I don't think anybody understood then what a monster really was.

The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg, his debut collection, represents an exploration into some pretty gritty spaces. Into contemporary surrealism. Into imaginative association. Into that blur between prose poem and flash fiction. As I read this book, I became enamored with the shapes Schomburg was making with his words, with the images, with the pieces and sections and book as wholes. Honestly, I am perplexed how to talk about this book as a collection in any defined/refined way. I know I liked it a great deal and am intrigued by why I like it. But when looking up one of my favorite poems “A Band Of Owls Moved Into Town,” I discovered it was originally published in a free verse form with linebreaks and a few other differences. Because my mind immediately latched onto the structure of the poems in this book, I thought I’d examine the differences between the two, hopefully uncovering some of the answers to what makes this book rule.

A basic overview of what I found structurally/thematically in this book: Two major structures of poems are normed in this book: half-page to full page prose poems and narrow, small stanza free verse poems. Also, recurring themes, names, and ideas repeat themselves (and Schomburg even includes a key word index at the end of the book). Also, there are some short sections/series in this book.

“A Band of Owls Moved Into Town,” a full page prose poem early in the book, is a great example of the type of things Schomburg is doing:

A band of owls moved into town. They shopped for groceries and ran for office, that sort of thing. It began casually. Everyone simply put up with the owls because businesses were booming and the schoolchildren’s test scores had suddenly taken a turn for the better. More and more owls, and some people too, made the move into town and the room for accommodations began to diminish. Needless to say, there was a lot of construction. The town became a city. It developed a night life and the
constant yellowish buzz of electricity.

One night at the Electric Mole, I met Julia, the daughter of new and prosperous socialites in town. She was incredible—the most amazing eyes. We stayed awake
through most nights holding each other beneath the moonlit window. We talked about everything, but mostly about our disdain for the construction and the flood of immigrant owls.

I would tell her, We seem to be the only two who are concerned, who notice. The only two who want out…

…Who want a simpler life, she would say. The only two who…who…

Aided by its structure, I am most intrigued by how this poem works its themes. This surreal context of owls moving into town automatically creates an oddness that for me allows the metaphors and the themes to shine. For instance, the struggle between youth and the various difficulties they face emotionally growing up, such as the conflict with adults, difficulty grasping change, and feeling like outsiders, radiates beautifully in this poem. The development of the piece complements those difficulties in the way it unravels. The first paragraph sticks to the third person, which allows readers to get comfortable with the unfamiliar situation. The second paragraph sets up the relationship between the I and Julia in this typical we-stay-up-all-night-and-just-talk-and-are-alone-together-in-the-world sort of way before finally unveiling the tension the speaker and Julia feel. Most telling, I think, is the separation of the speaker’s phrase, the more disgruntled of the two, from Julia’s, whose voice seems less concerned and more passive before trailing off symbolically. This structure pushes the poem to a good height because it allows readers to take each thing one step at a time, leading to the full realization of what it is representing.

Tarpaulin Sky originally published this poem in a different version. I’m intrigued by how the differences inform what Schomburg is doing in this book.

A band of owls moved into town,
shopped for groceries, ran for office,
that sort of thing. It began casually,
some of them gathered on Sundays
at Sophia’s to get their hair done and
then it was the bookstore on the corner.
Everyone simply put up with the owls
because businesses were booming
and the schoolchildren’s test scores
had suddenly taken a turn for the better.
More and more owls, and some people too,
made the move into town and the room
for accommodations began to diminish.
Needless to say, there was much
construction. The town quickly became
a city. It developed a night life and the
constant yellowish buzz of electricity.
One night at the Electric Mole, I met Julia,
the daughter of new and prosperous
socialites in town. She was incredible—
the most amazing eyes. We would stay
awake through most nights holding each
other beneath the moonlit window. We
talked about everything there, but mostly
about our disdain for the construction
and the flood of immigrant owls. I would
tell her, “We seem to be the only two who
are concerned, who notice. The only two
who want out…”
“…Who want a simpler life,”
she would say. “The only two who…who…”

Besides the additional musicality of the line breaks and the use of more fragments, especially in the opening, the main difference in this version is how the single stanza drives the poem. As mentioned before I think the white space informs the reading, allowing readers to take their time with the poem and progress into the metaphor and surrealism. In this version, however, I think that effect is lost because the added musicality pulls the reader without much room or time to reflect or deal with what is happening. Not until the indentation leading into the final two lines and notably Julia’s sole primary appearance does the reader have a chance to pause. While it may be a bias of having read the prose version first, I think this version of the poem lacks the tightness in readability that allows the message to really shine through.

