fallen verses

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It’s a static-crusted world:
constant interference from the streaming
24/7 into our minds
which are as alterable as wikipedia.

The data in the table is corrupt
and we need to reindex;
we have forgotten to back-up
emotions. Memory is salvageable-
it is watching television without color
and we soon bore of it.

Attention is the microtransaction of the mind.

Sign the check,
enter your pin,
wait for the confirmation email and continue.
Always verify the information is correct.
No one can retrieve you
if you have lost
the password.

One thing I’ve always struggled with in my own mind is whether it is appropriate or not to contextualize my poems. To explain them. A dictum from most critique I’ve done is that it is best to not speak at all, to not provide answers: ultimately, the poem stands on its own in some journal or some book and that’s that. However, I feel that viewpoint neglects the benefits of the medium of blogging. Here, we are not limited by page count. We can collect information and hyper-reference and cross-reference, and probably do other compounded-reference words that I don’t even know!

This poem was written in response to two things: Jillypoet’s read write prompt (you can read others’ replies here), and a snippet of lyric from the song in this Brotherhood 2.0 video. The lyric that prompted this has since been removed as I opted to not write a love poem. I think perhaps I write too easily in that genre. So, a departure, a deviation, one of the damn few poems I’ve written this year. In case you happen to be curious (and I still plan to work with it, probably in some sort of love poem) the lyric that I “caught” was: “As in a mirror, dimly.”

A thought:I am awesome. However, I am synergistically super-awesome. Like an anode, I require a counterpart for these sparks to be more than just flares in the darkness.

A note: I am aware that an anode (speaking technically) has no meaning outside of being in a pair with a cathode and that there would be no sparks. All symbolic language fails at some point because no thing is ever the same as an other thing. At best we can have facile similarities that have connotation. And sound pretty and/or interesting. Meanwhile meaning continues eluding us because, ultimately, a word is also a thing.

I spent most of that night watching
the perfect half-circle of her lips
and feeling the slow rise and fall of untroubled sleep.

I woke while the shower was still running
and pictured the dark curve of hair
cascading across the small of her back
before it was vigorously towel-dried.

There was footsteps,
the sounds of doors and drawers
and the whisper of cloth against skin.
The zipper of a suitcase.

I kept to the imperfect artifice of a shallow breathing.
With my eyes closed I watched
as she stood in the doorway,
turned toward the bed-
her lips formed an unasked question,
and she waited for its answer.

In the silence-
which proved answer enough-
I chanced a deep breath
to capture the essence of her perfume
(the only thing that lingered).

If asked to describe it,
I could only say
that it smelled like twilight,
like the very last touch of pink
after the sun has set.

It’s no secret that I haven’t been writing here much. Even if it were, the easily accessible archives would have foiled my attempt at secrecy. When I started Fallen Verses, almost a year ago (crap! over a year ago, and I missed the mandatory blogoversary post/navel-gazing!), I intended it to be a site about poetry, and the poetry I was writing, and other “neat” or interesting things I cam across. I never really meant to have a personal journal sort of sight where I contemplate my own life in public, or, being a poet somewhat in the confessional school, only in the areas in which it informs my writing.

I achieved a variable amount of success with that.

I wonder if that reticence may have been detrimental, or if there really is enough self-pitying on the ‘net without my adding to it. That ship, however has sailed. Fallen Verses is not a personal journal, hasn’t been, won’t become one. That does leave me with a bit of hole in the content. Other sites are much better sites to catch up on poetry and I haven’t been writing any. I have also not found a whole lot out there that I want to share with the world. So, expect continued slow and sporadic and pointless meanderings here for a while.

But I specifically want to talk about why I haven’t been writing poetry recently.

We all, I’m sure, are familiar with the dictum “write what you know.” What we all know best is our own lives, and since I began writing that has been the main fuel for my writing. Not as baldly as the true “confessional school” poets, and not exclusively, but it has been a large focus. I feel whenever I attempt to write these days (and I do attempt) that there is nothing of interest in my life to write about anymore. I’ve written everything I needed to say (so far).

Though, I don’t think that is true. I think the rest of what I need to say would be uninteresting, self-pitying drek, and I am performing a public service by not allowing it to pollute the interwebs.

The problem I’m finding is that I am left with little inspiration. I am a terribly undisciplined writer and without that unconscious prompting, it never happens.

