James F. Lewis
ENGL 550
February 27, 2007
Paper #2: Michael Craig, postmodernist poetry, and thoughts on “accessibility” without directing the reader.
Thoughts on Michael Craig, Postmodernist Poetry, and “Accessibility" Without Directing the Reader
Something that particularly struck me in our analyses of poems in last week’s class is how most of us so consciously directed the meaning of our poems and, so, unconsciously wrote poetry that is decidedly note “postmodern.” How is this? The answer involves gaining, first, a heightened degree of exactly what postmodernist theory and art entails: namely a certain ambiguity, but not really an ambiguity, as it is not a matter of writing to befuddle, but writing in such a manner as to foster a postmodernist reaction to the poem, that is, the inevitability of their being multiple interpretations of the work evolving through the interaction of author, text, and reader.
And so, I found Greg’s emphasis, however subtle, upon writing our poetry in such a way that doesn’t direct the meaning (which, interestingly, many of us are want to spit out to the class at the first opportunity) but, rather, to foster possibilities of meaning. I would imagine that Greg is not trying to “teach” us to write in this fashion, as if such an approach is the “right” way to write but, rather, to help us gain awareness, as poets, of what we are doing and its affects. You might say fostering the development of our self-awareness as poets. Anyhow, I found our propensity towards directing our reader striking and, concomitantly, the ideas of creating poetry that is accessible yet written in such a way as to generate more possibility for a greater variety of reader experiences and interpretations exciting.
Curiously, I found Craig to be more directive in his approach than say, Billy Collins. Sure, he left open possibilities for interpretation and meaning, but there seems to be a more ego generated aspect to Craig’s poetry, and the reader can feel the poets own issues and concerns egging him on to write. Which raises an interesting area to look at in poetry, namely, how much of it is ego generated as opposed to being inspired by larger concerns centered outside the ego, so called “self-less” concerns, if such a thing can really be considered to exist. I would add, however, that the directive style of writing poetry can be equally applicable to either ego or super-ego generated poetry. In any case, what I’m primarily interested in gaining here is more awareness of what I’m both doing as a poet when I write a poem and what, consciously or unconsciously, a poet may be engaged in when writing verse.
Just as aside, when considering contemporary poetry, confessional work, and egoism, it is worth noting how problems experienced with the self tend to make one, especially once awareness of these problems has developed, more egotistical, a state of being which clearly reflects itself in confessional poetry and all such poetry that works to expel our dragons or in some way assist our self in coping with life. An excellent case in point is the work of poets suffering severe depression; it seems all they can offer in their poetry is a corpus of dark, moody, verse that is, at times, nothing more than a vehicle for the purging of their disturbed psyche.
Is poetry is healer in this regard, for poet and reader alike? Sure. It certainly can be. But, is it the case in the contemporary era–perhaps indicative of our age and the vast amounts of clinical anxiety and depression that is part and parcel of it–that such verse abounds and, for this reader anyway, has become cliché. Save your morbid musing for your therapist, or, possibly, let’s create a healthier society by spilling out our bile amongst family, friends, and colleagues, behavior that is sure to make us all feel better and take some stress off our beleaguered egos. Then, maybe, we can explore some other possibilities in poetry, allow our verse to open up new ways of experiencing and seeing through feeling and the psyche. Finally healing, where are the possibilities for poetry? What can we capture or open up with the art in a post-contemporary period?
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
550: Favorites, Dislikes, Imitations and Parodies
For a favorite poem, I chose a collection of poetry rather than a particular poem. The name of the collection is "Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry" by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. The work is a lovely little compilation of postcards the two poets wrote back and forth to each other after Ted's having been diagnosed with cancer. The two felt that writing to each other in poetry got at the heart of what they were trying to "say" to each other far-better than conventional prose letters and, so, corresponded for several weeks in poetry. Each piece is simple in style and structure, more like a Haiku, Zen-like, capturing the essence of life and existence in moving snapshots. Influenced by the collection, I wrote the following poem:
After Midnight
In nothing but nightclothes,
he ran through the streets of the
neighborhood at 1:00 a.m.
shouting, “Wake Up! Wake Up!”
