i don't know, tom, i think it may just be more conceptually perspicious/fresh, but i couldn't really say at this point. seems like izenberg's trying to pull off a basic reorientation on the critical side rather than making apologetics from within particular poetics/writerly communities.
― j., Monday, 1 July 2013 20:40 (ten years ago) link
haha well that sounds like a recommendation to me!!
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Monday, 1 July 2013 20:42 (ten years ago) link
oh also it takes up yeats early on (so, trying to establish something outside the objectivist/langpo circle) and one of the chapters on oppen is about crusoe and wittgenstein and 'other minds'.
font is annoying tho.
― j., Monday, 1 July 2013 20:50 (ten years ago) link
I once tried to explain my admiration for Paul Muldoon to a young poet I know, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I opened a book to Muldoon’s poem “Yarrow”; she immediately balked: “I don’t like poems that look like that.” She meant poems written in regular stanzas. This isn’t anecdotal evidence; it’s an anecdote. Everyone I know has one.
still, isn't there something accurate in that reaction??
― j., Monday, 1 July 2013 21:07 (ten years ago) link
i am still totally undecided as to whether that's an okay opinion to hold
i am curious to see what he does with 'other minds', seeing as i spent my dissertation trying to ignore the fact that that was a thing
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Monday, 1 July 2013 21:10 (ten years ago) link
i mean i tend to think that a measure of respect to a fellow practitioner would include being open to the idea that there are good and bad poems like that and that it might be a worthwhile test of sympathy to try and see what appeal they hold to other people, and other boring democratic shit like that
hey woah the izenberg book is actually affordable, i guess i will get it come payday
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Monday, 1 July 2013 21:13 (ten years ago) link
there is that, but i dunno, there's a certain amount of obstruction to be overcome during the process of 'poetic education' and maybe people on the teacherly/pro-democratic-sympathy side are too wishful about how readily the obstruction can be swept away by charitable receptivity when the process really more often involves (a) forced subjection to poems one finds unpleasing, under the influence of credentialing/enculturating authority, (b) years/decades-long sequences of passing things by, just not getting them at all, mutual indifference/misunderstanding.
― j., Monday, 1 July 2013 21:25 (ten years ago) link
well partly i'm wistful about it because i have spent time trying to convince myself i can get past those particular blockages myself but yeah
annoyingly i have this nagging feeling i've read 'yarrow' somewhere but i can't find it in any of the muldoon i have
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Monday, 1 July 2013 21:42 (ten years ago) link
hey after years of distaste for rhymey verse i read some heine and some herrick that made it seem like a thing so there's always a chance
― j., Monday, 1 July 2013 22:16 (ten years ago) link
herrick's pretty cool right? at least an 8/10 poet
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Monday, 1 July 2013 22:27 (ten years ago) link
ratings + c17th poets too obvious me-bait. I'm ignoring it.
― woof, Tuesday, 2 July 2013 22:44 (ten years ago) link
7.2/10
haha please rate and rank the top 25 17th-c poets that come to mind
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Thursday, 4 July 2013 16:29 (ten years ago) link
no oh ok then, going to be a bit literal about timeframe, so it's some significant work done 1600-1700 (so no 'Shakespeare/Donne is fundamentally a late Elizabethan sensibility' etc). I should probably exclude dramatists but f it
TENShakespeare (2nd half of career)DonneMilton
NINEJonsonDrydenMarvell Rochester
EIGHTG. HerbertWebster Fulke Greville, Lord BrookeHenry Vaughan the SiluristHerrickLovelace
SEVENJohn OldhamBishop KingAphra BehnSir John DaviesThomas OtwayCrashaw William Drummond of HawthorndenKatherine Philips
SIXChapman, Drayton, Cotton, Traherne, Denham, maybe Garth, Cowley I guess… gets crowded down here, & I suspect some of the dramatic ppl like Fletcher or Dekker or Middleton should be higher if I'm willing to count Webster & Shakespeare but I just don't know/read them much. & there are people who float in and out down here, like I'll read some Flatman or Cleveland or Wroth and decide they're actually pretty good, but then won't remember why I thought that the following week.
― woof, Thursday, 4 July 2013 19:00 (ten years ago) link
I can't believe I just did that, horribly reductive
and what's SIr John Davies doing in there? He really is Elizabethan
― woof, Thursday, 4 July 2013 19:01 (ten years ago) link
Also, Crashaw should be higher
― woof, Thursday, 4 July 2013 19:02 (ten years ago) link
how many of those did you just completely make up on the spot, w/ yr poetic faculty
― j., Thursday, 4 July 2013 19:10 (ten years ago) link
no oh ok then
this is not the most convincing display of reluctance i have ever seen tbh
j. come on, how can you not want to read someone called Henry Vaughan the Silurist
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Thursday, 4 July 2013 20:07 (ten years ago) link
when i was studying for the lit GRE (god what a waste of time) i found myself thinking i would really enjoy just reading 17th c poetry for a few months. all i managed to do tho was read rochester twice
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Thursday, 4 July 2013 20:08 (ten years ago) link
<3 woof <3
― ✌_✌ (c sharp major), Thursday, 4 July 2013 20:09 (ten years ago) link
is that a profession or the name of a pernicious tendency or a provincial locality or what
― j., Thursday, 4 July 2013 20:44 (ten years ago) link
there was a point when i knew the answer to that
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Thursday, 4 July 2013 20:52 (ten years ago) link
It's his sort of antiquarian, sort of made-up word for Welsh. So locality basically.