I was going through the feeds in Google Reader today and one of the posts by Seth Godin seemed appropriate. Go read it, then come back here.

Okay. I think in poetry we have the same kind of curves, whether they should be called real and slick, or appolonian and dionysian, or modern and classical, whatever, who cares. however you want to divide things (and there are probably many valid ways to do that) there is a division and the two sides are distinct. I favor the Dionysian/Appolonian split.. One side born of passion and emotion and intensity and all those ephemeral words. The other about perfection, refinement, discernment (”cold” words, you could say).

Most of my poetry has been written from the first style (some even being “well-written” but, still, poetry of passion). I’ve burned through that and there is no more firewood for a while. A time to step from the art to the craft of poetry, right?

But my internal editor won’t let me get past that dip in the middle. I cannot knowingly allow myself to write things with the expectation that they will be terrible. Neither the impassioned imagery, nor the crafted sentences, but some terrible hodge-podge. <shudder> I know that, to be a better writer, I should be working in and through that point, but writing something so bas even I don’t want to read? Hard to do. And that is why I haven’t been writing. As always, I’m curious to know what other people think (and that curiosity isn’t really a limited thing) so feel free to chime in on the comments below.

Within the realm of poetry, and art in general, and life in general, there are two forces at play: perhaps they can be called order and chaos, reason and emotion, id and superego, the primal and the civilized. In the context of aesthetics they are often referred to as the Appolonian and the Dionysian, based on the Greek gods.

Roughly, the Appolonian drive is tied to order, craft, reason. In poetry, this applies to formal verse, verse grounded in concepts and societies and focused on the experience of a people. The Dionysian, in contrast, is focused on the experience of the individual, emotion, ephemera. It is associated with much wilder leaps of metaphor.

It is easy to consider these two forces as opposites. Forces that only exist is tension, and I think that is fairly accurate. Many myth systems are less about good and evil, and have dichotomies based on creation and destruction, or the previously mentioned order and chaos, where there is no good or evil applied to these concepts. They are merely the forces underlying everything.

Poetry, or at least good poetry, relies on tension. Tension gives the poem dynamic energy. Tension between rhymes, between meanings, between line and syntax. Perfectly crafted formal verses may be appreciable based on its technical merits, but it is dull without more wild elements. The strangest of the Surreal can be so fanciful as to be unintelligible, but when it is connected to life, crafted to include considered repetition, is going to be superior.

Poetry cannot follow one impulse or the other. It exists between the two forces, constantly being pulled this way and then that. The struggle, especially as an artist, is to find the particular balance between the two that is ideal for you.

I find that the only time I desire to write poetry on a consistent basis is when I am reading it on a consistent basis.  Spring semester I took two lit classes in addition to a poetry workshop, and I have no real desire to pay attention or think about anything at the moment.

So I haven’t been reading poetry, and therefor not writing any, save what I wrote for class.

My question for you all is: how do you flex your poetry muscle?  Do you just let it lie unused until you’re ready for it? Do you "write every day, no matter what?" Or is time spent not writing, time "refilling the well?"

Intellectually, I think I should write, but I can’t seem to find any poetry when I write.  Philosophical musings (such as have been posted here), yes, but not poetry.

And no, I’m not referring to anything I’ve done.

I’m sure most of my regular readers (those not driven here by a link to one particular quote) are aware that, when I don’t lose track of time and freak out, I contribute to the Read Write Poem website as a prompt author and as a contributor of a monthly column on prosody.

Keep that in mind while I divert this post into a completely new channel.

Today was my one final for this semester, so I’m done with school for now. The last few weeks have been crazy with papers and research projects and portfolios, oh my! Top that off with corporate life and setting up website transfers and I’ve been distracted. As I was driving home from Iowa City I thought to myself “self, what shall I do to reward my survival and maintenance of sanity?” I responded: “Well, you survived at any rate. But you’re talking to yourself, so the sanity is questionable.” “Quite right, quite right. I know; I shall buy nilla wafers and frosting and eat nearly pure sugar (frosting with sprinkles, yay!).” And I ended up watching The Golden Compass, which I had bought some weeks ago (armored bears!) and which has been unopened. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the Nilla wafers and frosting. And then it still wasn’t time for bed-though it is getting close now-so what else to do?

