Week 14

I recorded myself reading the poems I was considering reading for our performance, "Incidents in Cartography", "Odyssey", and "Roadkill". I was interested mainly in figuring out pacing. I had read all of these poems so many times that I already felt pretty comfortable with how they sounded in every other way, except for pacing. Listening to "Odyssey", I realized that I had to really slow myself down because the rate I was reading it in my initial recording wasn't allowing enough time for the images to seep. With "Roadkill", I discovered that the tone with which I read the poem was actually a decision I had to make. Did I want it to be sardonic at the end? Did I want it to be sentimental? I realized that I had to make the tonal shifts within the poem obvious with my voice, so I rerecorded myself changing the tone of my voice and the pacing with each quatrain and couplet. Finally, I realized that with "Incidents in Cartography" that one of the things I like most about it is the conversational tone in the beginning that then shifts to majestic, so I decided to read it as I would say it to any old buddy of mine and then slow it down and put more weight on the words as I neared the close. It was pretty interesting recording myself. I think my voice changes when I read aloud. Hm.

Week 13

C.D. Wright's "One With Others [I take one more drive across town thinking]" is, I think, elliptical. Again, I find the term confusing, but pretty much when I come across a poem that seems purposefully confusing I automatically connect it to the term. Mutual confusion is the connecting thread, apparently. Well, this particular poem begins in a fairly straightforward way. The speaker goes for a drive and let's us into her thoughts momentarily, because you know when you drive your thoughts run rampant. Well, it starts simple enough, but then it starts to veer. The poem alludes to segregation, but then there's all of this stuff about V and I really don't think I know what she's getting at.

       I attach V to my driving-around thoughts.           An object unworthy of love she thought she was.            It was a cri de coeur.            Those of our get had given her a nom de guerre: V.

This is where it stops making sense, which I suppose means is when it starts being elliptical. It's like she's referencing something that's an inside joke for her and her friends, expecting us to get it, but knowing that we can't. I mean, what is V? Am I missing something? I don't think this whole elliptical thing is really to my liking...

Week 12

Picking from this week's playlist in particular, I would say that the poet who I admire the most is William Carlos Williams. His style is not particularly experimental, but it is also not boring or tired. His language is vivid, his themes interesting and simple, and his tone appealing. "Pastoral" is beautifully written with excellent images, but it has a great turn at the end. I really like closure in poems, call me old fashioned. His closure is definitely sudden and at the close, but it is also not on the nose or too obvious. He still allows your mind to wander.

"Love Song" is a vivid little poem that seems to be hyperbolic at times in tone and uses just wonderful imagery in depicting this sort of odd love poem. I'm not even sure I totally get it, but I like it. I imagine it is about a sexually restless person at sunset wanting to entangle his "limbs" with another's as night quickly approaches? Well, it's lovely and and I feel uncertain as to if I should find it lovely sue to the content. But I like that contrast.

I would like to play around with tone in the way that Williams does. I'm not sure if I can write humorous poetry, but I would like to try. And to do so in a way like Williams, where the language is still beautiful - at times florid, at times simple.

Week 13

I do not think I fully understand what elliptical poems truly are. According to one of the definitions of the word elliptical, it is "of or relating to extreme economy of oral or written expression" and it is "marked by deliberate obscurity of style or expression." To me, this is what all poetry is: using just the right words to express something that is not overtly evident at first glance. It is about deeper meaning and, intrinsically ,an economy of language. I understand how this definition applies to the poems that are considered "elliptical", but I also think that these poems are not exclusively that. They are a weirder, more confusing version of that from other poems. Basically, I don't like the definition and I think it is elevating this form of poetry to an overvalued state. In general I find them unappealing. I'll now look further into the example Hoagland gives of an elliptical poem, Louis Aragon's "Pop Tune."

Aragon's "Pop Tune" is actually easier for me to grasp than some of the other elliptical poems that I have come across in trying to figure out what the hell they are. I think I like it more than those others because it is actually dealing with an emotional thought, with a severe topic; therefore, even though it is following the detached form of an elliptical poem, it is decidedly attached to a serious human concern. Where I find this poem elliptical is in its lack of punctuation, which leads to a difficulty in placing yourself and determining who is speaking. But in general, the progression of the poem makes sense. This is something I think other "elliptical" poems seem to lack.

