Untitled
Hugh Laurie
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Super-Quickie
It's late, I'm sleepy, so I leave you with this gem from Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry:
Lé
Monday, June 28, 2010
Soup and Butts
This is a genre of poem called ars poetica which is not, as you might believe, Oxford schoolboy slang for the rear end of a bird you fancy. Supposedly, these are poems about the art of poetry. Usually, they turn into treatises on the mechanics of poetry. Which is actually a heckuva lot more interesting.
This one in particular is quite fine because it manages to be a poem, too.
How I make my soup: I draw water from a tap...
I am not an artist. And the water is not so much
drawn as allowed to fall, and to capture itself in a pot.
Perhaps not so much captured, as allowed to gather
itself from its stream; the way it falls that the drain
would have it.
But in this case a normal path interrupted by a pot;
for which soup is the outcome of all I do...
Soup Song
Russell Edson
I am not an artist. And the water is not so much
drawn as allowed to fall, and to capture itself in a pot.
Perhaps not so much captured, as allowed to gather
itself from its stream; the way it falls that the drain
would have it.
But in this case a normal path interrupted by a pot;
for which soup is the outcome of all I do...
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Coachella and Vachel Lindsay
Most people know Vachel Lindsay even though he's comparatively obscure. Or rather, they know two lines of his: "Then I saw the Congo creeping through the black,/Cutting through the forest with a golden track." You remember the scene: the prep school kids sneaking out at night to read poetry and sip a few swigs of liquor in "Dead Poets Society." Theres's something irrepressible in the pounding beats, sort of like a hippy drum circle or an Ace of Base cassette through your parents' minivan speakers.
I knew Lindsay mostly for that poem "The Congo" and just kind of assumed he's a one-trick pony doing the rhythms and poems meant to be spoken aloud. I didn't expect to find something that spoke directly to my poetry lust in the era of the Internet in the Year of Our Lord 2010.
Ah, they are passing, passing by,
Wonderful songs, but born to die!
Cries from the infinite human seas,
Waves thrice-winged with harmonies.
Here I stand on a pier in the foam
Seeing the songs to the beach go home,
Dying in sand while the tide flows back,
As it flowed of old in its fated track.
Oh, hurrying tide that will not hear
Your own foam children dying near
Is there no refuge-house of song,
No home, no haven where songs belong?
Oh, precious hymns that come and go!
You perish, and I love you so!
Okay, first... newspapers! Bah hah haha! Awesome - way to be old-school, Vachel. And second... poetry in the magazines and newspapers? It seems like a mythical thing, like a unicorn mating with a prairie dog. (For the record, I've heard the unicorndog is delicious with mustard and relish.)
But I get where he's coming from so deeply. "Wonderful songs, but born to die!" How many masterpieces did da Vinci paint? And we know the "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper" if you think for a minute or two. Alfred Hitchcock made some incredible, surrealist reconstructions that completely appropriated Hollywood conventions but all we remember is, "The 'Psycho' dude with the chocolate syrup in the shower."
Artists and critics have no real control over what pieces of art live on in the culture at large. It's not something artists and critics do. All you can do is make good work, find good work, appreciate good work and respond to good work.
I know plenty of writers and critics who find it bothersome that there's more poetry being written, published and posted today than at any other time in history. I listened to a podcast a few weeks ago where Joseph S. Salemi railed at the state of contemporary verse because, among other things, there's too much of it and therefore it's "moribund." (I remember it's moribund because he repeated that word about every six minutes.) Don't ask me why having too much of a thing means it's dying.
An argument he made was that there's too much to wade through, editors of poetry magazines can't get through it all. If you've got 50 pages to fill but only 25 pages of genuinely good stuff, do you publish the mediocre stuff or reduce the size of your magazine or what? And that strikes me as an argument both lazy and stupid.
It's lazy because in any era, any age in all of English letters you're going to have some real shit sandwiches, a lot of middling stuff that tastes vaguely of turd and then a few gems of true genius and artistry that will last far beyond anyone's lifetime. It's a classic bell curve.
