeks in them again this summer as I did last summer.
In the inner fold of the book there is a cropped map of the same coast. This map's center is a bit further north & west; it also reverses the coloring of the land (white on the cover, dotted in the center map) & water (dotted on the cover, dotted in the center). The shift north & west and the inverted colors conspired to make the familiar coast strange. (I even considered looking at my atlas to figure out what the hell I was looking at. Then, just before getting up out of my chair, I figured out (duh!) to switch the land & ocean. It was hard to do. Hard to unlearn the first map's language. But quite instructive.
I'd like to hear from anyone who has attended the readings this weekend. I'd especially like to hear about Fanny Howe's reading Friday night.
slainte.
{To get these finished I've had to miss the BoPo Marathon's first three days. Tomorrow I'll miss the last day because of graduation.}
I have to admit I'd intended to say something cogent about teenagers' writing but am speechless. I'm overwhelmed by the experiences & observations of these sixteen & seventeen year-olds. Pain of betrayal. Thrill of transgression, followed by self-hatred. Self-mutilation followed by self-discovery. Hallmark-ish triumph over very real adversity. Crises of faith. An Affirmation of faith. A Quiet (pain-filled) sermon against smiley-faced hypocrisy. Various solipsistic existential crises by very intelligent & self-important students.
Reading over forty confessions of sorts has made me very nervous. I'd planned to read some Fanny Howe tonight--from The Amerindian Coastline Poem--& I may just do so before falling asleep, but first I need to clear voices out of my head not add another one.
I quite like the cover of Fanny Howe's 1975 book. It shows the Atlantic Coast from northeastern Quebec (the part the curls above New Brunswick & Nova Scotia) down to northern New Jersey. The map extends east to western Newfoundland & west just short of the Great Lakes. New Brunswick & Nova Scotia are in the vertical center of the cover. I feel particularly close to these two provinces & hope to spend a few weeks in them again this summer as I did last summer.
In the inner fold of the book there is a cropped map of the same coast. This map's center is a bit further north & west; it also reverses the coloring of the land (white on the cover, dotted in the center map) & water (dotted on the cover, dotted in the center). The shift north & west and the inverted colors conspired to make the familiar coast strange. (I even considered looking at my atlas to figure out what the hell I was looking at. Then, just before getting up out of my chair, I figured out (duh!) to switch the land & ocean. It was hard to do. Hard to unlearn the first map's language. But quite instructive.
I'd like to hear from anyone who has attended the readings this weekend. I'd especially like to hear about Fanny Howe's reading Friday night.
slainte.
Friday, June 06, 2003
See xtina.org (I've yet to learn how to do links; in two weeks, when school's out, Amanda will help me with that) for news about the BoPo Marathon.
~
I like that at canwehaveourballback.com/pm.htm (Popular Mechanics) Jim put big spaces between the poems & the poets. This gave me a chance to guess the poet after reading the poem.
I guessed correctly for Christina's, Aaron's, and Mark's poems (though at least half way through, I thought Jordan Davis' poem might be Mark's). Of course, it helped significantly that I knew who to look. But still it made me happy that I know the work of these poets well enough to recognize some combination of words, phrasings, linebreaks, motifs, etc. as theirs.
~
Time to catch a bus home. Haven't decided if I'll be able to make it down to beantown for tonight's marathon leg. Much end of year work to do--little time in which to do it.
slan agat...
~
I like that at canwehaveourballback.com/pm.htm (Popular Mechanics) Jim put big spaces between the poems & the poets. This gave me a chance to guess the poet after reading the poem.
I guessed correctly for Christina's, Aaron's, and Mark's poems (though at least half way through, I thought Jordan Davis' poem might be Mark's). Of course, it helped significantly that I knew who to look. But still it made me happy that I know the work of these poets well enough to recognize some combination of words, phrasings, linebreaks, motifs, etc. as theirs.
~
Time to catch a bus home. Haven't decided if I'll be able to make it down to beantown for tonight's marathon leg. Much end of year work to do--little time in which to do it.
slan agat...
Thursday, June 05, 2003
I've decided I will try to post something everyday.
I will not be attending the first night of BoPo Marathon tonight. Sorry Dan. I have no transport & have far too much grading to do.
~
G.H.S. student a few years back: "Well a zero's better than nothing."
~
Was just reading about the Hotel Wentley Poems on Silliman's blog {sorry Jim} & am now listening to the Cat Power (Chan Marshall) song "Names":
"her name was Naomi
beautiful round face so ashamed
she told me how to please a man
after school in the back of the bus
she was doin it everyday
she was 11 years old"
The song describes five such kids (aged 10, 11, 12, 13, 14); all of whom have disappeared from the narrator's life.
I think when I get home 'round seven, I'll read more Wieners while listening to Cat Power.
~
I am curious about what others think about Silliman's comments on Kidnap Notes Next. Anyone?
~
Also, I'd like to hear any news about tonight's reading especially since Dan's opening of the BoPo thing a few years back was such a memorable event for me.
~
Can epiphanies (misunderstood as the ah-ha moment) be reclaimed from closed-off New Yorker poems?
Michael Carr called me on my breezy assertion that Joyce used epiphanies in Dubliners. As far as I know, he used none of the epiphanies he recorded in notebooks (cf the well-known letter to his brother) in Dubliners. But I would maintain that there are moments in Dubliners--the conversation between two young Brits & the shopminder near the end of "Araby" for example--that fit Joyce's own definition of epiphany, even though these moments are not from the notebooks. I'd also say that these moments that seem epiphanic in Joyce's own sense would not be considered epiphanies by my colleagues here at GHS or by the textbooks we use. I dare say--trusting Michael's memory of the collected "The Epiphanies" which I'd like to get my hands on--that Joyce's own recorded epiphanies would not be considered such by my colleagues & the Prentice Hall anthologies. More later.
~
Back to the essays
~
slainte!
I will not be attending the first night of BoPo Marathon tonight. Sorry Dan. I have no transport & have far too much grading to do.
~
G.H.S. student a few years back: "Well a zero's better than nothing."
~
Was just reading about the Hotel Wentley Poems on Silliman's blog {sorry Jim} & am now listening to the Cat Power (Chan Marshall) song "Names":
"her name was Naomi
beautiful round face so ashamed
she told me how to please a man
after school in the back of the bus
she was doin it everyday
she was 11 years old"
The song describes five such kids (aged 10, 11, 12, 13, 14); all of whom have disappeared from the narrator's life.