Week 11

I find Palmer's "Autobiography 2 (hellogoodbye)" interesting because of what the title adds to the poem. Although there is much to be said about this piece, the thing that I like most about it is how most of the couplets have a sense of transition within them. There are notions of togetherness and separateness (book of COMPANY - put down), travel (Trans-Siberian disappearing - Shadow Train), barriers/connectors (crossing the Lion bridge - doorway). Although the poem is fragmented, it has a thematic element that seems to connect it and I find the sentiment of "hellogoodbye" important for this. It is filled with the simultaneous arrival and departure of its subjects.

In terms of style, particularly, however, I find Ras's "You Can't Have It All" the most enjoyable to read because of how the words are strung together. Alliteration and repetition coupled with imagery make this poem flow nicely for me.

Here's my chant opening:

Going down to the river

Going down to the river

Going to smoke some crack

Down by the river

Where the crackheads are at.

Week 10

I don't feel as connected with poets as I do with some prose writers, so this prompt was proving to be quite difficult for me; therefore, I decided to just address it to Hemingway.

Dear Ernest,

I worry that I read too much into you. Your words just aren't enough. But maybe they are and I'm not losing it.

You are the worst kind of lover. You are the other who reveals nothing with your stifled words, the blankness of them a vacuum that sucks me into their void and I think and I think and I build my own story out of yours. Perhaps you mean nothing at all and I am driving myself mad for an iceberg that really is all above water.

But then, what does it matter? The notions that I connect to your nices mean something if they mean it to me, perhaps?

Out with it. If I can't write my own words then I must request that yours say more.

Yours (because what's yours is mine),

Marisa

Between Matthews and Levis, I suppose I would say that I appreciate the works of Matthews more. Although the narrative power of Levis is compelling for me, especially as a prose writer, I find that the subject matter and the imagery of Matthews' poetry resonates more with me. The beautiful and complex way that he writes about setting appeals to the poetic side of me, as I feel like my own writing is at its most vivid when describing sensual aspects of setting.

Week 9 - Fragmented

I sit in my dim matchbox,

Crowded around the glowing open mouth

Of the electric oven.

The blazing coils dim and intensify

With each wandering breath.

These are the duties of the righteous,

The ways of the anointed.

And she pulls me away from the oven

And she rubs my burns with ointment.

Last night she’d been

Ironing shirts and trying her best to explain

Something important to the children

And you waited

Behind a pile of linen.

The word linen seems inherently clean.

Soiled linen is no longer linen –

It is a rag.

Just as to spit-clean is inherently not clean.

And here I am filled with my own spit.

My house floats on a lawn.

In the icehouse I'd clear my name

From a scruff of ponderosa pines.

Week 8 - Ford

Ford's "Last Breath at Dawn" was a bit trippy. When I first attempted reading it, I had to stop and go back, to start over again. The thing with it is that it is not syntactically conventional. The lack of punctuation and the lack of line breaks as a substitution for the punctuation makes the thoughts string together. One word does not necessarily lead into the next, logically. It plays with expectations and immediately goes against the norm with its form. But then it sets things up, allowing you to momentarily be lulled back into predicting where it's going. But no, no, no. Don;t get fooled. That word isn't wives, it's lives. I just loved how this poem played with conventions and how the back and forth allowed it to be a very interactive reading experience.

Self

You know when the air smells like rain but instead of density all you feel is crisp, brisk. You see it in the distance, but instead of shifting streaks of falling water, gravity made visual, just mist. Breeze and goosebumps and trembling. Everything is moving and yet the silence makes it all seem still. Then breathing. Even if you weren't sucking on that cigarette, the air in front of you would still turn into a plume of fog. Ether escaping a dying being. Warmth leaving your body. Inside your head, just a hum. Words don't exist there. But thoughts do. Humming thoughts. Feelings so primitive that words aren't necessary. You just realized you smell like soap. That scent so particular to you and you alone, that one that you and you alone can't notice. It's soap. Soap mixed with popcorn and a bit of grass. Or is that just the grass you're standing in that you smell? You submerge your face into a pile of hair and it's confirmed. You smell like grass. And soap and popcorn.

Odyssey

The sun hides behind bright grey fog,

hovering low above the receding tide

and it's not raining but the air is wet.

Cataracts of cigarette smoke and lack of sleep,

warm breath expelled into the Pacific morning,

steam escaping from double-walled tumblers.

The levy path is littered with bodies,

the streets with wandering sand,

and I have to remind myself that this is home.

Not even the wet currents rushing in

compare to how quickly I rush out,

leaving Santa Cruz behind for Sierra Azul.

The bus out of town, up the hill, down into the valley,

picks me up every morning at 7:30

to carry me away.

