fallen verses

Complain loudly enough, and the mountain will move for you (via Poetry Hut Blog).

Or, if not mountains, you can squelch free speech and artistic expression that does not match with your iron-age belief system. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems the “moderate christians” should be with the people standing up against this. If that group wants to play in the modern world, they need to invigorate the Jesus 3.0. The 1.0 guy has been dead for a long time, the 2.0 guy is a bigot and needs to shut up. Jesus 3.0 is the opportunity to look for the positive things faith can add to the world (if you believe there are any), rather than the fear and intolerance bandied about by the vocally religious.

Just when you think the world maybe has a chance, you keep seeing stuff like this. Makes me sad.

Laughing in the Wind
after Rosetti

Still no one has seen the wind.
In these sepia photos the night
sky is the color of espresso.
Spring rains can be warm and gentle.
No one has really seen those either.

Still, no one has seen the wind.
Science, however, turns with the answer:
smoke. A trick that works in tunnels
but autumn remains stubbornly
unconvinced. Fire is too terrible.

Unless it is the incandescent burn
of passionate eyes. There is
velocity when falling,
even when falling in love.

The wind itself remains silent.
The wind itself explores all surfaces.
Realize, however, that the wind
is, itself, something to be explored.
Like silence. Like love.

Dana challenged us with a collection of words. Since I am never one to ignore a dropped gauntlet (er.. except the 30-40 prompts I didn’t do), I used that list as the basis. It took a few iterations before I found something that started working for me, and that is what remains above.

I didn’t use it, but in the wordle image the phrase “science turning tricksy” stood out to me. But it’s tricky like a mischevous god not tricksy like a con man. At least not true science, but you know what they say about true scotsmen.

Actually, being a pretty damn strict materialist / rationalist, I have enormous respect for science and the paradigm it works under. I don’t think it’s tricksy at all. I think Art is tricksy as all get out. And that is o.k. too.

via Poetry Hut Blog

Burger King Launches Canadian Online Poetry Contest (link)

…

Haiku is an ancient form of Japanese poetry consisting of a set number of syllables per line: five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line, and five in the third. The website includes haiku samples and an easy-to-use haiku-writing application….

/boggle

I think this calls for bullet points:

• “Ancient” is a very fluffy word in this context. Language is so fluffy to begin with but then we take words that have meanings and we stretch those meanings and stretch them and stretch them and soon, they have holes big enough in their ears you could mini-putt through them! So, while this is true, it is only true in some meanings of the word. Regardless, I don’t think I would call the 17th century ancient.
• Syllables: well, Japanese does not have syllables, so it is, in fact, impossible for Japanese poetry to have a form based on them. Japanese is measured in on (which are moras), which are not syllables!!!!!
• Per line? Well, the line issue. The glaring 5-7-5 of grade school prosody. Haiku (as an independent form) were not three line poems. Often, they were written in one line. Or, when mixed with visual arts in haiga, were formed according to how they best fit with the image (something the poets at Postal Poetry are working with).
• 5-7-5… well, remember, not syllables in Japanese, but on. Haiku are not 5-7-5, not really. They employ (in their most formal sense) a kireji (cutting word) after the fifth or twelfth on. The kireji serving as a point of separation similar to colon, semicolon, dash, ellipses, something of that nature. A little math and you can see how 12/5 or 5/12 gets thought of as (5+7)/5 or 5/(7+5) to get the tripartite form we use in western haiku.
• “easy-to-use haiku-writing application”  ????? write text, count, edit text, recount. Notepad does this!!!!

Feel free to ignore the man behind the curtain wearing the gold paper crown.

And feel free to ignore whoever wrote that idiotic trade-journal article. I mean, fuck, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, WIKIPEDIA it! How about, mr. fast-food-writer-man*, you write about the new innovation in fryers and leave the poem-talk to people that know more about poetry than your average 4th grader!

*I say man, of course, meaning the non-gender specific referent for person while still conveying “The Man.” mr. fast-food-writer-person just wouldn’t have had the same edge to it.

A Pin Worked Loose

Tatterdemalion slink into depleted villas,
each step chasing memories deeper into
these antiquated courtyards.

Here are artifacts which nobody recognizes.
They remain untouched. Visitors, focused inward,
do not notice them. They tarnish, fade, rust.

Outside, civil guards scream obscenities.
Someone has posted Lorca’s broadsides
believing both duende and Andalusia are omnipresent.

Somewhere else, meditation resurfaces a lost “I.”
In that same place a girl is born. An old woman dies.
Later, the process is repeated. And again. And again.

In an open notebook are words brilliant but forgettable-
tenuously held together scraps called verses.
The page is a pin worked loose- the center holds,
but a breeze carries the frayed edges out of sight.

It seems such a waste to let those words stand alone on this page. Especially when so many of them will be repeated from piece to piece, each a playful rehuffling of context and content.

Tatterdemalion is a word I have only encountered previously in a Terry Brooks novel: Knight of the Word. It was a magic creature, animated by the spirit of a dead child, built of scraps. Similar to its real definition in an essence. Tatters, the ends, fading, decay. I also think it echoes the essence of this excercise. We all started with scraps and are putting them together.

