what poetry are you reading

i'm reading david antin's talking at the boundaries. what poetry are you reading?

it would maybe need a caveat before being uncontroversially included in a poetry thread; maybe it's better in a which erratically typeset books are you reading discussion. i love him talking around marriage, in a private occasion in a public place, & this loose solution he found to wanting to use poetry without reciting poetry, to be able to digress to make himself understood, this long memory of a girl he was involved with in new york & what it is to him now & then the interruption of trying to remember what it was to him then.

suppose you sign another agreement
that is you decide that you have a relationship with each other
which is of such an order that you have
appetite for each other
interest in each other fondness for each other
whatever the word means you love each other so to speak
but you dont have any control of each other
that is
as soon as anybody feels some other impulse he/she goes makes it with whoever he/she wants
you can try that
its difficult
and i know this kind of experience
its the kind of experience that takes away
a kind of evenness
a kind of funny unpressured life
that is
it puts life at the pressure of a romantic adventure
because anything can dissociate into its separate parts at any moment
you can always at the moment of an adventure disappear from somebody else

i'm reading sharon olds too. i can only read one or two a day, they're so intense. & for days on end i would go back & read robert creeley's please. i think i first read it on ilx? it felt powerful to pick it up everyday & need to read it for comfort.

for James Broughton

Oh god, let's go.
This is a poem for Kenneth Patchen.
Everywhere they are shooting people.
People people people people.
This is a poem for Allen Ginsberg.
I want to be elsewhere, elsewhere.
This is a poem about a horse that got tired.
Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.
I want to go home.
I want you to go home.
This is a poem that tells the story,
which is the story.
I don't know. I get lost.
If only they would stand still and let me.
Are you happy, sad, not happy, please come.
This is a poem for everyone.

i'm reading anthony hecht 'collected later,' which has in it the transparent man, flight among the tombs, and the darkness and the light

also p stoked to have a copy of thom gunn's fighting terms on the way.

Hypnos Waking - Rene Char Early surrealist who later was a major figure in the Resistance, contains complete translations of 'Leaves of Hypnos' his war journal and Le Poeme Pulverise
Figured Image - Anna-Marie Albiach Translated by Keith Waldrop Rough going with this gal who is concerned with language and the body in a very textural/french way. Post Apollo Press does an excellent job with their books, I'd like to find everything by them.
Mute Objects of Expression - Francis Ponge Translated by Lee Fahnestock One of my favorite french poets who writes about objects or nature.
Early Poems 1947-1959 - Yves Bonnefoy Translated by Galway Kinnell and Richard Pevear Contains a complete translation of 'On the Motion and Immobility of Douve' one of the most beautiful poems I have read. I never tired of him.
Breathturn - Paul Celan Translated by Pierre Joris I also really like Sun & Moon Press, I have a few more Celan books but I'm completely lost, Maybe I need to read German, I took a break from him and Think I'll take him up again this year.

is the motion and immobility of douve a book length thing, jacob? i feel tentative with long poems, & reading what you both read it feels like you're maybe a lil more ambitious.

i just e-mailed my friend & included a jack gilbert poem & was so pleased to find it online, on a tumblr ("stillgreen"), because it's so specific, so gently transportive,

Trying to Have Something Left Over
Jack Gilbert

There was a great tenderness to the sadness
when I would go there. She knew how much
I loved my wife and that we had no future.
We were like casualties helping each other
as we waited for the end. Now I wonder
if we understood how happy those Danish
afternoons were. Most of the time we did not talk.
Often I took care of the baby while she did
housework. Changing him and making him laugh.
I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before
throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with
my mouth against the tiny ear and throw
him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up.
The only way to leave even the smallest trace.
So that all his life her son would feel gladness
unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined
city of steel in America. Each time almost
remembering something maybe important that got lost.

re celan: i think if german is needed then it's a reaaal fluent german, in which case i'm screwed. i've found that it helps to be able to parse the german, at least, maybe because it helps to sort of justify some of the choices in the english (absent which they can sometimes have a tinge of, come off it, pal to them), some of the patterns of sound and syllabation are audible/visible, etc. —but for the most part i just had to reread repeatedly, and be in the right mood. trying to take in the whole sequence of one of the breathturn sequence books seems to be crucial too.

