Jacket 40

My review of Aaron Belz' new book, Lovely, Raspberry, is now available for viewing in Jacket, issue 40.

http://jacketmagazine.com/40/r-belz-rb-belcher.shtml

Special thanks to John Tranter, and also Aaron Belz!
His blog, if you haven't seen it before, is here:

http://www.belz.net

The Center of the Room

or, more of the kind of behavior I'd prefer to see:

Directions:

Thank someone for being that one. Then, while singing a song, walk with that one to the center of the room and back again. Burn something.


-Seneca

from Shaking the Pumpkin, Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas
edited with commentaries by Jerome Rothenberg, 1972.

in the beginning

was the snake, and the snake was with God and the snake was God.

http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/2010/03/christine-wertheim-infestation-of.html

hmmm

Interesting spin on Eliot

by Vanessa Place at Les Figues

http://lesfigues.blogspot.com/

Baudelaire

Baudelaire, today:

"Correspondences"

In Nature's temple living pillars rise,
and words are murmured none have understood
and man must wander through a tangled wood
of Symbols watching him with friendly eyes.

As long-drawn echoes heard far off and dim
mingle to one deep sound and fade away;
vast as the night and brilliant as the day
colour and sound and perfume speak to him

Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child
sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green
Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild

Have all the expansion of things infinite:
as amber, incense, musk and benzoin,
which sing the sense's and the soul's delight

*

the rose

hooray for roses, and Williams.

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2009/04/and-then-of-course-there-is-this-what.html

don't you wish you could write like that? I do. This kind of thing inspires one to seek out new modes of expression. Someday I think I can do vaudeville and power chords until I'm blue in the face, but there is more.

a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
the yellow rose of texas
ode to a downfallen rose
every rose has its thorn
there is a rose in spanish harlem
bread and roses
moses supposes his toses are roses
blue rose of Novalis
war of the roses

Stumble upon

a terrific review of Peter Cole's Things on Which I've Stumbled, by Philip Metres.
linked from Ron once again.


http://gentlyread.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/toward-a-poetics-of-coexistence-a-review-of-peter-cole%25E2%2580%2599s-things-on-which-i%25E2%2580%2599ve-stumbled-by-philip-metres/

Agitprop

An enjoyable reading last night in San Diego, featuring the highly-successful women of Les Figues Press. Standing room only.

war against imagination, linked from HCP

This is linked from the Henry Corbin Project:

http://henrycorbinproject.blogspot.com/2009/02/war-against-imagination-and-battle-for.html

I remember reading this DiPrima piece aloud at a reading in Oakland - 02 I think,and it got a mixed response. Part of the problem was that the event organizers, I learned later, were losing the warehouse where they were keeping everyones paintings, and where incidentally this reading was occurring, so maybe they felt at that evening that the war against the imagination had taken a blow. But it could have just been that girls feel like this is more of a girl poem and boys shouldnt be performing it.

But it could be more of a faux pas in terms of the legacy, and by that I mean DiPrima is making more of a Culture War-relevant statement about the imperiled Imagination, and since I wasnt really groovin past Henry Huggins in 1985, when it was written, I cant really speak to it, although today I feel like I understand the arguments.

Originally I heard of the poem through a friend. I dont know how the war against the imagination fares for him today. I dont hang out with poets, he told me once.

Review: Things on Which I've Stumbled

Peter Cole's Things on Which I've Stumbled presents to the reader explorations of spiritual activity in the state in which this activity normally occupies the believer, which is of an individual learning how to embrace their own attributes of confusion and ambiguity. Reading these poems one not imagines in the author a sense of guilt, or penitence necessarily, instead something more akin to reverence. Cole is a spiritual man, and takes his spirituality seriously. Yet the concepts he presents are universal; you can sit with these poems. They do not reveal “answers” but possibly hope to point to useful questions for seekers, and to life lived deeper than any question can ask for if it's asking for the floor on which all the table-legs are standing.

This work is an examination of the gaps of mystery that open up in the quest for a spiritual life, which the poet reminds us are useful to remember for their tension as well as their enjoyment. He personally writes from the nation of Israel, his life enmeshed in a region of the world that a media-saturated Western mind may have come to associate with dogmatism and all those really, really certain guys whose beliefs make the news. Cole is not as interested in these people, but more in his own relationship to God and how the vicissitudes of attempting to forge that relationship impact his other relationships, his work in poetics, and to the community in which he lives.