Most of my poetry is written in a first-person perspective. I edited to remove the “I” from this poem. It seemed, to me, the “I” was too strong an identity for the poem to hold. The “I” was too complete. So I deleted it.

I’m curious to see so many other takes on this arrangement of words. See both what words get used most often and how their meanings change from place to place.

Additional information: I wrote the majority of this poem while listening to James Blunt’s album Back to Bedlam. Judge as you will.

Check out everyone else’s responses at Read Write Poem while you’re at it!

So, by now, I imagine most poets on the internet have heard of Issue 1 from forgodot.com*. I don’t care at all about any ethical issues with their use of peoples names and false attributions of poetic texts. Do. Not. Care. I think we, as people not just poets, place way too much stock in the notion of creation anyway. Nothing new under the sun in sex or poetry.

What interests me is the system by which the poems were created: the Erica T Carter algorithm. The poem below was “written” using that algorithm and, frankly, I would be happy to call it mine. Perhaps it is mine: I set the machine in motion to produce the result. Perhaps it is Jim Carpenter’s since he created the machine. Who knows. Who cares. As artists our job is to create, but that creation is not ex nihilo, it is a process all its own whereby our experiences, be they real, dream, borrowed, are filtered and twisted and looked at through broken glass until art is expressed.

The problem is not that forgodot used people’s names without permission, or even that they attributed falsely the generated texts to writers, or whether Issue 1 is just flarf. The problem is that these programs clearly show that poetry is not, in some aspects, a human act. The relation of words on the page is something can be generated by a program. It is nonsense but, let’s be honest, much avant-garde work may also be nonsense. The problem is that this shows our viewpoint of poetry is that it is solely the relationship of words to other words.

Poetry is not just the relationship of words to each other. That is verbal music, no more. Poetry is the relation of ideas to words to emotions. It is an evocative art rather than a representational one. That is why Erica T Carter and Issue 1 is ultimately irrelevant**, there is no evocation. Just words.

A crescent of negotiations

Her viridian crescents chuckle and crawl
Catching for a child

Clip any case to care about the
cochineal of contempt
How long should
I be a creed above her
coming crucifix?
Is this cashmere then, this cherubic consciousness,?
I am close

“I plan prints,” I
call
Between this prank
and that prank

What did I cite, covering, coming
above my crystals?
The hand next
I am costly
This time I
confer her

I am needed by an exclaim
There is my wizard-finger, there is another,
and there the wings of cobalt
blue she nurtures
I give her a way
But what if I should
wade sometimes, sometimes, yellow and wrong?

*IF you somehow have not, some links: Harriet 1 and 2, Silliman, Wet Asphalt, SeeqPod.

**IRRELEVANT as Art, I mean. It is interesting in other ways. Particularly the sociological sphere of poetry.

Poetry Thursday is gone, :( . The traveling edition of it has run out of steam, :( . But, we cannot have Thursdays without Poetry (actually, I’m fairly sure most of us poets cannot have any day without poetry!) so Tiel and Mike have taken over the reigns of Poetry as it is incarnated on Thursday, with their new site: Totally Optional Prompts. The premise: each week, they will post a writing prompt (much as Poetry Thursday did) which the following Thursday you may or may not follow it as you post something Poetry related on your blog. For their part, they will provide a post where people can put Links! to their blogs to share these posts with other poets and poetry lovers. And all, specifically, on Thursdays! I’m not so keen on their icon, so I’ll not be posting that, but please do check them out. I don’t anticipate having internet access for the rest of the week, so I’m posting a bit early and won’t have my link on their Thursday post unless I do end up having access. We’ll see. I wrote this piece inspired by the prompt for this week:

Salt, Girl

I chase you into the cabin,
trailing sand showers in our wake,
and the echo of surfboards.
In the purple of twilight
your sarong is tinted
as I coil it on the floor.
In front of the fireplace,
the sea water dries quickly
and I taste the salt
as I kiss your breasts.
While I lie awake through dawn
and I hear the waves gently rocking,
I still taste the salt
and remember the sweetness.

As a note, I always welcome constructive feedback, even though I’d likely ignore it. :)

Edit (Saturday 10-13-2007):
All right. Because I never checked the lobby of the hotel for wifi access, I’ve been cut off since I got here Tuesday night. Now, about 24 hours before I leave, I see someone on the ‘net in the lobby sans broadband phone card. I drag the laptop down here, and after screwing around with some networking settings, got connected, and put the permalink to this post over at TOP. More delicious posts here.

On the perils and amusements of writing class.

Verily I say unto you, when thou writest works that may be considered neo-Romantic, Metaphysical, or some other such school, consider carefully whether one who favors the strictest of modernism an ideal is one best fit to comment on your works that thous workest on. Verily.

