Don Paterson, the leading contemporary Scottish poet, throughout this book cites previous critical studies of the Sonnets (especially those written by Stephen Booth and Helen Vendler), but when he does it’s almost always to differ from them. Did he expect to get applause or even grudging acceptance from literary scholars? I’m not sure. To the task of exegesis and evaluation, Paterson brings neither academic credentials nor a rigorous critical method but instead a sharp mind, some serious homework, emotional engagement with the topic, a willingness to take risks, and the technical experience of a practicing poet. Apart from having written sonnets himself, he has translated (or “imitated”) Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus and is the editor of the Faber anthology 101 Sonnets. Clearly he has a partisan interest in the form itself and for that reason alone might want to comment on one of its greatest practitioners. Still, if someone had [...]
My research currently has me looking into the surrealist-Beats, and I recently read Solitude Crowded With Loneliness. This was Kaufman’s first book, published in 1965, which brought together work from the late fifties that had made him famous, including and Does the Secret Mind Whisper? I am in awe of how completely Kaufman was able to embody a multitude of traditions. His work is absolutely Beat, absolutely jazz/blues and absolutely surreal. He is thinking, living and writing with all three in mind—indeed, all of these “philosophies” were in the very core of his being—and he made them perfectly harmonious, crafting poetry that enacts revolt and social critique at the same time as it heals the primitive, hard-knocked soul. The reader familiar with the Beats will probably sense intuitively that jazz and Surrealism are highly compatible with the Beat ethos and that it makes perfect sense for the Beats to draw [...]
Yahia Lababidi remembers late nights in his dorm room at George Washington University, tossing in bed as the voices of Wilde, Rilke and Kafka reverberated around him. Words or phrases, even the tiniest snippets of philosophy, would teem, pulse and swirl to a boiling point, until he could no longer resist formulating his own response, entering the conversation. “They were literally bouncing off the walls,” he told me, “I would go to bed with a stack of napkins or receipts, and I would never put my glasses on because if I put my glasses on it would scare the thought away. The fox would not leave its hole if the hunter was outside.” But he persisted, and his haphazard notes, over time, became numerous and provocative enough that multiple professors and mentors encouraged him to compile and try to publish them. The result was Signposts to Elsewhere, published in 2008, [...]
This entry is part of a series, Joe Weil on Metaphor» In my next several posts, I am going to talk about metaphors and the invisible neutrino of “and” that lies beneath them. I will make the following contentions: 1. Metaphors are as much about disassociation as association 2. Metaphors generate subtexts. 3. Consciousness and metaphor are inseparable. 4. To present two unlike objects is to create the implicit arc of metaphor. 5. All language is relational. In a sense, language is innately metaphorical because no word is the thing or state of being it describes. We can call a person “Big Ben” or “tree” if he is tall, “bean pole” if he is skinny, or we can call an obese person “slim” or “bean pole.” This is ironic, sarcastic, incongruous. An obese person is certainly not “Slim,” but to say to an obese friend, “Hey Slim,” can carry far [...]
This entry is part of a series, Joe Weil on Metaphor» I am reading Rosanna Warren’s book, Departures, and liking it a great deal, and, since I find her poems especially keen on using the entire spectrum of poetic concreteness between representational abstraction and non-representational abstraction. I’ll use her “Portrait: Marriage” as a grounding for what I am trying to get at here as we continue . Prior to the modernist “revolution” (it was more of an evolution with certain revolutionary slants) poets used a rich and heavily Greek/Latin-influenced sense of occasion and rhetoric to formulate their poems. There were the small lyrics, and the very free madrigals and airs but even these were homages to the small lyrical poems of the Greeks and Romans. Here are some of the more common rhetorical devices. 1. Apostrophic address: speaking directly to the dead, to roses, to nation states, to states of [...]
Almost every poem in Matthew Zapruder’s third book, Come On All You Ghosts (a statement that is both joke and plea) starts with the word today or implies it with a declaration involving an observation almost generic in sound and meaning: “Today a ladybug flew through the window. I was reading” “Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway….” “I woke this morning to the sound of a little voice” “Sometime around 11 p.m. the you I was thinking of” “Today I read about the factory” “This morning I rode my gray metal bike” “Today I have the feeling that no matter” “Today I am going to pick you up at the beige airport” Of course, that recurring intention of today gets predictable after a while, but Zapruder uses it to compose poems that sound like what the love child of John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara [...]