I think when I get home 'round seven, I'll read more Wieners while listening to Cat Power.
~
I am curious about what others think about Silliman's comments on Kidnap Notes Next. Anyone?
~
Also, I'd like to hear any news about tonight's reading especially since Dan's opening of the BoPo thing a few years back was such a memorable event for me.
~
Can epiphanies (misunderstood as the ah-ha moment) be reclaimed from closed-off New Yorker poems?
Michael Carr called me on my breezy assertion that Joyce used epiphanies in Dubliners. As far as I know, he used none of the epiphanies he recorded in notebooks (cf the well-known letter to his brother) in Dubliners. But I would maintain that there are moments in Dubliners--the conversation between two young Brits & the shopminder near the end of "Araby" for example--that fit Joyce's own definition of epiphany, even though these moments are not from the notebooks. I'd also say that these moments that seem epiphanic in Joyce's own sense would not be considered epiphanies by my colleagues here at GHS or by the textbooks we use. I dare say--trusting Michael's memory of the collected "The Epiphanies" which I'd like to get my hands on--that Joyce's own recorded epiphanies would not be considered such by my colleagues & the Prentice Hall anthologies. More later.
~
Back to the essays
~
slainte!
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Art Space Arts Pace
Glosta
last Wednesday Night
Joe Torra concluded the featured readers portion of the Artspace coffehouse by reading his chapbook "August letter to my wife and daughters." At the time Joe began to read the audience had already heard five open-mic performers and two readers with a brief intermission between the five and two. Despite this, Joe's poem & reading captured the ears & eyes of the assembled minds. It was a brilliant reading.
One of handful that I've experienced in my young life. I hope to hear more. With Joe around it's bound to happen. Of the great readings I've attended, two others also involve Joe: at Artspace at the end of 1999 or 2000 (Joe read "The Second Coming"; Willie Alexander performed; Henry Ferrini showed his film "Radio Fishtown," a brilliant young saxophonist lead a trio, & Gerrit Lansing read brilliantly, as always; he's got chops, as they say) & at MIT this past winter Gerrit & Joe read together during a snowstorm.
Others? Creeley reading at Harvard shortly after Allen Ginsberg's death. Creeley began by reading Allen's "Transcription of Organ Music." R.C.'s reading of the poem was quite different that A.G.'s, but equally attentive. What a joy to hear those words given breath at just that moment.
Others? Dan Bouchard opening the second or third Boston Poetry Conference (now the BoPo Marathon--opening this Thursday as it happens) by reading WCW's rant against Massachusetts w/r/t the Sacco & Vanzetti executions. The conferences/marathons seldom have fire. Dan's reading did that night. Oh, & although he was not given a long enough slot for my taste, Dan made quite a bit of the well-heeled audience squirm w/ the political poems he read at Pen/New England new writers reading at the BPL last year.
Before I go on about the Charles Olson festival, etc. etc. I'll bring things back to Joe's reading of "The Second Coming" before the changing of the millennium by recalling the phrase (something like) "the worst of full of compassionate intensity" which Dan used to draw the worst of Yeats's era w/ the "compassionate conservatives" of our own--at least that's what I've always assumed Dan was doing. Dan?
Joe's reading of "August Letter to My Wife and Daughters"--available from Pressed Wafer--was spellbinding. I've chosen that word carefully. Xtina Strong later wrote & sd that I was keeping time along w/ Joe's reading. {Students have pointed out to me that I do the same when reading poetry in class, especially Shakespeare's iambs.} My friend Greg remarked upon the power of the lists of, for example, banks. The sounds & their permutations took over. But then the poem has a narrative too, a fractured one to be sure, but narrative nevertheless. The poem leaps around in time but in following the one always ends up on one's feet--even after stumbling for a line or two. Joe has a keen eye for epiphanic detail.
I often go on about how Joyce's youthful conception of epiphany as discussed in Stephen Hero & used in Dubliners has to do w/ an object's whatness (or a person's or situation's whatness) showing forth, radiating out. It's not quite the "ah ha!" moment that most people take "epiphany" to mean. So back to Joe: his poems are full of details (objects, exchanges, phases of the mind itself, juxtapositions) that effect epiphanies. This is also related to Joyce's use of the term "epicleti" where the Holy Ghost is evoked to transform the bread & wine into body & blood.
In Joe's poem commonplace details (honed by the mind down to the level of the phrase) & the arrangement of the details into sonic, rhythmic, & associational patterns (this one leads to this one; this one leads to that--though not necessarily chronologically or causally, etc.) transform fragmented (isolated) experience into a communion: from the experience, through writer/reader, to the audience (literally hear-ers); just as the blood & wine through the intercession of the priest becomes communion for the parishioners. This formulation is nothing new. Joyce had thought this through in letters to Stanislaus a hundred years ago, but it bears repeating for those of us who fled formal religion for the greener (more furtile not more lucrative) pastures of poetry seeking a more (not less) inspirited world.
***
The evening at Artspace ended with a few more open-mic performers. I don't remember much just now & must return to grading essays. But I do remember the woman who performed last. She played guitar and sang a song about loss that while cliched was delivered in so sincere a manner that, but the end of the performance, I felt a bit ashamed to have ever even thought about the failure of the words to convey the emotions she felt. At the time I may even have felt a snicker, though again the sincerity of the performance came through to surpress it.
Amanda asked a question about the difference & relative value of writing songs & performing them. At best both parts are strong. But a convincing performance can make up for an awful lot it seems. & of this I'm certain: a convincing performance can make up for far more than a skillful performance.
slainte & paz.
Glosta
last Wednesday Night
Joe Torra concluded the featured readers portion of the Artspace coffehouse by reading his chapbook "August letter to my wife and daughters." At the time Joe began to read the audience had already heard five open-mic performers and two readers with a brief intermission between the five and two. Despite this, Joe's poem & reading captured the ears & eyes of the assembled minds. It was a brilliant reading.
One of handful that I've experienced in my young life. I hope to hear more. With Joe around it's bound to happen. Of the great readings I've attended, two others also involve Joe: at Artspace at the end of 1999 or 2000 (Joe read "The Second Coming"; Willie Alexander performed; Henry Ferrini showed his film "Radio Fishtown," a brilliant young saxophonist lead a trio, & Gerrit Lansing read brilliantly, as always; he's got chops, as they say) & at MIT this past winter Gerrit & Joe read together during a snowstorm.