Until a neighbor,
young, really, at thirty-four,
called the police,
who later arrested him for “disturbing the peace.”
–J.F. Lewis, February 10, 2007
Below is my parody of a poem out of Valparaiso Review that I particularly disliked. The scorned poem is "Iceland" by Kim Bridgford. The original is below.
~KIM BRIDGFORD~
ICELAND
The surface is both green and tipped with ice,
Its rocks like tortured lovers in the air.
Its flowers in the north are like the trace
Of women pinning grief up in their hair.
Its history speaks of families making claim
And poetry that helps to make a name
For kings of Europe. Out of the battle's grave,
Poetry will salvage what's to save.
Reykjavik's a palette flung to dry,
The weather never one thing or another.
It is a place of woven ancestry,
With people's names reflective of their father,
And down the middle the shiver of a line
Like a drying fish with sunlight on its spine.
© by Kim Bridgford
My Parody....
Iceland: Latitude 38.6 W, Longitude 43.3 N.
The landmass is of grass and glacier,
its outcrops evidencing severe erosion due to heavy wind.
Flora found in the north, including red-leafed clover
like similar species in Bend.
Its history is Jurassic,
And replete with fossils identified by Dr. Fitzpatrick
For the Museum of the Rockies. Out of the Pleistocene layer,
Dr. Zu will salvage any fossilized hair.
Reykjavik’s a useful depot,
The weather, however, is problematic.
It is a place of Icelandic bravado,
And the fervor can be systemic.
And down the center the melting crevasse
Like that in Antarctica’s semi-frozen mass.
After Midnight
In nothing but nightclothes,
he ran through the streets of the
neighborhood at 1:00 a.m.
shouting, “Wake Up! Wake Up!”
Until a neighbor,
young, really, at thirty-four,
called the police,
who later arrested him for “disturbing the peace.”
–J.F. Lewis, February 10, 2007
Below is my parody of a poem out of Valparaiso Review that I particularly disliked. The scorned poem is "Iceland" by Kim Bridgford. The original is below.
~KIM BRIDGFORD~
ICELAND
The surface is both green and tipped with ice,
Its rocks like tortured lovers in the air.
Its flowers in the north are like the trace
Of women pinning grief up in their hair.
Its history speaks of families making claim
And poetry that helps to make a name
For kings of Europe. Out of the battle's grave,
Poetry will salvage what's to save.
Reykjavik's a palette flung to dry,
The weather never one thing or another.
It is a place of woven ancestry,
With people's names reflective of their father,
And down the middle the shiver of a line
Like a drying fish with sunlight on its spine.
© by Kim Bridgford
My Parody....
Iceland: Latitude 38.6 W, Longitude 43.3 N.
The landmass is of grass and glacier,
its outcrops evidencing severe erosion due to heavy wind.
Flora found in the north, including red-leafed clover
like similar species in Bend.
Its history is Jurassic,
And replete with fossils identified by Dr. Fitzpatrick
For the Museum of the Rockies. Out of the Pleistocene layer,
Dr. Zu will salvage any fossilized hair.
Reykjavik’s a useful depot,
The weather, however, is problematic.
It is a place of Icelandic bravado,
And the fervor can be systemic.
And down the center the melting crevasse
Like that in Antarctica’s semi-frozen mass.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Valparaiso Poetry Review: Thoughts on Jared Carter's "Prophet Township"
Jimmy Lewis
550 Seminar
G.Keeler
Sunday, February 10, 2007
Valparaiso Poetry Review: Comments on Prophet Township, by Jared Carter
I connected to Carter’s poem because it evoked memories of personal experiences I’ve had with such deserted farmsteads across the Montana prairie. I have walked up to many such places; they are usually in the heart of unimaginable bird country in which one can pursue the best of sport. Young, naive, and sheltered from the struggle to survive, I experienced these abandoned homes in the most callous fashion, somewhat romanticizing the whole experience of being their with my birddogs as an experience parallel to that which I had come to know through the photo essays in certain sporting publications: Gray’s Sporting Journal, Big Sky Journal, Pointing Dog Journal.... Look at me! That’s my birddog running through the C.R.P. now surrounding the dilapidated house. That’s my hunting partner holding a rooster pheasant in the photo. Been there. Done that! Thank God their efforts failed. What glorious bird habitat C.R.P. makes and the fact that this is public land where I can play....
