Rolling Contemporary Poetry

that's kind of how i feel about all poetry tho

I saw Jorie Graham give a talk and a Q&A once and she was lucid and compelling, and I was like, Oh! I like her when she speaks directly!

yup, with cardamon here. I think of her as epitome of in-the-academy US poetry.

got bought John Burnside's The Hunt in the Forest for birthday. Clearly a good poet, finding the repeatedly used tools (woods, darkness, illness, slaughter) a bit tiresome. It's enjoyable, but there aren't many 'Yes!' bits really. I like best his less freighted depictions of nature - esp winter, drizzle, that sort of thing, and he's at his best in this where extremes of darkness, death, insubstantiality, dying etc are replaced by things attenuated by... well, atmospheric dreariness I guess. I like his general approach, and the pastoral of cancer, illness and sensations of light and gloom, but it somehow doesn't quite hit the mark a lot of the time. Still good, still very pleased to get it.

yup, with cardamon here. I think of her as epitome of in-the-academy US poetry.

― woof, Friday, 21 June 2013 09:35 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

which american poet is the epitome of not-in-the-academy u.s. poetry?? not that i disagree with you, the biggest fan of hers i know is a hahvahd guy

i don't know i spelt it like that, he's not one of those harvard guys

I Watched a Snake

hard at work in the dry grass
behind the house
catching flies. It kept on
disappearing.
And though I know this has
something to do

with lust, today it seemed
to have to do
with work. It took it almost half
an hour to thread
roughly ten feet of lawn,
so slow

between the blades you couldn't see
it move. I'd watch
its path of body in the grass go
suddenly invisible
only to reappear a little
further on

black knothead up, eyes on
a butterfly.
This must be perfect progress where
movement appears
to be a vanishing, a mending
of the visible

by the invisible--just as we
stitch the earth,
it seems to me, each time
we die, going
back under, coming back up . . .
It is the simplest

stitch, this going where we must,
leaving a not
unpretty pattern by default. But going
out of hunger
for small things--flies, words--going
because one's body

goes. And in this disconcerting creature
a tiny hunger,
one that won't even press
the dandelions down,
retrieves the necessary blue-
black dragonfly

that has just landed on a pod . . .
All this to say
I 'm not afraid of them
today, or anymore
I think. We are not, were not, ever
wrong. Desire

is the honest work of the body,
its engine, its wind.
It too must have its sails--wings
in this tiny mouth, valves
in the human heart, meanings like sailboats
setting out

over the mind. Passion is work
that retrieves us,
lost stitches. It makes a pattern of us,
it fastens us
to sturdier stuff
no doubt.

presented without comment except that obviously the indenting is not meant to be like that.

which american poet is the epitome of not-in-the-academy u.s. poetry??

wcw!! at least then.

still riding that horse eh

shd I read emily berry / sam riviere / nick laird?

not sure I didn't get burned by sidereal

gonna ride that horse as long as eliot stans exist!!

eliot was so not in the academy he was working for lloyds of london or whatever

✌_✌ OTM, as per, re: Emily Berry's Dear Boy, above. Delighted to see the hitherto ineffable charms of post-swim vending machine Wheat Crunchies and the ball sack of Michaelangelo's David finally effed in verse.

i suppose the epitome of not-in-the-academy u.s. poetry is whatever posthumous bukowski collection came out this year

-

stevie i'm not sure those words in that order made sense

tumblr poets

i should have ever finished/sent you that collection of fantasy poems

haha yes. i think there is kind of a crossover between 'poets who have tumblrs' and 'mfa poets' tho tho i dont know if that is what you mean by 'tumblr poets'

i guess another answer is 'weird twitter' |:

In-the-academy poets tend to have a great deal in common, therefore it is a simpler matter to select an epitome from among that herd. Exoacademic poets are few and must travel strange paths to anything like prominence, so they share much less in common. Each one who attains any readership reigns in his own little kingdom apart. Bukowski is a good example.

I want to read the Berry myself - from a glance it seems really good.
I liked the Sam Riviere collection.
Every now and again I read something and think Laird might be alright, but actually really most of what I see by him reinforces my first instinct, from many years ago when I read a longish poem of his in a student anthology, which was that's he's not very good (tho' he makes all the right gestures) - solid box-ticker, too faber, idk quite what I'm trying to say.

which american poet is the epitome of not-in-the-academy u.s. poetry??

haha good q; and aimless otm I guess about various paths of poets outside the academy.

I think you can have a teaching post and not be an 'academic poet' in quite the sense we're talking about - but I am curious, which name US poets of the last thirty years say have not held a poetry/creative writing position somewhere in higher ed? (presumably but not necessarily on principle)

shd I read emily berry / sam riviere / nick laird?

