I was being sarcastic. To me, it's a classic example of 'I'm just gonna say some asinine, vaguely wistful recollected-in-tranquillity shit in prose then add some random line breaks to make it look like a poem', which is 95% of so-called contemporary poetry anyway.
― pomenitul, Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:02 (three years ago) link
I guess it matches what Ron Silliman dubbed the School of Quietude (which I don't entirely hate btw, depending on my mood and how competent the poet happens to be) back in the day.
― pomenitul, Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:03 (three years ago) link
Sorry, sometimes my sarcasmeter is a little off!
Another example of an acclaimed poet whose work is just godawful is Kaveh Akbar: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90975/despite-my-efforts-even-my-prayers-have-turned-into-threats
That guy has a visiting professorship at an elite MFA program and is also the poetry editory for The Nation, and I'm like, "this isn't poetry, it's emotional manipulation." awful dreck.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:11 (three years ago) link
I lol'd @ 'like a sponge / cowboy in water'.
― pomenitul, Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:13 (three years ago) link
The deliberate (I assume?) callout to William Carlos Williams doesn't help.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:17 (three years ago) link
Right? It's obviously, like, not good.
I love a lot of what is called "movement" poetry of the 70s-90s— I think so much of it is vital, necessary, and complex work that continues to resonate with the few readers it has.
But somewhere along the line, the perennial popularity of confessional lyricism commingled with a directive sensibility that wasn't aimed at larger social problems or causes, but was inward-facing regarding problems of identity and marginalization. As a result, even many poets whose politics I share write poetry that is emotionally manipulative, "closed" poetry, that tells the reader how they're supposed to feel about it.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:22 (three years ago) link
As for an example of "movement" poetry, I think immediately of Judy Grahn's "A Woman is Talking to Death," which should be in every anthology of contemporary American poetry, but probably won't ever be because she's a working class dyke who hates capitalism. https://poets.org/poem/woman-talking-death
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:24 (three years ago) link
It's hard to overstate my adoration for that poem— it hurts.
I need another run at that but jesus, extraordinary. Thank you for sharing.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:58 (three years ago) link
I don’t read poetry very often but just finished Vertigo & Ghost, which I recommend, and I’ve ordered a new collection by a Canadian Instagram friend, P4ul Vermeersch, that looks really good
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 30 September 2020 19:59 (three years ago) link
I like the Trethewey poem, and Trethewey in general -- I find her an interesting poet to read aloud, and surprisingly challenging to read well -- but I've already established that my tastes in poetry are quite middlebrow.
― handsome boy modelling software (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 20:16 (three years ago) link
And that's fine, obviously. I should say, though, that I have read some other poems by Tretheway, and often find her work much more interesting than the poem that was posted, which was just...really middle-brow, lol.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 20:53 (three years ago) link
Also many xps to Chinaski, but introducing people to that Grahn poem is something I plan on doing for the rest of my days. It's simply extraordinary, isn't it?
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 20:58 (three years ago) link
It really is. I've been pondering it since and there's a bunch of stuff that I need to process. And I'm already thinking about people I'm going to share it with!
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 21:21 (three years ago) link
t is straightforward, memory-based narrative addressed to a dead loved one that is supposed to evoke something mysterious and ineffable, but is in fact just a bunch of lines thrown together without much intention. Yes, straightforward, memory-based narrative, chosen because I think this is basically what she always does, though more tethered to the fishin' line reportage than is strictly necessary or entirely typical---like I said, "not bad for something that explains itself, though an impulsive choice, sorry. Yes, supposed to evoke something, but not mysterious and ineffable. if only that were a little more true, and she hadn't splained while showing the playback. also "supposed" doesn't go with just a bunch of lines thrown together without much intention., unless you mean she didn't think it through, or not deeply enough. Think it's more about trusting yourself and the reader, seeing how much more you can leave out and still hit the notes,Which reminds me, mark s has referred to the Beatles as middlebrow, which is fine, middlebrow is not the worst thing, as I'm sure you know, but nerts to those who find it such a perfect dismissal. (She's never the Beatles, but even in this verse, she's okay.)
― dow, Wednesday, 30 September 2020 21:58 (three years ago) link
kay ryan's my favorite poet fwiw
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:02 (three years ago) link
'I'm just gonna say some asinine, vaguely wistful recollected-in-tranquillity shit in prose then add some random line breaks to make it look like a poem', which is 95% of so-called contemporary poetry anyway. Not sure about the percentage, since I don't read that much poetry, but agree about the "tendency," which often seems dutiful, school-paper--y, but this particular poem, though I shouldn't have chosen it, is not nearly as bad as you describe it, get back Jo Jo!
― dow, Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:04 (three years ago) link
probably not very much to your taste though table xp
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:04 (three years ago) link
Kay Ryan packs a lot of gnomic wit in her verse; the wit's in the enjambments. I'll take her over Ammons (whom I like, I must say).
