These Three Must Be Related

At first, I was baffled in too many ways to respond/react properly. I put all of these reactions in a jar, popped the lid. This article is total bullshit, frontloads "facts" to open the door to weak thinking, and generalizes an already over-generalized topic beyond belief. Yet, I can't help but share it, think about it, talk about it. It's so scary, even on Fox, because it was written by a woman, and people are Liking/praising it. A total shame, continued. 

Shai Hulud, whose album That Within Blood Ill-Tempered is easily one of my favorite albums of all-time, is having tryouts again for lead vocalist, or as they put it a person to "channel the various emotions of our words and music through voice, intense physical presence, and visceral interaction during and in-between the songs." That's what I love about Shai Hulud; their music is pure emotion catapulted. Stoked for their new album with singer from-way-back-when Chad Gilbert (yes, that Chad Gilbert) (see video below). And despite my adoration for the things they shout and the big boom of their full sound, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the pulse of the demos available for free download for the vocal auditions. 

Been reading Madness, Rack, and Honey, Mary Ruefle's Collected Lectures, and have been mondo-stoked by the wisdom banner she waves regarding poetry. For my future reference, I'm dropping some stellar sections here from the essays I've read so far: 

"If you have any idea for a poem, an exact grid of intent, you are on the wrong path, a dead-end alley, at the top of a cliff you haven't even climbed." (p. 3; "On Beginnings") (I love how the extremity of this, the near-impossiblity of the danger of having "any idea for a poem.")

"Poetry and sex have this in common: they are the instant consumption of energy, that is, they do not accumulate, they do not have a value dependent upon the consequences of furthering anything outside themselves, though of course they can do that, whereas religious morality is always dependent on consequences." (p. 87; "On Secrets") (And that is why I'm drawn to poetry over religion and most other pursuits. Also, that is the reason I'm so sadden when people's faith in poetry becomes hinged on accomplishing anything specific, especially monetarily or ego-oriented.)

"We speak of secrets from the point of view of the teller or keeper, but what of the listener? What about the one who hears the secret? What happens to him?" (p. 100; "On Secrets") (Everything we do--tell a secret, write a poem, whistle out the window, smash a pumpkin on a lawn--affects someone else. Why do I always forget that!)

"Smoke signals are perhaps the most beautiful form of the letter ever to evolve. For what is a letter, but to speak one's thoughts at a distance? Which is why poems and prayers are letters." (p. 204; "Remarks On Letters")

"The greatest lesson in writing I ever had was given to me in an art class. The drawing instructor took a sheet of paper and held up a pencil. She very lightly put the pencil on the piece of paper and applied a little pressure; by bringing her hand a little ways in one direction, she left a mark upon the paper. "That's all there is to it," she said, "but it's a miracle. Once there was nothing, and now there's a mark." (p. 207; "Remarks On Letters") (GET STOKED THIS IS A MIRACLE ALL OF THIS ALL OF YOU)

"The great lunacy of most lyric poems is that they attempt to use words to convey what cannot be put into words." (p. 15; "Poetry And The Moon")

Link Plop

My skull is kinda whimpy so Im gonna start plopping online goodness I like here, for me, for memory, for maybe others if that is what they are into.

Mary Ruefle on Fear

Fear is the greatest motivator of all time. Conflict born of fear is behind our every action, driving us forward like the cogs of a clock. Fear is desire’s dark dress, its doppelgänger. “Love and dread are brothers,” says Julian of Norwich. As desire is wanting and fear is not-wanting, they become inexorably linked; just as desire can be destructive (the desire for power), fear can be constructive (fear of hurting another); fear of poverty becomes desire for wealth. Collective actions are not exempt from these double powers

Lovelace notes on revision

7.     How do you think the backside of a mirror feels? Think about how lonely that is, to be the backside of a mirror. Or maybe not at all. Maybe it’s a relief. It must be such pressure to be the front of a mirror.

Wayne Koestenbaum, Matt Rohrer, Rachel Zucker In Conversation regarding the domestic 

Chris Higgs with a list of 50 Best Instant Movies 

 Awesome poem by Mark Neely

The Most of It by Mary Ruefle

Mary Ruefle has this baffling ability to get into human experience and give it a heartbeat, sincerely, rejuvenatingly (that's not a word?). She proves to capture a moment is one thing, to make it pulse is another thing entirely, extraordinarily.