The poems keep a low profile and stay on the page, nestled. Most words are delicately put, contemplative - it's not a book that puts you at the edge of your seat, but you'll be glad. What is it that gives rise? What is meant by being? Cole asks. Styles vary: free verse, Sufi translations, rhymes that walk up to you slowly that you don't quite see until they say hello; then in part IV of the book there is a snapshot prose juxtaposed with the longer poem: “What Has Been Prepared”, which appears to be an investigation of judgments, ceremony-gone-wrong, distractions, aggravations. But are the distractions things that should be listened to more closely? Cole leaves all the doors open and suggests that they were either open already, or that there are no doors at all, just visions, movements, patterns, ornaments. These externals may become foci for study as a priority over personal motivations.

In his interview with Ben Lerner in BOMB magazine, Peter Cole had this to say about this piece:

... the subject is a kind of moral outrage in the face of destruction and desecration—of Palestinian society and culture, of (humanistic) Judaism, and of the land itself. “Anger management raised to the level of art” is how one poet-friend has characterized it. Sound and form are enlisted there, and listened to there, to help me make sense of a truly outrageous situation...

Total interview is available at this link:
http://www.bombsite.com/issues/105/articles/3180

There is a rich sestina on Palestine that uses the words Palestine, pain, hills, green, guests and land. There are poems looking into the results of applying words such as then and always to epiphanic moments, and what do these words mean for us? Such questions are at times valuable, since it can be deduced that the English language by itself may contribute to limitations in political or spiritual discourse. Cole is also an acclaimed translator, and ponders on the nagging effect of an asterisk and why he needs to physically return to “spiritual” locations at all.

And occasionally there is a dart thrown at the political body, such as “Israel Is”:

Israel is he, or she
who wrestles with God, call him what you will

not some goon (with a rabbi and gun)
in a pre-fab home on a biblical hill.

Succinct, and can apply in more places than Israel alone. Israel - derived from yisreh – he wrestles, and El (God) as it is noted by the poet on page 99.

The Notes on Bewilderment show the unanswered prayers, the prayers never sent, the soul twisted in on itself. These are Anti-Psalms where glory doesn't arrive, but humor sometimes does:

NoB XXII

He wanted to know how love was rewarded:
True love. That's easy, the lover replied.
the prize for that great desire comprises
the absence of any distinction between
the pain and pleasure one is accorded.

“Things on Which I've Stumbled” is the centerpiece poem in which Cole accounts a series of investigations and misunderstandings alongside a depiction of someone digging through archives, and some places that may be considered “garbage”, in search of beautiful clothing or jewelry – memories also as jewelry, friendship also as clothing. It's a highly personal piece yet no rectifying thought lingers except near the end, where he asks a philosophical question that has caused him to stumble before– tell me what man is...in the end notes he relates how the poem was composed of scraps from 11th and 12th century poets he discovered at Cambridge, kept in the geniza at Cairo. (A geniza, the notes tell us, is a store-room for Hebrew texts that are too worn to be read)

There is a bookend in the presentation – the two poems at the beginning and end have a more declarative certainty while grasping the meat of the book like two hands embracing a friend by the shoulders. The first piece is “Interpretation on Lines by Isaac the Blind,” who reveals himself to be quite the seer -endnotes tell us he was a 13th century kabbalist. Then there's the final poem, “The Ghazal of What Hurt,” which gives us an image of a person, previously injured, walking with utter health in a familiar street with acquaintances. They don't have roller-coasters in Jerusalem, so a jaunt like this may be one of the more joyous experiences one could have in public there. It shines.

Here is a piece I liked that used the word their effectively (who-? not sure what's going on, but it's lovely), also noting the repeated 'd' sounds that stop at a kind of period – at any rate – then the use of the 's' and the unexpected rhyme then opens into a wider space. The writer here does, as he often does in this work, easily move from the internal to the external.

And So the Skin...

