Rolling Contemporary Poetry

i have read hamilton's intro to the new poetry anthology and like, of course this guy's pop-culture touchstones are TNG and eddie izzard

also i got really annoyed because i bought it without reading the details and when it arrived i realised i'd bought something in bloodaxe. oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear no.

i have no personal history or animus! and i like a great number of young british poets-- i don't think I feel a distaste for them in general? It would be unreasonable for me to expect of myself that I would like all of these young people; it's maybe a little disappointing to me when the ones I like fall so clearly into a type.

on flicking through thus far the only one i've been tempted to stop and actually read is the 'therefore' guy

have spent as much time rolling my eyes at the biographies as i have reading the poetry. probably a bad sign

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/books/john-hollander-poet-known-for-his-range-dies-at-83.html?hp

so i posted abt this on fb but would like to submit the question here also

just picked up michael robbins' widely-praised book alien vs. predator, and i think i *get it*--it's cleverly versified pop culture riffs with some pathos baked in by way of careful use of references--but, like, this shit seems to have blown people's minds? and i'm not sure why? i know it's like uncool to hope for a view into a narrator's inner life or whatever, but as clever as this is, it leaves me pretty cold.

have any of you guys read it? thoughts?

Michael Robbins - Alien Vs. Predator (nb this book of poems is not about aliens, predators or their conflicts)

it got its own-damn-thread, fwiw

i think it's weird reading more than three poems of his at a time, or maybe ever, because of the sorta exposure of formula, technique, types-of-reference-points, &c, but I also think there's something insufficient about only seeing him in this broader context; that stuff is punchy, & wasn't being fed to people like that (afaik &c&x), & it seems to have some sorta formal timeliness that delivered what he wrote quite freshly, which can evaporate under scrutiny/saturation

oh lookat that

currently trying to wrap my brain around bernadette mayer's 'scarlet tanager'

btw i really love brenda hillman's essay on teaching contemporary poetry, which also functions as a guide on how its readers can slip into it more easily/thoughtfully:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/239762

It makes a straightforward patriotic statement based on an image of a bird; it rhymes.

lol

what's good

should i just keep reading twitter

I liked Charles Bernstein's book from this year...

markers who do you follow on twitter

http://shoutkey.com/provision

click that

and no it isn't a trick

New Franz Wright, bleak and amazing as ever.

ck williams, my favorite living poet. one of his poems was part of my wedding vows.

and now this

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-a-movie-based-on-a-book-of-poems-tar-stars-james-franco-of-course-20131111,0,2046763.story#axzz2kY6zFryD

a good friend has a new book coming out soon: http://www.h-ngm-n.com/dear-corp

A friend of mine sent me the link to this Kate Kilalea poem and I think it's incredible: http://newpoetries.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/don-share-on-kate-kilaleas-henneckers.html

(the subsequent interpretation stuff i find a little wearying: all this i-i-i- itemising of a person's reaction raises my hackles the way faux-naivety does)

I've been doing a poetry-reading round-robin email with a few friends - i.e. where we record mp3s of ourselves reading poems and send them to each other - and it's having a huge effect on how i think about poetry, way out of proportion to what i would have expected. I don't feel like I get a better sense of the poems from reading them aloud, but rather a bunch of different conflicting and sometimes unhelpful versions -- as dramatic monologue, as collection of sounds, as rhythm game. It makes everything so much harder; it's turning me against things i've liked for a while.

That poem's really exciting. To begin with - e.g. "Wow. The rain. Rose beetles" and "Ickira trecketre stedenthal, said the train" - I was prepared to be irritated, but as it expanded it got more and more wild and interesting.

The interpretation had some useful things to say, but you're spot on with the faux-naivety thing. The whole "I googled this and got nothing, but googling something else gave me a clue" style is very weird unless the point of his site is to be some step-by-step guide to approaching a poem.

my friend's new book is really, really good: http://www.h-ngm-n.com/dear-corp/

Kilalea is good and so is Tara Bergin I think

just read clover's "red epic" and enjoyed it a lot and now i see it is available free: http://communeeditions.com/red-epic-joshua-clover/

I can't find a more suitable thread to post this to, but I just wanted to say it makes me a little sad to see the dismissal of the poet H.D. in some earlier posts. Have people read Trilogy and Hermetic Definition? The earlier poetry generally hasn't done much for me (though many others swear by it), but I think the late poetry, especially those two collections, are where it's at. I remember "Winter Love" in particular as having some strikingly musical passages, though it's been a while since I read it. (I ditched my copy of Hermetic Definition a long time ago because I was annoyed with my youthful underlining and marginalia.) Helen in Egypt is a hard nut to crack and is perplexingly static. I can't say I've ever loved it either.

Her memoir, Tribute to Freud is also quite good (and I've seen it recommended in bibliographies of works on Freud for non-specialists), and the highly edited memoirs New Directions put out at one time, entitled The Gift, has some fascinating material (though I never made it through the unexpurgated version of the memoir material put out much later by some university press or other). End to Torment (on Pound) is also at least a breeze to read. I can't say I've ever enjoyed her fiction.

(I might be partial to the material in the Gift because of the references to Pennsylvania German culture, which makes up a good part of my own background.)

it makes me a little sad to see the dismissal of the poet H.D. in some earlier posts.

I searched around in this thread for these dismissals and couldn't find them. That doesn't mean they aren't there, but can you give me a hint?

Haha, there were maybe 1.5 dimissals, but not on this thread just in the deep archives of ILB.