My father-in-law, pensive, erudite, reflexive with a tendency towards melancholia saw things differently. Now deceased nearly three years, he would walk around talking mostly to himself. “What happened to them,” with no question in his tonality. “Didn’t make it,” his gun broken open, walking around the debris beside the home, gamebirds flushing about, himself the progeny of a pig farmer. What is it about those of us with farming histories?
It wasn’t until later, after my childish sensibilities began to wear out or otherwise no longer suffice that I too began to feel. I too, carefully, ventured through some of these unhinged doors, nervous that my birddog might follow me and be killed by a rattlesnake seeking refuge from whatever inhospitable form of weather the prairie may have been spitting out. The flue, the old mattresses, the plank walls, the wind, wondering how.... Myself now a father, a family, wondering how and wandering to survive.
Carter’s physical and psychic illustration allows me to connect with this place and, by proxy, a deep empathy and respect for our struggle, for those who may have not “succeeded” but lived and tried. How do we define “success” anyway? When the wood ran out, when there was no hay for stock, when there was nothing for the children to eat, did what they had to do and left, abandoning the homestead, abandoning the dream, courageously going forward into whatever life awaited them. It is in this manner that Carter’s poem connects us with the presence of our ancestors, our recognition of their struggle and their acknowledgement of this recognition and empathy for them. I am left with a feeling of connection to people and to life.
On a more technical level, the above essay being more poetic in style and substance, I enjoy how Carter develops his impact verse by verse. At first, we come to understand what is done with the dead during the winter, the young and the old, the sick and the vulnerable, “a custom learned from their grandparents¬–how to make it through till spring, how to handle hardship on their own.” Then, we come to understand how fortunate one is to simply have to carry over the dead, that winter can be much worse than that. This process of placing children and the old in coffins filled with rock salt, seemingly heart-wrenching to the sensibilities of the contemporary reader, is clearly part and parcel of life for the residents of Prophet Township. The real disaster for such people materializes in the next stanza:
But there were times when no one lasted,
fierce winters when the wood gave out,
when there was nothing left to eat,
no hay to pitch out for the stock,
no way to break down through the ice
on the horse trough, or get the pump
working again.
Reality inserting itself forcefully and pitilessly upon a hopeful, struggling community, leaving for the reader in its wake no illusions of security and a final understanding of how, conscious of it or not, we are all struggling to survive and, unlike the people of Prophet Township, not one amongst us would know what to do with the bodies of the sickly, the old, the young should they fall ill and die in the cold of winter. What are our traditions passed down by our grandfathers, our grandmothers to cope with life? What will we do “with no heat, no money for seed”? Go shopping? Recycle? Using the medium of poetry Carter adroitly gets at this question for the contemporary reader, thus, making his poem unquestionably “contemporary,” and, by nature of the content of his work, perhaps redefining how we should determine what constitutes “contemporary American poetry. “Prophet Township” illustrates this constitution as a synthesis of form with content that bespeaks our historical moment and concomitant sensibilities.
550 Seminar
G.Keeler
Sunday, February 10, 2007
Valparaiso Poetry Review: Comments on Prophet Township, by Jared Carter
I connected to Carter’s poem because it evoked memories of personal experiences I’ve had with such deserted farmsteads across the Montana prairie. I have walked up to many such places; they are usually in the heart of unimaginable bird country in which one can pursue the best of sport. Young, naive, and sheltered from the struggle to survive, I experienced these abandoned homes in the most callous fashion, somewhat romanticizing the whole experience of being their with my birddogs as an experience parallel to that which I had come to know through the photo essays in certain sporting publications: Gray’s Sporting Journal, Big Sky Journal, Pointing Dog Journal.... Look at me! That’s my birddog running through the C.R.P. now surrounding the dilapidated house. That’s my hunting partner holding a rooster pheasant in the photo. Been there. Done that! Thank God their efforts failed. What glorious bird habitat C.R.P. makes and the fact that this is public land where I can play....
