Modern and Contempory American Poetry

[ussusimiel]

Here's the next lot of poems. These are people who didn't/don't agree with the way that the modernist poets were going. Robert Frost's 'Mending Wall' was one of the poems, but I won't include it as it's the longest and most people are probably familiar with it already. (The Richard Wilbur poem looks different because I wanted to maintain its format.)

"Lines for an Abortionist's Office"
by Ruth Lechlitner

Close here thine eyes, O State:
These are thy guests who bring
To gods with appetites grown great
A votive offering.
Know that they dare defy
The words of law and priest---
(Better to let the unborn die
Than starve while others feast.)
The stricken flesh may be
Outraged, and heal; but mind
Pain-sharpened, may yet learn to see
Thee plain, O State. Be blind:
Accept love's fruit: be sleek
Fat and lip-sealed. (Forget
That Life, avenging pain, will speak!)
Thrust deep the long curette!

Interior
by Genevieve Taggard

A middle class fortress in which to hide!
Draw down the curtain as if saying No,
While noon's ablaze, ablaze outside.
And outside people work and sweat
And the day clings by and the hard day ends.
And after you doze brush out your hair
And walk like a marmoset to and fro
And look in the mirror at middle-age
And sit and regard yourself stare and stare
And hate your life and your tiresome friends
And last night's bridge where you went in debt;
While all around you gathers the rage
Of cheated people
Will we hear your fret
In the rising noise of the streets? Oh no!

Yet Do I Marvel
By Countee Cullen

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

If We Must Die
By Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

truth
By Gwendolyn Brooks

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.

Code: Select all

                  THE DEATH OF A TOAD
                   by Richard Wilbur

       A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
   To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
   Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
      Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
          Low, and a final glade.

       The rare original heartsbleed goes,
Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
    In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
    As still as if he would return to stone,
        And soundlessly attending, dies
           Toward some deep monotone,

       Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia^Rs emperies.
    Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone
    In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
        To watch, across the castrate lawn,
            The haggard daylight steer.

Nude Descending a Staircase
By X. J. Kennedy

Toe after toe, a snowing flesh,
a gold of lemon, root and rind,
she sifts in sunlight down the stairs
with nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister
a constant thresh of thigh on thigh;
her lips imprint the swinging air
that parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterfall, she wears
her slow descent like a long cape
and pausing on the final stair,
collects her motions into shape.

u.

[ussusimiel]

Next for some more wastrel hipster s*** I'm not sure how to go about posting these guys, so I'll mix it up a bit. I'll go with Ginsberg and Creeley first and add Kerouac and a couple of others later on.

The reason that the Beats are included is that their poetry was more about method rather than content. Kerouac was open to chance operations and letting things flow, and that fits with people like Stein and those who come later like Cage, Mac Lowe and Retallack.

We did a good bit on 'Howl Part I' and what's interesting is how much structure there is under what seems like a flood of material. The basic structure of the whole of 'Part I' is:

'I saw the best minds...

who sat up.../bared.../passed.../dreamt...

to receate...

the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.'

Allen's studious upbringing couldn't be escaped and it finds it's expression in the structure of the poem (if not in the material ).

(Excerpts from Howl, Parts I)
by Allen Ginsberg

For Carl Solomon

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
..hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
..fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
..starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
..supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
..cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
..staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkan-
..sas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,...

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt
..of marijuana for New York,...

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy
..Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought
..them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain
..all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,...


and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash
..of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the
..vibrating plane,...

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before
..you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet
..confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his
..naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here
..what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow
..of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love
..into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered
..the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies
..good to eat a thousand years.

I Know a Man
By Robert Creeley

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,—John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.

u.

[Avatar]

I like the...I dunno...rhythm of Ginsberg there. I tried some similar SoC feeling stuff a couple of times.

I quite like the Creely one there too actually.

--A

[ussusimiel]

More from the Beats! A couple of pieces by Jack Kerouac. The first is more of a list of instructions but it reads like poetry. The second is a sample of what he called 'spontaneous prose'. Then there's one by Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) and one by Anne Waldeman.

After that it'll be back to the New York School.

BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE
LIST OF ESSENTIALS

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside yr own house
Be in love with yr life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
Youre a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
As ever,
Jack [Kerouac]


section from Old Angel Midnight
by Jack Kerouac

Boy, says Old Angel, this amazing nonsensical rave of yours wherein I spose you'd think you'd in some lighter time find hand be-almin ya for the likes of what ya devote yaself to, pah -- bum with a tail only means one thing, -- They know that in sauerkraut bars, god the chew chew & wall lips-And not only that but all them in describable paradises aye -- ah -- Angel m boy-Jack, the born with a tail bit is a deal that you never dream'd to redeem -- verify -- try to see as straight-you wont believe even in God but the devil worries you-you & Mrs Tourian -- great gaz-zuz & I'd as lief be scoured with a leaf rust as hear this poetizin horseshit everywhere I want to hear the sounds thru the window you promised me when the Midnight bell on 7th St did toll bing bong & Burroughs and Ginsberg were asleep & you lay on the couch in that timeless moment in the little red bulblight bus & saw drapes of eternity parting for your hand to begin & so's you could affect-and eeffect -- the total turningabout & deep revival of world robeflowing literature till it shd be something a man'd put his eyes on & continually read for the sake of reading & for the sake of the Tongue & not just these insipid stories writ in insipid aridities & paranoias bloomin & why yet the image-let's hear the Sound of the Universe, son, & no more part twaddle-And dont expect nothing from me, my middle name is Opprobrium, Old Angel Midnight Opprobrium, boy, O.A.M.O. --

Pirilee pirilee, tzwe tzwi tzwa, -- tack tick-birds & firewood. The dream is already ended and we're already awake in the golden eternity.

Incident
BY Amiri Baraka

He came back and shot. He shot him. When he came
back, he shot, and he fell, stumbling, past the
shadow wood, down, shot, dying, dead, to full halt.

At the bottom, bleeding, shot dead. He died then, there
after the fall, the speeding bullet, tore his face
and blood sprayed fine over the killer and the grey light.

Pictures of the dead man, are everywhere. And his spirit
sucks up the light. But he died in darkness darker than
his soul and everything tumbled blindly with him dying

down the stairs.

We have no word

on the killer, except he came back, from somewhere
to do what he did. And shot only once into his victim's
stare, and left him quickly when the blood ran out. We know

the killer was skillful, quick, and silent, and that the victim
probably knew him. Other than that, aside from the caked sourness
of the dead man's expression, and the cool surprise in the fixture

of his hands and fingers, we know nothing.

Rogue State
by Anne Waldman

I’m in a rogue state, honey
Getting unpredictable & strange
Just a rogue state itching to
Test my harridan ballistic range

National Missile Defense System
Got nothing on me
I can pierce thru the genome project
With a cyborg’s vitality

I’m in a rogue state, Mr. President
Don’t tell me what to do
Your rules aren’t my rules
Cause I’m the Lady of Misrule

u.

[Vraith]

heh...sometimes I hate kerouac. I've never been able to figure out if that's cuz he usually bores me, so I hate that or cuz every once in a while he isn't boring so I hate that.

Baraka...I like some, some is spectacular, little is awful.
But I know too much about who he was BESIDES poetry [or behind it] to just read it. And not in a good way. It is one thing to make a point. It is another to say "if you don't act exactly as I think you should, you are evil/wrong."
His poetry [some of it] is open. He is closed, and ruins his poetry by insisting the two are the same.
It's like if van Gogh insisted everything important about his paintings was cuz he did/would/will cut his fucking ear off.

[Avatar]

I never heard of him. But I didn't like that poem.

The Waldman one was amusing.

And for what it's worth, I've never been much of a Kerouac fan. Don't know why.

--A

[aliantha]

These Kerouac pieces remind me of Sarge's style, a little. Altho it ought to be the other way around, I guess.

I *loved* the Waldman.

I found the Baraka...interesting. To me, it reads like embroidery on top of a police report of a shooting -- still cold and clinical (until the "Other than that" section at the end), but with more details than a cop would ever give out.

[ussusimiel]

These Kerouac pieces remind me of Sarge's style, a little. Altho it ought to be the other way around, I guess.

I'd agree, the Sarge's style is definitely in Whitman/Beat territory and yet the poets he likes always have quite a different style again.

There was an interesting discussion about the Baraka poem on the course. The reason the poem was probably chosen is that it clearly shows the influence of Stein (in the repetition) while also coming in as a Beat poem. This shows the clear influence of modernism on the Beats (and those who will come afterwards on the course).