I knew Lindsay mostly for that poem "The Congo" and just kind of assumed he's a one-trick pony doing the rhythms and poems meant to be spoken aloud. I didn't expect to find something that spoke directly to my poetry lust in the era of the Internet in the Year of Our Lord 2010.
In Praise of Songs That Die
Vachel Lindsay
AFTER HAVING READ A GREAT DEAL OF GOOD CURRENT
POETRY IN THE MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS
POETRY IN THE MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS
Wonderful songs, but born to die!
Cries from the infinite human seas,
Waves thrice-winged with harmonies.
Here I stand on a pier in the foam
Seeing the songs to the beach go home,
Dying in sand while the tide flows back,
As it flowed of old in its fated track.
Oh, hurrying tide that will not hear
Your own foam children dying near
Is there no refuge-house of song,
No home, no haven where songs belong?
Oh, precious hymns that come and go!
You perish, and I love you so!
Okay, first... newspapers! Bah hah haha! Awesome - way to be old-school, Vachel. And second... poetry in the magazines and newspapers? It seems like a mythical thing, like a unicorn mating with a prairie dog. (For the record, I've heard the unicorndog is delicious with mustard and relish.)
But I get where he's coming from so deeply. "Wonderful songs, but born to die!" How many masterpieces did da Vinci paint? And we know the "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper" if you think for a minute or two. Alfred Hitchcock made some incredible, surrealist reconstructions that completely appropriated Hollywood conventions but all we remember is, "The 'Psycho' dude with the chocolate syrup in the shower."
Artists and critics have no real control over what pieces of art live on in the culture at large. It's not something artists and critics do. All you can do is make good work, find good work, appreciate good work and respond to good work.
I know plenty of writers and critics who find it bothersome that there's more poetry being written, published and posted today than at any other time in history. I listened to a podcast a few weeks ago where Joseph S. Salemi railed at the state of contemporary verse because, among other things, there's too much of it and therefore it's "moribund." (I remember it's moribund because he repeated that word about every six minutes.) Don't ask me why having too much of a thing means it's dying.
Yes, this is actually that guy's picture. I know, a beret, right?!
An argument he made was that there's too much to wade through, editors of poetry magazines can't get through it all. If you've got 50 pages to fill but only 25 pages of genuinely good stuff, do you publish the mediocre stuff or reduce the size of your magazine or what? And that strikes me as an argument both lazy and stupid.
It's lazy because in any era, any age in all of English letters you're going to have some real shit sandwiches, a lot of middling stuff that tastes vaguely of turd and then a few gems of true genius and artistry that will last far beyond anyone's lifetime. It's a classic bell curve.
What we have with our fancy technological gadgets and doodads and instant connectivity and Google searches and the Gutenberg Project and a zillion MFA programs and all these other developments... all that does is increase the amplitude on the bell curve. Let's do a little math game together using completely made-up numbers, which happen to be the finest kind.
Think of the bell curve as a percentage. Let's imagine for the sake of argument that 20% of the poetry written in any given decade is completely worthless tripe that's good for little but greeting cards and cautionary tales; 60% is varying shades of middling, some anthologized and most forgotten; and 20% is really excellent, worthy of devoted time and study, models for good writing, some of which will continue to be read, discussed, studied and emulated for decades to come.
If one million poems were written a year in 1980 and now two million poems a year are being written in 2010, how many more works of genius are created per year?
Someone else in my reading said that a William Blake or Emily Dickinson may very well not be read now because there's so many other writers crowding the field, obscuring the hidden treasures. And that's just ridiculous. How much easier would it be for Blake if he could have used Blogger instead of his home printing press? Emily could have taught lectures from her bedroom in Amherst. We're saying that the democratization and multiplicity of voices is something we need to curtail or control?!
Next thing you know, these jokers will be talking about instituting a Poet's Licensing Board that's got entrance exams, membership dues and professional certifications in Poetic Raditude. Oh, wait, they did.
