buckle up
― mustread guy (schlump), Saturday, 1 February 2014 21:40 (ten years ago) link
my *selected berryman* showed up last night and man
those fuckin sonnets
"Maybe our safeties…come for our risk’s sake."
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 6 February 2014 16:26 (ten years ago) link
aw i'm just about to pick up dream songs, from the library, cause i never tended to berryman much& then i read something last week on a blog that knocked me for six, like wow
& i didn't post the ceravolo poem because it was too simple, out of contextlike you needed the mess of the whole thinghe is really interesting!, i think. maybe because sometimes i am cruising this sorta in-love-with-eileen-myles wave of tumblr poetry that takes this elemental small-scale form as a template but has this maybe predictable voice?, now, like there's not a solipsism but a fixed reach to it? a formula by which it roams. & the ceravolo is crazy, it's like frank o'hara free jazz, i can't believe he gets so far with so little, eschewing so much, relying on you so muchmaybe i'll post it later
― mustread guy (schlump), Thursday, 6 February 2014 17:55 (ten years ago) link
ah yeah i just read that one last night too, damn near devoured the whole little selected in a few hours
so much to chew on
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 6 February 2014 19:01 (ten years ago) link
I'm an admirer of Berryman's sonnets, too. He leaves enough of the trad structure intact that it frees his sense of language, imagery and ideas to climb forward, and his plays against the trad sonnet structure gain extra weight because they are so deliberate.
― Aimless, Thursday, 6 February 2014 19:02 (ten years ago) link
i got halfway through this great long thing on berryman on the bus home last night, stopped reading to start reading the selected, then picked it back up and realized the whole thing is sort of a long-form review of the selected itself. happy accident.
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 6 February 2014 19:04 (ten years ago) link
man sharon olds' the dead and the living just came in and i tried to read a bit of it before bed
fuckin mistake.
just awful dark stuff, not meant for the pillow.
mary karr's viper rum is winning me over though. every third one or so is a gut punch, like a slightly unstiffened O'Connor. and i like my O'Connor just fine.
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, 12 February 2014 21:10 (ten years ago) link
This has a lovely cover, but the prose poems it consists of did nothing for me.http://ndbooks.com/images/made/images/covers/Fullblood_Arabian_300_450.jpg I found them facile and pseudo-profound (the nod to Khalil Gibran in Lydia Davis's introduction should have tipped me off), but plenty of people disagree with me.
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, 13 February 2014 01:08 (ten years ago) link
there is just so much in Olds; they're not even so panoramic, just so full and imaginable. three a day, max.
― mustread guy (schlump), Thursday, 13 February 2014 03:09 (ten years ago) link
& wait is TDATL the recent one?
nah its one from the early 80s.
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 13 February 2014 03:41 (ten years ago) link
Petrarch b/w English Alliterative Revival stuff; then a reading of Villon's Testament to close the middle ages
― my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy), Thursday, 13 February 2014 17:25 (ten years ago) link
newyear
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 28 February 2014 20:50 (ten years ago) link
Seaton's version of Cold Mountain Poems.
― Aimless, Friday, 28 February 2014 20:52 (ten years ago) link
read a.e. housman's 'a shropshire lad' on my kindle a few weeks ago. uneven but some great stuff.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 28 February 2014 21:15 (ten years ago) link
rereading Walcott after all the attention over the new collected poems.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 28 February 2014 21:20 (ten years ago) link
i read goethe and herrick, felt very leisured and cultured
― j., Saturday, 1 March 2014 00:59 (ten years ago) link
like an Englishman in 1841.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 March 2014 01:00 (ten years ago) link
xp ya Housman's great, seems underappreciated (maybe due to the conservatism of his forms?) but the books qua books hold together really well
― my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy), Saturday, 1 March 2014 21:05 (ten years ago) link
Housman attracted such immoderate adulation in his day that there had to be a reaction against him for a time. Now it's safe to dust him off and put him back into his niche.
― Aimless, Saturday, 1 March 2014 21:09 (ten years ago) link
Aimless I forget, are you a UK poster?