HD >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Edith Sitwell >> Amy Lowell

I never cared much about those two. I think I've read more Sitwell than Lowell, but it's been a while. I'd rather read Loy than either of those, if we're doing women poets. But I'd rather read HD or Loy than some very well known male modernist poets as well.

yup, with cardamon here. I think of her as epitome of in-the-academy US poetry.

I think language poetry is the ultimate made-for-the-academy poetry, since it needs so much theory to prop it up, but I largely hate it. And I know that many who love it will say: oh no, it's not about the theory.

I did read some Graham a while back and it seemed okay and everything but went by me in a blur. But most poetry does now. I probably shouldn't even be allowed to comment since although I've read a ton of poetry over the years (not much lately), I only like maybe 1% of it at this point.

Robert Duncan said something in an interview somewhere about how in the Elizabethan era, you wrote poetry for the stage, because that's where the money was; and now you write poetry for the classroom, for the same reason. Something like that. He was including himself in the group of poets writing for the classroom, so it wasn't pointing fingers.

Maybe he didn't say money, maybe he said audience.

Does anyone have anything to say about Akashic Press's Black Goat imprint? I've been a little intrigued with it since finding out about it. It looks like it's slowed down though so maybe nobody has been biting.

http://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog-tag/black-goat/

xps

Being a careful, respectful and understanding reader never requires you to like what you find. These days I find that even the best poetry I read seldom excites me as it did when I was younger, but the best still engages me and gives me worthwhile satisfaction.

If you haven't already perused the many threads where ilxors have posted their own poetry, you really ought to. The results are not overly concerned with theory, reputation-making, or critical approval, and so are rather refreshing. You might like a good 3%!

On the anniversary of the birth of the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), poet Marilyn Hacker shares a new translation:

The Second Olive Tree

By Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Marilyn Hacker

The olive tree does not weep and does not laugh. The olive tree
Is the hillside’s modest lady. Shadow
Covers her one leg, and she will not take her leaves off in front of the storm.
Standing, she is seated, and seated, standing.
She lives as a friendly sister of eternity, neighbor of time
That helps her stock her luminous oil and
Forget the invaders’ names, except the Romans, who
Coexisted with her, and borrowed some of her branches
To weave wreaths. They did not treat her as a prisoner of war
But as a venerable grandmother, before whose calm dignity
Swords shatter. In her reticent silver-green
Color hesitates to say what it thinks, and to look at what is behind
The portrait, for the olive tree is neither green nor silver.
The olive tree is the color of peace, if peace needed
A color. No one says to the olive tree: How beautiful you are!
But: How noble and how splendid! And she,
She who teaches soldiers to lay down their rifles
And re-educates them in tenderness and humility: Go home
And light your lamps with my oil! But
These soldiers, these modern soldiers
Besiege her with bulldozers and uproot her from her lineage
Of earth. They vanquished our grandmother who foundered,
Her branches on the ground, her roots in the sky.
She did not weep or cry out. But one of her grandsons
Who witnessed the execution threw a stone
At a soldier, and he was martyred with her.
After the victorious soldiers
Had gone on their way, we buried him there, in that deep
Pit – the grandmother’s cradle. And that is why we were
Sure that he would become, in a little while, an olive
Tree – a thorny olive tree – and green!

Derek Walcott

With the stampeding hiss and scurry of green lemmings,

midsummer’s leaves race to extinction like the roar

of a Brixton riot tunneled by water hoses;

they seethe towards autumn’s fire—it is in their nature,

5 being men as well as leaves, to die for the sun.

The leaf stems tug at their chains, the branches bending

like Boer cattle under Tory whips that drag every wagon

nearer to apartheid. And, for me, that closes

the child’s fairy tale of an antic England—fairy rings,

10 thatched cottages fenced with dog roses,

a green gale lifting the hair of Warwickshire.

I was there to add some color to the British theater.

“But the blacks can’t do Shakespeare, they have no experience.”

This was true. Their thick skulls bled with rancor

15 when the riot police and the skinheads exchanged quips

you could trace to the Sonnets, or the Moor’s eclipse

Praise had bled my lines white of any more anger,

and snow had inducted me into white fellowships,

while Calibans howled down the barred streets of an empire

20 that began with Caedmon’s raceless dew, and is ending

in the alleys of Brixton, burning like Turner’s ships

Ha -- was gonna post that I'm rereading The Bounty.

I've been enjoying the Szymborska collection I've been reading. She got good pretty early on (by her early 30s at least) and stayed very good for a long period of time. I feel like that's one award the Nobel committee got right.

^^^

Especially her death poems

Derek Walcott

New Frederick Seidel poem this week:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/03/21/now/

Started reading Patricia Lockwood’s memoir, Preistdaddy.

FOGLAND

In winter my lover thrives
among the forest creatures.
The laughing fox knows I must return
before morning.
How the clouds tremble! And a layer
of broken ice falls on me
from the snow craters.

In winter my lover
is a tree among trees inviting
the melancholic crows
to its lovely branches. She knows
that at dusk, the wind will raise
her stiff adorned evening gown
and chase me home.

In winter my lover
swims mute among the fish.
On the bank, I stand in thrall to waters,
caressed from within
by the stroke of her fins.
I watch as she dips and turns,
till banished by the floes.

And warned once more by the shriek
of the bird that arcs stiffly
above, I head for the open field: there
she plucks the hens bald,
throws me a white collarbone.
I wield it to my throat,
make my way through the scattered plumage.

A faithless lover, as well I know,
at times she sweeps into town
in her high-heels,
she parades herself in bars, the straw
from her glass deep in her mouth,
the mot juste tripping from her lips.
I do not understand this language.

I have seen fog-land,
I have eaten the smoke-screened heart.

-- Ingeborg Bachmann