So to beat that old drum one more time... Poetry is like a massive multi-day music festival. There's a huge main stage where a few mega-famous acts play for thousands. There are side stages where up-and-comers ply their craft. There are local stages that are the proving grounds. And about a jillion buskers, partiers, amateurs, retirees and mentally unbalanced drifters lounging around doing their thing. You don't get to shut them down just because you don't like the tunes.
Stop whinging about how much you dislike the bad stuff. If you can't find a glut of amazing art, the problem isn't the bands, it's you. If it's too loud, grandpa, either get some earplugs or go home.
Saturday Suck: Casting Aspersions and Also Things Much Pointier Such as Stones at Glass Houses
So you may remember a few weeks back I embarked on a diatribe about being accused of shoplifting poetry at a Boston bookstore. I also delivered my critique of one of the books purchased at that establishment. Somehow, in the wonderful ways of the almighty Internet, the author found my scathing review and posted a comment at the end of that blog entry.
I've posted my response, I'm not sure if I'll hear back from him. But in his comment he mentioned, "At this distance, it would be silly to defend anything...." And it certainly made me think about my own crappy work, not just the juvenilia but everything failed and misguided. And so I decided to put my shame on display as any good exhibitionist will.
First some very early crap, practically diaper-filling: I think I wrote this at fourteen.
my mind races at the speed of light
trying to remember my name
and my face in the mirror
unforgiving, stares at me
who is he?
shame is tattooed on my forehead
acceptance is not an option
but what else is left
suspension of belief
acceptance and grief
mavrone, i cry to the bewildered stars
sick with hunger for expectant mankind
strengthen feeble hands from falling
what can we do?
many versus few
So much here to love to hate. We have scientific inaccuracy: neuroscientists find that the firing of neurons in the brain is actually faster than the speed of light. So when I say my mind races at the speed of light, I'm saying my brain is slowing down, which could explain why I can't remember my name, apparently. We have the complete lack of capitalization which I can't even justify as an e.e. cummings fixation. We've got the word "mavrone," which Irish people stopped using in the 19th century, probably because it was too overdramatic even for 19th-century Irish people.
And then we have the wonderful teenage ambiguity, the complete refusal to speak in specifics, to let metaphors occur naturally rising up out of the details of a situation. Is it a poem about amnesia? If so, how does the speaker remember what to be ashamed about? And why do stars want to eat humans? (Bonus points if you just mentally cried out, "'To Serve Man'... It's a COOKBOOK!")
But I'll give it this much - the formal elements are fun because they set up an expectation and then subvert it. Most beginning poets fall into one of two camps, one that was born from Emily Dickinson and one that bursts fully-grown from Walt Whitman's head. The Dickinsonians have that tight, incorrigible rhyme and meter where every one of the 1,776 poems can be sung to the tune of either "Amazing Grace" or the "Gilligan's Island" theme song. The Whitmanists see rhyme and meter as chains imprisoning their personal expression, man,you gotta fight the powers that READ!
This poem at least has the oddball distinction of being both and neither. You can see the seeds being planted, even if those initial shrubs are really just overgrown weeds in need of a good soaking in Agent Orange.
So here's a more recent bit of crap, more of a three-cheesy-gordita-crunches-from-Taco-Bell-on-a-Saturday-afternoon kind of dump.
Every time you write it feels like dying,
the end of the world too early.
You tilt the backrest down before even trying,
the sedative staves off the hurting.
The end of the world comes early, flickering
with smash cuts in the ad breaks.
You feel someone behind you is snickering
when collapsing from the work day.
The breather that your life seems to be buying
(the nothing that nothing gets you)
will just collapse your lungs, the wheeze and sighing
are witnesses who will attest to.
The energy you save you never use,
calories thickening the fat.
But if this entertainment will amuse,
lie down: it’s not as bad as all that.