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:06 (three years ago) link
this is probably my favorite of ryan's poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40887/the-fabric-of-life
they all work this way so it's truly you either like it or dislike it on impact, even though i remember say uncle growing on me extremely as i progressed through it
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:08 (three years ago) link
"don't look back" also slaps imo https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=39960
i just like that they're these compressed ideas that internally rhyme
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:10 (three years ago) link
I used to try keeping up with anglophone poetry when I was younger. Of the 'bigger' (more like mid-tier, celebrity-wise) post-1980 (ish) American poets I remember enjoying, I had a soft spot for Michael Palmer, Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Clark Coolidge, Cole Swensen and… I'm forgetting lots.
― pomenitul, Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:15 (three years ago) link
i have very basic taste in poetry mostly because i don't like poems or poets v much to begin with. i dated a poet once and in briefly inhabiting that circle i discovered it was somehow worse than new york media
that grahn poem is incredible table, let me be another person to thank you for sharing it
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:31 (three years ago) link
Here's one for the art vs artists thread: I like poetry but I hate poets.
I mean, not exactly (I don't hate table, for one ;)), but you get my drift.
― pomenitul, Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:33 (three years ago) link
I'm rereading Rita Dove. What do we think of her?
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:34 (three years ago) link
Ha, well Brad, I would never date another poet. I never have, in fact, something I am rather proud of.
As far as poetry tastes in general, while I can easily categorize and place and judge other poets and poems, at the end of the day, I also know that my own preferences are usually so far outside any sort of visibility or popular attention that I find it difficult to spend too much time worrying about stuff I don't like.
That doesn't mean I don't wish the stuff I like was more popular, but I also realize that not many want to read Dorothy Lusk or Prynne or whatever.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 30 September 2020 22:42 (three years ago) link
lol i dated and then married a poet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
in spite of the steady stream of poetry books entering our apartment i haven't read much poetry at all lately, mostly occupied with novels at the moment (which is funny because a few years ago i went through a whole anti-novel thing and mostly read poetry. circle of life etc). but whenever i get back to that place i've got a pretty sizable to-read pile here (including your new one, T!)
― donna rouge, Thursday, 1 October 2020 00:32 (three years ago) link
i mean tbf i was very much in love with the poet i dated. otherwise generally recommend never dating writers
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Thursday, 1 October 2020 00:44 (three years ago) link
― Erdős-szám 69 (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 1 October 2020 01:27 (three years ago) link
She has only four mentions on ILX, including the two on this thread.
― Erdős-szám 69 (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 1 October 2020 01:54 (three years ago) link
Rita Dove is okay. She has a sense of the line that I can get behind, even if I think some of her work falls into the 'dilatory epiphanic' mode that so annoys me.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Thursday, 1 October 2020 12:26 (three years ago) link
Isn't "Dilatory Epiphanic" a Paul Simon song?
― Erdős-szám 69 (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 1 October 2020 12:27 (three years ago) link
Lol
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Thursday, 1 October 2020 15:51 (three years ago) link
I only know Thomas and Beulah
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 October 2020 15:53 (three years ago) link
Diane di Prima passed away today. One of the greats and one of the few left of her generation. Her kind and generous spirit will be missed.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Monday, 26 October 2020 03:09 (three years ago) link
Aimless that macniece you posted in april last year was the ticket and no mistake
― your own personal qanon (darraghmac), Thursday, 1 April 2021 00:04 (three years ago) link
yeah I remember being really struck by that one
― k3vin k., Thursday, 1 April 2021 00:08 (three years ago) link
Muireadh dhea you're at least ninety percent irish by poetry alone at this stage yrself
― your own personal qanon (darraghmac), Thursday, 1 April 2021 00:14 (three years ago) link
I'm at the point in the term where I'm so exhausted I can't really read anything at all but have been sitting up and browsing Frank O'Hara when I can't sleep. His profligacy allows for a lightness of reading and the tumble of images, the sense of movement, the roll call of names and places scrolling by in a great horny rush is oddly soothing. CK Stead wrote about Shakespeare that even at his most clotted, his eyes and his mind, like those of a runner are set well ahead of his feet and I love that sense of O'Hara flooding the page with sense impressions.
Anyway, this caught my eye last night:
Mayakovsky
1My heart’s aflutter!I am standing in the bath tubcrying. Mother, motherwho am I? If hewill just come back onceand kiss me on the facehis coarse hair brushmy temple, it’s throbbing!
then I can put on my clothesI guess, and walk the streets.
2I love you. I love you,but I’m turning to my versesand my heart is closinglike a fist.
Words! besick as I am sick, swoon,roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare downat my wounded beautywhich at best is only a talentfor poetry.
Cannot please, cannot charm or winwhat a poet!and the clear water is thick
with bloody blows on its head.I embrace a cloud,but when I soaredit rained.
