"My Brother's Insomnia" by Eric Pankey – Verse Daily, March 5, 2015

from Crow-Work (Milkweed Editions, 2015)
poem found here
 

First lines:
A boy ties (but will not remember how)
An intricate knot that slips at the slightest tug.
 

the action of the prosaic and poetic

 

Editing note: I am rather unsatisfied with how this post turned out. I tried to keep it short (or as short as I could manage) and now wonder if the presentation suffers for it. I plan to return to this in a few days; though I am not sure what will result. — March 20

 

Continuing in the stream of the examination of texts by way of the material and ideational axes, we have this work which came up on the Verse Daily site. It presents an opportunity to look at the ideation axis from both the prosaic and the poetic within one, short poem. Hopefully, the very local contrast will go toward developing the ideas.

The post will be in two parts. The first will focus upon that functioning of the prosaic and poetic within the text. After that, I would like to pick up a couple specific moments in the poem for exploration.

 

I divide the poem into three: the first stanza; stanzas 2 and 3; and the final part, stanzas 4-6. I believe the poem rather divides itself in this manner. Though, I could see a person making a fourth section out of the final stanza, so the division is in part motivated by how I want to talk about the poem.

I'll start in stanza 4. On the surface, in the narrative, it gives two actions by the boy, two things the boy does when he cannot sleep, both of which are operated through holding his breath. Sometimes he silences his body and pretends he is dead. Other times he silences his body to listen to the very quiet sounds of the world around him. Only, the line does not say "pretends":

"Bible Study" by Tony Hoagland, Poetry Magazine

from Poetry (March 2015)
poem found here
 

First lines:
Who would have imagined that I would have to go
a million miles away from the place where I was born
 

returning to the definition of poetry

 

The previous post, about the moment from Frozen, was meant to set up a theme for upcoming posts: texts with instances where attention to detail – or the lack thereof – has a discernible effect upon the experience and reception of the text. But you take what you get. "Bible Study" perhaps could be used to that end, but I find it might find greater use if brought as an example (or test case) for the theme that was overtly present in many of the posts over the last year: that of the question of "what is 'poetry'?"; more specifically, the verse-prose, poetic-prosaic axes that I began discussing in the post about the work "Hymn to Life" (another text found on the electronic pages of the Poetry site).

I have said it before but it bears repeating: The single most troublesome event for me in writing this blog is the use of the words poetry, poem, and poet. Since I have not (and will not) take time with every post at the first use of either word to give once again definition as they are used on this blog, it is assured that most people, when they read these posts, will wholly – and I mean entirely – misread the words. The words play within two contexts: the popular and the literary ("literary," here, as in the academic or "serious" discourse about literature). Within popular usage, it is fair to have "poetry" be defined, to be blunt, as any text that visually looks like poetry (or, even, any text that seems like poetry to the speaker). After all the popular discourse is not based in theory or participant in criticism.[FN] The word can rightly serve a most general purpose.

******************************** [FN] As well, the word function primarily within the nomic – are mostly generic, convention driven – and the discourse of poplit seems only infrequently, less so genuinely, to be concerned with the aesthetic. But that is another discussion. ********************************

But in discourse about literature qua literature, the use of the word demands some degree of basis.

"Let it Go," from Frozen

Frozen directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee
"Let It Go" sung by Idina Menzel, written and composed by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez

 

an object lesson in brilliance

 

That's right. First post in a month; second in four months, and I'm going to Frozen. Not only Frozen but "Let It Go." As I said elsewhere, deal with it. (I'll get to Wallace Stevens in the end, so don't have a fit.)

This is the official (Disney UK) sing-a-long version of the song as found on Youtube. I have no idea how it might be possible, but if you speak English and have somehow avoided familiarity with the song, or if you haven't seen the movie itself, give a listen and a watch before we continue.

 

 

Sorry if that song get's stuck in your head. It's been playing in my brain for two weeks, now.

To say, if you haven't seen Frozen it is well worth the viewing. And while you're at it, you probably haven't seen Brave either and you should see that as well (it's even better than Frozen, though it's Pixar and Frozen is Disney). It was one of the best films produced in the US that year. I never thought I'd say it, but after Tangled (which is also really good) and Frozen, it looks like Pixar hooking up with Disney was a net positive for both sides. Creatively the two films are orders of magnitude above the pablum (if not occasional stupidity) Disney had been putting out over the previous many decades (ok, Hercules has its assets). And Frozen is a complete break from the normal Disney princess story-lines. But I digress.

My point of focus here is but three notes. And I am not concerned only with the song but with the song as part of the film: the events on the screen and the integration of the song with the events on the screen are both integral to my point. What I am going to do here is not complex or a deep analysis. I simply want you to see one moment in the music and film. To see that moment will require comparing it to the other two iterations of the that moment (the opening "let it go"s of the three choruses) later in the film. Hopefully I can set the stage here so you can see what I see. Once there, I have three rather simple conclusions. Simple, even perhaps obvious, but profound within the realm of creative endeavor.