There was also a connection made with a poem by Countee Cullen:

Incident
by Countee Cullen

Once riding in old Baltimore,
...Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
...Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
...And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
...His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
...From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
...That’s all that I remember.

and the contrast between the two mode of representation was talked about. How Baraka is highlighting the paucity of 'normal' connotive and denotive methods of representation (your generic police report or newscast) in relation not only to the actual incident itself, but also in relation to the complexity of the context in which the murder occurs (especially race relations).

The Countee Cullen poem is using 'normal' modes of representation to ensure that we remember the incident, while Baraka is using modernist modes to stress the need for new and multiple ways of seeing for us to be able to begin to come to terms with the complexity of the contemporary situation.

Incident
BY Amiri Baraka

He came back and shot. He shot him. When he came
back, he shot, and he fell, stumbling, past the
shadow wood, down, shot, dying, dead, to full halt.

At the bottom, bleeding, shot dead. He died then, there
after the fall, the speeding bullet, tore his face
and blood sprayed fine over the killer and the grey light.

Pictures of the dead man, are everywhere. And his spirit
sucks up the light. But he died in darkness darker than
his soul and everything tumbled blindly with him dying

down the stairs.

We have no word

on the killer, except he came back, from somewhere
to do what he did. And shot only once into his victim's
stare, and left him quickly when the blood ran out. We know

the killer was skillful, quick, and silent, and that the victim
probably knew him. Other than that, aside from the caked sourness
of the dead man's expression, and the cool surprise in the fixture

of his hands and fingers, we know nothing.

IMO, a very impressive achievment for what looks like a slight poem.

u.

[Avatar]

Meh...if the poet was deliberately trying to achieve that complicated goal, (and said so), then it turns the poem from (a form of (because I don't like it) ) art to a work of work.

If not, then as I often suspect, somebody is over-thinking things maybe.

"The poets vision dissected by inexpert tools."

I suppose I've never been a particularly analytical reader. I read and speak for the love of the sound of the language. I don't look for the hidden messages (if any) and perhaps am slightly suspicious of those who do.

I'm largely of the school that authorial intent is king. Everything else is just audience interpretation. Not wrong per se, certainly it's what they believe and how they perceive, but not quite true either.

--A

[ussusimiel]

Meh...if the poet was deliberately trying to achieve that complicated goal, (and said so), then it turns the poem from (a form of (because I don't like it) ) art to a work of work.

If not, then as I often suspect, somebody is over-thinking things maybe.

I tend to agree (even if it looks like I'm the one doing the overthinking ) It was a constant criticism of mine during the course that because modernism is concerned with the artificial nature of language (and thus suspicious of its uses) that to read the poems in a satisfying way meant that lots of meta-stuff had to be entertained. (This will become essential when we look later on at the language poets and the conceptual poets.)

Stein seemed the worst to me, but after reading her piece on composition:

No one thinks these things when they are making when they are creating what is the composition, naturally no one thinks, that is no one formulates until what is to be formulated has been made.

I've changed my mind a bit. It may simply be a case of modernism providing certain tools for the poet that weren't available before. In Baraka's case he may simply have been dissatisfied with Countee Cullen's mode of addressing the incident and written his poem out of that dissatisfaction using the new tools provided by modernism/Stein/the Beats without any deliberate goal in mind. That he achieved a certain complicated goal in the process is the nature of good/great art.

"The poets vision dissected by inexpert tools."

Again I tend to agree. One of the things I noticed on the course is that they tended not to read out the poems (even the short ones) before they started discussing them. This annoyed me because it's as if they were afraid to deal with the poem as a unified entity and were more comfortable addressing its dissected parts. However, I am a fan of close reading, especially of poetry that I personally find difficult or incomprehensible. If someone else loves a poet (Stein for example) and my only response is confusion or dislike, then (reassured that there is something worth exploring) I like to be able to engage with the poet's work more closely. If the poet has integrity I am usually rewarded by the effort I put in.

I'm largely of the school that authorial intent is king.

Not sure that I can agree with you here. I've had the experience, both in my own writing and the writing of others, where what the author intended is not at all what appears in the poem. IMO, unconscious forces are always at work when we engage in the creative act. I have seen good poems ruined by the author insisting that what they intended is more important than what they actually created. IMO, ego and creativity are mutually exclusive in the actual creative act itself and if the ego intrudes afterwards it is usually to the detriment of the poetry/art.

Everything else is just audience interpretation. Not wrong per se, certainly it's what they believe and how they perceive, but not quite true either.