Others? Creeley reading at Harvard shortly after Allen Ginsberg's death. Creeley began by reading Allen's "Transcription of Organ Music." R.C.'s reading of the poem was quite different that A.G.'s, but equally attentive. What a joy to hear those words given breath at just that moment.
Others? Dan Bouchard opening the second or third Boston Poetry Conference (now the BoPo Marathon--opening this Thursday as it happens) by reading WCW's rant against Massachusetts w/r/t the Sacco & Vanzetti executions. The conferences/marathons seldom have fire. Dan's reading did that night. Oh, & although he was not given a long enough slot for my taste, Dan made quite a bit of the well-heeled audience squirm w/ the political poems he read at Pen/New England new writers reading at the BPL last year.
Before I go on about the Charles Olson festival, etc. etc. I'll bring things back to Joe's reading of "The Second Coming" before the changing of the millennium by recalling the phrase (something like) "the worst of full of compassionate intensity" which Dan used to draw the worst of Yeats's era w/ the "compassionate conservatives" of our own--at least that's what I've always assumed Dan was doing. Dan?
Joe's reading of "August Letter to My Wife and Daughters"--available from Pressed Wafer--was spellbinding. I've chosen that word carefully. Xtina Strong later wrote & sd that I was keeping time along w/ Joe's reading. {Students have pointed out to me that I do the same when reading poetry in class, especially Shakespeare's iambs.} My friend Greg remarked upon the power of the lists of, for example, banks. The sounds & their permutations took over. But then the poem has a narrative too, a fractured one to be sure, but narrative nevertheless. The poem leaps around in time but in following the one always ends up on one's feet--even after stumbling for a line or two. Joe has a keen eye for epiphanic detail.
I often go on about how Joyce's youthful conception of epiphany as discussed in Stephen Hero & used in Dubliners has to do w/ an object's whatness (or a person's or situation's whatness) showing forth, radiating out. It's not quite the "ah ha!" moment that most people take "epiphany" to mean. So back to Joe: his poems are full of details (objects, exchanges, phases of the mind itself, juxtapositions) that effect epiphanies. This is also related to Joyce's use of the term "epicleti" where the Holy Ghost is evoked to transform the bread & wine into body & blood.
In Joe's poem commonplace details (honed by the mind down to the level of the phrase) & the arrangement of the details into sonic, rhythmic, & associational patterns (this one leads to this one; this one leads to that--though not necessarily chronologically or causally, etc.) transform fragmented (isolated) experience into a communion: from the experience, through writer/reader, to the audience (literally hear-ers); just as the blood & wine through the intercession of the priest becomes communion for the parishioners. This formulation is nothing new. Joyce had thought this through in letters to Stanislaus a hundred years ago, but it bears repeating for those of us who fled formal religion for the greener (more furtile not more lucrative) pastures of poetry seeking a more (not less) inspirited world.
***
The evening at Artspace ended with a few more open-mic performers. I don't remember much just now & must return to grading essays. But I do remember the woman who performed last. She played guitar and sang a song about loss that while cliched was delivered in so sincere a manner that, but the end of the performance, I felt a bit ashamed to have ever even thought about the failure of the words to convey the emotions she felt. At the time I may even have felt a snicker, though again the sincerity of the performance came through to surpress it.
Amanda asked a question about the difference & relative value of writing songs & performing them. At best both parts are strong. But a convincing performance can make up for an awful lot it seems. & of this I'm certain: a convincing performance can make up for far more than a skillful performance.
slainte & paz.
Thursday, May 29, 2003
Artspace (Gloucester, MA)
Wednesday Night
Since a few Boston-area readers of this weblog expressed an interest in the goings on last night at Artspace in Gloucester, here's a very limited and very subjective (&, as always, digressive) account.
I'll start w/ a digression. (Can one digress before one has begun?) On Yoo Doo Right (mikecounty.blogspot.com) Mike County, talking about using Donne poems to create "superficial" constraints for his poems, writes "There's no ideological basis other than those superficial arrangements. Just a way to get some writing done at times when I feel overwhelmed by work/life." Yeah, "overwhelmed by work/life." The same need to get some work done--to get writing--sent me to work on translations of Federico Garcia Lorca this winter. It wasn't so much a decision as a realization. I simply found myself translating the poems as I read them in Spanish. It was a powerful *reading* experience. (Very *absorptive*.) Then I grabbed my pad. {Who out there composes by pen? Who by pencil? Who by computer? & then how do you revise?} I wrote down one of the translations I did in my head, making a few changes as I did so; I then typed it into my PC, making a few more changes. The rest of the story is predictable. I stayed up far too late, which for me (as a high school English teacher is laughably earlier as compared to many of your internal clocks, I'm sure). Nevertheless, having these translations to do gave me some definable, nameable {spelling is strange} work to do. I had to, as one says, get it done. I've tried--like Mike--to create such tasks w/ my own work, but thus far I've failed. Any ideas?
Back to the events in Gloucester: I finished up some grading here at GHS around 330 & Amanda & I went to Cafe Sicilia to watch the European Cup final, AC Milan v. Juventus. Paolo, the owner of the cafe, is a big Juve fan. (After Celtic played them in the Champions League last year I became a bit of a fan myself. Davids & Trezeguet are brilliant footballers.) After 90 minutes the teams were tied & Amanda & I had to leave to prepare dinner for the folks (hello!) coming up from the Boston-area for the reading.
Once at home (while cleaning, printing out the poems I planned to read, & reading the poems aloud) I had a few glasses of red wine--always a good idea before a reading; whiskey (especially Powers, Paddys or Jamesons) works too--& a few more (plus a shot of Powers) when friends arrived. Amanda made an amazing one hour sauce. (We shouldn't have indulged in watching the Cup final, but it's the last big club match until late August at best.) Everyone--Gerrit Lansing, Joe Torra, Bob D'Attilio, Jim Dunn, Greg Cook (no relation), Zac Martin, Tim Peterson, Christina Strong, Aaron Tieger (aye dios, am I forgetting anyone?)--had a bit to eat (including some focaccia Paolo gave us gratis--he must have been devastated when Juve lost 3-2 on penalty kicks). At about 740/745(?) we headed downtown for the reading.