My father-in-law, pensive, erudite, reflexive with a tendency towards melancholia saw things differently. Now deceased nearly three years, he would walk around talking mostly to himself. “What happened to them,” with no question in his tonality. “Didn’t make it,” his gun broken open, walking around the debris beside the home, gamebirds flushing about, himself the progeny of a pig farmer. What is it about those of us with farming histories?
It wasn’t until later, after my childish sensibilities began to wear out or otherwise no longer suffice that I too began to feel. I too, carefully, ventured through some of these unhinged doors, nervous that my birddog might follow me and be killed by a rattlesnake seeking refuge from whatever inhospitable form of weather the prairie may have been spitting out. The flue, the old mattresses, the plank walls, the wind, wondering how.... Myself now a father, a family, wondering how and wandering to survive.
Carter’s physical and psychic illustration allows me to connect with this place and, by proxy, a deep empathy and respect for our struggle, for those who may have not “succeeded” but lived and tried. How do we define “success” anyway? When the wood ran out, when there was no hay for stock, when there was nothing for the children to eat, did what they had to do and left, abandoning the homestead, abandoning the dream, courageously going forward into whatever life awaited them. It is in this manner that Carter’s poem connects us with the presence of our ancestors, our recognition of their struggle and their acknowledgement of this recognition and empathy for them. I am left with a feeling of connection to people and to life.
On a more technical level, the above essay being more poetic in style and substance, I enjoy how Carter develops his impact verse by verse. At first, we come to understand what is done with the dead during the winter, the young and the old, the sick and the vulnerable, “a custom learned from their grandparents¬–how to make it through till spring, how to handle hardship on their own.” Then, we come to understand how fortunate one is to simply have to carry over the dead, that winter can be much worse than that. This process of placing children and the old in coffins filled with rock salt, seemingly heart-wrenching to the sensibilities of the contemporary reader, is clearly part and parcel of life for the residents of Prophet Township. The real disaster for such people materializes in the next stanza:
But there were times when no one lasted,
fierce winters when the wood gave out,
when there was nothing left to eat,
no hay to pitch out for the stock,
no way to break down through the ice
on the horse trough, or get the pump
working again.
Reality inserting itself forcefully and pitilessly upon a hopeful, struggling community, leaving for the reader in its wake no illusions of security and a final understanding of how, conscious of it or not, we are all struggling to survive and, unlike the people of Prophet Township, not one amongst us would know what to do with the bodies of the sickly, the old, the young should they fall ill and die in the cold of winter. What are our traditions passed down by our grandfathers, our grandmothers to cope with life? What will we do “with no heat, no money for seed”? Go shopping? Recycle? Using the medium of poetry Carter adroitly gets at this question for the contemporary reader, thus, making his poem unquestionably “contemporary,” and, by nature of the content of his work, perhaps redefining how we should determine what constitutes “contemporary American poetry. “Prophet Township” illustrates this constitution as a synthesis of form with content that bespeaks our historical moment and concomitant sensibilities.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Collins Inspired Poems
As I Sit Here Watching My Wife Fill the Bird Feeders
The snow blows bitingly in the bitter north wind,
Last night, a forecast for blizzard conditions,
Snow, cold, wind, from the north–and nowhere else.
She scurries about, this redhead from Northern Europe
Making the world a better place for little birds, housefinches, sparrows, winter birds.
Nature is my two-year-old daughter’s coos and crys, as my coffee brewing in the corner of the kitchen.
An American flag flutters in the blowing snow, hanging courageously on the corner of his garage. A singular bird alights on the feeder,
And I type on my word processor at the kitchen table.
“Your daughter went into your underwear drawer and put a pair of boxers over her head!”
A fire is lit in the living room
And the thumb of my old birddog’s tail raps quietly but assertively on the carpeted floor.
Where are we? Really?
A place where hope is alive. A nasty winter storm. Fifteen-below tonight.
Convulsions
With the arrival of our baby-sitter
My wife invites me out to breakfast.
No matter that this is her scheduled time to work
and I am sick, absent from work.
Out to breakfast we go.
The air is warm with a tinge of spring in it.
More than a tinge really, a heavy dose,
and the feeling of warmth and the freedom of
The two of us being babyless for a moment
Brings on ecstasy. Movement.
