"My God, It's Full of Stars" and Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011)
poem found online at Poetry Foundation site here
 

First lines:
We like to think of it as parallel to what we know,
Only bigger. One man against the authorities.
 

reading selectively and reading collectively — another demonstration that reading well means close reading

minor editing, an added footnote, and moving a bit to the end — 7/31/2014

This post has been added to the Hatter's Cabinet site via its Best of the Poetry Daily Critique page
 

This post focuses on "My God, It's Full of Stars" because it has been published online in Poetry Magazine. Though, I will take the opportunity to reach out from the one poem and give some consideration to the Pulitzer winning book Life on Mars as a whole. In such, I hope to offer something of a critical review of the book without abandoning the normal focus here of exploring poems to the end of writing poems. One of the motivations I had in expanding my purview beyond the two Daily sites was to be able to talk about books of poetry – which is to say poems in an organized group – as well as individual poems. What better choice for such exploration than books already selected for consideration by the Pulitzer committee.

There needs to be here some words towards transparency. First, I do not think much of the Pulitzer prize. I do not buy books on the basis of the committees' judgments. Indeed I have never bought a book because it either won the prize or was short listed for it. The Pulitzer has never done anything for as long as I have given attention to it (when I give attention to it) to convince me that it has any genuine, valuable, critical merit; and, it has done much to persuade me otherwise. Second, I did not purchase Life on Mars for the purpose of reviewing it. I bought it only because it was new to the poetry shelf at a used bookstore I frequent. Thus, it is only chance that it came to my possession and in turn only chance that it is appearing here. What previous knowledge I have of the book is limited to my having picked it up in a book store after it won the award. Though, I put it back finding it on perusal as something that was not going to change my mind about the Pulitzer.

"A Way" by Rosanna Warren -- Poetry Magazine

from Poetry Magazine (July/August 2014)
poem found here
 

First lines:
She said she sang very close to the mike
to change the space. And I changed the space
 

an exploration post

 

No one theme here, just exploring what is offered by the text.

 
1.

Let's begin with the first sentence. To write

(1) She said she sang very close to the mike to change the space.

is not the same thing as writing

(2) She sang very close to the mike to change the space.

is not the same thing as writing

(3) She said, she sang very close to the mike to change the space.

For clarity I'll modify it slightly:

(3) She said, I sing very close to the mike to change the space.

The difference between (2) and (1), the addition of the "she said," changes the focus of the sentence. Sentence (2) is a statement of fact that does not in itself go beyond that uttered fact. The function of such a sentence is only to present the fact to the reader. However, with the addition of the "she said" — and, importantly, without any comma marking the rest of the sentence as dialogue, as in sentence (3) — the content of the sentence is moved in focus from a mere fact to a fact connected connected to the actor: that it, the fact of singing close to the mike is brought within the domain of the speaker.

It is made personal; it is given personal interpretation. Without the "she said" the reason for the singing close to the mike will only imputed to act from outside the singer. Yes, it is presented by the narrator of the poem, but without the presence of the speaker herself in the sentence, the narrator is imposing a "reason" upon the action.

"Hymn to Life" by Timothy Donnelly -- Poetry Magazine

from Poetry (July/August 2014)
poem found here
 

First lines:
There were no American lions. No pygmy mammoths left
or giant short-faced bears, which towered over ten feet high
 

verse or prose, poetic or prosaic

– some minor editing, Feb. 5, 2015
 
This post has been added to the Hatter's Cabinet site via its Best of the Poetry Daily Critique page

 

The ideas in this post are given further examination in "Re-examining the Verse-Prose Poetic-Prosaic Graph"

 

As is obvious from the last post, I recently read Owen Barfield's Poetic Diction, and want to bring into the run of this blog one of his ideas. Though, in truth it is not a thought peculiar to Barfield. Coleridge (who stands in the background of Poetic Diction) posits the general idea through his own theories, and it is a central idea to the Modernist endeavor (in both literature and the arts), not to mention that strain of philosophy that runs through Nietzsche into the post-structuralists.

I will let Barfield speak for himself. (This is the opening to chapter IX, "Verse and Prose.")[FN]

At the opposite pole to the wide sense in which I have been using the phrase "poetic diction," stands the narrowest one, according to which it signifies "language which can be used in verse but not in prose." This artificial identification of the words poetry and poetic with metrical form is certainly of long standing in popular use; but it has rarely been supported by those who have written on the subject. As Verse is an excellent word for metrical writing of all kinds, whether poetic or unpoetic, and Prose for un-metrical writing, in this book the formal literary distinction is drawn between verse and prose; whereas that between poetry, poetic on the one hand and prosaic on the other is a spiritual one, not confined to literature [i.e., open to all the arts].