Hoo boy. The convoluted grammar: "witnesses who will attest to." You can't end a sentence with a prepositional phrase lacking an object, it's like ending a song before you get to the chorus! The melange of unrelated references to air travel, television, health and self-improvement. But worst of all is how forced it all feels, the meter jumping all over the place like trying to force mustard back into the squeeze jar, the slant rhymes that slant as far from each other as shingles on a shack. And then the almost Kiplingesque last line that is so cringe-worthy.
The more I look at these two, the more I think I did better at 14. Come back, mini-me!
So there's my self-flagellation for the day. This was fun, I'll have to indulge in literary masochism more often for Saturday Suck.
I've posted my response, I'm not sure if I'll hear back from him. But in his comment he mentioned, "At this distance, it would be silly to defend anything...." And it certainly made me think about my own crappy work, not just the juvenilia but everything failed and misguided. And so I decided to put my shame on display as any good exhibitionist will.
First some very early crap, practically diaper-filling: I think I wrote this at fourteen.
feeble minds (grief is me)
Matt Quarterman
my mind races at the speed of light
trying to remember my name
and my face in the mirror
unforgiving, stares at me
who is he?
shame is tattooed on my forehead
acceptance is not an option
but what else is left
suspension of belief
acceptance and grief
mavrone, i cry to the bewildered stars
sick with hunger for expectant mankind
strengthen feeble hands from falling
what can we do?
many versus few
So much here to love to hate. We have scientific inaccuracy: neuroscientists find that the firing of neurons in the brain is actually faster than the speed of light. So when I say my mind races at the speed of light, I'm saying my brain is slowing down, which could explain why I can't remember my name, apparently. We have the complete lack of capitalization which I can't even justify as an e.e. cummings fixation. We've got the word "mavrone," which Irish people stopped using in the 19th century, probably because it was too overdramatic even for 19th-century Irish people.
And then we have the wonderful teenage ambiguity, the complete refusal to speak in specifics, to let metaphors occur naturally rising up out of the details of a situation. Is it a poem about amnesia? If so, how does the speaker remember what to be ashamed about? And why do stars want to eat humans? (Bonus points if you just mentally cried out, "'To Serve Man'... It's a COOKBOOK!")
But I'll give it this much - the formal elements are fun because they set up an expectation and then subvert it. Most beginning poets fall into one of two camps, one that was born from Emily Dickinson and one that bursts fully-grown from Walt Whitman's head. The Dickinsonians have that tight, incorrigible rhyme and meter where every one of the 1,776 poems can be sung to the tune of either "Amazing Grace" or the "Gilligan's Island" theme song. The Whitmanists see rhyme and meter as chains imprisoning their personal expression, man,you gotta fight the powers that READ!
This poem at least has the oddball distinction of being both and neither. You can see the seeds being planted, even if those initial shrubs are really just overgrown weeds in need of a good soaking in Agent Orange.
So here's a more recent bit of crap, more of a three-cheesy-gordita-crunches-from-Taco-Bell-on-a-Saturday-afternoon kind of dump.
Exaggeration
Matt Quarterman
Every time you write it feels like dying,
the end of the world too early.
You tilt the backrest down before even trying,
the sedative staves off the hurting.
The end of the world comes early, flickering
with smash cuts in the ad breaks.
You feel someone behind you is snickering
when collapsing from the work day.
The breather that your life seems to be buying
(the nothing that nothing gets you)
will just collapse your lungs, the wheeze and sighing
are witnesses who will attest to.
The energy you save you never use,
calories thickening the fat.
But if this entertainment will amuse,
lie down: it’s not as bad as all that.
Hoo boy. The convoluted grammar: "witnesses who will attest to." You can't end a sentence with a prepositional phrase lacking an object, it's like ending a song before you get to the chorus! The melange of unrelated references to air travel, television, health and self-improvement. But worst of all is how forced it all feels, the meter jumping all over the place like trying to force mustard back into the squeeze jar, the slant rhymes that slant as far from each other as shingles on a shack. And then the almost Kiplingesque last line that is so cringe-worthy.
The more I look at these two, the more I think I did better at 14. Come back, mini-me!