At first, the poetic grumpyhead in me was mumbling about the abundance of paragraphs, but honestly, I realize that these are certainly poems and the prose form that is abundant is the best move as it allows Schomburg to do what he does best. Where many poems, mine included, are aided by linebreaks and a more stanza’ed form as it matches and controls the musicality and reading of the poem, most of Schomburg’s poems, especially his best ones, utilize their surrealism and symbolism as their catalyst for reading the poem. Rereading this poems, I find myself caught in the rhythm of the wild things happening on the page, engrossed and loving it. That is enough for me right now.

The facts aiming your eyes down the road...

One of the main reasons I got into poetry is that I’m drawn to using writing to deal, cope, live, move on. My favorite poets are the ones that push that ability, working through problems and points, staying true to their voice and persona to take their readers to a rewarding end. Bob Hicok was one of the first contemporary poets that I remember. He introduced me to the power of pushing his poems deep, stretching them wide to get their full effect.

In my poems, I have created the most satisfactory complete-feeling pieces by using this lesson to make the most out of what I was talking about. Sometimes, it involves traveling around the topic. Sometimes, it requires digging deep into myself and the idea. As I am currently going through the beginning stages of a divorce, college graduation, and the other things that come along with those big steps, I am having to remind myself, hard as it may be, to write about these things, and take them the distance.

Hicok’s early collection The Legend of Light is a great example of a young poet doing just that. Whether the poem be in first person or not, Hicok does not shy away from the tough subjects. In my favorite poem from the collection “Divorce,” Hicok guides us through his relationship with such a difficult topic by starting at an entry point away from himself, a man on the phone, through his own associations, like thinking about guns, before settling down beside his own wife to think:

When she asks what’s wrong, I begin to say
idiots, we’re all idiots, but stop
and put my arms around her. Because
we’re not, and because warmth’s
better comfort than words.

This is a place where I worry about going, because sometimes it can come off overly self-concerned. However, The progression of this poem pushes himself and his readers so deep into this idea so that the ending comes out meaningful. This isn’t just some whiny poet guy worried about his marriage, but rather a thoughtful poet giving himself the benefit of the doubt and being honest with what’s he’s finding.

Hicok’s complete sense of empathy, both with himself and others, balanced inside complete honesty is what makes Hicok such an admirable person on the page. Sometimes, I worry that my self-focus and confessions of things like depression and loneliness, even masked in my energy and associations, will come off as whiny and unpurposeful. Hicok manages to turn those risks into rewards by not relenting on his path.

Looking at “Neighbor,” I notice how Hicok carefully crafts the relationship and juxtaposition of a homeless man that is his “neighbor” and his own life. I am blown away here with how Hicok portrays the man and himself within the situations of themselves and their relationship to one another in a way that neither belittles or puts the homeless man on a pedestal, also without overemphasizing Hicok himself as the observer/poet, but rather smoothing out the details in a way that moves me equally in thought and feeling:

A man lives under the Beakes bridge. I drive over him
every day. His hair’s
like a troll’s I had once, a thicket though not purple.
Curled fetal, he sleeps
with his back to the river. I see him when I run, when
I chase my breath
to stay alive. He has a radio I’ve never heard croon.
Perhaps he’s an aficionado
of silence. He doesn’t wear foil on his head. Does not
spread the flower of his hand
for coin. Not that I’ve seen and we are neighbors.
I pass his house
on my way to breakfast, to buy shoes, tan or black
lace-ups, to drive
into what’s called the country but is really the city
spread out like paint
on canvas. I live in an area where cities are growing
together. The term used
is megapolis. Everything will have to get bigger.

The places he puts the lens circles around both him and the man in their various contexts to really allow himself to keep the tone and perspective in control. Then, like in many of his poems, the “point” barrels out, hitting me at my most natural level: a caring, worried human being.

FOUR OF A KIND BY MARK NEELY: A RESPONSE

When starting this project, Todd asked me the direction I wanted to go with the poems for the manuscript, a question we returned to last week. We talked about series and themes, how they can add unity to a manuscript. Until this talk and the further thinking that evolved from it, I hadn’t really contemplated the importance of a definable theme or even style, assuming naively it just comes. Reading Four of a Kind by Mark Neely, I was reminded of the ability of a series to right away solidify a manuscript in some sort of a way. These poems, each titled things like “Four Accidents” or “Four Threads,” are constructed on the page in four equally-sized “windows” of text, two on top and two on bottom. Beyond being formatted and sized the same, the content of the poems, at once, hold their own as individual pieces but more importantly pull themselves together under each umbrella of “Four Somethings.”