And so their pounded hearts
were worn -
like a badge
or talisman that canceled
almost all their blindness-

creation's linkage depending
on a drive itself
derived from a kind of kindness
or desperation, the sense that one's
inadequate,
at any rate

the space for time-

water has it, flowing
(even from a faucet...)
and here the black swan glides across it

as the sunlight's suddenly on my back,
and now the skin along it's warmer,
Lord,
which lets me walk by the river...

post-coyote

I like this idea. Re-reading some things that have appeared on Ron Silliman's train of knowledge.

Sounds like it resonates with my experience of the last few years. Life post-2003 that is. Yes, there was life after entertainment. Hm..one can forget. Except that I'm not learning a foreign language currently, for shame.

http://www.longhousepoetry.com/andrewschelling.html#anchor88739

The term "trickster" is a difficulty, but I am curious about the books.

Poets Against War

Ah, yes, I was in that too. Not in the shortened collection that came later, but I sent in a poem among the 22,000. Basically I was trying to write a Rage Against the Machine song, or at least enough lyrics to inspire one. I don't think you can find it by searching, you'd have to ask them directly. I've read it so many times it has no more effect, especially since the war happened anyway. If I had known how nasty the war was going to get I would have edited some things, there are references to Clinton bombing Sudan, Yugoslavia. So I made it anti-war in general and not just targeting Republicans, which in my opinion after 2004 got to be just too easy.

War sucks. What's happened is the entertainment industry, not "the media", has become the 4th branch of government, this is why people couldn't think critically about ejecting Bush. But maybe bloggers can take it back. I feel ok talking from both sides because I have a degree in "the media."

Best anti-war song ever, this one:

Gonna lay down my burden (lay down)
down by the riverside (down by)
down by the riverside (down by)
down by the riverside
gonna lay down my burden (lay down)
down by the riverside
ain't gonna study war. no. more - yes indeed
..hm hmhmh hmhmhm

http://poetsagainstthewar.org/

checking in with Denise Levertov

"Journeyings", by Denise Levertov

Majestic insects buzz through the sky
bearing us pompously from love to love,
grief to grief,
expensively,
motes in the gaze of that unblinking eye.

Our threads of life are sewn into dark cloth,
a sleeve that hangs down over
a sinister wrist. All of us.
It must be Time whose pale fingers
dangle beneath the hem...

Solemn filaments, our journeyings
wind through the overcast.

*

Not to say too much toward this sublime piece out of The Freeing of the Dust (1975), but a few things: it is a fantasy at a time when fantasy is not really big, as a genre, (unless you consider Zeppelin) but the "unblinking eye" does provoke me to ask: whose eye? A question which we must approach individually, since I can't say there is here a clear Tolkein reference. Elements of the Gothic; then, is "Time" here maternal -?, because of the "dangle"-ing, not paternal as we often see it presented, an interesting reversal of the image of Father Time. Somehow I imagine a woman's hand being depicted here, but wonder why it has to be "sinister?"

Why do I imagine this depiction? Because in another poem of hers, The Soothsayer, there is a similar sequence:

My daughters, the old woman says,
the weaver of fictions, tapestries
from which she pulls only a single thread each day, ...(etc)

Great use of ellipsis in the first piece. A poem that succeeds by not trying too hard, for one thing.
But could my interpretation regarding the femininity of the hand be off? I make an easy association from one poem to the other as I read the language presented, but of course I cannot know the mind of the master poet Denise Levertov, and why she made her creative choices. Is it her mother's hand, or her grandmother's, maybe it is the archetypal Hand of Destiny, as in the saying "destiny had a hand in it."

?

Whether or not its a man's hand or a woman's hand might be a fun thing to argue about over darts, but now I make a grander presumption, which is that the person I'm throwing darts with would actually enjoy poetry. Indeed the hand itself does not technically appear in the poem, there is only a wrist, sleeve and fingers visible- I create the image I need out of the surrounding details, which I think is what poetry can help us do. Well, it's not a big stretch for this particular poem, but for me the image of the hand lingers, even though I never really get a good look at it.

As for Poets by Gary Snyder

*

As for poets
The Earth Poets
who write small poems
need help from no man.

*

The Air Poets
play out the swiftest gales
and sometimes loll in the eddies
poem after poem,
curling back on the same thrust.

*

At fifty below
Fuel oil won't flow
and propane stays in the tank.
Fire Poets
Burn at Absolute Zero
Fossil love pumped back up.