-

lately i've reread a little creeley. that's all.

strangely, I've just been reading Celan as well (selected poems, Hamburger trans.)—having previously been of the I'm completely lost, Maybe I need to read German mindset towards him, I now think I'm starting to "get it" a little more...

'On the Motion and Immobility of Douve' is a book length poem, but well worth reading. I've also been reading Edmond Jabes's Book Of Questions which are astonishing and sometimes heartbreaking.

I am only familiar with Jabes via Derrida's essays, which made him seem both brilliant & tedious

I think I would like to read what Derrida wrote about Jabes, which book is the essay from?

Writing & Difference—I believe the title of the essay is "Edmund Jabes & the Question of the Book"—I read it c.college because I was into, like, Borges & 'postmodernism' & shit, so possibly I didn't totally get it... I remember the characterization of the jew as a fold in history(?)

in that perloff essay (on gass on rilke) i linked on another thread she takes that celan as an epitome of the translatable

i think i'm going to read some celan this year

i've been failing to read 'dear world and everyone in it' for months. dear world and everyone in it, i don't care about your shitty poetry

John Berryman - The Dream Songs
Michael Robbins - Alien Vs Predator

Both discovered via ILB.

in that perloff essay (on gass on rilke) i linked on another thread she takes that celan as an epitome of the translatable

She talks about Trakl too, who is also mentioned by Michael Hofmann is given v high praise in this piece on Kraus/Vienna, so his name has been in my mind lately. Hope to track something down.

mr bones vs predator, that would be good

Robbins, of course, was not the first to call Rilke a “jerk.” John Berryman did this scandalously in The Dream Songs[1] (first published in 1964). Robbins has absorbed Berryman’s haunting work, the vaguely formalistic structure (rhythmic lines of varying length/beat and ninja rhymes that ambush the reader), frequent references to movies, songs, art, black culture, multiple narrative identities, uninhibited sexual appetites and the brooding sense of loss that lies at the heart of it all, and nuked it till it has bloomed with an acid glow that (&c &c)

TAKING SIDES: Rilke vs. Berryman-Robbins (aka 'Team Snark')

not reading him right now, but closely following developments in this r s thomas on crisp packets story.

Michael Robbins - Alien Vs Predator

― o. nate, Thursday, January 2, 2014 6:28 PM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did you like this? i enjoyed it at first, but once i 'got it' i sort of didn't enjoy it anymore.

also

https://twitter.com/alienvsrobbins/status/410099232586997760

what adrienne rich should i start with, do people think?

xp haha

did you like this? i enjoyed it at first, but once i 'got it' i sort of didn't enjoy it anymore

I still like it, yeah. I take it down from the shelf and read one or two every once in a while. Some I like better than others. The best ones hold up well, I think.

I'm not as familiar with Rich's work as I'd like, so I hope others better informed can advise, but Diving into the Wreck is probably a good place to start; I'm also partial to the long poem "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" from the book of the same title.

xp

In music I'm attracted to ambitious disasters; in literature I'm attracted to larval states, during which poets and novelists haven't found their voices. The Diamond Cutters and Snapshots of a Daughter in Law are my favorites of hers: I love the tension between the glacial severity of her images and barely suppressed anger (the enjambments are harsh and sharp too).

you can find a cheap Norton anthology of her selected works that also includes her (essential) essays

November 1968

Stripped you're beginning to float free up through the smoke of brushfires and incinerators the unleafed branches won't hold you nor the radar aerials

You're what the autumn knew would happen after the last collapse of primary color once the last absolutes were torn to pieces you could begin

How you broke open, what sheathed you until this moment I know nothing about it my ignorance of you amazes me now that I watch you starting to give yourself away to the wind

wait go http://www.best-poems.net/adrienne_rich/poem-43.html for formatting

I don't know, I always found Rich really dry, but it was a talk she gave on Emily Dickinson that made me curious about that author. Because before that I thought Dickinson wrote "little girl scout prayers" as Rich put it (possibly not verbatim), while discussing her image.