We pick up cyclists who sit beside their helmets,

bag ladies who sneer at sleeping students,

demanding that they "stop it".

Forty-somethings type up charts,

twenty-somethings crack their knuckles,

and I look out the window.

We leave a wake of exhaust to float above the pavement

as we get pulled away from sea level

to waltz with the mountain roads once more.

When I drive highway 17 myself

I always light up a cigarette at the summit,

a rare stretch of flat, straight road.

Now the clearing atop the hill

is accompanied by a no smoking sign

and a woman's voice reciting "Now passing - The Summit".

The road finally starts to wind down

and I begin my descent towards

home.

But home keeps passing by.

I see Summit Road, but I can't drive onto Mountain Charlie.

Just a mile down and I could be on Old Santa Cruz Highway.

I know Holy City is in there,

but have I passed it yet?

Are daffodils still blooming by my grove?

It would be lovely to drive on Old Santa Cruz today,

the rising sun hitting the redwood canopy,

shadows like lace on the grayed road.

Flora and fauna and fawns and ferns

and not even the radio can drown out

the rustle of woven branches connecting.

The wind whistles and pine needles wander

to the red forest floor and it's a wonder

this was called the blue range, Sierra Azul.

But it's just hydraulics and brakes

and the grunts of passengers

trying to not slide out of their seats.

By the time we reach down to the belly of the fog,

the valley lies sprawling before us

and there's a layer of smog.

Redwoods are replaced by Oaks,

except for the edges of Lexington

where Eucalyptus drip their boughs,

their bark peeling away from themselves

like stale wallpaper clinging to old walls

for so long, but gliding away so easily

in the end.

Two in the Morning

It's a long walk from Vacaville to Stockton.

I wouldn't recommend it.

Especially not when starting out at two in the morning

on some July evening, because you know if you do anything

at two in the morning you're probably not just waking up.

The hollow darkness of it,

the ambient hum of absence,

do not scream bacon and eggs and a newspaper, please.

Nights in Solano County and the San Joaquin Valley

are cooler than the days, yes.

But the air is heavy with mosquitos

and what I imagine to be

condensed sweat vapor left over

from the 100 degree fahrenheit

day that preceded this

two in the morning night.

So, needless to say, I would avoid making the 60 mile trip on foot from Vacaville to Stockton at two in the morning on some July evening.

My brother might tell you otherwise, though.

He's the one who decided to embark upon this journey along the 12.

That's another thing about the Valley -

you don't say "Highway 12" or simply "12" like you do here.

It's the 5, the 99, the 160.

Well, my brother started walking at two in the morning

along the 12 one night this past July

and I have a few ideas why.

There's a picture of my grandfather as a young boy

in front of a bar with a cowboy hat on

playing an accordion for change.

The photograph is muted black and white,

which I suppose means grey,

but when I envision my grandfather

standing on the streetside

busking at the the age of four,

that hat is red.

Everyone always says my brother

was the spitting image of this image

of my grandfather as a young boy

when my brother was a young boy.

My brother was named after my father.

My father went from Rick to Richard,

my brother from Ricky to Rick.

When my brother started having trouble with pot,

his room constantly emitting an odor

of something dried becoming damp

like a tanned cow hide

soaked in the first rain of the season,

my father raised his voice,

he moved in too close,

he allowed himself to clasp his swollen fingers

around my brother's collapsing shoulder,

but only for a moment before releasing his grasp

so each Richard could walk away to their respective corners,

my father towards a beer,

my brother towards a joint.

Eventually my father decided

to smoke some marijuana with his son.

After that, trimmings that looked like

mint tea leaves would sprinkle the kitchen counter,

the coffee table, the computer desk,

no longer confined to my brothers

damp and dried room.

When he was six he practiced his karate moves on me,

punching me so hard in the abdomen

that not even gasping could catch and release

a hidden breath.

When he was eight we left him behind at a gas station

in Yosemite where the attendant fed him ice cream

while he waited for us to remember.

When he was 12 my father and second stepmother got a divorce.

When he was 16 he told me he wanted to join the air force.

When he was 18 he moved in with his mother in Vacaville,

leaving my father alone in Stockton.

When he was 20 he tried to walk home

at two in the morning

along the 12.