*

The first
Water Poet
stayed down six years.
He was covered with seaweed.
The life in his poem
left millions of tiny
different tracks
criss-crossing through the mud.

*

With the Sun and the Moon
In his belly,
The Space Poet
Sleeps.
No end to the sky -
but his poems,
like wild geese,
fly off the edge.

*

A Mind Poet
Stays in the house.
The house is empty
and it has no walls.
The poem is seen from all sides,
everywhere
at once.


**at last I believe I have seen/met an example of each kind of poet :) I think GS is suggesting that mother nature provides the theory, although its not really a theory, but more like an influence, but there are these six different ways we can express that connection. This poem is from Turtle Island, 1974.**

Recommended Book

Decided to include a 'recommended book' feature.

This first time it will be The Misread City, edited by Scott Timberg and Dana Gioia, 2003.

This book, as I mentioned below, was supposedly prompted by Dana Gioia's charge that California letters lacked critical support. What he and Mr. Timberg produced out of that imperative was this terrific series of essays on the literary life of the southland. From Raymond Chandler's treacherous allure of the hard-boiled detective to the expressionist poetry of Wanda Coleman to the narratives of the wild lifestyle of gay model John Rechy, there emerges from literary Los Angeles a bolder and more brilliant cultural panache, never lacking in neither conviction nor diversity, than what one would ever expect to get out of a Friday night at the movies.

Especially interesting is the piece "Surviving Apocalypse" by David Fein, a recently retired professor of English, who describes how subnarratives of looming Apocalypse pervade much creative work that comes out of southern California, literary, film, or otherwise; he goes on to tell us of the geographic, authentic, historical and media-manufactured reasons for this.

Here is a piece from a poem that appears in the collection, Shangri-La, by Suzanne Lummis:

New York, is it true
that in the rest of the world it is winter?

Our state is a mosaic of blue pools
even the Mojave, and the palm trees
line up straight to the Sierra Nevadas,
and the surf comes down slow like
Delirious laundry, even near Fresno

We're sorry we can't be reached
by plane or bus, sorry one can't pull
even the tiniest thing out of a dream
We're like the landscape inside
a plastic dome filled with water

But turn us over, then upright.
See?
No snow falls.

*

two poems that got my attention this week

The Danger of Writing Defiant Verse by Dorothy Parker

And now I have another lad!
No longer need you tell
How all my nights are slow and sad
For loving you too well.

His ways are not your wicked ways,
He's not the like of you.
He treads his path of reckoned days,
A sober man, and true.

They'll never see him in the town,
Another on his knee.
He'd cut his laden orchards down,
If that would pleasure me.

He'd give his blood to paint my lips
If I should wish them red.
He prays to touch my finger-tips
Or stroke my prideful head.

He never weaves a glinting lie,
Or brags the hearts he'll keep.
I have forgotten how to sigh-
Remembered how to sleep.

He's none to kiss away my mind-
A slower way is his.
Oh, Lord! On reading this, I find
A silly lot he is.

Phenomenal Woman - Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Carlos Edmundo de Ory

Much reading these past few days. A lot has happened in the last twenty years or so of theory/poetry/life. So today, this is a poem from a writer I am much enjoying, the Spanish poet Carlos Edmundo de Ory, translated by Steven J. Stewart. This appeared, along with some of his other poems, in the New Orleans Review, vol 30 #1. (published by Loyola University)

I obtained this book while on a trip to New Orleans in 2004, almost exactly one year before Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city. This particular poem intrigues me because unlike many of his other poems, the meaning of this one is unclear to me.


"I Advise you to Sleep"

I Advise you to sleep when you can't
to go to mass in a dream
to pay all your debts on horseback
to knock on a door and have it be opened
to play with a typewriter on the floor of your room

If the drugs for your insomnia can't get you to sleep
go out on your balcony at midnight
and watch the soldiers coming home from the war
or a woman carrying a flower pot
or four penitents from Seville

I warn you that it's the same
whether you sleep or not
whether you dream or smoke
if when you light a match
you burn the darkness
and the flame speaks to you

Tell your pillow that you are a lord
a lord a lord
don't let it think
you forgot how to sleep as it well knows.