i'm reading david antin's talking at the boundaries. what poetry are you reading?
― mustread guy (schlump), Tuesday, 31 December 2013 17:58 (nine years ago) link
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 agreementthat is you decide that you have a relationship with each otherwhich is of such an order that you haveappetite for each otherinterest in each other fondness for each otherwhatever the word means you love each other so to speakbut you dont have any control of each otherthat isas soon as anybody feels some other impulse he/she goes makes it with whoever he/she wantsyou can try thatits difficultand i know this kind of experienceits the kind of experience that takes awaya kind of evennessa kind of funny unpressured lifethat isit puts life at the pressure of a romantic adventurebecause anything can dissociate into its separate parts at any momentyou can always at the moment of an adventure disappear from somebody else
― mustread guy (schlump), Tuesday, 31 December 2013 17:59 (nine years ago) link
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.
― mustread guy (schlump), Tuesday, 31 December 2013 18:02 (nine years ago) link
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.
― creating an ilHOOSion usic sight and sound (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Tuesday, 31 December 2013 18:12 (nine years ago) link
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 PulveriseFigured 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.
― JacobSanders, Tuesday, 31 December 2013 18:25 (nine years ago) link
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 OverJack 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.
― mustread guy (schlump), Tuesday, 31 December 2013 19:57 (nine years ago) link
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.
― j., Tuesday, 31 December 2013 21:54 (nine years ago) link
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...
― confused subconscious U2 association (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 1 January 2014 00:40 (nine years ago) link
'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.
― JacobSanders, Wednesday, 1 January 2014 18:54 (nine years ago) link
I am only familiar with Jabes via Derrida's essays, which made him seem both brilliant & tedious
― confused subconscious U2 association (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 1 January 2014 23:56 (nine years ago) link
I think I would like to read what Derrida wrote about Jabes, which book is the essay from?
― JacobSanders, Thursday, 2 January 2014 00:53 (nine years ago) link
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(?)
― confused subconscious U2 association (bernard snowy), Thursday, 2 January 2014 02:20 (nine years ago) link
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
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 2 January 2014 18:03 (nine years ago) link
John Berryman - The Dream SongsMichael Robbins - Alien Vs Predator
Both discovered via ILB.
― o. nate, Thursday, 2 January 2014 18:28 (nine years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 2 January 2014 19:33 (nine years ago) link
mr bones vs predator, that would be good
― j., Thursday, 2 January 2014 19:59 (nine years ago) link
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)
― confused subconscious U2 association (bernard snowy), Friday, 3 January 2014 05:02 (nine years ago) link
TAKING SIDES: Rilke vs. Berryman-Robbins (aka 'Team Snark')
― confused subconscious U2 association (bernard snowy), Friday, 3 January 2014 05:05 (nine years ago) link
not reading him right now, but closely following developments in this r s thomas on crisp packets story.
― woof, Wednesday, 8 January 2014 16:15 (nine years ago) link
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.
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Friday, 31 January 2014 17:48 (nine years ago) link
also
https://twitter.com/alienvsrobbins/status/410099232586997760
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Friday, 31 January 2014 17:49 (nine years ago) link
what adrienne rich should i start with, do people think?
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Friday, 31 January 2014 17:50 (nine years ago) link
xp haha
― flopson, Friday, 31 January 2014 17:50 (nine years ago) link
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.
― o. nate, Saturday, 1 February 2014 02:00 (nine years ago) link
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
― one way street, Saturday, 1 February 2014 02:05 (nine years ago) link
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).
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 February 2014 02:19 (nine years ago) link
you can find a cheap Norton anthology of her selected works that also includes her (essential) essays
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 February 2014 02:20 (nine years ago) link
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
― mustread guy (schlump), Saturday, 1 February 2014 05:36 (nine years ago) link
wait go http://www.best-poems.net/adrienne_rich/poem-43.html for formatting
― mustread guy (schlump), Saturday, 1 February 2014 05:39 (nine years ago) link
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.