Maybe the most, I appreciate Neely’s use of the image to play on and delve into the title. A sense of purpose unfolded as I moved from block to block. The poem “Four Fields” is an excellent example of such, as the first one begins, “The locust trees could hiss like snakes,/then still to painted leaves—the wind playing with its paper toys” leading to the first line of the last section, beginning, “These nights the silence has a human shape.” To me, throughout this poem, the associative quality, in this case nature-oriented, of each section pushes them together, while each still makes an impact of its own.

I think this complexity and unique design is what makes this a solid foundation for the collection. While I do very much enjoy the language and the content of the poems, I’m going to focus on the larger structure here, as it pertains to my process of developing this manuscript with Todd. Basically, I have two series of poems developing. One is the set that I’m using for this class, what Todd calls “The Stoked Poems,” where my voice is excited, often using caps, my slang, and energetic association (hopefully well). The other is “The On Poems,” which because of their stage of development and (GASP) simpler construct, I’ve decided to develop on my own, with some help from pals. These have a similar set-up to the Stoked Poems in general style, but they pay less attention to poetic sensibilities and more attention to the relationship between thinking and feeling as expressed in writing. Sometimes, I even feel guilty calling them poems.

There, I think I found it, my point to this post. When thinking about series, especially in the vein of the On Poems, but certainly in generally, I often wonder when something becomes less about the poetry and more about the exercise or the act of behaving a certain way on the page. Before I delve deeper into Neely’s book with this idea in mind, along with Descriptive Sketches by Nate Pritts and Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! by Peter Davis, I want to consider my series with this idea in mind.

Last summer, I started these pieces as an attempt to “calm down.” Often, I was getting lost in the “coolness” of language, and I’d end up with this emotionally-empty but (hopefully) cool sounding thing. When trying to correct it, I’d end up writing these thoughtful poems that were boring. The solution: state a simple topic of concern or interest, disregard linebreaks/rhyme/other poetic conventions, and simply merge the thinking and the feeling. I’ve written about 60 of these and I’m proud of maybe 40 of them for accomplishing my task. The concern I have is about the artifice of it. Of course, as Todd says, all poetry is artifice, but how does such an artifice become relevant, legitimate, and poetic? I guess I have similar concerns about the stoked poems, especially because a lot of readers won’t know me, and might think that this is just a ploy, not me really saying my guts sincerely.

Where Neely’s collection takes a step above simply being a series or exercise is the way the language, the construct, and the poems themselves come together. Though not always aesthetically pleasing for me, I appreciate his sense of the image, the sense of how things unfold in these little windows, which says a lot about the power of the way they are presented, automatically creating a balance in the purpose, the content, and the delivery. Most importantly for me, when together, these poems create their own image about the author, about the style, about the scenes laid out, piled together, that pushes this collection to be a true achievement in series writing.

Because of the descriptive style of Neely, I was reminded of another chapbook with a unique style and construction called Descriptive Sketches by Nate Pritts. On the acknowledgements page, Pritts explains that “each sketch is a haze of language built out of the first line” with the point “to explore the tensile strength of language itself.” While I certainly appreciate that attempt and style as an exercise, these pieces together as a chapbook of poems clashed with my understanding of what makes a solidified work.

Maybe it is a result of differences in aesthetics, though I certainly love other poems of Pritts, I feel that these poems run their course and lose their uniqueness only a few poems in. This is not to say the writing or the language exploration is bad. Here, I am talking about how a series comes together. Looking at the first and last of the bunch might help this point. The first one begins with an onslaught of autumn-devolving-into-winter imagery:

this spinning snow fall leaves scattered bird bright in grey
bright leaves scattered spinning fall snow this bird in grey
snowfall in grey this bird spinning scattered leaves bright

This continues for four more stanzas. Certainly, the ability to refigure language in this way is notable, but when the last one, and the ones in between, look, feel, and resonate so similarly, it is difficult to grasp onto the collection as a whole, as in the beginning of the last one:

I am right now more than ever feeling again
I am feeling again right now more than ever
again more now feeling I am ever right than

While certainly the content and even diction is different, the result for me, merely thinking about how the poems work together does not illicit any sort of overall response from me as a reader, a fear I constantly have with my poems.