― woof, Thursday, 4 July 2013 20:58 (ten years ago) link
Herbert i think i'd push up a bit. also <3 woof obv. Marvell's going up to ten not for consistency but for what he does when he does it - tho those nines are p solid and a hard league to escape from imo. Like Herrick but too high imo. Jonson???? walking to Scotland to meet W Drummond is all i remember. (I know f' all about 17th C poetry). lol@ Vaughan twins, obv soft spot for Ths.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 4 July 2013 21:11 (ten years ago) link
Rochester didn't used to get so much love 40 years ago. I'm glad to see he's rising in the world again.
― Aimless, Thursday, 4 July 2013 23:15 (ten years ago) link
maybe nothing ever happens to him so he's just gotta write about twizzlers and rappers.
― unprepared guitar (Edward III), Friday, April 5, 2013 5:28 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
haha this gets at it exactly
― HOOS it because...of steen???? (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, 28 August 2013 02:28 (ten years ago) link
what if twizzlers and rappers are what happen 2 u hmmmm?
― j., Wednesday, 28 August 2013 16:21 (ten years ago) link
im glad the warning was added to the thread title, i kept accidentally clicking it
― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, 28 August 2013 16:51 (ten years ago) link
Huh, never heard of this guy, but I like the samples reproduced on this thread. I definitely get a Mark Leyner vibe, in that it provokes a similar response to how I felt when I first encountered Leyner back in the day, ie., "You can do that in a poem (novel)!?" and both make me laugh, which is always a plus.
― o. nate, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 19:35 (ten years ago) link
well that was my long-ago (now) response to the seidel and robbins poems that muldoon put in the new yorker. i had forgotten that poetry could be funny. and entertaining. and still be decent poetry. i certainly forgot this reading the new yorker over the years. which is why i started the muldoon/new yorker thread. definitely refreshing. do i want all poetry to be like this? no. i think its cool that people who never buy poetry bought the robbins book though. like me. when was the last example of that? brautigan probably. ginsberg before him. unless you count rod mckuen. actually, maya angelou would be a more recent example. michael robbins and maya angelou should go on a world tour.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 19:42 (ten years ago) link
Sadly it seems harder to think of poets who are both funny and good than it should be. In addition to Ginsberg and Brautigan, I guess I would include Frank O'Hara, Philip Larkin, hmm... running out of names. I guess I don't find Ashbery very funny. I probably need to read more poetry.
― o. nate, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 20:02 (ten years ago) link
Oh yeah, Charles Simic can be kind of funny.
― o. nate, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 20:13 (ten years ago) link
my kids thought the robbins book was hysterical. i read almost the whole thing to them and maria when i got it.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 20:25 (ten years ago) link
I guess one question in my mind is how much of Robbins' effect depends on being transgressive or shocking - because that kind of thing tends to have a short shelf-life. Not many people still listen to Lenny Bruce.
― o. nate, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 20:36 (ten years ago) link
you gotta live or die by your words. his poems read really well and are a lot of fun to read aloud. will people want to read them in 50 years? who knows?
― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 20:51 (ten years ago) link
Good point. I'm not really worrying about people 50 years hence. More like whether these are poems I'll want to re-read. "Worried" is probably too strong a word. I've read some of them twice now, and so far they are holding up!
― o. nate, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 20:56 (ten years ago) link
missed this one:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/books/ct-prj-0908-poetry-essay-20130906-1,0,7411339,full.story
― scott seward, Saturday, 14 September 2013 01:51 (ten years ago) link
'take my american poetry, please!'
― j., Saturday, 14 September 2013 21:10 (ten years ago) link
man septemberrrrr but i wanna read internet excerpts nowwwwwwww
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MD4Lv8NLL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
― j., Tuesday, 18 February 2014 21:55 (ten years ago) link
oh boy
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Tuesday, 18 February 2014 22:02 (ten years ago) link
j., you can! 12 of the poems have been published online (in The New Yorker, Poetry, Commonweal, The Economy, Hazlitt, Lemon Hound, & The Walrus).
― murk, Saturday, 22 February 2014 15:50 (ten years ago) link
well that sounds like a needless hassle, what am i, a poetry hunter-gatherer, this is late late web 2.0 capitalism, where's my commodity (that other people will buy and type from)
― j., Saturday, 22 February 2014 22:40 (ten years ago) link
boo
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/book-reviews/he-who
― j., Monday, 24 February 2014 18:08 (ten years ago) link
you need to work on yr google skillz
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-springtime-chicago-november
― murk, Tuesday, 25 February 2014 03:36 (ten years ago) link
also, website w/ links: michaelrobbinspoet.tumblr.com
― murk, Tuesday, 25 February 2014 03:37 (ten years ago) link
it's too late now that i know he thinks 'naturalism appears incoherent'
― j., Tuesday, 25 February 2014 04:55 (ten years ago) link
he's me, & he's right. you don't have to be a theist to figure that out. read john mcdowell. also, lol at the usual atheist bigotry. see ya.
― murk, Tuesday, 25 February 2014 05:35 (ten years ago) link
murk if you are actually M.R. you should know that Grado headphones are not acceptable in a library environment because they are "open" style headphones and thus leak sound, it's very annoying
― boxall, Tuesday, 25 February 2014 05:39 (ten years ago) link
you know, you're actually quite right about that. i bought some noise-canceling sennheisers recently & tho they're lower grade than the grados my ipod sounds better on them. also less leakage.
sorry for being cranky, but deciding not to read someone's work because of his philosophical or religious beliefs is just dumb, unless he's a nazi or something, & even then ...
― murk, Tuesday, 25 February 2014 05:43 (ten years ago) link