― _Rudipherous_, Saturday, 1 February 2014 17:04 (nine years ago) link
(I've at least read one of those Norton selected or collected poems of Rich's.)
― _Rudipherous_, Saturday, 1 February 2014 17:05 (nine years ago) link
Her Dickinson essay is fantastic!
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 February 2014 17:05 (nine years ago) link
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.)
― _Rudipherous_, Saturday, 1 February 2014 17:08 (nine years ago) link
'on lies, secrets, and silence' is a good essay collection
― j., Saturday, 1 February 2014 19:56 (nine years ago) link
i am going to post a short verse of a joseph ceravolo poem when i get home, get ready for it
― mustread guy (schlump), Saturday, 1 February 2014 21:40 (nine years ago) link
buckle up
my *selected berryman* showed up last night and man
those fuckin sonnets
"Maybe our safeties…come for our risk’s sake."
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 6 February 2014 16:26 (nine years ago) link
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 contextlike you needed the mess of the whole thinghe 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 muchmaybe i'll post it later
― mustread guy (schlump), Thursday, 6 February 2014 17:55 (nine years ago) link
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
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 6 February 2014 19:01 (nine years ago) link
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.
― Aimless, Thursday, 6 February 2014 19:02 (nine years ago) link
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.
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 6 February 2014 19:04 (nine years ago) link
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.
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, 12 February 2014 21:10 (nine years ago) link
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.
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, 13 February 2014 01:08 (nine years ago) link
there is just so much in Olds; they're not even so panoramic, just so full and imaginable. three a day, max.
― mustread guy (schlump), Thursday, 13 February 2014 03:09 (nine years ago) link
& wait is TDATL the recent one?
nah its one from the early 80s.
― i have the new brutal HOOS if you want it (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 13 February 2014 03:41 (nine years ago) link
Petrarch b/w English Alliterative Revival stuff; then a reading of Villon's Testament to close the middle ages
― my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy), Thursday, 13 February 2014 17:25 (nine years ago) link
newyear
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 28 February 2014 20:50 (nine years ago) link
Seaton's version of Cold Mountain Poems.
― Aimless, Friday, 28 February 2014 20:52 (nine years ago) link
read a.e. housman's 'a shropshire lad' on my kindle a few weeks ago. uneven but some great stuff.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 28 February 2014 21:15 (nine years ago) link
I'm rereading Rita Dove. What do we think of her?
― Erdős-szám 69 (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 1 October 2020 01:27 (three years ago) link
She has only four mentions on ILX, including the two on this thread.
― Erdős-szám 69 (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 1 October 2020 01:54 (three years ago) link
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.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Thursday, 1 October 2020 12:26 (three years ago) link
Isn't "Dilatory Epiphanic" a Paul Simon song?
― Erdős-szám 69 (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 1 October 2020 12:27 (three years ago) link
Lol
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Thursday, 1 October 2020 15:51 (three years ago) link
I only know Thomas and Beulah
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 October 2020 15:53 (three years ago) link
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.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Monday, 26 October 2020 03:09 (three years ago) link
Aimless that macniece you posted in april last year was the ticket and no mistake
― your own personal qanon (darraghmac), Thursday, 1 April 2021 00:04 (two years ago) link
yeah I remember being really struck by that one
― k3vin k., Thursday, 1 April 2021 00:08 (two years ago) link
Muireadh dhea you're at least ninety percent irish by poetry alone at this stage yrself
― your own personal qanon (darraghmac), Thursday, 1 April 2021 00:14 (two years ago) link
I'm at the point in the term where I'm so exhausted I can't really read anything at all but have been sitting up and browsing Frank O'Hara when I can't sleep. His profligacy allows for a lightness of reading and the tumble of images, the sense of movement, the roll call of names and places scrolling by in a great horny rush is oddly soothing. CK Stead wrote about Shakespeare that even at his most clotted, his eyes and his mind, like those of a runner are set well ahead of his feet and I love that sense of O'Hara flooding the page with sense impressions.