― my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy), Sunday, 2 March 2014 02:15 (ten years ago) link
that Shambhala Editions Cold Mountain Poems has caught my eye many times in B&N without my ever buying it... I've put so much effort into learning to appreciate european poetry these past few years, it's made me very reluctant to explore other traditions, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time
― my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy), Sunday, 2 March 2014 02:18 (ten years ago) link
I post from Oregon, USA, where I've lived about 57 of my 59 years. But when you love literature and are a monoglot in English, you learn to love English lit.
― Aimless, Sunday, 2 March 2014 02:53 (ten years ago) link
― xyzzzz__, Friday, February 28, 2014 8:50 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
wow
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 19:41 (ten years ago) link
At the moment, I've been dipping into my copy of Padraic Colum's poetry, titled Poems, a late compilation that does not identify itself as a 'collected poems of'. Padraic can't be described as anything but a "minor poet", but he had a nice touch when he keeps his loftier ambitions in check. Methinks the mere existence of Yeats lifted the work of every Irish poet well above what they could have achieved without him.
Just before that I was paddling around in the poetry of Stevie Smith and in doing so I decided to remove her from my shelves and sell her off during my next selling spree. A few of her early poems have charm, but her charms are very rapidly exhausted.
― Aimless, Thursday, 20 March 2014 16:12 (ten years ago) link
yknow, i think i would really enjoy a history of american poetry whose driving narrative was basically repetitions of
'i am the poet of america!!!'
'no you're not fukk u'
― j., Thursday, 20 March 2014 22:30 (ten years ago) link
america's one true poet was t.s. eliot iirc
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 20 March 2014 22:34 (ten years ago) link
FITE!
― Aimless, Thursday, 20 March 2014 22:43 (ten years ago) link
rrrr tom you know me TOO WELL fukk u
no you know what ts eliot was the one true poet of 20th c. britannia and after that you guys have been up shit's creek, no bard to sing your songs, how does it feel
― j., Thursday, 20 March 2014 23:01 (ten years ago) link
i mean we got like. geoffrey hill and shit, i dunno
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 20 March 2014 23:43 (ten years ago) link
rereading an old Helen Vendler collection published in the late seventies. Essays on Moore, Merrill, Stevie Smith, Lowell, Stevens, and Gluck.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 20 March 2014 23:47 (ten years ago) link
and, like, carol ann duffy
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 20 March 2014 23:47 (ten years ago) link
all bases covered, is what i'm saying
albion liveth still and everafter
― j., Friday, 21 March 2014 00:23 (ten years ago) link
but they'll be doing it in the Championship come August
― fhingerbhangra (Noodle Vague), Friday, 21 March 2014 00:43 (ten years ago) link
can't see how anybody cd mistake Eliot's hyper-tense class paranoia for anything other than oh shit hold on
― fhingerbhangra (Noodle Vague), Friday, 21 March 2014 00:45 (ten years ago) link
so yeah i really don't have the stomach for louise gluck
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 21 March 2014 08:17 (ten years ago) link
she's a bit of a psychosexual hack tbh
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 21 March 2014 10:48 (ten years ago) link
nah that was your mother
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 21 March 2014 16:54 (ten years ago) link
which Gluck you been reading? I dig the two most recent collections, particularly A Village Life, where she sounds like an aging writer trying to age faster(?)
― Many American citizens are literally paralyzed by (bernard snowy), Friday, 21 March 2014 21:09 (ten years ago) link
Ararat and The House on Marshland. The first book felt too glib.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 22 March 2014 02:30 (ten years ago) link
i was reading the other one that starts with a and the one with the boat on the cover
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Saturday, 22 March 2014 14:55 (ten years ago) link
Meanwhile, apropos of the ongoing surrealism obsession mentioned on the other "what are you reading" thread, I picked up the recent (1990s) English translation of Breton's Clair de terre, which is mostly baffling, occasionally charming (as in the 'poem' listing off all of the Bretons in the Paris phonebook), and lacks a parallel French text due to copyright issues (boo!). Also bought a Gerard de Nerval selected works (not the Penguin edition, an older one, translated by Wagner--the Encyclopedia of Literary Translations into English praises his handling of the poetry, moreso than the novellas), which I am enjoying in spite of its hermetic density of allusion & personal mythology.