Neely’s book on the other hand sticks with me because of how the stark images and underlying emotion are framed within the artifice of the series in a way that lets them breath their own life, but are even stronger in such a contained series.
This reminds me of Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! by Peter Davis. With all poems titled “Poems Addressing…”, everything from Babies to People Who Read My First Book Of Poems, so Are Checking This Out, Davis comes at the audience in a straight forward way that at first can seem unpoetic and plain.

However, what makes this book so impactful for me is the unrelenting assault on the reader of this back and forth between the deeper emotions Davis expresses and the humor as the guise. For instance, several poems address people, such as universities or reviewers, that Davis is seeking approval and recognition from. While the style and the series makes this humorous, the underlying emotion is astounding. When these are packed and repeated in a full length collection, the quality and the quantity of emotional honesty breaks through the humor, creating a lasting set of poems.

I suppose my point with this post is to not necessarily criticize Pritts, as he did do some cool things in those sketches, or point to Davis’ or Neely’s books as any revolutionary works. Rather, they all three are helping me deal with coming to grips with my project, the focus of it, and how I can improve it to make the lasting impression on the readers that I want.

I think about you so much

When I finished The Sleep Hotel by Amy Newlove Schroeder, I thought to myself, Man there are a lot of flames in here. The intersection between nature and human life seems to run as a solid thread holding the fragments of these poems together. My overall reaction to the book floated between indifference and being mesmerized, sometimes being struck by the breathtaking juxtaposition of stark images and clear purpose. Other times, I would get lost in the tangle of the seemingly overworking of these elements. For this response, I want to tease out the difference between the two types of poems I see in this book and why each strike me in their own way.

The first type, the ones that I particularly felt connected to, were shorter pieces, typically less than a page, consisting of fragmented associations and the brief collision of spiritual and/or sexual feelings and strong images. A poem like “Covet” combines a strong opening, quick slices of images, and a deep moral undertaking at the end, alluded to by the title:

birds fly when my neighbor tells them to
whenever she waves her hands

or that’s how it seems to me

when I think about her, in my lock box of gravel & sand

my clawed face, my scar
Sycorax cleaving the sprite into the tree

it’s a jeweled abandon, isn’t it being mean

so happy for you so happy so so

envy consumes itself

first the face then the hands the feet

The spacing and unraveling exposure of “the point” strikes me in this poem. In a way that reminds me at times of Michael Dickman, Schroeder lets go of her information at just the right time, choosing her timing, words, and space delicately to arrive at the physical consumption by envy. The line “it’s a jeweled abandon, isn’t it being mean,” rules because of its poofing out of “being mean.” In my writing, I force the issue too quick sometimes, if I even get there at all, often by holding my “point” in my head and slapping it down unpurposefully to get it on the page. (Side note: I love the first stanza so much for its combo of attention grabbing quality, image, and deeper meaning.)

A poem like “Sonic” has the opposite effect for me, unraveling in such an ambiguous way, that I never find myself moved in the manner the subject matter and presentation would suggest was the intention. Rather, Schroeder’s longer sectioned poems string me along, and when I was done, I didn’t really feel anything. The first two sections of this poem, for instance, illustrate that this type of writing is essentially fragments within fragments of a fragmented poem:

where houses used to be

now /
flight vapor

*

trying to see with the mind
or through the mind:

a lot of sex with him—no radiation

(if I didn’t love him
he could hurt me)

the streets became empty fields, but still have names like Buena Vista

doesn’t air speak
the same fluent language as water?

Typing out those lines, I notice the attempts at tension, like with the parenthesis or line length variation, and awesome lines like “the streets became…”, but it lacks the addition effect of the fragments in “Covet.” I find that these longer poems do not hold my attention or emotionally impact me. I have never written long poems until recently, and that is one concern I have: the sustaining of voice, style, and most importantly purpose. For this poem, Schroeder takes us to the last section where I’m still not holding much:

almost asleep but the birds are peevish

the birds don’t sleep
even under the drape of darkness

birdsong, not like bells but bell-shaped

I just wanted to see around it,
around the possibility of flight

chain link fence
diamond-shaped empty

O sound

hidden in the sea

While this section has more cohesion than the beginning, with a little more sustained in the form and in the interwoven idea, ending the way it does still keeps me from grasping the significance.