In terms of reader interpretation you are into the post-modern idea of the reader recreating the work of art in the act of reading/viewing. I am usually not in favour of this way of addressing poetry/art, but it is also a given that a work of art has no vital existence separate from its effect on a reader/viewer. Squiggles of ink on a page or splashes of colour on a canvas are not going to reproduce themselves; the effect of a poem or artwork on a person may alter them and thus the society/culture they live in. Regardless of the creator's intention what is effected is whatever occurs within the person who engages with the work of art. (Not to lose the argument but the obvious example for me is the adoption of Wagner's work by the Germans during the period before WWII. How people responded to his work and what he actually intended had almost nothing to do with each other, but the effect was powerful. (Similarly, Nietzsche's work.))

u.

[Avatar]

Why must you make posts like that? Now I must work to reply.

Stein seemed the worst to me, but after reading her piece on composition:

No one thinks these things when they are making when they are creating what is the composition, naturally no one thinks, that is no one formulates until what is to be formulated has been made.

I've changed my mind a bit. It may simply be a case of modernism providing certain tools for the poet that weren't available before.

I'm not seeing it. If the "formulation" only comes after the writing, if the piece itself is created independently of it, then how can it be about it? If it is tacked on in retrospect, then I can tack on any meaning in retrospect and it is equally as valid.

I'm largely of the school that authorial intent is king.

Not sure that I can agree with you here.

So you're one of those fellows who insists Lord of the Rings was about the rise of fascism and WWII and that Sauron was Hitler? Despite Tolkein denying it for the rest of his life?

I've had the experience, both in my own writing and the writing of others, where what the author intended is not at all what appears in the poem.

Says who? Don't you mean that what the author intended is not what you (or somebody else) sees in the poem?

IMO, unconscious forces are always at work when we engage in the creative act.

Hmmmm....maybe. My own forces tend to be quite conscious usually, but I understand what you mean.

IMO, ego and creativity are mutually exclusive in the actual creative act itself and if the ego intrudes afterwards it is usually to the detriment of the poetry/art.

That I can agree with, although it is probably to the detriment of the artist if it is not involved in the creative process. If it is, then to the art certainly. (Poetry is art by the way. )

But I don't see how that refutes my point.

If the poet stands there and says "this is what I meant when I wrote that" and a teacher stands their and says "What this poem is actually about is..." who are you going to believe?

If the poet says "I'm using modernist modes to stress the need for new and multiple ways of seeing for us to be able to begin to come to terms with the complexity of the contemporary situation," I might think less of the poem (or the poet), but I'm not going to doubt that that's what he was trying to do, whether that's what I understood from the poem or not.

Everything else is just audience interpretation. Not wrong per se, certainly it's what they believe and how they perceive, but not quite true either.

In terms of reader interpretation you are into the post-modern idea of the reader recreating the work of art in the act of reading/viewing. I am usually not in favour of this way of addressing poetry/art, but it is also a given that a work of art has no vital existence separate from its effect on a reader/viewer.

You're overthinking my position. I would never have called it a post modern idea, although if the post modernists think that, then I partially agree. But it's too grandiose.

I think of it quite simply...if you believe that I meant X when I wrote something, then you think and act as if I had, which means as far as you're concerned, I might as well have done. (And as far as you'd be concerned, I did.)

Regardless of the creator's intention what is effected is whatever occurs within the person who engages with the work of art.

Yes. But if the creator says to me, "ah, I actually meant XYZ, not ABC," it would alter my perception of the work, because if anybody knows what it means, it's the person who made it.

--A

[ussusimiel]

Why must you make posts like that? Now I must work to reply.

Hee, hee! This must be close to the longest post I've ever seen you make. Sorry for the clipped wings, Your Glibness!

I'm largely of the school that authorial intent is king.

Not sure that I can agree with you here.

So you're one of those fellows who insists Lord of the Rings was about the rise of fascism and WWII and that Sauron was Hitler? Despite Tolkein denying it for the rest of his life?

As your winking shows you know that I am categorically (or allegorically ) not one of those. That interpretation is a stretch at best, and at worst (as J.R.R himself pointed out) doesn't even hold up in the particulars.