So there's my self-flagellation for the day. This was fun, I'll have to indulge in literary masochism more often for Saturday Suck.
In Which I Kiss John Donne's Butt
It's my brother's anniversary today (yes, he of "What Do I See in the Clouds Above?" fame) and I thought I'd post this in honor of the happy occasion.
All kings, and all their favourites,
All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun it self, which makes time, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw.
All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay ;
This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday ;
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
Two graves must hide thine and my corse ;
If one might, death were no divorce.
Alas ! as well as other princes, we
—Who prince enough in one another be—
Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears ;
But souls where nothing dwells but love
—All other thoughts being inmates—then shall prove
This or a love increasèd there above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.
And then we shall be throughly blest ;
But now no more than all the rest.
Here upon earth we're kings, and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
Who is so safe as we? where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.
True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore ; this is the second of our reign.
If I haven't already mentioned it, Donne is one of my heroes.
Here's the thing about him: his verbiage is dense. Ridiculously so, sometimes bordering on Miltonian. Fortunately, though, he forgoes the ridiculous Latinisms that have prompted some to claim Milton wrote poems in his head in Latin, then translated them into English.
Donne always has complex thoughts to match the complex grammar. He's kind of like St. Paul in that way, where once you can sort out all the clauses and participles, you see there's a deeper thrust to what he's getting at. (I'm not going to say John Donne is divinely inspired, but I won't say he's not, either.)
It's not just the tangled knot of sentence structure, it's not just the intricacy of the thought that gets me, though. It's his imagery, his tightly-plotted conceits that can make a flea or a compass into a rich metaphor for what literary critics and other blowhards like to call "the human experience." Birth, passion, marriage, faith, sickness, loss, death. There's sex, violence, greed, despair and at the end of it an assuredness that's neither smug nor trite, not holier-than-thou or can't-we-all-just-get-along.
There's a certain kind of Zen to him: a passion that's learned self-control, a joy that's learned grief, this balance of feeling and form. If the Middle Way is really the path to truth, Donne walks that road. And he walks hard.
The Anniversary
John Donne
All kings, and all their favourites,
All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun it self, which makes time, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw.
All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay ;
This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday ;
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
Two graves must hide thine and my corse ;
If one might, death were no divorce.
Alas ! as well as other princes, we
—Who prince enough in one another be—
Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears ;
But souls where nothing dwells but love
—All other thoughts being inmates—then shall prove
This or a love increasèd there above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.
And then we shall be throughly blest ;
But now no more than all the rest.
Here upon earth we're kings, and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
Who is so safe as we? where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.
True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore ; this is the second of our reign.
If I haven't already mentioned it, Donne is one of my heroes.
Here's the thing about him: his verbiage is dense. Ridiculously so, sometimes bordering on Miltonian. Fortunately, though, he forgoes the ridiculous Latinisms that have prompted some to claim Milton wrote poems in his head in Latin, then translated them into English.
Donne always has complex thoughts to match the complex grammar. He's kind of like St. Paul in that way, where once you can sort out all the clauses and participles, you see there's a deeper thrust to what he's getting at. (I'm not going to say John Donne is divinely inspired, but I won't say he's not, either.)
It's not just the tangled knot of sentence structure, it's not just the intricacy of the thought that gets me, though. It's his imagery, his tightly-plotted conceits that can make a flea or a compass into a rich metaphor for what literary critics and other blowhards like to call "the human experience." Birth, passion, marriage, faith, sickness, loss, death. There's sex, violence, greed, despair and at the end of it an assuredness that's neither smug nor trite, not holier-than-thou or can't-we-all-just-get-along.
There's a certain kind of Zen to him: a passion that's learned self-control, a joy that's learned grief, this balance of feeling and form. If the Middle Way is really the path to truth, Donne walks that road. And he walks hard.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Into the Jaws of Death
Today is a big day at my job. I work at a tech company that's pretty well known, the product launches are a BIG DEAL - press, lines, 12 hour days, the whole shebang. It used to be once a year, but we just did this two months ago.