Sam Coleridge Goes to the Superbowl

an exercise in deep reading

 

So, as I am sure everyone knows, there has been no small squall over "the play" that ended the Superbowl, Sunday last. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll has taken on a lot of abuse for the call that resulted in an interception and a victory for the Patriots: the most commonly uttered seven-word phrase in English today is "the dumbest play in Super Bowl history." Even I, at first glance, was questioning, "Why in the world didn't you run it?!?!" Though, quickly enough, I did come up with one possibility: Seattle had only one time-out in pocket, and three downs to get into the end zone. Calling a pass play on one of the first two downs (which would either result in a score or an incompletion) would save the time out for if a called running play fails to get in. If you ran on the first play, defense would know the odds of a pass play on the next would be much higher.

Admittedly, that is not the strongest of arguments; but, it is an argument. Since then I have found out a bit more information.

"Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot

poem can be found here

 

line construction, and sham or genuine poetics

– minor editing, Jan. 20, 2015
 
This post has been added to the Hatter's Cabinet site via its Best of the Poetry Daily Critique page
 

Perhaps it is not as often the case as once might have been, with pop-poetry being so inundated with bad free verse, if not defined by bad free verse, that the question of enjambement is one of the first, major, creative explorations in poetics for novices. Though, in truth, that statement does not fit my own experience with younger explorers of poetry. That experience points to that the natural tendency is to write in defined lines and explore through defined lines, even if not formal lines, and enjambement is a complexity added much later to that base idea. But then again, looking at poetry posting sites online, that individual experience may not be telling of the statistical norm. Irrespective, I know I am not the first person to say that free styling culture of poetry of the last half century has had a detrimental effect on the ability to read and hear poetic structure.

You would have to work to convince me that even a substantial minority of pop-poets have any real, organic idea of the line, or write their poetry through any such idea. There is far too much bad prose with line breaks being published in books and chapbooks and mags. This goes for formal poets as well, who to most appearances defer the considerations of writing lines (couplets, stanzas) to the mechanical procedure of rhythms and rhymes.

In my own introductions to writing poetry the idea of enjambement was something counter – contrapuntal – to the beginning want to write lines; it was an idea that was at the start not wholly trusted, something that had to be explored, justified, before being implemented. It was (for me) introduced through what I am sure are familiar phrases: a means to have the flow of the poem cross lines; a means to create importance or energy by varying from a norm within a poem of end-stopped lines. Given such justifications, my fellow, novice writers would merrily introduce enjambement into their writing – or increase its frequency if already present. They would then learn how to defend the use of the running lines through the same or similar phrasings: "It creates a more natural flow" or "It creates an interesting moment in its variation." And you will hear the same and similar justifications by poets higher up the learning curve, even for poetry that exhibits a dearth of end stopped lines. Lest I forget, there is also that most important one: "that is how contemporary poetry is written."

My Life by Lyn Hejinian

My Life (Sun & Moon Press, 1987) – apparently this is a second edition, differing from a 1980 edition also published by Sun & Moon Press.

 
Other works:

William S. Burroughs. The Soft Machine, The Ticket that Exploded, The Nova Express (Grove Press, originally published 1961, 1962, 1964)

Marjorie Perloff. The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the Pound Tradition (Northwestern UP, 1985).

 

a question of confidence; an issue of strength

 

Hejinian's My Life is usually classed as prose. But because of (1) the nature of the book, (2) Hejinian's relation to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and (3) the issues covered, it fits well on this site.

This full length essay has been posted as well to Hatters Cabinet site, here. On that page is a link to the essay in pdf format.

 

I have read Lyn Hejinian's My Life twice (if I remember correctly). And with "read" it should be understood that both times I was forcing my way through the book. I did not get to the end by the energies of the pleasure of reading; I got to the end because, for essentially academic reasons (if self-imposed), I felt it necessary: the first go through was because I felt I needed a basic familiarity with the book; the second was because I wanted to affirm or reject my first response. If that response has somehow evaded you in this paragraph I will be blunt: no, I do not hold My Life to be meritable literature.

I picked it up again a couple months ago (indeed, I pick it up here and there when I come across its name to test it yet again) and it has since sat within arm's reach at one reading place or another, though mostly I have only been re-reading the first few chapters. The reason I picked it back up this time was because I have recently finished re-reading Burroughs's Nova Trilogy, and wanted to explore the differences between the works, as both present a fragmentary text though of different methods and natures. (For the record, that was the second time I had read the Nova Trilogy straight through; though, unlike My Life, I first came to the trilogy because Naked Lunch and Cities of the Red Night had already made me an admirer of Burroughs.)

The question that I was and am exploring is a simple one: why do I revel in and praise Burroughs but am bored by and reject Hejinian?