― Many American citizens are literally paralyzed by (bernard snowy), Sunday, 23 March 2014 00:11 (ten years ago) link
I should clarify: de Nerval's prose works (of which I've only tackled 'Sylvie' thus far) do not strike me as terribly obscure; but the poetry, which abounds in allusions both Classical and Medieval (thank heaven for endnotes!), seems also to take for granted a familiarity with the prose.
― Many American citizens are literally paralyzed by (bernard snowy), Sunday, 23 March 2014 00:16 (ten years ago) link
I haven't read De Nerval in years, but I enjoyed the copy I use to have. I think it was published by Exact Change. My favorite surrealist was Eluard, but sadly I never found a complete translation of him. I always wanted to like Lautréamont, but I never enjoyed actually reading him. Have you read Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton by Mark Polizzotti? Breton was such a curious guy, I sort of hate him and love him.
― JacobSanders, Sunday, 23 March 2014 01:19 (ten years ago) link
the Polizzotti biography was recommended in the other thread; I may look into once I finish the Balakian, or if a cheap copy falls into my lap.
Maldoror is wonderful in small doses & particular moods, but the narrowness of its emotional range can get kind of suffocating. I don't know what to make of the Poesies, and I find the body of critical literature around Lautreamont somewhat maddening (possible exception: Gaston Bachelard's monograph, which I remember being decently insightful... I can't make heads or tails of Blanchot's long essay, though, & I usually dig his criticism)
― Many American citizens are literally paralyzed by (bernard snowy), Sunday, 23 March 2014 03:33 (ten years ago) link
Marvell. I don't know why
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Sunday, 23 March 2014 21:17 (ten years ago) link
I recently finished Anne Carson's latest book, Red Doc>, her oblique successor to Autobiography of Red, and while I enjoyed it I found it frustratingly diffuse in comparison to the earlier book or Nox. The strongest passages in the book, which focus on the death of G/Geryon's mother, follow from the Celan-pastiche lyrics on mourning in Decreation but seem a little too loosely connected to Red Doc>'s earlier wisps of narrative. I'll probably find more in it on a second reading, though.
― one way street, Monday, 24 March 2014 01:31 (ten years ago) link
To be clear, I don't generally read Carson for the sake of narrative.
― one way street, Monday, 24 March 2014 01:44 (ten years ago) link
i think the exact change edition of nerval had the poems translated by robert duncan from memory and they used the earlier wagner translations for the stories. and yeah, the chimera poems are pretty dense with classical/esoteric allusions (haven't read the wagner edition i have of his work yet, but it has a lot more editorial matter than the exact change). aurelia is a trip, and if you ever see a copy of his journey to the orient it's a+ 19th century orientalism
i read maldoror in snatches over lunch breaks while studying and loved it, so maybe it's best to approach it in pieces? (also have his complete works sitting here unread, so need to read poesies sometime too)
i think i prefer what i've read of the parasurrealist poets more than the actual thing, people like michaux & daumal, etc
― no lime tangier, Monday, 24 March 2014 06:38 (ten years ago) link
I picked up a collection of Robinson Jeffers's poetry lately and have been reading his epic narrative poem, Tamar. I guess I don't read a lot of narrative poems, especially 20th century ones, but the material strikes as being a rather strange basis for writing a long poem about. A family living on an isolated stretch of the California coast is troubled by incest and madness. Maybe the point will become clearer by the end.
― o. nate, Monday, 31 October 2022 02:35 (one year ago) link
picked up Louis MacNiece's Autumn Journal last night. been a while since i read it, but it turns out i was exactly in the right mood. the mixture of poetic and more, well, 'journal' like cadences is very appealing - the a, b, c, b rhymes and half rhymes in the first section are one example of that, but so are the slightly awkward quotidian observations and considerations that don't quite fit into the poetic - either for reasons of scansion or register. the 'then, but then again' arguments – little palinodes, to use a word MacNeice uses early on of the retraction of summer to autumn - appropriate to someone observing and discussing with themselves. Emotional content closely linked with the immediate context and reminders, whether on the train up to London with his dog.