I had a much longer post done up (I was going to try and make you work some more ) addressing your points one by one, but it all basically boiled down to one thing: in my experience what the author intends and what is realised in the creative work often bear little relation to each other. I consider this a very good sign in a piece of work because it means that during the creative act the ego is not in control and what is expressed is what is necessary (not what is desired by the ego).

u.

[Avatar]

Why must you make posts like that? Now I must work to reply.

Hee, hee! This must be close to the longest post I've ever seen you make. Sorry for the clipped wings, Your Glibness!

Haha, that's because I've been pressed for time these last few years. If you ever looked at some of my long-ago posts, you would see impressive examples of loquaciousness.

...in my experience what the author intends and what is realised in the creative work often bear little relation to each other.

But what is realised by who? If the author sees the outcome as matching his intent, then it doesn't matter what you see in it.

--A

[ussusimiel]

...in my experience what the author intends and what is realised in the creative work often bear little relation to each other.

But what is realised by who? If the author sees the outcome as matching his intent, then it doesn't matter what you see in it.

We may never agree on this (Fortunately this is not the 'Tank. Ahh, Civility! Such an underrated human capacity )

As I see it, if every single reader of a poem gets basically the same meaning from it, but the author says that it means something completely different, then, IMO, the author has not realised their intent. What they have intended is not what they have created/realised. Unless they can clearly show that the readers are mistaken then to continue to insist that they have been successful in fulfilling their intent is borderline delusional. (That artists are borderline at the best of time is no justification )

In the case of geniuses (Joyce, Eliot etc.) it may be the case that the readers do not yet have the means to read the work fully, but this is rare. IMO, in most cases, when an author insists that the readers don't get their work (because of deficiencies in the readers) it is a sign that their intent has not been successfully realised.

u.

[ussusimiel]

Here's some of the New York School. I've posted some Ashbury and O'Hara earlier, Berrigan and Guest are examples of elaborations on the School's techniques. (I've used the {code} tag to (partially) preserve format.)

Hard Times
by John Ashbery

Trust me. The world is run on a shoestring.
They have no time to return the calls in hell
And pay dearly for those wasted minutes. Somewhere
In the future it will filter down through all the proceedings
But by then it will be too late, the festive ambience
Will linger on but it won't matter. More or less
Succinctly they will tell you what we've all known for years:
That the power of this climate is only to conserve itself.
Whatever twists around it is decoration and can never
Be looked at as something isolated, apart. Get it? And
He flashed a mouthful of alumnium teeth there in the darkness
To tell however it gets down, that it does, at last.
Once they made the great trip to California
And came out of it flushed. And now every day
Will have to dispel the notion of being like all the others.
In time, it gets to stand with the wind, but by then the night is closed off.

Code: Select all

   3 Pages
   By Ted Berringan

10 Things I do Every Day

                              play poker
                              drink beer
                              smoke pot
                              jack off
                   curse

BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN

                               flower

      positive & negative

go home

          read   lunch   poems

               hunker down

    changes

                  Life goes by
                                        quite merrily
                                                               blue
                        NO HELP WANTED
                                 
                                 Hunting For The Whale

                   “and if the weather plays me fair
                               I’m happy every day.”

                     The white that dries clear
                     the heart attack
                     the congressional medal of honor
                     A house in the country

                     NOT ENOUGH

A Step Away From Them

by Frank O'Hara
It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell' attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.

Code: Select all

   20
   By Barbara Guest

Sleep is 20
                    remembering the
insignificant flamenco dancer
in Granada
                    who became
important as you watched
the mountain ridge
                    the dry hills

What an idiotic number!

Sleep is twenty

it certainly isn’t twenty sheep
there weren’t that many in the herd
under the cold crest of Sierra Nevada

It’s more like 20 Madison Ave. buses
while I go droning away at my dream life
Each episode is important
that’s what it is! Sequences —
I’ve got going a twenty-act drama
the theatre of the active
the critics are surely there
even the actors
even the flowers presented onstage
even the wild flowers
picked by the wife of the goatherd
each morning early (while I sleep)
under the snow cone
of Sierra Nevada

            yellow caps like castanets
            I reach into my bouquet
            half-dreaming
            and count twenty
            yellow capped heads

flowers clicking twenty times
because they like to repeat themselves

as I do as does the morning
or the drama one hopes
will be acted many times

As even these dreams in similar
people’s heads

             20
     
          castanets

u.

[Avatar]

As I see it, if every single reader of a poem gets basically the same meaning from it, but the author says that it means something completely different, then, IMO, the author has not realised their intent.