Anyway, this caught my eye last night:
Mayakovsky
1My heart’s aflutter!I am standing in the bath tubcrying. Mother, motherwho am I? If hewill just come back onceand kiss me on the facehis coarse hair brushmy temple, it’s throbbing!
then I can put on my clothesI guess, and walk the streets.
2I love you. I love you,but I’m turning to my versesand my heart is closinglike a fist.
Words! besick as I am sick, swoon,roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare downat my wounded beautywhich at best is only a talentfor poetry.
Cannot please, cannot charm or winwhat a poet!and the clear water is thick
with bloody blows on its head.I embrace a cloud,but when I soaredit rained.
3That’s funny! there’s blood on my chestoh yes, I’ve been carrying brickswhat a funny place to rupture!and now it is raining on the ailanthusas I step out onto the window ledgethe tracks below me are smoky andglistening with a passion for runningI leap into the leaves, green like the sea
4Now I am quietly waiting forthe catastrophe of my personalityto seem beautiful again,and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey andbrown and white in trees,snows and skies of laughteralways diminishing, less funnynot just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day ofthe year, what does he think ofthat? I mean, what do I? And if I do,perhaps I am myself again.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 2 July 2021 18:07 (two years ago) link
Actually relatively housebound for O'Hara? I get a bit of Dylan Thomas from this; maybe some Hart Crane.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 2 July 2021 18:10 (two years ago) link
Also Kafka's The Lost Writings, published in translation by Michael Hofmann last year. And very rainy day relatable just now; thanks.
― dow, Friday, 2 July 2021 20:29 (two years ago) link
maybe especially:what a funny place to rupture!and now it is raining on the ailanthusas I step out onto the window ledgethe tracks below me are smoky andglistening with a passion for runningI leap into the leaves, green like the sea
― dow, Friday, 2 July 2021 20:31 (two years ago) link
Love that O'Hara poem
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Saturday, 3 July 2021 21:42 (two years ago) link
Jim Morrison's poem "Ode to L.A. While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased" was distributed at each of The Doors two July 21, 1969 shows at the Aquarius Theatre in Los Angeles. Jim Morrison died exactly two years after Brian Jones on July 3, 1971, both of them were 27 yrs old. pic.twitter.com/fpltB6MyZi— Wendy O'Rourke (@wendyOrourke) July 3, 2019
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 3 July 2021 21:58 (two years ago) link
I prefer God Star
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Saturday, 3 July 2021 22:11 (two years ago) link
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/05/27/lovesick-for-a-god/
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 23 July 2021 23:25 (two years ago) link
hans arp
― dogs, Friday, 30 July 2021 16:59 (two years ago) link
read that nyrb article when that issue came out and definitely made me interested. how is it?
― k3vin k., Friday, 30 July 2021 22:44 (two years ago) link
Clayton Eshleman died last year. Years ago on ILB I posted the single fact I knew about him, found in the biography of Zukofsky by Scroggins. The poem mentioned was called "The Moistinsplendour" and it appeared in the Spring 1968 issue of Caterpillar. Last month I read the biography of Lorine Niedecker by Peters, and Niedecker disliked that poem too. That motivated me to dig it up. Google found the title in Eshleman's book Indiana, published in 1969, which would be right. Google didn't lie, but it turns out Eshleman used the word in a different poem, and the poem of that title isn't collected there. It's a nice-looking book from Black Sparrow, and at 178 pages it's a substantial collection of poetry. I've been trying to understand why so little of the poetry worked. The bad judgment evidenced by that anecdote wasn't a one-off, it's throughout the book. Separately, I was waiting for a transfiguration of all those personal musings into poetry. Eshleman never managed it, though he tried very hard (possibly too hard). I was reminded of watching someone flick his cigarette lighter over and over but never start a flame. There were some fun passages, though.