One line early on doesn't make sense to me, and I was going to take it to the poetry interpretation thread, but it's difficult to state the problem without citing all of the first section. That first section is very clear, and then, in that train up to London with his dog, 'a symbol of the abandoned order' who
Lies on the carriage floor,Her eyes inept and glamorous as a film star's, Who wants to live, ie wants morePresents, jewellery, furs, gadgets, solicitations As if to live were notFollowing the curve of a planet or controlled water But a leap in the dark, a tangent, a stray shot.
Although there are some complications here, they're not hugely difficult, but I actually understand what 'controlled water' means. By analogy of the eliptical orbit 'curve of a planet', the 'controlled water' might mean a similar arc - but making water, that is having a piss, seems, to say the least, not right here. so is he talking about water out of a hose? That's as good as I can manage here, but it's not very satisfactory. Otherwise, i'm not at all clear.
― Fizzles, Monday, 31 October 2022 07:51 (one year ago) link
Controlled water is a weird term that does exist. In the context of this I read it two ways:As if to live were notFollowing the curve of a planet or controlled waterSo the first refers to the tides, no? The moon is earth’s satellite and in its orbit. However the moon also influences the tides. The tides exist as they do because the moon’s gravitational pull controls them. Tides are gradual, they erode cliffs and carve out the coastline over time. Controlled water is a really weird term. Could refer to a lot of things within this context - rivers carving their pathways out, the effect of water on the natural landscape, the efforts to keep said bodies of water fit for consumption or to manage them in some way. It’s a long term project because of the delicacy of the ecosystem. Idk, that’s the best I have. It is a weird line.
― barry sito (gyac), Monday, 31 October 2022 08:54 (one year ago) link
I don't know that poem, but coming after "curve of a planet" the phrase "controlled water" suggests to me the idea of the curious way gravity keeps all the water on the planet, trapped in a ball. It seems impossible that it all stays so neatly in shape rather than spilling out into space, but that is how physics works. And if that is the way the whole universe is set up, how crazy is it to expect (as the dog doesm as we do) that we might defy those forces and leap into the dark, go off on tangents, etc.
― Eyeball Kicks, Monday, 31 October 2022 10:34 (one year ago) link
yep, i hadn't considered tides or that wider gravitational effect - seems very possible. my overall reading of the passage is that there is a difference between the life that recognises it follows a curve of forces and tensions torquing against each other, creating a defined, if mysterious, path, rather than a set of more or less accidental or arbitrary incidents, almost frivolous, without connexion.
the implication is not fate at work, as such, but capturing the path between intersecting movements... from summer to autumn, in the train's movement, in *movement's* movement, in people's movement:
Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire,Ebbing away down ramps of shaven lawn where close-clipped yewInsulates the lives of retired generals and admirals
(the opening lines)
And the rebels and the youngHave taken the train to town or the two-seaterUnravelling rails or roadLosing the thread deliberately behind them -Autumnal palinode.And I am in the train nowq too and summer is goingSouth as I go north
^ those last lines exactly what I mean by that torque created by intersecting forces.
― Fizzles, Monday, 31 October 2022 11:30 (one year ago) link
this has now turned into a post that sits better on the other thread!
As if to live were notFollowing the curve of a planet or controlled water
I agree that the use of "controlled water" is perplexing. I like the suggestion of the arc of water from a hose or from a man taking a piss, but I suspect he probably meant something about navigating a river or canal, e.g. following the bend in a river.