My point in this discussion is less about the goodness or badness of this book, but rather looking at Schroeder in terms of the variability of a first book. While on the page, many of these poems look similar, either of the two varieties mentioned, and the content has some reoccurring things, like fire, the method of poetic engagement varies greatly, everything from syntax and word choice to jumping between heavy description in one poem and abstract fragmentation in the next. The title poem, “The Sleep Hotel,” is one of my favorites from the collection, as it allows the image to do the work:

lights went back & forth in the near distance

Mars was supposed to be close
but I couldn’t find it

while my father slept
I sat, open-eyed, in a green vinyl chair—

watching tubes, monitors, joking nurses
who made the same jokes over and over,
wearing their brisk obedient clothes

when he woke I fed him
ice chips from a plastic spoon

As I’ve discussed before with Todd, my favorite types of poems are the ones that have qualities which allow the reader to simply enjoy them right away, like a compelling narrative (this one) or an energetic mood, but that also possess the depth to reward a reader for further reading and examination. This book shows examples of both types of poems, which illuminates my own difficulty sometimes of leaning one way or the other (immediate enjoyment vs. deep insight).

OH MICHAEL

In his blurb, a rather lengthy one, for Michael Dickman’s first book, The End of the West, Franz Wright says, “To me, he is one of the younger American poets who are hiddenly heralding the end of the randomness, the glib irony Rilke strenuously warned against, the gratuitous non sequiturs and obscurities for obscurity’s sake which have been fashionable in our poetry over the past couple of decades.” Undoubtedly, he is right about one thing: the idea that Dickman’s poems are without that sense of associative franticness that inhabits much modern writing, including that of Dickman’s brother, Matthew, some of my favorite poets, and even at times myself.

Todd asked me about this blurb, the whole thing, which runs half of the backcover, and I’ve been taking time to digest it. Sure, blurbs are often lame, but I do think Wright brings up some interesting points about Dickman’s writing, but ones that also point to some of the contemporary writing I love and even many of my own poems.
I’ll come right out and say that I do like this book a lot, but honestly, I’m not sure why, as its distinctively outside of my “norm” and also has some glaring weaknesses. However, this book continues to resonate with me each time I’ve read it. Last fall, I read it twice in one weekend, so perplexed by my infatuation with it that I had to read it again. Now, as part of this class, we decided to include it because it is far from my aesthetic, forcing me to looking deeper into the book and my own poetic perspective.

As I contemplate this collection of poems more, I have begun to think of it as one of those air fresheners that shoots out a fresh scent every so often, something so minute that unless you’re looking closely at it, it’s effect can be missed. Still, its consistency and subtle potency keeps the place cozy and clean-smelling for a long while. Maybe, that’s an odd association.

Let me continue then. I think the kind of stuff Wright is talking about feels more like a quick straightening up, a couple swipes of a duster, picking up the magazines and dirty clothes. While for the moment its effective, deep down, things might not be as well-done and successful in the long run. Oh goodness, is this making any sense?

Dickman’s poems are sparse, heavily fragmented, and simple, yet somehow emotionally specific and impactful. I think it’s because he keeps coming at me. Most poems run a few pages, though short in word count. It’s this slow unraveling that seems to get me. Take the first page of “We Did Not Make Ourselves,” which slowly leaks humility onto the page:

We did not make ourselves is one thing
I keep singing into my hands
while falling
asleep

for just a second

before I have to get up and turn on all the lights in the house, one after the
other, like opening an Advent calendar

My brain opening
the chemical miracles in my brain
switching on

I can hear

dogs barking
some trees
last stars

You think you’ll be missed
it won’t last long
I promise

The lack of punctuation, the sparseness of words, the length it travels in such a short space really affects me. His negotiation of images to get to that last stanza, to me, is brilliant.

And, I think that’s where I find myself with Dickman, unable to comprehend how to write like this. Trust me, I’ve tried. I find both beauty and a challenge in attempting to blip through emotions that way.

But at last, I am of the temperament. that wants to run, to drag, to be dragged. Mike Young seems like one of those poets, one that I love, that Wright might point to as random for this type of discursive energy:

"You Know That Wait Means Stay"

Right away there’s thinking. Right away.
No matter how much I want my face to moon
with no contortion, leave all talk to voiceovers.
Hands take after purrs. Nicknames remind us
mostly of the fun inventing them. Every beach
fire is a kind of desperate flag. Cops pull over a
riding lawnmower, and the man won’t turn it off.
We walk the dike that crosses I-91. Headlights
pan like reasons. We’re keeping warm. Cars aren’t
fireflies, which is not even how I feel. “Funny isn’t
the same as being happy,” I tell you. Duh. Neither is
that. A family of tiny arsonists live in burned out
delivery trucks behind your neck. They are your
bad pillow. Hands wobble. It’s never been infinity
with me. Infinity is something I can fist bump.