Jumping back to the previous channel: A couple of weeks ago I had written a prompt to use jargon in a poem. I like to bring something kind of crazy to my prompts to get people out of comfort zones; I think we learn a lot about ourselves as writers when the net is taken away. What we write I think is more honest when the artifice of a long-standing style or theme is compromised. At any rate, I had not read the posted poems! So I rectified that. And it is impressive how creatively people have used jargon in poetry. I’d like to thank everyone for giving it a go. I only want to highlight one, because a line from it just stuck with me.

from Chemical Acrostic by watermaid

Entropy is an existential state.

Well watemaid, if my blog traffic ever gets back up, you may get some click-throughs!

Hopefully I can will take more time to devote this site and to my writing now that classes are out. There certainly should be a lot of catching up for us all to do.

EDIT: I have a lot of blog’s in my google reader and my blogroll is still gone, so I’ve added a link at the end of the sidebar to my google reader’s shared items.  It’s just a few things right now, but I’ll be adding posts from various sources to it.  If you’re interested in seeing what’s interesting me, that’s one way to get a glimpse.  Or you can ask.

Ekphrasis

For my poetry workshop, we were supposed to write an ekphrastic piece. I knew the piece of art I wanted to write about, but I had some difficulties getting a good concept. After talking with my instructor a bit (and having to turn in the portfolio tomorrow), I wrote this:

On the Technique of George Seurat

It’s at the end of a long gallery. You can’t help but to stand in the doorway, just for a moment and look at Seurat’s masterpiece. It fills the entire wall at the far end. The time he must have put into it…
We stood, just like the thousands before us and the giggling teenage girls being quietly shuffled along by the art historian whose MA should qualify her for a job better than tour guide. We stood and looked over the parquet floors to see that little park in Paris.
The working-class man with his dog, the upwardly mobile strolling with parasols and gloved hands, strangers all, and inhabiting that moment together as they shared some purpose for being on that island.
(Seurat! What would your painting of this hall be? Would you catch the giggles of the girls or would prefer something less fleeting?)
We stood for our moment to take in the painting, stepped inside the gallery and sat on one of the benches. Ever the instructor, you told me about Seurat’s life, his influences, his technique. You suggest I take a closer look. I stand, look at you, expecting you to join me. A slight shake, “no.” My solitary footsteps, then, echo.
(Seurat! These frames lining the walls surrounding the work of your peers: would your keen eye see green in the shadowed recesses of their gilt scrollwork?)
I can’t see the whole thing as I near it…. I have to focus on smaller and smaller sections…. and Bernadette Peters really does look like this woman in the front…
Sunday in the park with…
The people start to get fuzzy, not blurry, their edges bleed into the trees and the trees into them…
Sunday in the park with…
“He used a technique we call pointillism. Instead of fields of color, the entire image is composed of dots of discrete colors. At a distance, they eye blends the dots together and you see the colors as if they were unified.”
Sunday in the park with…
Your voice blends into the moment in my mind and I see the dots: blues reds pinks even yellow in the dress… bright dots of spotlights… (Seurat! Seurat! How did you see all these colors? How close to the dress and the tree did you have to stand?) the small dots of atoms I will never see and the large dots of stars and the distance is dots of nothingness and your face, half shadowed above the bench in the distance…
On the interstate that night, you’re asleep in the passenger seat. As the headlights of oncoming traffic flit past, I see your face lit for just a moment. Ahead, the intermittent red of taillights.

I wrote the piece below for my workshop class and is a “found” poem by the criteria the instructor set forth. Because of the formatting, I had to post it as an image, which I set so you could click it and see the full image which is slightly larger than the one below.

I haven’t been posting much anything here for a while. This semester at school has kinda killed any creativity I might have thought I had at some point. Like it or not, most of my writing is brought on by reading. Specifically, reading things I enjoy. Haven’t done that in a while. Modernist texts- blech. Marxist, feminist texts- blech. Reading with theory in mind- blech. I hope today finds everyone in teh intarblogwebs well and not stuck in the tubes. I have had to write some terrible pieces for my poetry workshop class, I may post those at some point so you can /point and /laugh at them. For today’s amusement, a short poem I wrote during my poetry workshop class while I wasn’t paying any attention to the nice grad student who teaches it. Sorry.

(Fragment)

Torn foil and cork still on the screw-
One bottle- one glass-
the dissipating residue of sweet German grapes

Down a short hallway a muffled figure in a bed that has only one pillow.