The idea is rather a simple and obvious when it comes to it: we can readily speak about the formal properties of the material aspect of a text without dependence upon the spiritual or ideational aspects (which is the aim prosody), and we can speak about the spiritual/ideational aspects of a text without dependence upon the formal properties of the material aspect of the text (exploring meaning, metaphor, etc.)

Sharing a Found Bibliography

This post has been added to the Hatter's Cabinet site via its Best of the Poetry Daily Critique page
 

The Afterword of Owen Barfield's Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, added by the author after the third edition, consists mostly of a list of works in the same exploration as Poetic Diction, works written at or before the first edition of 1928 and in the time between then and the third edition of 1973. It is quite an excellent list of works for people interested in aesthetic literature (and the aesthetic in general), including writers thereof. (Indeed, Barfield's text is itself equally applicable to both appreciators of aesthetic literature and writers thereof.) Being familiar with a majority of the works (or authors) on the list, and what with it being in Poetic Diction, quite the worthwhile book on its own measure, I have no qualms with passing it on here in this post (and adding it, after, to the library). For a better basis of recommendation than my own familiarity, I will say that this is a list of the usual suspects of the field, works and authors that I have frequently seen referenced to this very end. (In truth, this list has reorganized my theoretic reading list.)

The authors and books below all approach the same general subject — the aesthetic modality of being — though often from different approaches, both in content and in the nuances and details of their theoretic/critical systems. The aesthetic, by the very nature of its modality of thought, cannot be spoken of in the manner of the theoretic, arriving at any sense of theoretic definitiveness: it can only be spoken about. To approach it genuinely is invariably to approach along one's own path. As Jung wrote about the exploration of psychology, which is concomitant to the exploration of the aesthetic, "[t]he psychologist should constantly bear in mind that his hypothesis is no more at first than the expression of his own subjective premise and can therefore never lay immediate claim to general validity" (The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, Collected Works, 85).

Sonnet 128 — William Shakespeare

First lines:
How oft, when thou my music music play'st
Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds
 

structure and organic unity

 
This post has been added to the Hatter's Cabinet site via its Best of the Poetry Daily Critique page

 

Before I start the post proper, let me give a couple of notes as to my project here and the blog itself.

I have said previously that I have decided to extend my subject matter outward to cover more than just the poems of the two daily sites. There really is no reason not to be exploring works by non-contemporary authors, or works not of the immediate now (which is the domain of daily sites). Also, I have for a while carried the thought to start looking at books of poetry. One of the issues I have with contemporary poetry is its apparent laziness: books seem too often assembled and printed — and then praised as worthwhile effort — simply because they are books with enough poems in it to fill a hundred, or eighty, or sixty pages. Even though, like a pop album, once you get past the songs that get air play, the rest of the can be fairly banal, if not bad. The general work of poetry culture today is too small: too small in size, and too small in thought. To explore that requires exploring the larger contexts. Also in that vein, I have wanted to start looking at things like Pulitzer winners, to see if there is really anything there worth trumpeting. Through such explorations, I feel, might be able to speak to the culture of poetry while still maintaining the purpose of this blog: to talk about poetry from the viewpoint of the writing of poetry.

Simultaneously, my posting here will stay somewhat slow for a while. In no small part this is because of some major projects cluttering up my desk and holding court in my mind. I would like to try to have one good post every seven to ten days but cannot guarantee it. I am hoping that starting larger explorations, like books of poetry, may actually aid in the rate of posts. Such explorations — and the expanding of the coverage area — will bring the blog project into more interaction with my other projects, which is good all around. In honesty, I am disappointed in myself that I have let my rate of posts here slide, though only in the lesser degree in the sense of production; in the greater degree simply in that I have also stopped exploring the poetry being presented by the dailies. Hopefully, these changes will give this project new life for me.

That being said . . . .

A General Update

For those following the story, I have been struck with a touch of computer misfortune. As such, I do not expect to be posting anything here for the next couple of weeks. In part, it is simply because of the hassles of decreased connectivity. In part, though, I am turning the disconnect into an opportunity to focus on a couple of larger projects that have been cluttering up the desk for some time now.