It seems the prevalence of the term "controlled water" was rising rapidly in the 1930s, and has since fallen.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=controlled+water&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=29&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true&direct_url=t4%3B%2Ccontrolled%20water%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bcontrolled%20water%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BControlled%20Water%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BControlled%20water%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BCONTROLLED%20WATER%3B%2Cc0
― o. nate, Friday, 4 November 2022 15:29 (one year ago) link
The Early Poems of Yvor Winters 1920-28
― alimosina, Sunday, 21 May 2023 04:36 (one year ago) link
Now we’ve no hope of going back,cutter, to that grey quaywhere we moored twice and twice unwillingly cast off our cables to put out at the slack when the sea’s laugh was choked to a mutter and the leach lifted hesitantly with a stutter and sulky clack, how desolate the swatchways look, cutter …
… We have no course to set,only to drift too long, watch too glumly, and wait,wait.
Basil Bunting, Perche no Spero
― Slays two. Found gassed. Thinks of cat. (Chinaski), Saturday, 9 September 2023 21:16 (eight months ago) link
why would he want to go back to that? Does he say?
― dow, Saturday, 9 September 2023 23:18 (eight months ago) link
Oh wait, at least he wasn't here, right? I know the feeling.
― dow, Saturday, 9 September 2023 23:19 (eight months ago) link
McMichael, Four Good Things
― alimosina, Tuesday, 31 October 2023 22:28 (six months ago) link
was at the museum of contemporary art in barcelona this afternoon, and there’s an exhibit that features this poem, by forough farrokhad, which I found almost unbearably moving
My entire soul is a murky verseReiterating you within itselfCarrying you to the dawn of eternal burstings and blossomingsIn this verse, I sighed you, AH!In this verse,I grafted you to trees, water and fire
Perhaps life isA long street along which a womanWith a basket passes every day
Perhaps lifeIs a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branchPerhaps life is a child returning home from school
Perhaps life is the lighting of a cigaretteBetween the narcotic repose of two lovemakingsOr the puzzled passage of a passerbyTipping his hatSaying good morning to another passerby with a vacant smile
Perhaps life is that blocked momentWhen my look destroys itself in the pupils of your eyesAnd in this there is a senseWhich I will mingle with the perception of the moonAnd the reception of darknessIn a room the size of one solitudeMy heartThe size of one loveLooks at the simple pretexts of its own happiness,At the pretty withering of flowers in the flower potsAt the sapling you planted in our flowerbedAt the songs of the canariesWho sing the size of one window.AhThis is my lotThis is my lotMy lotIs a sky, which the dropping of a curtain seizes from meMy lot is going down an abandoned stairwayAnd joining with something in decay and nostalgiaMy lot is a cheerless walk in the garden of memoriesAnd dying in the sorrow of a voice that tells me:“I loveYour hands”I will plant my hands in the flowerbedI will sprout, I know, I know, I knowAnd the sparrows will lay eggsIn the hollows of my inky fingersI will hang a pair of earrings of red twin cherriesRound my earsI will put dahlia petals on my nailsThere is an alleyWhere the boys who were once in love with me,With those disheveled hairs, thin necks and gaunt legsStill think of the innocent smiles of a little girlWho was one night blown away by the windThere is an alley which my heartHas stolen from places of my childhoodThe journey of a volume along the line of timeAnd impregnating the barren line of time with a volumeA volume conscious of an imageReturning from the feast of a mirrorThis is the waySomeone diesAnd someone remainsNo fisherman will catch pearlsFrom a little stream flowing into a ditchI Know a sad little mermaidDwelling in the oceanSoftly, gently blowingHer heart into a wooden fluteA sad little mermaidWho dies with a kiss at night
her name sounded vaguely familiar, and it’s the director who made THE HOUSE IS BLACK — what a remarkable, regrettably brief life
― brony james (k3vin k.), Friday, 29 March 2024 16:02 (two months ago) link
Slowly reading my way through the 2022 Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers anthology. The longer narrative poems tend to feature lots of death and weird sex, and the shorter lyric ones are defiantly nihilistic in a sort of zen way. Recommended.
― o. nate, Monday, 1 April 2024 20:16 (one month ago) link
correction: 2002, not 2022.
― o. nate, Monday, 1 April 2024 20:18 (one month ago) link