9/11 Exercise

I had to be the one to tell my mother. As I watched the news, she slept in bed. Although I knew something big had happened, something that made me go into my mother's room and wake her up, it didn't hit me until she started crying, in the dark, still recovering from a dream. It hit her instantly. I didn't understand how she could react so viscerally without even seeing that image - one plume of smoke, one flaming puncture. Some people were kept out of school that day. I went around laughing and asking people if they were Pakistani. I still feel sickened by that 12 year old reaction to something too grave for her to understand. Not long after the event occurred, the memory became absurd to me. My friend's little brother would say the pledge of allegiance at 9:11 each morning, each evening. We'd eat hot dogs off paper plates with printed red, white, and blue.

Who is this Nobel Prize Winning Swedish Poet?

I am not exactly an expert on poetry (okay, I am no where near even proficient), so I wasn't surprised that I hadn't heard of this Tomas Transtromer. When I read this article I became curious about what this guy has written that made him worthy of such a prestigious prize. Here's one short poem:

National Insecurity

BY TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER

The Under Secretary leans forward and draws an X

and her ear-drops dangle like swords of Damocles.

As a mottled butterfly is invisible against the ground

so the demon merges with the opened newspaper.

A helmet worn by no one has taken power.

The mother-turtle flees flying under the water.

Interesting... From what I can see, he seems to mix the banal with the surreal with the political. The language in his poem November in the Former DDR is quite evocative to me, but the poem itself seems scattered. But I sense the translation aspect might be partially responsible. Plus, who am I to criticize a Nobel Prize winner for literature?

Week 7 - Hass

I rather like Robert Hass's "Dragonflies Mating". The way each section, pretty much, just jumps right into it. The first section, for instance, places us in a place, but we don't know where, and in relation to people, but we don't know who, but it is written in a way that doesn't care. It assumes familiarity. I really love that first section. The "probably" in line five that adds a colloquial, personable aspect to the beautiful imagery and lulling pull. Here's an attempt at imitating:

Father brought me to our first house,

the one I can't remember, but that he assures me

was where I spent my first night.

I don't know if that accomplishes what I mean't...

Week 6 - Self-Consciousness in Donne's "The Flea"

I love this poem. It is both absurd and completely understandable. A hard feat to meet. This is a love poem in the form of an argument. It is an argument for love. The speaker is trying to persuade the object of his affection to be with him and here's why: we've both been bitten by the same flea. Absurd. And great.

The reason this poem is self-conscious is because it is playing with the typical love poem. It has the elevated diction that can be viewed as a trope of this type of poem. It has the sentiment of unrequited love. But its central image is a flea. The argument is not the typical argument you would make in favor of yourself. It is, in a sense, grotesque. This poem uses the cannon of love poetry and it succeeds because it knows what love poems typically do, and then does something very, very different.

Week 5 - Two Poems

Li-Young Lee's "The Gift" relies heavily on rhetoric and imagery. The poem begins with rhetoric that reminds us of the tone in which one speaks to a child when putting him to sleep, telling him a story, helping him say his prayers. The rhetoric of the final stanza alludes to the sentiments of the first, where the child fears he will die of this splinter. However, this echo is reduced with the final sentiment of a kiss from child to father. The use of imagery in the poem is both literal and figurative. In the second stanza, the lines alternate from literal to figurative: "And I recall his hands / two measures of tenderness / he laid against my face, / the flames of discipline / he raised above my head" (9-13). Two hands, laid against my face, and raised above my head are literal, while equating them to two measures of tenderness and flames of discipline bring in metaphor. I think where the poem works best for me is in the imagery, particularly lines like "silver tear, tiny flame" (17). They are simple and tangible, but lovely, just like the act that is being described in the poem.

Philip Levine's "You Can Have It" melds all elements. There are aspects of diction that strike me, particularly the colloquial "Am I gonna make it?" (16). The narrative quality of the poem applies a heavily weighted rhetorical element. The imagery is particularly strong, however. I think the repetition of moon in the second stanza is a little lazy, personally, but hands yellowed and cracked, gasping for breath, chute its silvery blocks, bright grass between cracks dying... It are these aspects of the poem that really have a lasting affect for me, as opposed to the elements of diction and rhetoric, no matter how well-executed or strong they may be.

Poem 1 - 2nd Draft

Bobby told me about this guy he knew who's now married but when he knew him he was living in a water tower and this guy he used to smoke crack with let him live there and so he moved into this converted-water-tower-studio up Soda Springs Road and him and this guy and some other people would smoke crack together.

Bobby said this guy would climb up the ladder and crawl through his floor and find himself in this giant cylinder with riveted walls and echos.

There were no windows, no corners.

Bobby said something about this guy's record collection and somewhere in there the words "mellow tone in" were strung together and I remember laughing and Bobby laughed along just because he liked that he had made me laugh.