Berry is I think better than Riviere, and also the most approachable, definitely the one you read if you read just one. So much of Riviere's charm for me is in the brattishness of his poetic persona, this feeling of the person who is still a precocious child in their late 20s. So he is clever and funny and mean but there is always (intentionally, in a way that i reckon a lot of time has been put into) this edge of petulance and slapdashness. Berry is more willing to use the conventional strengths - lyricism, tenderness, visible craft, the delicately chiming juxtaposition of images - and so the personality of them is less startling, especially as she's often writing stories rather than personal reflection.

but like both of them have got me back into poetry in a rly strong way so they are first in my heart

I have never read Laird.

i don't think he sits well with them. Feels like the previous generation.

the next generation is Lamp's fantasy poems i hope

I'd never heard of Patricia Lockwood before today, but damn.

she is so good always and she is amazing there.

she is such a well-turned writer and so sharp and apt of phrase, it's amazing to see that acuteness used on a poem with a warm body in it.

and it's kind of amazing to watch the retweets and comments rack up, the goodwill and admiration she's getting -- i feel so strongly that she deserves them. she had a poem published in the lrb last week too, which i was super happy about.

holy shit

Patricia Lockwood ‏@TriciaLockwood 5h
The real final line of "Rape Joke" is this. "You don't ever have to write about it. But if you do, you can write about it any way you want."

i don't really know anything about contemp poetry but read that earlier and was pretty blown away by it. kudos.

Holy shit

i like that poem a lot.

i like how she maintains her wit and composure while writing about an issue that is so sensitive, and with righteous anger, turning everything around and revealing callous people with dehumanizing attitudes to be the real "humorless" ones.

shd I read emily berry / sam riviere / nick laird?

You want the Carcanet New Poetries series.

The three mentioned above are 'dazzling' poets - hyped-up, london-based, references to cool contemporary stuff, occasional moments of angst, but not really actually very good poems tbh, tbf.

Some of Riviere can be found here:

http://clinicpresents.com/2011/07/22/a-new-sincerity-81-austerities-sam-riviere/

Of the Faber new poets pamphlets series the only one that's stuck around for me is Fiona Benson. She was doing a PhD about the character of Ophelia at the time, and you can tell, but there was a strong current and drive to the poems.

Of the others I found Underwood's to be an effective and friendly persona I didn't mind reading, but altogether a little too much like a young version of Poetry Society-sanctioned 'Contemporary British Poetry'. Martinez de las Rivas was the kind of poetry that puts people off experimental poetry. There was another Fiona (I think) who had titles like 'German Phenomenology makes me want to run naked through North London' and had a poem about 'My dad used to read me Kafka's short fiction at breakfast'.

I believe I've made my feelings clear about the American 'hip lit' or 'alt lit' or whatever it's called in the Tao Lin thread, but there's a particular blend of boredom and revulsion you get watching young British poets and a great British publishing house trying to catch that wave ... and not even being very good at it.

Also what do people think of this flavourwire list, any finders, any keepers?

http://flavorwire.com/406950/23-people-that-make-you-pay-attention-poetry/2

oh god of course there exists a clicky slideshow of young poets with minimal text, dear internet what alchemy you have wrought.

i have been reading the nathan hamilton-edited "dear world and everyone in it" new poetry in the uk anthology - a lot of it is just maddening, but some digs in and makes me stop with startled satisfaction. One poem I read while flicking through, felt the chime of this-feels-right, and then felt vaguely irritated with myself when I found out it was by Luke Kennard, like ugh, of course it is, how typical of me, seems i have a type.

Is dear world worth getting?

a clicky slideshow of young poets with minimal text

True in so many ways

the introduction to dear world is a tour de force

not necessarily a good one, but a tour de force nonetheless

i don't really know! i borrowed rather than bought it and so i can approach it w/o sunk costs to consider -- it is satisfying to me that it should contain so much stuff i dislike, because that reminds me that there is so much new poetry going on and i really don't have to care about or like all of it, but obviously that does not render it v.f.m.

I spose what annoys me about the current UK Poetry Kidz isn't actually the poetry itself. It seems like not a good look to get angry because someone wrote a poem, even if I don't like it. It's not like they're having the good life handed to them either, the royalties aren't like having a secure job in finance and even someone of Todd Swift's stature can still have a bottle of urine thrown on him by members of The Wanted as he walks through London on the way from his gym to his flat.

It's more the efforts on the part of established people in poetry writing and publishing to canonise this (very particular slice of) new poetry as 'The' new poetry. I mean, picking up and reading all those Faber pamphlets really isn't equivalent to 'seeing what young poets are writing today', as per the line so many reviewers have gone with.

A great claim is being made for them - not even a claim of potential but of achievement. The claim might not be being made by the writing itself, but man is it ever annoying reading Sean O'Brien and the rest of the creepy coupe when they pretend that Riviere, Berry, etc, are 'the' young generation of poets writing today.

Not least because it's bollocks that an established poet in the UK should need Faber pamphlets to show what was 'going on'. Anyway, I'll be over here with my lamp looking for one good man.

the clever ones tend to emigrate

i'm fairly new to the world of contemporary poetry but having read almost nothing but it for the past two months i would just like to say that lyn hejinian's 'my life' is totally stunning

i wrote a chunk of my ma thesis on a hejinian i never finished /:

she's really good, though, i think. i think ilx user 'j.' has been reading my life for plural years. hejinian's theoryish book is a good book to look at if you're getting involved in that like whole thing. i think most Contemporary Poet types would think of her as being quite old hat but i mean, those people.

yes i have.

i have yet to finish it.

but each time i do better. sustained attention to it pays dividends.

i would like to think that if ilx user 'the pinefox' were to read it he would have reservations about its intelligibility but grudgingly admit that it really is something.

i tried to teach it once. boy did i have to try to back out of that.

while browsing the poetry section at B***** & N****, I picked up a book by Brian Russell (whose name is uncannily similar to that of a friend of mine), The Year of What-Next--it is about terminal illness, but in a good way