The reading led off w/ an open-mic. Brian King, the impresario, began with two Patti Smith influenced songs set in Gloucester. Right now I'm questioning why the songs put in me in mind of Patti Smith. There was something in both the strumming & the vocal delivery I think. These songs sound like rock--as opposed to folk--songs, which is, I think, a compliment of sorts. John, whose last name I didn't catch, came next & played some bluegrass tunes in a fairly straight folk-style. (I may be getting this order wrong.) A woman named Aura read poems about sex & gardening. The phrase "giving away kisses like frequent flyer miles" stood out to Zac both because he like the phrase & because it was a unique (ironic) moment in her work. Another accoustic folk performer concluded the pre-reading open-mic with light satires in the folk vernacular. One was a song about men being violent and abusive. Some people didn't know if he was delivering the songs straight or w/ tongue in cheek. Since I'd heard him at an anti-war reading, I assured those around me that he was a card carrying NPR lefty.
Back at our place in Annisquam Joe Torra, Amanda, and I had drawn lots as to who should read first, second, and third. I drew the leadoff spot. I decided to read "Opening the Eyelid" (the poem not the entire book) by David Rattray. I had read through the poem a few times earlier Wednesday--a few passages were tricky for my tongue--but I was still overwhelmed by the power of the poem once I began to give it voice.
Reading the Rattray was one of the best reading experiences I've had. Bits of the poem have been flashing into my mind all day, especially when reading _Metamorphosis_ (w/ tenth graders) & _Hamlet_ (w/ eleventh graders). I feel I've been --in all too brief moments--conjuring (parallel) verbal universes. (Here's to visionary poems in all their forms!)
After the Rattray I read a poem "Lyric/for Gerrit Lansing," which I'd written as a birthday present for Gerrit a few months back. I was happy to read it w/ Gerrit present & happy to do so after reading from Rattray whose prose piece "The Mantis" inflamed memories of Gerrit's work on a train ride from Gloucester to Boston during which I wrote "Lyric".
I finished by reading my translation of Lorca's "Mirror Suite". Reading those poems I realize there's something unsatisfying about them, but I could also hear in them something that I could borrow for my own work. I should have read fewer of them but preceded by the original Spanish. Then I might've felt a presence--the duen de casa?--as I did while reading "Opening the Eyelid".
Amanda read next. She read the "My University" passage of Mayakovsky's "I Love". She also read a passage selected by Zac & her favorite Mayakovsky passage:
I spit on the fact
That Homer and Ovid didn’t create
Soot-covered with pox,
Men like us all,
But at the same time, I know
That the sun would fade
If it looked at the golden fields of our souls.
(from "Cloud in Trousers")
Amanda warned everyone to avoid reading a translation of the poem called "Cloud in Pants". I agree (but can't remember the translator's name just now, though I do recall that he was British & used the phrase "puddin' head.")
Amanda then read a poem including an image of slashed canvases lying by the side of the road. (A member of the audience happened to remember the very same slashed canvas.) Amanda's poems of love and adoration followed. A few of you out there have heard or read these poems a few times now. Do you know who's who? These poems are very simple, beautiful, and tender. What followed--an anti-Yankees, anti-Roger Clemens poems--could not be described with the later of the previous adjectives but was certainly timely. (Put "299" on your glove R.C.!)
{I must begin packing up here at GHS...Joe Torra still to come.}
Wednesday Night
Since a few Boston-area readers of this weblog expressed an interest in the goings on last night at Artspace in Gloucester, here's a very limited and very subjective (&, as always, digressive) account.
I'll start w/ a digression. (Can one digress before one has begun?) On Yoo Doo Right (mikecounty.blogspot.com) Mike County, talking about using Donne poems to create "superficial" constraints for his poems, writes "There's no ideological basis other than those superficial arrangements. Just a way to get some writing done at times when I feel overwhelmed by work/life." Yeah, "overwhelmed by work/life." The same need to get some work done--to get writing--sent me to work on translations of Federico Garcia Lorca this winter. It wasn't so much a decision as a realization. I simply found myself translating the poems as I read them in Spanish. It was a powerful *reading* experience. (Very *absorptive*.) Then I grabbed my pad. {Who out there composes by pen? Who by pencil? Who by computer? & then how do you revise?} I wrote down one of the translations I did in my head, making a few changes as I did so; I then typed it into my PC, making a few more changes. The rest of the story is predictable. I stayed up far too late, which for me (as a high school English teacher is laughably earlier as compared to many of your internal clocks, I'm sure). Nevertheless, having these translations to do gave me some definable, nameable {spelling is strange} work to do. I had to, as one says, get it done. I've tried--like Mike--to create such tasks w/ my own work, but thus far I've failed. Any ideas?
Back to the events in Gloucester: I finished up some grading here at GHS around 330 & Amanda & I went to Cafe Sicilia to watch the European Cup final, AC Milan v. Juventus. Paolo, the owner of the cafe, is a big Juve fan. (After Celtic played them in the Champions League last year I became a bit of a fan myself. Davids & Trezeguet are brilliant footballers.) After 90 minutes the teams were tied & Amanda & I had to leave to prepare dinner for the folks (hello!) coming up from the Boston-area for the reading.
Once at home (while cleaning, printing out the poems I planned to read, & reading the poems aloud) I had a few glasses of red wine--always a good idea before a reading; whiskey (especially Powers, Paddys or Jamesons) works too--& a few more (plus a shot of Powers) when friends arrived. Amanda made an amazing one hour sauce. (We shouldn't have indulged in watching the Cup final, but it's the last big club match until late August at best.) Everyone--Gerrit Lansing, Joe Torra, Bob D'Attilio, Jim Dunn, Greg Cook (no relation), Zac Martin, Tim Peterson, Christina Strong, Aaron Tieger (aye dios, am I forgetting anyone?)--had a bit to eat (including some focaccia Paolo gave us gratis--he must have been devastated when Juve lost 3-2 on penalty kicks). At about 740/745(?) we headed downtown for the reading.