(I've at least read one of those Norton selected or collected poems of Rich's.)

Her Dickinson essay is fantastic!

I heard a recorded talk she gave, presumably close to the essay, or maybe a reading of it. (I don't think I ever went on to read in print form what she had to say about Dickinson.)

'on lies, secrets, and silence' is a good essay collection

i am going to post a short verse of a joseph ceravolo poem when i get home, get ready for it

buckle up

my *selected berryman* showed up last night and man

those fuckin sonnets

"Maybe our safeties…come for our risk’s sake."

aw i'm just about to pick up dream songs, from the library, cause i never tended to berryman much
& then i read something last week on a blog that knocked me for six, like wow

& i didn't post the ceravolo poem because it was too simple, out of context
like you needed the mess of the whole thing
he is really interesting!, i think. maybe because sometimes i am cruising this sorta in-love-with-eileen-myles wave of tumblr poetry that takes this elemental small-scale form as a template but has this maybe predictable voice?, now, like there's not a solipsism but a fixed reach to it? a formula by which it roams. & the ceravolo is crazy, it's like frank o'hara free jazz, i can't believe he gets so far with so little, eschewing so much, relying on you so much
maybe i'll post it later

ah yeah i just read that one last night too, damn near devoured the whole little selected in a few hours

so much to chew on

those fuckin sonnets

I'm an admirer of Berryman's sonnets, too. He leaves enough of the trad structure intact that it frees his sense of language, imagery and ideas to climb forward, and his plays against the trad sonnet structure gain extra weight because they are so deliberate.

i got halfway through this great long thing on berryman on the bus home last night, stopped reading to start reading the selected, then picked it back up and realized the whole thing is sort of a long-form review of the selected itself. happy accident.

man sharon olds' the dead and the living just came in and i tried to read a bit of it before bed

fuckin mistake.

just awful dark stuff, not meant for the pillow.

mary karr's viper rum is winning me over though. every third one or so is a gut punch, like a slightly unstiffened O'Connor. and i like my O'Connor just fine.

This has a lovely cover, but the prose poems it consists of did nothing for me.
http://ndbooks.com/images/made/images/covers/Fullblood_Arabian_300_450.jpg
I found them facile and pseudo-profound (the nod to Khalil Gibran in Lydia Davis's introduction should have tipped me off), but plenty of people disagree with me.

there is just so much in Olds; they're not even so panoramic, just so full and imaginable. three a day, max.

& wait is TDATL the recent one?

nah its one from the early 80s.

Petrarch b/w English Alliterative Revival stuff; then a reading of Villon's Testament to close the middle ages

newyear

Seaton's version of Cold Mountain Poems.

read a.e. housman's 'a shropshire lad' on my kindle a few weeks ago. uneven but some great stuff.

"Poetry is what happens when nothing else can."
- Charles Bukowski True?

If they think anyone except pick up artists and 15 year olds who've moved beyond 4chan give a shit about Bukowski, they're sadly mistaken.

Fat drunk misogynist who wrote one good poem.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-genius-of-the-crowd/

if that's his best, never mind the rest for sure.

<blushes with shame at user name>

Fwiw, I signed up in around 2004. I don't think I've read the miserable old bastard since. Bukowski would be good example for the 'separating art from artist' thread, albeit his art isn't really up to much. Also, fat, drunk misogynist isn't a bad catchall for a whole bunch of mid-C20 writers.

Poetry adjacent, rather than poetry but... Flatter myself that I know a bit about contemporary poetry but I had never even *heard* of Kay Ryan (apparently she was US Poet Laureate and everything) until coming across this review of her collected essays the other day https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/09/26/kay-ryan-giddy-with-thinking/

Turns out she is an absolute treat! Almost too pat to say it's like Emily Dickinson judiciously pruning Marianne Moore, but... it's true.