3That’s funny! there’s blood on my chestoh yes, I’ve been carrying brickswhat a funny place to rupture!and now it is raining on the ailanthusas I step out onto the window ledgethe tracks below me are smoky andglistening with a passion for runningI leap into the leaves, green like the sea
4Now I am quietly waiting forthe catastrophe of my personalityto seem beautiful again,and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey andbrown and white in trees,snows and skies of laughteralways diminishing, less funnynot just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day ofthe year, what does he think ofthat? I mean, what do I? And if I do,perhaps I am myself again.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 2 July 2021 18:07 (two years ago) link
Actually relatively housebound for O'Hara? I get a bit of Dylan Thomas from this; maybe some Hart Crane.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 2 July 2021 18:10 (two years ago) link
Also Kafka's The Lost Writings, published in translation by Michael Hofmann last year. And very rainy day relatable just now; thanks.
― dow, Friday, 2 July 2021 20:29 (two years ago) link
maybe especially:what a funny place to rupture!and now it is raining on the ailanthusas I step out onto the window ledgethe tracks below me are smoky andglistening with a passion for runningI leap into the leaves, green like the sea
― dow, Friday, 2 July 2021 20:31 (two years ago) link
Love that O'Hara poem
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Saturday, 3 July 2021 21:42 (two years ago) link
Jim Morrison's poem "Ode to L.A. While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased" was distributed at each of The Doors two July 21, 1969 shows at the Aquarius Theatre in Los Angeles. Jim Morrison died exactly two years after Brian Jones on July 3, 1971, both of them were 27 yrs old. pic.twitter.com/fpltB6MyZi— Wendy O'Rourke (@wendyOrourke) July 3, 2019
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 3 July 2021 21:58 (two years ago) link
I prefer God Star
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Saturday, 3 July 2021 22:11 (two years ago) link
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/05/27/lovesick-for-a-god/
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 23 July 2021 23:25 (two years ago) link
hans arp
― dogs, Friday, 30 July 2021 16:59 (two years ago) link
read that nyrb article when that issue came out and definitely made me interested. how is it?
― k3vin k., Friday, 30 July 2021 22:44 (two years ago) link
Clayton Eshleman died last year. Years ago on ILB I posted the single fact I knew about him, found in the biography of Zukofsky by Scroggins. The poem mentioned was called "The Moistinsplendour" and it appeared in the Spring 1968 issue of Caterpillar. Last month I read the biography of Lorine Niedecker by Peters, and Niedecker disliked that poem too. That motivated me to dig it up. Google found the title in Eshleman's book Indiana, published in 1969, which would be right. Google didn't lie, but it turns out Eshleman used the word in a different poem, and the poem of that title isn't collected there. It's a nice-looking book from Black Sparrow, and at 178 pages it's a substantial collection of poetry. I've been trying to understand why so little of the poetry worked. The bad judgment evidenced by that anecdote wasn't a one-off, it's throughout the book. Separately, I was waiting for a transfiguration of all those personal musings into poetry. Eshleman never managed it, though he tried very hard (possibly too hard). I was reminded of watching someone flick his cigarette lighter over and over but never start a flame. There were some fun passages, though.
I come in fury against Robert Bly & the Falsifiers of the animal.Swindle cloaked in spiritum - Robert Kelly - but more true:I see Robert Kelly exercising in the Valley of Death.Robert Lowell is the Wickerman of Scandinavia: Merton theSpectre of Hart Crane.Must Barbara be expelled to cast out Johnson?
Swindle cloaked in spiritum - Robert Kelly - but more true:I see Robert Kelly exercising in the Valley of Death.
Robert Lowell is the Wickerman of Scandinavia: Merton theSpectre of Hart Crane.
Must Barbara be expelled to cast out Johnson?
It was all an unnecessary detour, because the issue of Caterpillar is here with the poem I was looking for. Relevant sample:
OUR MASSTURBINED INTO MAREEEEEEEE,flunkingyou,fuckit outa you,fuckit outa you,our Lady in the Seaops groindorueating, at the base of the treethere aint no Artaud thing to rehearseno Louis eating Celia wirejawed retrieverlocked in its curse, lower level,to aim at who are human,now regenerated youd suckoff Zukofskywho wld suckoff you means you nolonger play by their games.
lower level,to aim at who are human,now regenerated youd suckoff Zukofskywho wld suckoff you means you no
longer play by their games.
Well, that would put off the hypersensitive, uxorious, 64-year-old Zukofsky. Eshleman really does seem to be purging himself of him.
This is a kristMassDECK THE HALLS Out old Fustum out ZukofskyOut old Blakam
Out old Fustum out ZukofskyOut old Blakam
Eshleman reminds me of Vachel Lindsay, a sort of headlong un-self-aware carrying on in the wrong direction.
― alimosina, Wednesday, 2 March 2022 02:55 (two years ago) link
Eshleman was a terrible poet but a fine editor and an incredible translator-- his work on Césaire is enough to endear him to me for life.
But yeah, his poetry is...awful. Jerry Rothenberg his friend was the same way, incredible editor and critic, but his poetry was just abysmal
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Wednesday, 2 March 2022 03:03 (two years ago) link