The reading led off w/ an open-mic. Brian King, the impresario, began with two Patti Smith influenced songs set in Gloucester. Right now I'm questioning why the songs put in me in mind of Patti Smith. There was something in both the strumming & the vocal delivery I think. These songs sound like rock--as opposed to folk--songs, which is, I think, a compliment of sorts. John, whose last name I didn't catch, came next & played some bluegrass tunes in a fairly straight folk-style. (I may be getting this order wrong.) A woman named Aura read poems about sex & gardening. The phrase "giving away kisses like frequent flyer miles" stood out to Zac both because he like the phrase & because it was a unique (ironic) moment in her work. Another accoustic folk performer concluded the pre-reading open-mic with light satires in the folk vernacular. One was a song about men being violent and abusive. Some people didn't know if he was delivering the songs straight or w/ tongue in cheek. Since I'd heard him at an anti-war reading, I assured those around me that he was a card carrying NPR lefty.
Back at our place in Annisquam Joe Torra, Amanda, and I had drawn lots as to who should read first, second, and third. I drew the leadoff spot. I decided to read "Opening the Eyelid" (the poem not the entire book) by David Rattray. I had read through the poem a few times earlier Wednesday--a few passages were tricky for my tongue--but I was still overwhelmed by the power of the poem once I began to give it voice.
Reading the Rattray was one of the best reading experiences I've had. Bits of the poem have been flashing into my mind all day, especially when reading _Metamorphosis_ (w/ tenth graders) & _Hamlet_ (w/ eleventh graders). I feel I've been --in all too brief moments--conjuring (parallel) verbal universes. (Here's to visionary poems in all their forms!)
After the Rattray I read a poem "Lyric/for Gerrit Lansing," which I'd written as a birthday present for Gerrit a few months back. I was happy to read it w/ Gerrit present & happy to do so after reading from Rattray whose prose piece "The Mantis" inflamed memories of Gerrit's work on a train ride from Gloucester to Boston during which I wrote "Lyric".
I finished by reading my translation of Lorca's "Mirror Suite". Reading those poems I realize there's something unsatisfying about them, but I could also hear in them something that I could borrow for my own work. I should have read fewer of them but preceded by the original Spanish. Then I might've felt a presence--the duen de casa?--as I did while reading "Opening the Eyelid".
Amanda read next. She read the "My University" passage of Mayakovsky's "I Love". She also read a passage selected by Zac & her favorite Mayakovsky passage:
I spit on the fact
That Homer and Ovid didn’t create
Soot-covered with pox,
Men like us all,
But at the same time, I know
That the sun would fade
If it looked at the golden fields of our souls.
(from "Cloud in Trousers")
Amanda warned everyone to avoid reading a translation of the poem called "Cloud in Pants". I agree (but can't remember the translator's name just now, though I do recall that he was British & used the phrase "puddin' head.")
Amanda then read a poem including an image of slashed canvases lying by the side of the road. (A member of the audience happened to remember the very same slashed canvas.) Amanda's poems of love and adoration followed. A few of you out there have heard or read these poems a few times now. Do you know who's who? These poems are very simple, beautiful, and tender. What followed--an anti-Yankees, anti-Roger Clemens poems--could not be described with the later of the previous adjectives but was certainly timely. (Put "299" on your glove R.C.!)
{I must begin packing up here at GHS...Joe Torra still to come.}
Saturday, May 24, 2003
Another in an on-going series…
This was written ten days ago but I forgot to post it.
MIT
Sabado (el veinte seis de abril) por la noche
As with other readings over the course of the weekend at MIT, it took a few minutes & a few poems to begin to *hear* what was happening in Deirdre Kovac's poems. It was at some point in the middle of “Alt.country” (or perhaps “Alt Dot Country”) that I began to hear. The poem was fluently alliterative & associative. {Quite a bit of what follows appeared earlier in the week in a different form.} Some months past Ron Silliman’s blog included an email from Chris Stroffolino in which Chris said/asked something about the equivalent of rock guitar in poetry.
I’m both dubious of & drawn to music analogies for poetry. Music is, after all, the upper limit—but a limit nevertheless. Onomatopoeia—“whambam” and “la-la-la” and “chitty-chitty-bang-bang” were found w/ in the stream of “Alt.country”—isn’t quite what I’ve been thinking about as an equivalent of the zig-zag guitar but wrote something to that effect (or wrote the question) while listening to Deirdre Kovac's poems a few Saturdays back.
I’ve thought about the analogy since…I’m interested in the kind of kinetic-digressive rock guitar that seems to burst over a steady bass-drum beat, &, like a squirrel crossing the street, head this way then that—beautiful improvisational zig zag freak-out—before leaping on a tree & leaving only a shaking branch behind. Who among us poets—and poets of the past—has propulsive bass-drum & zig-zag guitar w/ perfect timing, knowing just when to have a go, make-a-break-for-it, rupturing (but also intensifying) sound & sense?
Bass-drum virtuosity is necessary. Guitar-hero shenanigans are counter-productive to such a poetry project. (In fact keys and/or vocals sometimes achieve a similar effect.) Caveat: For God’s sake don’t forsake the driving beat when seeking guitar-vocal-keyboard intensification. No one will be able to hear it. Without the “rock” it’d just sound like noise! W/o percussive propulsion it’ll just be noodling. Don’t noodle. Rock & write when no other act is possible (cf Creeley). And whatever you do as you zag across the street, don’t turn around to tell the on-rushing car that you won the 1992 Mr. Silver Lake Talent Show for your rendition of “Silent Lucidity.”
{Added 5/24: Phrases from Kovac more like zig-zag guitar: “soda jerk this,” “switch and sin like me,” “local lawman gags on ‘Nam.” I also wrote admiringly that Kovac wrote “fluent” poetry that was also capable of “slog[ging]” along when needed. To recreate the effect extralinguistically, I might go sit by the Annisquam River on this windy fifty degree day after throwing back some Nyquil. I’ll hunt down some of her poems instead… Found “Red Hook” in Pressed Wafer 2. Had a different effect. Versatility.}
Douglas Rothchild closed out Saturday’s bill by attempting to bring the Zinc Bar (NYC) to Boston. In his verbal recreation of the Zinc Bar both inside & out, I played the taxi cabs.
Huh?
Recently, Douglas spent some time writing down language—both spoken & written—observed outside the Zinc Bar. He wrote down phrases uttered by passersby; writing on busses; words seen from the northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest corners; and writing of cabs including license numbers, adverts, and fares. He then had audience members read these phrases while he read his poems. The piece succeeded in making the verbal overload of citylife audible. In the din, the clarity & coherence of Douglas’ poetry seemed both overwhelmed & heroic. (Fragile saxifrage comes to mind.) Conversely, when, for example, others' taxi phrases—“unwire your world,” “$.50 Night Surcharge,” etc.— could be picked out of the ambient noise, my mind's ear was aroused but unsatisfied. The poetry—itself about the city—satisfied by making something amidst the noise.