Heads up for Michael Klein’s new book of poetry, , which will drop this Friday, October 15. Here is a list of upcoming readings for Michael in the NYC area. Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 7PM David Groff, Michael Klein, and Elaine Sexton City College 135th Street and Convent Avenue New York, NY Monday, November 8, 2010, 7PM Michael Klein and Sean Singer 85 East 4th Street New York, NY Monday, November 22, 2010, 7PM Shanna Compton, Michael Klein, Jennifer L. Knox and Jason Schneiderman 505 West 23rd Street New York, NY Tuesday, December 21, 2010, 7:30PM 5th Avenue and 5th St. Brooklyn, NY Tuesday, February 1, 2011, 6:00PM Michael Klein, Joan Larkin, and Jean Valentine Cornelia St. Cafe (Downstairs) 29 Cornelia St. New York, NY Stay tuned to THE THE for a review of Klein’s latest work of poetry. Vancouver-area Reading: Micah Towery Harry Mathews’ New Poetry Book, Upcoming Reading [...]
is releasing first collection of poetry in some 20 years: . Books are available now directly from the press and very soon and other fine bookstores, by way of . Harry will giving a celebratory reading at Harry will also be reading at , October 21st. Stay tuned to THE THE for a coming review of Matthew’s latest book. Read More ...
A few years back, I met at a writing conference in Binghamton, NY. We ended up talking metaphysics and Marxism and Beat poetics deep into the night. After Gene left, we kept in touch and Gene ended up contributing to The Cartographer Electric! the magazine I helped found as an undergrad at Binghamton. After I had left Binghamton, I thought about starting an online press that would give away free chapbooks in PDF form on the internet. We published a book by Gene, originally titled Excerpt from Pastoral Emergency. The chapbook featured Gene’s artwork side by side with his poetry (Gene studied both art and poetry at Iowa). Recently, Gene expressed a desire to revise the work. He conceived of the revision as an illuminated chapbook, and I think it turned out amazingly well. The at . While you’re there, and a few other chapbooks that I worked on with [...]
I just posted this in the Poems | News | Events sidebar, but I wanted to put it out there in the main section too. . When I was there, I got to see Robert Pinsky, Mark Strand, Ed Hirsch, Mary Karr, Anne Carson, Frank Bidart, Gary Shteyngart, and tons more. It’s free (and so is the wine and cheese–at least when I was a student), but you should RSVP. You’ve just missed Robert Hass, the first reader of Fall 2010. But there are still more to come. Read More ...
Episode 8 of Poetry Fix now available. Related posts: Poetry Fix Episode 3: Pablo Neruda Poetry Fix Episode 1: Robert Hass. Poetry Fix Episode 5: Louise Gluck Poetry Fix Episode 6: Miroslav Holub Poetry Fix Episode 7: Robert Frost
Episode 7 of Poetry Fix: Robert Frosts’s “Once by the Pacific.” Poetry Fix Episode 8: Nicanor Parra Poetry Fix Episode 6: Miroslav Holub Poetry Fix Episode 9: Seamus Heaney Poetry Fix Episode 5: Louise Gluck tagged as Chrs Robinson, Episode 7, Mary Karr, Once by the Pacific, Poetry Fix, Robert Frost, YouTube
of Poetry Fix. Miroslav Holub’s “Ode to Joy.” Poetry Fix Episode 7: Robert Frost Poetry Fix Episode 5: Louise Gluck Poetry Fix Episode 4: Wallace Stevens Celebrating Sylvia tagged as Chris Robinson, Episode 6, Mary Karr, Miroslav Holub, Ode to Joy, YouTube
FIRST ANNUAL MAGGY POETRY CONTEST JUDGED BY DARA WIER (HAS BEEN EXTENDED!) Maggy poetry magazine is proud to announce its first poetry contest, with winning poems selected by Dara Wier. Winning poems will be published in Maggy, issue 2, due out in fall 2010, and will announced by September 1st. All winning entries will be selected anonymously by Dara Wier. Dara Wier is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including most recently, Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2009), Remnants of Hannah (2006), Reverse Rapture (2005), which received the 2006 SFSU Poetry Center Book Award, Hat On a Pond (2002), Voyages in English (2001), Our Master Plan(1998), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Award, Blue for the Plough(1992), The Book of Knowledge (1988),All You Have in Common (1984), The 8-Step Grapevine (1980), and Blood, Hook & Eye (1977). Guidelines 1. All entries must be previously unpublished poems. 2. Do not include [...]
(it’s scaffolding) (it’s supposed to be temporary) (the domino effect) (had been forgotten about) (it was in storage) (nobody knew where) (that’s a logging road) (you can see its gutters) (they leave handprints) (they shudder with dolor) (nobody could settle on any particular color) (they meant different things to different people) (for luck) (on the […]