The smell of fresh blueberry pancakes and greasy bacon.
A breakfast restaurant with only the two of us by the window.
Morning. Sharing. The moment is as fresh and natural as the
warm spring-like air.
The snow-melted water in the street I hear and feel under my shoes.
Really, we should go home now. Return. We both have work to do.
Me, with deadlines, beginning to panic. Negative emotions that constrict
my efforts more than help.
What kind of work makes us procrastinate? Brings on stress and anxiety?
We go anyway. Walking the streets of a neighborhood and looking at houses.
The snow blows bitingly in the bitter north wind,
Last night, a forecast for blizzard conditions,
Snow, cold, wind, from the north–and nowhere else.
She scurries about, this redhead from Northern Europe
Making the world a better place for little birds, housefinches, sparrows, winter birds.
Nature is my two-year-old daughter’s coos and crys, as my coffee brewing in the corner of the kitchen.
An American flag flutters in the blowing snow, hanging courageously on the corner of his garage. A singular bird alights on the feeder,
And I type on my word processor at the kitchen table.
“Your daughter went into your underwear drawer and put a pair of boxers over her head!”
A fire is lit in the living room
And the thumb of my old birddog’s tail raps quietly but assertively on the carpeted floor.
Where are we? Really?
A place where hope is alive. A nasty winter storm. Fifteen-below tonight.
Convulsions
With the arrival of our baby-sitter
My wife invites me out to breakfast.
No matter that this is her scheduled time to work
and I am sick, absent from work.
Out to breakfast we go.
The air is warm with a tinge of spring in it.
More than a tinge really, a heavy dose,
and the feeling of warmth and the freedom of
The two of us being babyless for a moment
Brings on ecstasy. Movement.
The smell of fresh blueberry pancakes and greasy bacon.
A breakfast restaurant with only the two of us by the window.
Morning. Sharing. The moment is as fresh and natural as the
warm spring-like air.
The snow-melted water in the street I hear and feel under my shoes.
Really, we should go home now. Return. We both have work to do.
Me, with deadlines, beginning to panic. Negative emotions that constrict
my efforts more than help.
What kind of work makes us procrastinate? Brings on stress and anxiety?
We go anyway. Walking the streets of a neighborhood and looking at houses.
Greg Keeler Lectures on Contemporary American Poetry: Reflections
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
On Whitman and his place as the first “contemporary poet” :
What intrigues me about Whitman occupying this position is his relationship to the united states. The U.S. and its democratic principals being an “experiment,” you might say, in the concept of “freedom,” I find there may be a connection to Whitman being the first contemporary poet and the social ideology that gave birth to the poet. Considering Whitman, I particularly emphasize the ideology of the U.S. rather than the specific social climate of the nation during the 19th Century, as ideals of our democracy we are still trying to define and reach in practice (thus, The Theory and Practice of Freedom). Whitman was an individual who conceptualized our democracy’s principals as manifesting an unlimited and unprecedented human freedom. Whitman, himself, strived to live a life reflective of these ideals put into practice. In living, thought, and expression Whitman pushed the very boundaries of the possibilities of freedom’s realities.
Where else could such an individual emerged in the world? Therefore, asking the question of whether or not poetic expression need be nurtured by the soil of social liberty or can it flourish anywhere and, is, therefore, inherent in all human beings but seldom expressed. Is there a parallel here then between what the U.S.’s ideology was and is still doing in the world as far as human potential is concerned and what Whitman did for the chains of poetics?
Influences:
A thought that came to mind during our discussion on Tuesday was influences and, in particular, the influences upon contemporary poetry. Greg’s comment about e.e. cummings and the typewriter, cummings particular fascination with it and the resulting influence of this fascination upon his work. What about computers? Laptops, especially, make it possible to write just about anywhere and, more specifically, to “publish” your work to the world within minutes. Word Processing programs...the possibilities are endless. And today, with the advent of voice recognition technology, the very definition of “writing” is changing. Writing, for example, like any artistic medium is just a vehicle upon which to express our thoughts and artistic vision and sensibilities. At one time, we used a quill, then a pen to a printing press, a typewriter, and the computer and word processor. With voice recognition, once the technology is perfected, having to go through the tedious act of typing will become obsolete, and, glass of our favorite libation in hand, we can close our eyes in the dark, speak into a microphone on a headset and watch our thoughts transcribed into type on a word processing program later to be edited an put into print. Imagine the freedom. This begs the question of what is writing, exactly? Artistic expression, an attempt to translate thoughts, not necessarily the banging away on keys, however stimulating this may be.