I raise my early evening cup of coffee to readings that make something happen.
slan leat,
j.c.}
This was written ten days ago but I forgot to post it.
MIT
Sabado (el veinte seis de abril) por la noche
As with other readings over the course of the weekend at MIT, it took a few minutes & a few poems to begin to *hear* what was happening in Deirdre Kovac's poems. It was at some point in the middle of “Alt.country” (or perhaps “Alt Dot Country”) that I began to hear. The poem was fluently alliterative & associative. {Quite a bit of what follows appeared earlier in the week in a different form.} Some months past Ron Silliman’s blog included an email from Chris Stroffolino in which Chris said/asked something about the equivalent of rock guitar in poetry.
I’m both dubious of & drawn to music analogies for poetry. Music is, after all, the upper limit—but a limit nevertheless. Onomatopoeia—“whambam” and “la-la-la” and “chitty-chitty-bang-bang” were found w/ in the stream of “Alt.country”—isn’t quite what I’ve been thinking about as an equivalent of the zig-zag guitar but wrote something to that effect (or wrote the question) while listening to Deirdre Kovac's poems a few Saturdays back.
I’ve thought about the analogy since…I’m interested in the kind of kinetic-digressive rock guitar that seems to burst over a steady bass-drum beat, &, like a squirrel crossing the street, head this way then that—beautiful improvisational zig zag freak-out—before leaping on a tree & leaving only a shaking branch behind. Who among us poets—and poets of the past—has propulsive bass-drum & zig-zag guitar w/ perfect timing, knowing just when to have a go, make-a-break-for-it, rupturing (but also intensifying) sound & sense?
Bass-drum virtuosity is necessary. Guitar-hero shenanigans are counter-productive to such a poetry project. (In fact keys and/or vocals sometimes achieve a similar effect.) Caveat: For God’s sake don’t forsake the driving beat when seeking guitar-vocal-keyboard intensification. No one will be able to hear it. Without the “rock” it’d just sound like noise! W/o percussive propulsion it’ll just be noodling. Don’t noodle. Rock & write when no other act is possible (cf Creeley). And whatever you do as you zag across the street, don’t turn around to tell the on-rushing car that you won the 1992 Mr. Silver Lake Talent Show for your rendition of “Silent Lucidity.”
{Added 5/24: Phrases from Kovac more like zig-zag guitar: “soda jerk this,” “switch and sin like me,” “local lawman gags on ‘Nam.” I also wrote admiringly that Kovac wrote “fluent” poetry that was also capable of “slog[ging]” along when needed. To recreate the effect extralinguistically, I might go sit by the Annisquam River on this windy fifty degree day after throwing back some Nyquil. I’ll hunt down some of her poems instead… Found “Red Hook” in Pressed Wafer 2. Had a different effect. Versatility.}
Douglas Rothchild closed out Saturday’s bill by attempting to bring the Zinc Bar (NYC) to Boston. In his verbal recreation of the Zinc Bar both inside & out, I played the taxi cabs.
Huh?
Recently, Douglas spent some time writing down language—both spoken & written—observed outside the Zinc Bar. He wrote down phrases uttered by passersby; writing on busses; words seen from the northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest corners; and writing of cabs including license numbers, adverts, and fares. He then had audience members read these phrases while he read his poems. The piece succeeded in making the verbal overload of citylife audible. In the din, the clarity & coherence of Douglas’ poetry seemed both overwhelmed & heroic. (Fragile saxifrage comes to mind.) Conversely, when, for example, others' taxi phrases—“unwire your world,” “$.50 Night Surcharge,” etc.— could be picked out of the ambient noise, my mind's ear was aroused but unsatisfied. The poetry—itself about the city—satisfied by making something amidst the noise.
I raise my early evening cup of coffee to readings that make something happen.
slan leat,
j.c.}
Friday, May 23, 2003
This from Brenda Iijima, correspondent in the field (so to speak):
Thanks for mentioning my (portion) reading. Words do (due) lead (elude) (exude). The seduction is met with the stark reality of language as exchange--firstly anonymous, without the spark of connection until the connection is made. Our inheritance, this language. Or something containing too, sinister intent as Bourdieu would have it (it). Much can grow of it. The weed and the fine coiled vine. Both can align and both are lush. There is interspersion. The language is tumescent, swollen like a seed in spring waiting to burst forth (with its contained, embedded feeling ((towards the reader, for the reader, for the words themselves, for the message, for the shell of the writer who becomes seed, seedling)) but still can't be obvious. The mirror-quality is real. As you say, one's own doubt or hesitation reflects back but then (in a buoyant, generous situation) is engulfed and re-absorbed. After all, we aren't out to write billboard messages. The various colorized messages billow and give and billow and give and continue to call and hopefully respond as well. The well. The deep recessed (fecund) well where water is to be had. Off-spring. Connection. The bountiful leaping from sense to sense, form to sense. This interplay between idea and the flow, the music as you say. Stark apparent idea so keen in our human minds and then the music.
Thanks for mentioning my (portion) reading. Words do (due) lead (elude) (exude). The seduction is met with the stark reality of language as exchange--firstly anonymous, without the spark of connection until the connection is made. Our inheritance, this language. Or something containing too, sinister intent as Bourdieu would have it (it). Much can grow of it. The weed and the fine coiled vine. Both can align and both are lush. There is interspersion. The language is tumescent, swollen like a seed in spring waiting to burst forth (with its contained, embedded feeling ((towards the reader, for the reader, for the words themselves, for the message, for the shell of the writer who becomes seed, seedling)) but still can't be obvious. The mirror-quality is real. As you say, one's own doubt or hesitation reflects back but then (in a buoyant, generous situation) is engulfed and re-absorbed. After all, we aren't out to write billboard messages. The various colorized messages billow and give and billow and give and continue to call and hopefully respond as well. The well. The deep recessed (fecund) well where water is to be had. Off-spring. Connection. The bountiful leaping from sense to sense, form to sense. This interplay between idea and the flow, the music as you say. Stark apparent idea so keen in our human minds and then the music.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
I've written part of a post about rock guitar & poetry (a digression from the conclusion of the Saturday night MIT readings) but have decided to let it sit for a while. What in poetry is the analog of the sudden, propulsive, zig zag rock guitar (cf, "Sympathy for the Devil")?* Or, another way to put it, what in poetry is the analog of a squirrel darting erratically across the road & then disappearing, leaving only a shaking branch behind--all of it done with perfect timing? I last got that feeling from reading Vladimir Holan's "A Night with Hamlet" (trans. Clayton Eshleman & Frantisek Galan w/ Michael Heim). Some of this feeling has to do w/ idiom too. There is always something supracolloquial about the squirrel-guitar. It begins in the colloquial & goes beyond it.