But, I would be at the defense of Young’s poems because where I’m astounded by Dickman’s concision translating emotion to the page, I am equally enthralled with Young’s thinking, how it is both controlled and wild, natural in the most human of ways. For him to get from this excerpt to this quote, saying, “Sometimes I know that I don’t know what’s going to happen/next, but I know exactly who I’m going to be with when it/does,” is my definition of human thought and feeling combined and captured on the page.

My point wasn’t really to defend Mike Young against a theoretical attacker or to take away from Dickman’s approach. Rather, I wanted to hold Dickman’s style against my poetic worldview to see more, and what I seem to be learning is that Dickman’s book resonates with me because it feels so genuine, as Young’s poem does as well. While I’m not the kind of thinking, feeling human like Dickman, I know those types, and I appreciate the restraint and energy of both styles.

More and more, I’m wanting poems to feel like people, like personalities, like they exist outside the page and the world of literature, whether its an artifice or not. Wright complains that the “randomness” makes “it so difficult to determine whether or not a poet has talent or anything significant to tell us.” Certainly, that particular style runs the risk of getting lost in its action, ending up empty, but I’m realizing that as both a reader and a writer, through being close with a text, with myself, I can find the significance and talent, if it exists, both in myself and others.

by now you were beginning to suspect/that everyone/lived a secret life of acts/they never advertised/and you were right.

The first time I read Tony Hoagland’s first book, Sweet Ruin, last spring, borrowed copy from Todd, mainly on the bus, I remember being fairly disappointed. Re-reading it this second time, my own copy, still mostly on the bus, now for my independent study, I wonder what in the world I was thinking. Sure, the middle gets a little tedious and sometimes off-putting, but Part I, the first 8 poems, including the title poem, strike with the associative narrative beauty that I love about Hoagland while having the raw charm expected in a debut collection. Really, these first poems, re-reading them now, astound me for the path their openness and voice carve.

The opening poem “Perpetual Motion,” a meditation about driving, twists as Hoagland often does into emotion. The most striking part of this poem is where Hoagland goes, the movement of the car matching the movement of the piece. Each stanza is a step, first details of the driving, tuning the radio, etc. Then, he takes off into thoughts of “the traveling disease,” “perceptual confusion that make your loved ones into strangers,” the romanticism of driving, and finally to the admittance of that place “where the desire to vanish/is stronger than the desire to appear.” This is the type of poem to start a collection, it seems, because of the themes, both in content and in style, that it introduces, letting the reader know what kind of poet he/she is dealing with.

Following the second poem “Poem for Men Only,” Hoagland’s introduction of his social and political leanings, areas he goes deeper into in later books, the third poem “Oh, Mercy” might be my favorite of the collection. The retrospective energy it builds in the beginning is incredible:

Only the billionth person
to glance up at the moon tonight
which looks bald, high-browed and professorial to me,

the kind of face I always shook my fist at
when I was seventeen
and every stopsign was a figure of authority

that had it in for me
and every bottle of cold beer
had a little picture of my father on the label

for smashing down in parking lots
at 2 AM, when things devolved
into the dance of who was craziest.

But the shift of pace and perspective it takes in the second half, pulling away from that young self, becoming more reflective, acknowledging the change, “how we come around in time,” illustrates the complete control, through his associations and meditations, that Hoagland possesses:

That year, if we could have reached the moon,
if we could have shoplifted the paint and telescoping ladders,
we would have scribbled FUCK YOU

on its massive yellow cheek,
thrilled about the opportunity
to offend three billion people

in a single night.
But the moon stayed out of reach,
imperturbable, polite.

It kept on varnishing the seas,
overseeing the development of grapes in Italy,
putting the midwest to bed

in white pajamas.
It's seen my kind
a million times before

upon this parapet of loneliness and fear
and how we come around in time
to lifting up our heads,

looking for the kindness
that would make revenge unnecessary.

The very next poem “My Country” seems both well-placed and well-done for the way it narrows the scope, taking it to later years, viewing just Hoagland and his best friend’s wife and an adulterous kiss that takes place outside of a zoo. Hoagland works through the situation, bouncing between the narrative story, and thoughtful meditation, seeing the kiss as “a patriotic act.” In the fifth and sixth stanzas, when Hoagland thinks of his friend, “who always tries to see the good in situations,” the humanity shakes itself free of the narrative and takes us to the end for further reflection. The end of this poem is a great example of one of my biggest (sometimes) complaints and (often) questions about Hoagland. He has a way of taking poems that seem done, narratively completewith a point made, further, often onto a second page, often with questions. This poem is a great example, where I wonder if it’s too much, wonder the effect:

I slipped my hand inside her skirt and felt
my principles blinking out behind me
like streetlights in a town where I had never

lived, to which I never intended to return.
And who was left to speak of what had happened?
And who would ever be brave, or lonely,

or free enough to ask?