Also reading the e-book (much more approachable than the overwhelming 700 page doorstop incarnation) of Don Paterson's The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre which is more fun than I had been expecting. Have always been a fan of DP's prose but had soured on his more recent books of poetry; this makes me want to go back to them.

I've heard of Kay Ryan, never really read her. Tbh if someone is US poet laureate, it probably means I'll hate their work lol.

Tbh if someone is US poet laureate, it probably means I'll hate their work lol.

Good rule of thumb imo. See also: Canada poet laureate, UK poet laureate, etc.

Yep. I mean I love a lot of poets who've won prominent awards-- Cecily Nicholson, who won the Gov a few years back, is a great poet and a friend. But an award like that is one thing...being a poetic mouthpiece for a country is another.

B-but you don't hate xpost Natasha Trethewey, do ya?! She doesn't seem like a mouthpiece for anybody, from what I've read. May be a few dutiful bits of that somewhere, but who is gonna remember.

Not bad for something that explains itself: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57695/elegy-i-think-by-now-the-river-must-be-thick

Yeah, that poem isn't very good.

It is straightforward, memory-based narrative addressed to a dead loved one that is supposed to evoke something mysterious and ineffable, but is in fact just a bunch of lines thrown together without much intention. Just because something is true doesn't make it an interesting subject for a poem, and anyone who says different doesn't know much about poetry imho.

It's got line breaks therefore it is poetry by definition.

i never said it wasn't a poem. i said it wasn't good.

I was being sarcastic. To me, it's a classic example of 'I'm just gonna say some asinine, vaguely wistful recollected-in-tranquillity shit in prose then add some random line breaks to make it look like a poem', which is 95% of so-called contemporary poetry anyway.

I guess it matches what Ron Silliman dubbed the School of Quietude (which I don't entirely hate btw, depending on my mood and how competent the poet happens to be) back in the day.

Sorry, sometimes my sarcasmeter is a little off!

Another example of an acclaimed poet whose work is just godawful is Kaveh Akbar: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90975/despite-my-efforts-even-my-prayers-have-turned-into-threats

That guy has a visiting professorship at an elite MFA program and is also the poetry editory for The Nation, and I'm like, "this isn't poetry, it's emotional manipulation." awful dreck.

I lol'd @ 'like a sponge / cowboy in water'.

The deliberate (I assume?) callout to William Carlos Williams doesn't help.

Right? It's obviously, like, not good.

I love a lot of what is called "movement" poetry of the 70s-90s— I think so much of it is vital, necessary, and complex work that continues to resonate with the few readers it has.

But somewhere along the line, the perennial popularity of confessional lyricism commingled with a directive sensibility that wasn't aimed at larger social problems or causes, but was inward-facing regarding problems of identity and marginalization. As a result, even many poets whose politics I share write poetry that is emotionally manipulative, "closed" poetry, that tells the reader how they're supposed to feel about it.

As for an example of "movement" poetry, I think immediately of Judy Grahn's "A Woman is Talking to Death," which should be in every anthology of contemporary American poetry, but probably won't ever be because she's a working class dyke who hates capitalism. https://poets.org/poem/woman-talking-death

It's hard to overstate my adoration for that poem— it hurts.

I need another run at that but jesus, extraordinary. Thank you for sharing.

I don’t read poetry very often but just finished Vertigo & Ghost, which I recommend, and I’ve ordered a new collection by a Canadian Instagram friend, P4ul Vermeersch, that looks really good

I like the Trethewey poem, and Trethewey in general -- I find her an interesting poet to read aloud, and surprisingly challenging to read well -- but I've already established that my tastes in poetry are quite middlebrow.

And that's fine, obviously. I should say, though, that I have read some other poems by Tretheway, and often find her work much more interesting than the poem that was posted, which was just...really middle-brow, lol.

Also many xps to Chinaski, but introducing people to that Grahn poem is something I plan on doing for the rest of my days. It's simply extraordinary, isn't it?