. . . They are anemic,
as if without bloodshed there would be nothing,
they are expelled but not yet excommunicated,
they are curious but have yet to find the mirror
in which Helen-Helen
looked from below-below,
in fact, they are so deaf, they would like to hear
the voice of Jesus Christ on an LP . . .
from "A Night with Hamlet"
Well, I'm off to read myself to sleep. Think another go at Eshleman & Galan's Holan will rouse the daemons of the subconscious.
slainte & paz
[* Some months back Ron Silliman posted an email from Chris Stroffolino that asked a similar question. My line of thinking comes from my shadowy memory of Chris' email as well as more recent listenings & readings that have given a bit of flesh to the memory's ghost, though the original/Chris' flesh is not the new/my flesh.]
. . . They are anemic,
as if without bloodshed there would be nothing,
they are expelled but not yet excommunicated,
they are curious but have yet to find the mirror
in which Helen-Helen
looked from below-below,
in fact, they are so deaf, they would like to hear
the voice of Jesus Christ on an LP . . .
from "A Night with Hamlet"
Well, I'm off to read myself to sleep. Think another go at Eshleman & Galan's Holan will rouse the daemons of the subconscious.
slainte & paz
[* Some months back Ron Silliman posted an email from Chris Stroffolino that asked a similar question. My line of thinking comes from my shadowy memory of Chris' email as well as more recent listenings & readings that have given a bit of flesh to the memory's ghost, though the original/Chris' flesh is not the new/my flesh.]
Monday, May 12, 2003
S=A=T=U=R=D=A=Y n>i>g>h>t
at 60 AT MIT
{A Cambridge Spring Poetry Festival}
I've spent the last week writing MCAS preparation curricula for the local community college (North Shore C.C.) & preparing Gloucester tenth graders for the English Language Arts MCAS test (the next phase of which begins tomorrow). What kind of pact have I made with what kind of devil?
~
8:15 “Transformed”
Jon Woodward’s poem “Billy Goats Should Always Stay on Platforms Too” reminded me of my friend Greg (no relation) Cook’s comics (see highwaterbooks.com). In fact I think Greg would do a wonderful job illustrating the poem for a small chapbook.
Jon’s poems seemed to consist of interior monologues & strange, short narrative episodes. It took me a few poems to find the thread that wove the phrases into a poem (as opposed to a string of non-sequiturs) but once I found the thread—floating in the air, as threads do at readings—I enjoyed the Jon’s work. In fact I wrote this note, “not non-sequiturs but things brilliant kids might say.” The poems seemed to be about the need to tell someone things, wonderful & strange things. The telling had urgency & seemed to reveal something of the narrator’s own vulnerability & wonder. This seemed especially true of the newer poems. Thanks, Jon.
8:30 “Counterfeit to be tied”
Friday night Behrle said something about giving a prize to the poet who best incorporated the equations left over on the blackboard into a reading. Brendan Lorber took him up on the offer (though I’m still not sure who, if anyone, got the prize). Brendan struck a professorial stance, commented—er, “corrected”—an equation, then segued back into the regularly scheduled reading by saying he would “continue with the regular syllabus.”
A student at Gloucester High School, Dan Sloane, wrote a mock-feature on reindeer hunting for the school newspaper’s December edition. He’s also written a mock-history of the highway system—invented to suit the whims of presidential transportation & somehow related also to presidential micturation—& submitted a yearbook blurb about discovering the contents of stolen rations in the stomach of a dead friend during World War II. Why am I telling you this? I wrote Dan’s name in my notebook during Brendan’s reading & now I know why.
Brendan’s work, though, includes word play in addition to oblique satirical narrative. He uses language with a reckless, buoyant, fluent virtuosity. It’s the kind of work that makes a question like “what does it add up to?” seem irrelevant. But I find myself asking the question anyway.
~
8:45 “many moons called suns”
I experienced a few “ah ha!” moments during Brenda Iijima’s reading. I’d read—and promised to re-read after an interesting conversation about pathos with Mark Lamoureux—Brenda’s Pressed Wafer book “In a Glass Box”. There was something about Brenda’s work that I found intriguing but a bit “anti-absorptive” (to use Bernstein’s phrase from “Artifice of Absorption”) about Brenda’s work. As Bernstein points out, it is not strange for a reader to find an intriguing text—or speech, a read text—both inviting & resistant. In general, I find myself both distrustful of language & easily seduced by it. (This is how I feel about melody too. See Mike County’s comments about Wilco at his blog mikecounty.blogspot.com. A New Yorker review of Sonic Youth also comes to mind. The critic said something about Sonic Youth playing with the line between music & dissonance. Yeah! {Funny then that Wilco & Sonic Youth are playing together at the F**** Boston Pavilion at the end of June.})
In Brenda’s work lovely phrases like “numerical wetness” and “many moons called suns” are quite seductive. There are also passages of philosophical abstractions, “spatially contiguous to the present.” The poems seem to interrogate language: how do we use language to mean (or try to mean)? how do we perceive with (and without) language? etc. etc. So once the probing aspect of the poems came clear to me a lot more “light” seemed to get through them (come from them, “shining forth”?) into my mind’s ear. What was once fascinatingly opaque was now at least translucent.
Readings are at least partially about learning how to hear.
~
9:00 “because of the death of being sincere”
So there it was again. Sincerity. Right there out in the open for one & all to swing at or hug. Yuri Hospodar also offered—Did he then retract?—a “bowl full of honest intent.” Yuri, I do hope you’re wrong & that there is “liberation from the hairy armpit of morality.” The play & insistence in the poems is such that if Italo Calvino had an ear for writing American poems & if he were also invaded by Mayakovsky’s less violent daemons, he would be you, Yuri. Of course, to be Yuri he would also have to seem to run smack into ostensibly unavoidable puns (smiling knowingly all the while).