From "A Half-Sketched Head"

Childhood Memories

There was a long silence during which he seemed to be struggling. Suddenly he looked up at her. "I wish to tell you as quickly as possible that when I was a boy it was my sole responsibility to feed the baby goats from a bottle containing their mother's milk. On one such occasion I managed to spill the goat's milk down my shirtfront--over which I should have been wearing a smock in the first place. And though I can't tell you why, I was wearing my best shirt: perhaps for the like of that alone I deserved to be punished. I went immediately to the washroom and began to rinse out the milk spots, using a large bar of my mother's soap, which was always in plentiful supply since she made it herself. And as I stood there it struck me--my mother's soap was goat's milk soap, with goat's milk I was trying desperately to erase goat's milk. That something could be its own remedy--though I did not then think in those terms--struck me as a rather serious joke. It was my first occasion of panic.

Stevens And Ruefle Together

I read Selected Poems by Mary Ruefle and the essay "The Relations Between Poetry And Painting" by Wallace Stevens from his essay collection The Necessary Angel recently. I thought I'd place together some of my favorite quotes and see how they collide.

Speaking of Wordsworth's Michael and the line "And never lifted up a single stone" on pages 162/163, Stevens said: "One might say of a lazy workman, 'He's been out there, just loafing, for an hour and never lifted up a single stone,' and no one would htink this greaty poetry...These lines would have no existential value; they would simply call attention to the lazy workman. But the compositional use by Wordsworth of his line makes it something entirely different. These simple words become weighted with the tragedy of the old shepherd, and are saturated with poetry. Their referential importance is slight, for the importance of the action to which they refer is not in the action itself, but in the meaning; and that meaning is borne by the words. Therefore this is a line of great poetry."

From Ruefle's poem "Patient Without an Acre" on page 6:
I can't work, much less love.
Love, there's no mistaking the word
for it: once you've driven the
wild breath in, you'll have
a little glass hammer,
perfectly useless. This,
the flint of all things!

Speaking of the mind's retention of experience on pages 164/165, Stevens' says: "If it merely reconstructed the experience or repeated for us our sensations in the face of it, it would be the memory. What it really does is to use it as material with which it does whatever it wills. This is the typical function of the imagination which always makes use of the familiar to produce the unfamiliar."

From the beginning of Ruefle's "Perfect Reader" on page 63:
I spend all day in my office, reading a poem
by Stevens, pretending I wrote it myself,
which is what happens when someone is lonely
and decides to go shopping and meets another customer
and they buy the same thing. But I come to my senses,
and decide when Stevens wrote the poem he was thinking
of me, the way all my old lovers think of me
whenever they lift their kids or carry the trash,
and standing outside the store I think of them:

Discussing Simone Weil's thoughts on "decreation" on pages 174/175, Stevens says: "She says that decreation is making pass from the created to the uncreated, but that destruction is making pass from the created to nothingness. Modern reality is a reality of decreation, in which our revelations are not the revelations of belief, but the precious portents of our own powers. The greatest truth we could hope to discover, in whichever field we discovered it, is that man's truth is the final resolution of everything."

Ruefle's poem "The Tragic Drama of Joy" on page 95:
Late that night it rained so hard the world
seemed flattened for good.
But the grocer knew the earth had a big gut
and could hold more than enough.
When he went out to receive a shipment of cat food
the stays of his umbrella were bent.
It took some time to fix them and when he got to his shop
the truck had already left.
On a whim he went inside and brought home
a bottle of wine for his wife.
Have you gone crazy? she said. They didn’t uncork it,
but he felt something nonetheless.
That wonderful click his umbrella had made
when it finally opened for good!

you are the greatest living authority

I feel like shouting WHATS GOING ON? and I mean it, but it's National Poetry Month and today is NO SHOUTING DURING NATIONAL POETRY MONTH DAY, well I mean, no shouting during national poetry month day, and I need to chill out. Mary Ruefle agrees. Her poem "The Hand" is a nice reminder of wuzzzzzup.