This poem effectively conveys my feelings about today.
1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
2.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
4.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
The actual charge of the Light Brigade was a stupid waste of lives that prefigured a lot of stupid waste to come. This poem is really the only good thing to come out of the whole affair. I can't say one artistic masterpiece justifies the slaughter.
This poem effectively conveys my feelings about today.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
2.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
4.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
The actual charge of the Light Brigade was a stupid waste of lives that prefigured a lot of stupid waste to come. This poem is really the only good thing to come out of the whole affair. I can't say one artistic masterpiece justifies the slaughter.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Southpaws and Leprechauns
This is something from one of the professors at a local MFA program I was checking out. I figured if I was planning on paying a lot of money to sit at somebody's feet (even electronically) that I should see if I could deal with the smell. On the whole, I'm not sure, but I do appreciate this poem.
The Left Hand Is Complement
Jeanine Hathaway
My awkward hinge, my elders-hand, the hand
that holds the wallet while the quick one
spends, the hand that hugs the bowl
as the adept stirs the dough, the hand
at the end of the bat for stable opposition.
The hand that wears the ring, my elders,
that says until death, that says
I do (I did); the ring I don’t wear any more,
that says this hand has a chance at wisdom
if not dexterity. The hand that, when I am
seated at God’s right, will be closest,
will brush against the hand of God
as we pass around desserts.
It reminds me somehow of both Auden and Sexton, it manages to be normal and slightly off. I love that there's a big point but not really, it's mostly a meditation on something that interests the poet. The fact that she got to a big point by the end is almost not even relevant. It's like following a trail that winds its way through someplace worthwhile.
And finding that at the end there's a spectacular view and a diminutive Irish man with breakfast cereal in a cauldron.
PoemBowl 3
It's time for another face-off in the PoemBowl! You get to choose not just which of these is the winner, but also which poem gets to be ham-handed Nic Cage and which gets to be hand-hammed John Travolta... Okay, no more John Woo jokes, I promise - I can't afford the dove poop dry cleaning bills.
Incidentally, I decided to change the format mid-stream. It's going to be single-elimination instead of double-elimination. It's just too many rounds, and I don't want to burden you good folks overmuch. Not to mention, we're not deciding who lives and who dies, like Judge Dredd. But that would be awesome.
Cartoon Theology
Matt Quarterman
for Scott Cairns
“ ... let not thy left hand know
what thy right hand doeth.”
-- Gospel According to St. Matthew, ch. 6, v. 3
In “Prince of Egypt,” God
and Moses
speak with the same voice.
Swirling drawings of grey maelstrom
surround the all-consuming fire
which never consumes.
The elegant smoothness of the man
(startled in a silent movie way)
shrinks before that
looming
bulk.
And in contrast
(to that contrast),
the command and
the complaint
are shades of the same.
God booms }
Moses minces } In crisp round tones,
an animated discussion
that Disney never did.
Funny,
isn’t it?
How Jewish of God
to talk back
to himself....
Christ in the Wood
Matt Quarterman
He’s a surreptitious kind of savior,
almost a wallflower in his messianic way.
His silence frightens me,
coming as it does from
a man so alone in the dark.
He is not gloomy or menacing
but simply blank;
ribs poke out from his alabaster body
like tent poles
stretching out canvas.
And perhaps this torture has become casual,
I explain; his outstretched arms
convey just a shrug.
His head lolling to the side seems
almost sleepy.
The wooden structure frames him like a picture,
a portrait of nonchalance in the face of sacrifice.
After all, he has been here a while.
Perhaps saddest of all is his rootedness,
the feeling he is caught, transfixed to the spot.
It gives him some hint of nostalgia or
the feeling of return to a town that’s unchanged.
The one thing we can know with certainty and no doubt
is that this is a Christ who will never come down.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Sex and Remembrance
Warning: Graphic adult situations and innuendo abound, in keeping with the subject matter.
Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator
Anne Sexton
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute's speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
She took you the way a women takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today's paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
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