Would every single reader agree with each other? Ever?

But this is different from what I was really talking about.

The writer can certainly fail to communicate his intent through deficiency. What I am really trying to get at is that I consider the writers interpretation of his own work to be more authoritative than the interpretation of people analysing that work.

--A

[ussusimiel]

The writer can certainly fail to communicate his intent through deficiency. What I am really trying to get at is that I consider the writers interpretation of his own work to be more authoritative than the interpretation of people analysing that work.

I generally agree, especially if it's academic analysis. However, I am talking about reader response rather than analysis. In my experience it's very common for younger writers (and writers just starting out) not to have a good handle on the material they are working on. The upshot is that it gets out of their control and they reveal stuff that they are not aware of. In cases like this I disagree that the author is the ultimate authority.

Another example that I would give is when primal unconscious material is at play, even in the most seasoned of writers. The best example that I can think of is material that touches on the lone-twin phenomen (and I think a significant percentage of writers/artists are lone-twins! ). An artist might be obsessing about his muse or lost soulmate and swear that that is the true source of his inspiration, while to someone who is aware of the lost-twin idea could have a clearer idea about what's going on.

In an extension of my position, it is also possible for an author to mistakenly think that they are open to all sources to enable their creativity when they are not. A poet I know cannot understand why their poems are not accepted in any of the journals when so much work has been put into them. They are well made poems, but arid and barren because the person is unaware that they are not (because of its painful nature) tapping into a key source. Here. IMO, the poet's authority is again not the ultimate one.

u.

[Avatar]

Another example that I would give is when primal unconscious material is at play...

Again, we're talking about the perception of the reader here. Just because you experience something different in reading something than the author did in writing it, your experience isn't more valid than his.

I have a memory of an "analysis" of something...a book I think...and in the analysis, the analyst said something about how the imagery of a swimming pool was a reference to something traumatic or other.

The only way I'm going to accept that is if the author himself says "The swimming pool was intended to represent XYZ."

Otherwise, it's just what the reader is reading into it. And, possibly because I'm not really a critical reader, I'm suspicious of people who try and "read into" what they're reading.

--A

[ussusimiel]

The writer can certainly fail to communicate his intent through deficiency. What I am really trying to get at is that I consider the writers interpretation of his own work to be more authoritative than the interpretation of people analysing that work.

And this is the exact point of disagreement

I agree completely that this is the case with some (if not most) writers, but I disagree with you completely that it is always the case. Some writers are so intuitive in their creative process that they may never have a clue about what it is that they are trying to express, but they still know exactly how to express it.

Back to my example of the lost-twin. I doubt very much that Emily Bronte knew while she was working on Wuthering Heights that she was dealing with that phenomenon, yet it is there to see plainly once you are aware of it. Her actual unconsciousness of it, allied with her artistic gift, may be what gives the work such enduring, elemental power.

u.

[Orlion]

*shrug* The problem I see is that 1) The reader rarely has the tools the writer has. Maybe a reader of Hemingway has no idea about minimalism and therefore automatically assumes he is a lazy writer and not that he/she ought to be looking for clues of the undercurrent of the story. In cases like these, I think the reader's interpretation accounts merely as taste/opinion.

2) The reader rarely makes the connection that the writer is reacting to events in his time period. So, this type of reader is usually fine with more modern books because he/she all ready knows the background. But older works like Dante's Divine Comedy and Swift's Gulliver's Travels? Forget about it! Automatically, the reader is going to miss much needed context without knowing the history the author is reacting to and also by refusing to admit that history since then plays no part in any real understanding of the work. So we have Heart of Darkness being focused as some terrible work by some terrible racist instead of the masterful look into a descent into madness through power.

3) The reader will project his/her own self onto the story. That means they are going to find things that the author not only intended, they are probably going to feel very strongly that they are right. Mark Twain once wrote that art is pretty much a mirror, and the viewer will see himself/herself. So, Bronte could be more concerned with the theme of loneliness, and have actively written with nothing but that in mind, but you are going to see lone twin syndrome.

All of these cases the review is going to say much more about the reader than the actual writing itself. As a result, the writer's interpretation carries more weight not because he/she is necessarily always more insightful but because of the nature of art is going to be more on-topic.

It's like if you went to see a lecture on Edward III and the lecturer began to talk principally about his own life. You would not think you had learned much about Edward III, would you?