I come in fury against Robert Bly & the Falsifiers of the animal.Swindle cloaked in spiritum - Robert Kelly - but more true:I see Robert Kelly exercising in the Valley of Death.Robert Lowell is the Wickerman of Scandinavia: Merton theSpectre of Hart Crane.Must Barbara be expelled to cast out Johnson?
Swindle cloaked in spiritum - Robert Kelly - but more true:I see Robert Kelly exercising in the Valley of Death.
Robert Lowell is the Wickerman of Scandinavia: Merton theSpectre of Hart Crane.
Must Barbara be expelled to cast out Johnson?
It was all an unnecessary detour, because the issue of Caterpillar is here with the poem I was looking for. Relevant sample:
OUR MASSTURBINED INTO MAREEEEEEEE,flunkingyou,fuckit outa you,fuckit outa you,our Lady in the Seaops groindorueating, at the base of the treethere aint no Artaud thing to rehearseno Louis eating Celia wirejawed retrieverlocked in its curse, lower level,to aim at who are human,now regenerated youd suckoff Zukofskywho wld suckoff you means you nolonger play by their games.
lower level,to aim at who are human,now regenerated youd suckoff Zukofskywho wld suckoff you means you no
longer play by their games.
Well, that would put off the hypersensitive, uxorious, 64-year-old Zukofsky. Eshleman really does seem to be purging himself of him.
This is a kristMassDECK THE HALLS Out old Fustum out ZukofskyOut old Blakam
Out old Fustum out ZukofskyOut old Blakam
Eshleman reminds me of Vachel Lindsay, a sort of headlong un-self-aware carrying on in the wrong direction.
― alimosina, Wednesday, 2 March 2022 02:55 (one year ago) link
Eshleman was a terrible poet but a fine editor and an incredible translator-- his work on Césaire is enough to endear him to me for life.
But yeah, his poetry is...awful. Jerry Rothenberg his friend was the same way, incredible editor and critic, but his poetry was just abysmal
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Wednesday, 2 March 2022 03:03 (one year ago) link
Reading Robert Kelly pic.twitter.com/nK4bqpOWGa— Charlotte Mandell (@avecsesdoigts) March 18, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 28 March 2022 22:42 (one year ago) link
"Clayton Eshleman died last year"
I love his work on Vallejo's poetry.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 28 March 2022 22:43 (one year ago) link
can't say i much liked the one kelly collection i've read, but should give him another go, i guess.
still need to make a start on the césaire translation mentioned above. have had it sitting around for over a decade now.
only poetry i've read in an age is orlando furioso which probably doesn't count as it was translated into prose (still good though!)
& mention of clark coolidge's name here/other ilb threads was ringing a bell for me... turns out it's because he played drums for serpent power :-O
― no lime tangier, Tuesday, 29 March 2022 05:41 (one year ago) link
nlt, Coolidge is/was a very accomplished jazz drummer. He's written some about jazz, too.
Kelly is very hit or miss for me. There's a bit too much self-conscious feeling "mysticism" in his work for me to really latch onto anything too much, tho a friend of mine was his student and swears by him, and one of my favorite poets (Kenneth Irby) was good friends with him.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 March 2022 14:38 (one year ago) link
I've only encountered Kelly via Charlotte's twitter. In the main I really connect with what is flowing out of him but I've not actually sat down with a book of his.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 31 March 2022 07:08 (one year ago) link
Or not reading.
Across the hall was Hannah. She'd been a normal, middle class housewife, married to an accountant or something in Connecticut or somewhere. Then she had taken LSD, or lots of LSD, and her life had gone on a little detour. Now she lived alone in the East Village, saw words on her forehead, and made poems out of them.Years later, I was in a used book store and actually saw her book. There was a picture of Hannah's pleasant, loppy face beaming out from the cover. Written on her forehead in crayon was, "I See Words on My Forehead." I wonder how many copies were sold.