In the seventh poem, “Sweet Ruin,” Hoagland moves the camera to his father, recalling the way his father willingly got caught cheating on his mother. A poet like Hoagland, one whose art is so indebted to his personal history, makes a smart move here. The poem, one of the longer in the collection at two and a half pages, provides such keen insight to the poet we are getting to know. Re-reading this poem just now, I’m struck by this passage, in the middle of Hoagland’s recollection of his father’s explanation:

he reclined in his black chair,
divorced from the people in his story
by ten years and a heavy cloud of smoke.
Trying to explain how a man could come
to a place where he has nothing else to gain

unless he loses everything.

As the title poem, but also as an early poem, “Sweet Ruin” has a sense of irony and brutal honesty that seems to introduce Hoagland in a brilliant way. As this passage hopefully illustrates, this, the story he got from his father, is the same thing he himself is doing in the pages of this book.

I’m so thankful to have read this book again, in a circumstance that forced me to evaluate it deeper and with more care. As the first book for this study, it lends excellent examples of a variety of topics that I’ve never had to contemplate: poem order, epigraphs, even acknowledgements. Each time I thought of this book, Part I stuck in my head for it’s ability to introduce, as well as it’s ability to push forward into Hoagland’s style and career.

It's All Gotta End Sometime

A large theme of the discussion last week between Todd and I was purposefulness. More specifically, we started talking about choices in poetry. I believe I was the catalyst for such a discussion, contemplating the idea of spacing in poems. A trouble I often have is reasoning or justifying my choice to indent a line or word, or to otherwise make the page “more busy.” With left aligned poems, the majority of what I write, linebreaks themselves come to me for reasons of sound or emphasis, typically. But, the whole business of pushing a certain word over to the one side or excessive tabbing has yet to find a place in my style, if it even should.

I’m reminded of a sentence towards the end of Pinsky’s book, where he says, “What must be pointed out is the horrible ease with which a stylish rhetoric can lead poetry unconsciously to abandon life itself.” It seems more in the context of language use, but with this statement, Pinsky is also making a point about purpose. Where does a choice overtake the reason and become a stylish element?

I’ve heard the question raised about the aforementioned Daniel Bailey and his choices with the Drunk Sonnets, especially in terms of writing his versions of the sonnet and the use of capitalization. For me, these choices are justified because of the tone, lonely and angsty, that Bailey utilizes. Frankly, they are love poems written while drunk, hence sonnets disobeying many of the “rules” of sonnets written in all caps.

Todd mentioned the poem “America” by Claude McKay. I’d read it in the past, and after re-reading it, I find great depths in his choices as well. A black man writing about America in the form of a sonnet certainly has a special agenda behind it. Similarly, his language evokes thoughts of strong purpose and statement. As Todd pointed out, it is as if McKay is pointing out how he can play America’s game, writing solid traditional poetry.

I’m not sure how unconscious or conscious these types of decisions are or should be in poetry. Rather, I’m pointing out that in one shape or another, they’ve come to work. In my writing, my aesthetic as taken me towards discursiveness in my poems, a focal point of discussion as Pinsky’s book comes to a close. The problem I’ve encountered lately is turning it on and off, finding the purpose in my actions. As I progress forward in this study, I’ll continue to keep in mind these types of main ideas Pinsky has imparted.

IMPATIENT POETS?! NO WAY?!

Poem
by Frank O’Hara

The eager note on my door said “Call me,
call when you get in!” so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and

headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!

Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was

there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.

In the first section of “Conventions Of Wonder,” Pinsky takes to task the descriptive styles of Louise Bogan and Frank O’Hara. More specifically, the two poems, one from each, seem to do a flip-flop of typical modes of description, as Pinsky says, “both avoid the convention of words telling-about a physical reality…each deflects our feelings…away from wonder, and towards impatience.” Bogan’s poem “Simple Autumnal,” as her poems often do for me, strike as flat because of their method of putting themselves on a pedestal of sorts before attempting to reach back down to the reader, so to speak. O’Hara’s poem, to me, does a much better job accomplishing what Pinsky says both do, in a way that is accessible, purposeful, and poignant.