It really is. I've been pondering it since and there's a bunch of stuff that I need to process. And I'm already thinking about people I'm going to share it with!

t is straightforward, memory-based narrative addressed to a dead loved one that is supposed to evoke something mysterious and ineffable, but is in fact just a bunch of lines thrown together without much intention.
Yes, straightforward, memory-based narrative, chosen because I think this is basically what she always does, though more tethered to the fishin' line reportage than is strictly necessary or entirely typical---like I said, "not bad for something that explains itself, though an impulsive choice, sorry. Yes, supposed to evoke something, but not mysterious and ineffable. if only that were a little more true, and she hadn't splained while showing the playback. also "supposed" doesn't go with just a bunch of lines thrown together without much intention., unless you mean she didn't think it through, or not deeply enough. Think it's more about trusting yourself and the reader, seeing how much more you can leave out and still hit the notes,
Which reminds me, mark s has referred to the Beatles as middlebrow, which is fine, middlebrow is not the worst thing, as I'm sure you know, but nerts to those who find it such a perfect dismissal. (She's never the Beatles, but even in this verse, she's okay.)

kay ryan's my favorite poet fwiw

'I'm just gonna say some asinine, vaguely wistful recollected-in-tranquillity shit in prose then add some random line breaks to make it look like a poem', which is 95% of so-called contemporary poetry anyway. Not sure about the percentage, since I don't read that much poetry, but agree about the "tendency," which often seems dutiful, school-paper--y, but this particular poem, though I shouldn't have chosen it, is not nearly as bad as you describe it, get back Jo Jo!

probably not very much to your taste though table xp

Kay Ryan packs a lot of gnomic wit in her verse; the wit's in the enjambments. I'll take her over Ammons (whom I like, I must say).

this is probably my favorite of ryan's poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40887/the-fabric-of-life

they all work this way so it's truly you either like it or dislike it on impact, even though i remember say uncle growing on me extremely as i progressed through it

"don't look back" also slaps imo https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=39960

i just like that they're these compressed ideas that internally rhyme

I used to try keeping up with anglophone poetry when I was younger. Of the 'bigger' (more like mid-tier, celebrity-wise) post-1980 (ish) American poets I remember enjoying, I had a soft spot for Michael Palmer, Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Clark Coolidge, Cole Swensen and… I'm forgetting lots.

i have very basic taste in poetry mostly because i don't like poems or poets v much to begin with. i dated a poet once and in briefly inhabiting that circle i discovered it was somehow worse than new york media

that grahn poem is incredible table, let me be another person to thank you for sharing it

Here's one for the art vs artists thread: I like poetry but I hate poets.

I mean, not exactly (I don't hate table, for one ;)), but you get my drift.

I'm rereading Rita Dove. What do we think of her?

Ha, well Brad, I would never date another poet. I never have, in fact, something I am rather proud of.

As far as poetry tastes in general, while I can easily categorize and place and judge other poets and poems, at the end of the day, I also know that my own preferences are usually so far outside any sort of visibility or popular attention that I find it difficult to spend too much time worrying about stuff I don't like.

That doesn't mean I don't wish the stuff I like was more popular, but I also realize that not many want to read Dorothy Lusk or Prynne or whatever.

lol i dated and then married a poet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

in spite of the steady stream of poetry books entering our apartment i haven't read much poetry at all lately, mostly occupied with novels at the moment (which is funny because a few years ago i went through a whole anti-novel thing and mostly read poetry. circle of life etc). but whenever i get back to that place i've got a pretty sizable to-read pile here (including your new one, T!)

i mean tbf i was very much in love with the poet i dated. otherwise generally recommend never dating writers

I'm rereading Rita Dove. What do we think of her?

She has only four mentions on ILX, including the two on this thread.

Rita Dove is okay. She has a sense of the line that I can get behind, even if I think some of her work falls into the 'dilatory epiphanic' mode that so annoys me.

Isn't "Dilatory Epiphanic" a Paul Simon song?

Lol

I only know Thomas and Beulah

Diane di Prima passed away today. One of the greats and one of the few left of her generation. Her kind and generous spirit will be missed.