Years later, I was in a used book store and actually saw her book. There was a picture of Hannah's pleasant, loppy face beaming out from the cover. Written on her forehead in crayon was, "I See Words on My Forehead." I wonder how many copies were sold.
-- John Lurie
Lurie might well have been bemused. I have looked into Hannah Weiner's Open House and it was painful to read. Code Poems was great, but what the poetry world makes of her later ramblings I don't know. Having been the lifeline for nearly 20 years of a close friend suffering from schizophrenia, I loathe mental illness and all its works.
― alimosina, Monday, 30 May 2022 22:06 (one year ago) link
fwiw that book he mentions goes for a fair amount of money these days
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Monday, 30 May 2022 23:44 (one year ago) link
i've read 'spoke' and 'the fast' by hannah weiner in the last couple of years, both - the latter particularly - are great
― dogs, Wednesday, 1 June 2022 17:48 (one year ago) link
Ammons, Tape for the Turn of the YearAmmons, Sphere
― alimosina, Friday, 9 September 2022 19:15 (one year ago) link
I Share My Bed with a Large Dog
After I’ve rumpled the sheetswrestled and tossed and turnedAfter I’ve seen you shake in your dreamsand pulled you back from your apprehensions
After the deep breathing and chests heaving stretching and whining and wide yawning snoresAfter the first sun shows on the ceilingslips down the wall, the dresser, the floor
After your nose starts to sound like a whistle I raise my phone to check in on the weatherAfter you have seen me move you feel betterYour brown eyes wide open and paw pads like leather
only after that —and after the your sharp elbows rib my core —only after all of that could we crawl out of bed
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 02:14 (one year ago) link
sorry, i meant that for another thread
sure you did
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 5 October 2022 02:23 (one year ago) link
for me: Beowulf!
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 5 October 2022 02:24 (one year ago) link
i truly did!
which translation?
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 02:33 (one year ago) link
The Heaney one after a friend said I must.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 5 October 2022 09:31 (one year ago) link
Saner, So This Is The Map
― alimosina, Sunday, 30 October 2022 00:18 (one year ago) link
I picked up a collection of Robinson Jeffers's poetry lately and have been reading his epic narrative poem, Tamar. I guess I don't read a lot of narrative poems, especially 20th century ones, but the material strikes as being a rather strange basis for writing a long poem about. A family living on an isolated stretch of the California coast is troubled by incest and madness. Maybe the point will become clearer by the end.
― o. nate, Monday, 31 October 2022 02:35 (one year ago) link
picked up Louis MacNiece's Autumn Journal last night. been a while since i read it, but it turns out i was exactly in the right mood. the mixture of poetic and more, well, 'journal' like cadences is very appealing - the a, b, c, b rhymes and half rhymes in the first section are one example of that, but so are the slightly awkward quotidian observations and considerations that don't quite fit into the poetic - either for reasons of scansion or register. the 'then, but then again' arguments – little palinodes, to use a word MacNeice uses early on of the retraction of summer to autumn - appropriate to someone observing and discussing with themselves. Emotional content closely linked with the immediate context and reminders, whether on the train up to London with his dog.
One line early on doesn't make sense to me, and I was going to take it to the poetry interpretation thread, but it's difficult to state the problem without citing all of the first section. That first section is very clear, and then, in that train up to London with his dog, 'a symbol of the abandoned order' who
Lies on the carriage floor,Her eyes inept and glamorous as a film star's, Who wants to live, ie wants morePresents, jewellery, furs, gadgets, solicitations As if to live were notFollowing the curve of a planet or controlled water But a leap in the dark, a tangent, a stray shot.
Although there are some complications here, they're not hugely difficult, but I actually understand what 'controlled water' means. By analogy of the eliptical orbit 'curve of a planet', the 'controlled water' might mean a similar arc - but making water, that is having a piss, seems, to say the least, not right here. so is he talking about water out of a hose? That's as good as I can manage here, but it's not very satisfactory. Otherwise, i'm not at all clear.