In a more normal language:
I’m taking Poetry Writing for the second time at the University of Iowa. The first time I had an instructor who seemed to favor surrealist poetry. That worked out all right for me. Lots of indulgent images, perhaps, but there was some common ground. This time, the instructor seems to be quite a modernist. My poetry is not modernist, at all. Or, while some few may be, they are very untypical of my style. I favor more expressive metaphors rather than realist images. A different style, completely. However, what am I supposed to get out of his criticism? If his criticism basically boils down to: “this isn’t modern poetry,” my only real response is, “yeah, it isn’t.” How do you know, what criticism really centers on? Is it centering on the stylistic elements of the poem not filling his notions of poetry? Is it a bad poem? Is it merely too obscure for the audience? I certainly have written some shit poems, but the one I’m specifically talking around was not one of those. I was fond of it; I thought the use of images and cultural iconography allowed me to be very concise in text and present layers of meaning. So, bad poem, too obscure, or just not for him? How do I tell? What are your thoughts, you few who wander over here? The poem (originally this post):

Yearning

You and I
were
cherry blossoms
between
branch and ground.

I would undo Spring
to blossom again
with you.

His comments:

1. Why is “were” on its own line?

2. Off on the side: “We were falling blossoms…”

3. I believe continuing the above thought: “but lets bloom again? Doesn’t quite make sense. Think about tense: if we “are” falling blossoms (note: cherry blossoms in haiku-like poems are a cliche), then it would make sense to want to be blooming, on the branch, etc.”

So, what do you think? Terrible poem, obscure, not his thing? I’ve spent several days thinking about this and I have some thoughts, and I’ll put them a little lower down. First, I wrote a collection of senryu-like poems from the ire. Maybe not so much with the quality, but amusing to me nonetheless.

Senryu-esque reflections on Sakura

O cherry tree
your meaning is cliché
please blossom no more

Hana-mi in full swing
pages ripped from my notebook
left with the sakura they mention

falling cherry blossom
is cliché
but sakura chiru
is not

Spring has no impermanence
Prints of cherries on the walls

no symbol for
impermanent beauty
in autumn

such little, pale flowers
perhaps the pink
means they are communist

symbols must die
burn the flags, crosses
and cherry trees

So, to address his points (an aside: the poem, of course, has to stand on its own, but as the author, can I change something solely for others, or does my vision have to have preference in the revision process, a process I don’t usually indulge in).

1. “were” is on it sown line because I like to use line breaks to signify cognitive division points. It breaks the thought up into almost three separate thoughts: 1- “You and I…” (sets up a clearly direct address. Probably, given most poetry, a romantic involvement. Sets a mood), 2- “You and I were.” (Gives the twist to the first line. One, we anticipate something else, so the thought is hanging, grasping for meaning, but there’s a second meaning, a maybe-this-it-it meaning. These two “were” past tense, no more), 3- “You and I were cherry blossoms.”(The metaphor. simple). If I did the line breaks differently I don’t think all those readings would still be in the text.

2. This isn’t haiku-like. It’s tanka-like. There is, in point of fact, more than one style of Japanese poetry. And they all have different rules.

3. I fail to see how “cherry blossoms” are cliche. They are a cultural icon and have been written about for hundreds of years. It may be true, may, that American authors have misused the images and symbolisms to give their haiku an authentic feel, without caring about the actual referent of the trees. That does not make them a cliche. it may make them cliche (adjective), but even that would be exceedingly disrespectful of the cultural value placed on them in Asian societies.

4. Considering tense: the “we” are not anything. They were. In the past. There is no present tense, except the implicit one in which”I” express a wish.

I could continue, I suppose, but, eh… Despite the fact I like the poem, it is possible it just isn’t any good. I don’t agree with his comments, though, and I would suggest he assumed it was written without care and forethought to the placement and choice of words, thus coloring his interpretation into that of someone reading a poem he expects to be not good preventing him from even considering that there are levels and not just ink on paper. I am most curious for all of your thoughts on this. Please?

Last post of September

I started blogging (more or less) in May of this year, and moved to this site at the end of July. It has been two months over here at Wordpress and I have been fairly pleased, both with their service and at the communities I’ve started to become part of. Those of you who are frequent commenters (esp. Susan, Gautami, Paisley, Liz, and Deb, and everyone else) are the ones who make it worthwhile to continue. I wish I could give as much back to the community as you do, but I feel so guilty for stealing the little time I do for this endeavor. One day, perhaps. So, for anyone randomly finding my blog by some strange combination of search terms: if you have any interest in poetry, definitely check out their sites. Anyway, I leave September behind with this poem, written, appropriately enough, in bed (though alone :( ):

Intimate Kisses

after Wendy Maltz

I start on the back of your neck,
trace your spine with my breath:
a warm mist interrupted by
kisses almost immediately memory.
As I linger on the small of your back,
my left hand tracing your thigh,
my right hand the curve of your side,
You shiver.
The temperature falls on the
sun-lapsed landscape
and you grow ever more flush,
leaving your skin
as playground for mercury.
Soft kisses in the past,
our bodies burn each other
and we throw the duvet from our bed.
Sweat becomes steam rising from us
becomes teardrops as the windows
weep: joy for our joy.

Remembering to look down every once in a while.

Walking Away

Scarlet on grey:
Trampled
By a thousand leather soles-
Discarded roses.

Yearning

You and I
were
cherry blossoms
between
branch and ground.

I would undo Spring
to blossom again
with you.