Some puns are like Stop signs to pedestrians. No, I don’t mean that they make one stop. I mean that when one walks into them & falls to the pavement, it is both funny & foolish. But Italo Mayakovsky only seems to walk into puns. Approaching a street sign which hangs over the sidewalk somewhat, he slyly puts his hands in front of his face at the last moment. The impact is absorbed by the hands but he fakes surprise & falls to the ground, playing the fool to make us laugh. That is my theory about Yuri & unavoidable puns. Surreal humor is often foregrounded in Yuri’s poems but lurking a bit back & perhaps around the corner (i.e. line break) is the pathos of language’s limits. Yuri knows it’s there—around the corner, every corner & down all the mind’s alleys.
~
I have a note in my little green book that "Jim gives up his drink for poetry." Elsewhere I wrote that “the words are their own (accompaniment) own music.”
~
It’s getting on & I must return to writing MCAS prep units for NSCC. Next time Marcella Durand’s “sham nation” & Douglas Rothschild brings the Zinc Bar to Cambridge.
~
Slainte & Paz
at 60 AT MIT
{A Cambridge Spring Poetry Festival}
I've spent the last week writing MCAS preparation curricula for the local community college (North Shore C.C.) & preparing Gloucester tenth graders for the English Language Arts MCAS test (the next phase of which begins tomorrow). What kind of pact have I made with what kind of devil?
~
8:15 “Transformed”
Jon Woodward’s poem “Billy Goats Should Always Stay on Platforms Too” reminded me of my friend Greg (no relation) Cook’s comics (see highwaterbooks.com). In fact I think Greg would do a wonderful job illustrating the poem for a small chapbook.
Jon’s poems seemed to consist of interior monologues & strange, short narrative episodes. It took me a few poems to find the thread that wove the phrases into a poem (as opposed to a string of non-sequiturs) but once I found the thread—floating in the air, as threads do at readings—I enjoyed the Jon’s work. In fact I wrote this note, “not non-sequiturs but things brilliant kids might say.” The poems seemed to be about the need to tell someone things, wonderful & strange things. The telling had urgency & seemed to reveal something of the narrator’s own vulnerability & wonder. This seemed especially true of the newer poems. Thanks, Jon.
8:30 “Counterfeit to be tied”
Friday night Behrle said something about giving a prize to the poet who best incorporated the equations left over on the blackboard into a reading. Brendan Lorber took him up on the offer (though I’m still not sure who, if anyone, got the prize). Brendan struck a professorial stance, commented—er, “corrected”—an equation, then segued back into the regularly scheduled reading by saying he would “continue with the regular syllabus.”
A student at Gloucester High School, Dan Sloane, wrote a mock-feature on reindeer hunting for the school newspaper’s December edition. He’s also written a mock-history of the highway system—invented to suit the whims of presidential transportation & somehow related also to presidential micturation—& submitted a yearbook blurb about discovering the contents of stolen rations in the stomach of a dead friend during World War II. Why am I telling you this? I wrote Dan’s name in my notebook during Brendan’s reading & now I know why.
Brendan’s work, though, includes word play in addition to oblique satirical narrative. He uses language with a reckless, buoyant, fluent virtuosity. It’s the kind of work that makes a question like “what does it add up to?” seem irrelevant. But I find myself asking the question anyway.
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8:45 “many moons called suns”
I experienced a few “ah ha!” moments during Brenda Iijima’s reading. I’d read—and promised to re-read after an interesting conversation about pathos with Mark Lamoureux—Brenda’s Pressed Wafer book “In a Glass Box”. There was something about Brenda’s work that I found intriguing but a bit “anti-absorptive” (to use Bernstein’s phrase from “Artifice of Absorption”) about Brenda’s work. As Bernstein points out, it is not strange for a reader to find an intriguing text—or speech, a read text—both inviting & resistant. In general, I find myself both distrustful of language & easily seduced by it. (This is how I feel about melody too. See Mike County’s comments about Wilco at his blog mikecounty.blogspot.com. A New Yorker review of Sonic Youth also comes to mind. The critic said something about Sonic Youth playing with the line between music & dissonance. Yeah! {Funny then that Wilco & Sonic Youth are playing together at the F**** Boston Pavilion at the end of June.})
In Brenda’s work lovely phrases like “numerical wetness” and “many moons called suns” are quite seductive. There are also passages of philosophical abstractions, “spatially contiguous to the present.” The poems seem to interrogate language: how do we use language to mean (or try to mean)? how do we perceive with (and without) language? etc. etc. So once the probing aspect of the poems came clear to me a lot more “light” seemed to get through them (come from them, “shining forth”?) into my mind’s ear. What was once fascinatingly opaque was now at least translucent.
Readings are at least partially about learning how to hear.
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9:00 “because of the death of being sincere”
So there it was again. Sincerity. Right there out in the open for one & all to swing at or hug. Yuri Hospodar also offered—Did he then retract?—a “bowl full of honest intent.” Yuri, I do hope you’re wrong & that there is “liberation from the hairy armpit of morality.” The play & insistence in the poems is such that if Italo Calvino had an ear for writing American poems & if he were also invaded by Mayakovsky’s less violent daemons, he would be you, Yuri. Of course, to be Yuri he would also have to seem to run smack into ostensibly unavoidable puns (smiling knowingly all the while).
Some puns are like Stop signs to pedestrians. No, I don’t mean that they make one stop. I mean that when one walks into them & falls to the pavement, it is both funny & foolish. But Italo Mayakovsky only seems to walk into puns. Approaching a street sign which hangs over the sidewalk somewhat, he slyly puts his hands in front of his face at the last moment. The impact is absorbed by the hands but he fakes surprise & falls to the ground, playing the fool to make us laugh. That is my theory about Yuri & unavoidable puns. Surreal humor is often foregrounded in Yuri’s poems but lurking a bit back & perhaps around the corner (i.e. line break) is the pathos of language’s limits. Yuri knows it’s there—around the corner, every corner & down all the mind’s alleys.
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I have a note in my little green book that "Jim gives up his drink for poetry." Elsewhere I wrote that “the words are their own (accompaniment) own music.”
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It’s getting on & I must return to writing MCAS prep units for NSCC. Next time Marcella Durand’s “sham nation” & Douglas Rothschild brings the Zinc Bar to Cambridge.
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Slainte & Paz
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