― Fizzles, Monday, 31 October 2022 07:51 (one year ago) link
Controlled water is a weird term that does exist. In the context of this I read it two ways:As if to live were notFollowing the curve of a planet or controlled waterSo the first refers to the tides, no? The moon is earth’s satellite and in its orbit. However the moon also influences the tides. The tides exist as they do because the moon’s gravitational pull controls them. Tides are gradual, they erode cliffs and carve out the coastline over time. Controlled water is a really weird term. Could refer to a lot of things within this context - rivers carving their pathways out, the effect of water on the natural landscape, the efforts to keep said bodies of water fit for consumption or to manage them in some way. It’s a long term project because of the delicacy of the ecosystem. Idk, that’s the best I have. It is a weird line.
― barry sito (gyac), Monday, 31 October 2022 08:54 (one year ago) link
I don't know that poem, but coming after "curve of a planet" the phrase "controlled water" suggests to me the idea of the curious way gravity keeps all the water on the planet, trapped in a ball. It seems impossible that it all stays so neatly in shape rather than spilling out into space, but that is how physics works. And if that is the way the whole universe is set up, how crazy is it to expect (as the dog doesm as we do) that we might defy those forces and leap into the dark, go off on tangents, etc.
― Eyeball Kicks, Monday, 31 October 2022 10:34 (one year ago) link
yep, i hadn't considered tides or that wider gravitational effect - seems very possible. my overall reading of the passage is that there is a difference between the life that recognises it follows a curve of forces and tensions torquing against each other, creating a defined, if mysterious, path, rather than a set of more or less accidental or arbitrary incidents, almost frivolous, without connexion.
the implication is not fate at work, as such, but capturing the path between intersecting movements... from summer to autumn, in the train's movement, in *movement's* movement, in people's movement:
Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire,Ebbing away down ramps of shaven lawn where close-clipped yewInsulates the lives of retired generals and admirals
(the opening lines)
And the rebels and the youngHave taken the train to town or the two-seaterUnravelling rails or roadLosing the thread deliberately behind them -Autumnal palinode.And I am in the train nowq too and summer is goingSouth as I go north
^ those last lines exactly what I mean by that torque created by intersecting forces.
― Fizzles, Monday, 31 October 2022 11:30 (one year ago) link
this has now turned into a post that sits better on the other thread!
As if to live were notFollowing the curve of a planet or controlled water
I agree that the use of "controlled water" is perplexing. I like the suggestion of the arc of water from a hose or from a man taking a piss, but I suspect he probably meant something about navigating a river or canal, e.g. following the bend in a river.
It seems the prevalence of the term "controlled water" was rising rapidly in the 1930s, and has since fallen.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=controlled+water&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=29&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true&direct_url=t4%3B%2Ccontrolled%20water%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bcontrolled%20water%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BControlled%20Water%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BControlled%20water%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BCONTROLLED%20WATER%3B%2Cc0
― o. nate, Friday, 4 November 2022 15:29 (one year ago) link
The Early Poems of Yvor Winters 1920-28
― alimosina, Sunday, 21 May 2023 04:36 (six months ago) link
Now we’ve no hope of going back,cutter, to that grey quaywhere we moored twice and twice unwillingly cast off our cables to put out at the slack when the sea’s laugh was choked to a mutter and the leach lifted hesitantly with a stutter and sulky clack, how desolate the swatchways look, cutter …
… We have no course to set,only to drift too long, watch too glumly, and wait,wait.
Basil Bunting, Perche no Spero
― Slays two. Found gassed. Thinks of cat. (Chinaski), Saturday, 9 September 2023 21:16 (two months ago) link
why would he want to go back to that? Does he say?
― dow, Saturday, 9 September 2023 23:18 (two months ago) link
Oh wait, at least he wasn't here, right? I know the feeling.
― dow, Saturday, 9 September 2023 23:19 (two months ago) link
McMichael, Four Good Things
― alimosina, Tuesday, 31 October 2023 22:28 (one month ago) link