And we let the melatonin out and breathed the scotch broom in and I tasted the pine needles and the blackberry leaves and when the smoke had left I could also taste dandelions and madrone and my throat felt sore and everything smelt like mold and burnt sage. But stars reached out towards each other above us and the refracted light from my fucked up vision connected the dots and I really saw Orion's belt, not as projected upon the sky by me or someone else, but by the stars themselves, reaching for each other with spider thread.

Week 4 - Yusef Komunyakaa "Tu Do Street"

Yusef Komunyakaa's "Tu Do Street" is a poem that relies heavily on rhetoric and imagery, with the diction supplying a clear narrative voice while maintaining a non-in-you-face approach. The poem opens with several words that imply separateness (divides, lines in the dust, pushes) setting the tone and theme of the poem in place. There are several instances of beautiful imagery, particularly "membrane / of mist & smoke" (4-5), "bar girls / fade like tropical birds" (8-9), "I look / for a softness behind these voices / wounded by their beauty & war" (20-22), and "these rooms / run into each other like tunnels / leading to the underworld" (32-34). I love these last lines of the poem. There's the small (rooms) connected by a larger (tunnels) that leads to the ultimate (underworld). The fact that the poem opens with separation and closes with negative togetherness is compelling. These strengths are related to rhetoric, whereas each of the quoted sections listed above relate to imagery. Diction comes in to play with the inclusion of scene specific words, such as mama-san, psychedelic jukebox, and Dak To & Khe Sanh. All of these colloquial terms incorporated seamlessly and without explanation into the poem scream diction to me. I think I am correct here...

Week 3 - I Go Back to May 1937

Immediately when I started reading this poem I said to myself, "I know this... Is this...? Wait let me see, is there a part about sword-tips? Yep, this is the poem recited in Into The Wild!" So, anyway, I know this poem, but never took the time to find out who wrote it. The context that the movie put it in allowed me to instantly understand the theme of childhood victimization brought on by the decisions and actions of parents. It's interesting how seamlessly the inclusion of this poem in the film was made. I don't think I even stopped to ask whether it was written by someone other than Chris McCandless. The specific images of bricks, gates, books all speak to this universal collegiate image. However, the poet makes them her own with these images of plates of blood and sword-tips. Originally I viewed the tone of this poem as incredibly negative and angry. The lines:

you are going to do things

you cannot imagine you would ever do,

you are going to do bad things to children,

you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,

you are going to want to die.

all seem like angry projections the child is placing on the parents brought about by her negative experiences as a child. However, when I heard Olds recite the poem herself, a more sorrowful tone took shape for me. The repetition of "I want" was really brought to the forefront and I began to view this poem as a melancholy attempt to rectify the past, to try to halt the heartbreak before it begins. Then it is brought around to her own mortality. But with the final line this poem reveals to me the acceptance of what's done is done and although it was awful, it's because of the decisions and actions of her parents and the negative aspects of her childhood that allowed her to write this poem.

Week 1 - Dylan, Ginsberg, Komunyakaa

I am a huge Bob Dylan fan. Much of the time my love for him is connected to his delivery and the musical aspects of his songs, but certainly the lyrics are imperative to my appreciation of him. This particular song is an interesting one. I would like to focus on it as a performance piece and not simply words on a page, especially given that we're talking about a musician here. The tone in which he sings and the softness of the music adds a lot to this "poem" to me. It opens with images of a hanging coupled with images of a carnival, all while softly sung. This theme of contrasting images pervades the poem and the musical tone becomes more and more sad for me. There are instances of slightly more "punch", but in general it is pure melancholy. If you simply read the lyrics, I think it can come across as a tad more sardonic than sad.

I've studied Howl many times in many classes and although I generally enjoy the poem, I didn't quite get that much out of it until we discussed it in class. We sort of hurried through it and didn't go too in depth, which is why I'm shocked that something finally clicked. But I think the matter of fact way in which Professor Soldofsky accounted for each of the images as being directly pulled from his life was incredibly helpful. Rather than feeling boggled down with trying to find abstract meaning it was boiled down to fact. Much easier to handle and much more rewarding.

My favorite lines from Yusef Komunyakaa's "Togetherness" are "a lyre & Jew's harp / sighing a forbidden oath" (5-6). The fact that lyre is a homonym for liar and that Jew's harp is, yes, an instrument, but also associated with negative connotations is incredible interesting and stylistic for me. I just love using "lyre" in this context I can;t get enough of it!