Also, on influences, the airplane, the satellite, the Internet, technology of all kinds, nuclear power, machines, television, phones, computers, etc. All of these have the power to influence, whether this influence is conscious or not. It may be, in fact, inescapable.
On the State of Contemporary Poetry as “opened up”
If that’s where we are, a poetic age in which both formalism and contemporary approaches to poetry can be embraced, what does this say about our cultural milieu? Are we finally, in general, getting beyond “black and white” dualistic thinking to something else? If so, what does this say about the future of poetry? Where will we go from here? Confessional poetry in formalist form? New forms? A complete abandonment of form? (already happening really). In any case, you might say that, similar to earlier observations on Whitman and his emerging as a “contemporary” poet, poetry of the 21st century will reflect the unique individual and social possibilities of its age.
On Whitman and his place as the first “contemporary poet” :
What intrigues me about Whitman occupying this position is his relationship to the united states. The U.S. and its democratic principals being an “experiment,” you might say, in the concept of “freedom,” I find there may be a connection to Whitman being the first contemporary poet and the social ideology that gave birth to the poet. Considering Whitman, I particularly emphasize the ideology of the U.S. rather than the specific social climate of the nation during the 19th Century, as ideals of our democracy we are still trying to define and reach in practice (thus, The Theory and Practice of Freedom). Whitman was an individual who conceptualized our democracy’s principals as manifesting an unlimited and unprecedented human freedom. Whitman, himself, strived to live a life reflective of these ideals put into practice. In living, thought, and expression Whitman pushed the very boundaries of the possibilities of freedom’s realities.
Where else could such an individual emerged in the world? Therefore, asking the question of whether or not poetic expression need be nurtured by the soil of social liberty or can it flourish anywhere and, is, therefore, inherent in all human beings but seldom expressed. Is there a parallel here then between what the U.S.’s ideology was and is still doing in the world as far as human potential is concerned and what Whitman did for the chains of poetics?
Influences:
A thought that came to mind during our discussion on Tuesday was influences and, in particular, the influences upon contemporary poetry. Greg’s comment about e.e. cummings and the typewriter, cummings particular fascination with it and the resulting influence of this fascination upon his work. What about computers? Laptops, especially, make it possible to write just about anywhere and, more specifically, to “publish” your work to the world within minutes. Word Processing programs...the possibilities are endless. And today, with the advent of voice recognition technology, the very definition of “writing” is changing. Writing, for example, like any artistic medium is just a vehicle upon which to express our thoughts and artistic vision and sensibilities. At one time, we used a quill, then a pen to a printing press, a typewriter, and the computer and word processor. With voice recognition, once the technology is perfected, having to go through the tedious act of typing will become obsolete, and, glass of our favorite libation in hand, we can close our eyes in the dark, speak into a microphone on a headset and watch our thoughts transcribed into type on a word processing program later to be edited an put into print. Imagine the freedom. This begs the question of what is writing, exactly? Artistic expression, an attempt to translate thoughts, not necessarily the banging away on keys, however stimulating this may be.
Also, on influences, the airplane, the satellite, the Internet, technology of all kinds, nuclear power, machines, television, phones, computers, etc. All of these have the power to influence, whether this influence is conscious or not. It may be, in fact, inescapable.
On the State of Contemporary Poetry as “opened up”
If that’s where we are, a poetic age in which both formalism and contemporary approaches to poetry can be embraced, what does this say about our cultural milieu? Are we finally, in general, getting beyond “black and white” dualistic thinking to something else? If so, what does this say about the future of poetry? Where will we go from here? Confessional poetry in formalist form? New forms? A complete abandonment of form? (already happening really). In any case, you might say that, similar to earlier observations on Whitman and his emerging as a “contemporary” poet, poetry of the 21st century will reflect the unique individual and social possibilities of its age.
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