Sure, the emotion is less defined by words, as Bogan uses words like “sorrow,” but O’Hara puts himself on the page in other ways: with the action, with the speaker, with the voice. While Bogan’s undoubtedly has those elements, O’Hara’s uses are, for me, more aligned with an aesthetic of approachability and engagement. Where Pinsky claims that this poem “quarrels with our sense of how poetry treats experience,” I certainly agree, but I’ll also point to that quality as one of the major contributors for the engaging quality of the poem, as in much of O’Hara’s writing.

Such a trait, I might add, could be one of the reasons O’Hara continues in popularity with my generation of writers and poetry readers. As Pinksy does so well to point out, O’Hara uses phrases and specifics that “insist upon the unique, unpredictable character of experience…warning the reader that his generalities and expectations are likely to prove irrelevant to these irreducible particulars.” In this quote and in O’Hara’s poem, I see a point about my developing view of poetry that at once points at my extreme preference of O’Hara over Bogan and my deep affinity with indie/small press lit.

This element of broken expectations and approachability adds energy and emotional movement to O’Hara’s poem that I don’t find in Bogan’s. Additionally, my favorite pieces of indie literature ride on similar mechanisms. I’m reminded of Daniel Bailey’s Drunk Sonnet 14 because of it’s refusal to be anything expected or emotionally worded:

Drunk Sonnet 14
BY DANIEL BAILEY

IF ANYONE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON EVER THEN HEY
I AM HERE IT WOULD BE NICE TO TALK SOMETIME
INFOMERCIALS HAVE STARTED AND I KIND OF WANT TO DIE
I’M PRETTY SURE THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY FOR A MORGUE

OK SO ACTUALLY IT’S FOR THE BIBLE OR SOMETHING
SO IT’S A COMMERICAL FOR TRYING TO BE HAPPY OR SOMETHING
BUT I AM NOT HAPPY TONIGHT NO I AM NOT JUST HERE
IF HAPPINESS EVER WORKED THEN HOW—I DON’T KNOW

HAPPINESS IS A LIZARD IN THE SUNLIGHT GETTING WARM
AND THEN IN THE NIGHT BENEATH A ROCK EATING FLIES
AND SWALLLOWING THE MEAT OF THE TRASH OF THE DIRT

AH, SO TONIGHT IS A LITTLE DRUNK AND OK OK OK
THAT IS GOOD SO LET ME BE—THERE IS NO LOVE TONIGHT
GOD IS LIKE BONO—SOME DICKWAD NO ONE WILL EVER MEET OR LIKE

While it uses words like “happiness,” this poem takes that abstract word and other emotions and puts them onto the page, a page that steamrolls over itself. That third stanza is a great example of this. The poem starts with the speaker, the situation, the direct address of the openness. Then, boom, the turn in the third stanza pulls the poem, and more importantly the feeling, into description, but beyond that it busies its way through the image. The ending, for me, seems like a fuck-you to this whole discussion, going from “THERE IS NO LOVE TONIGHT” immediately to the last line, a seemingly unrelated commentary on both God and Bono. This last part is a good example of both this poem as a even more modern example of Pinsky’s thoughts on description going beyond wonder to impatience and the idea that my favorite kind of poems don’t hide behind their language but reach out for the reader and their true selves.

Where are these voices coming from?

In Pinsky's chapter titled "Voices," he takes a closer look at modernism's "new direction," one that is "cooler and quieter, suggests the paradoxical, essential, historically recurring poetic aim of sincerity." In doing this, he focuses on persona, moving from Lowell to Berryman, which leads to a final section cross-examining Berryman's masterwork The Dream Songs with earlier poems by Thomas Hardy and John Crowe Ransom.

The section where he solely focuses on The Dream Songs and Berryman's persona of Henry was the most enlightening for me. Over the summer, I had read, or should I say attempted to read, this series, stopping after the first volume, 77 Dream Songs, due to what I'll call an overwhelming feeling of what?. It's not that I didn't enjoy these poems or understand why they are important (the mixture of dictions, perspectives was both exhilarating and awe-inspiring). Rather, I could not grasp the understanding of what was going on (both in terms of story and style) enough to latch onto these poems in any self-respecting way.

Here, I am reminded of something W.S. Merwin said on a video interview I watched last night. He said something along the lines of the emphasis when reading a poem being too much on the interpretation and not enough on the reaction. I take this to mean what I encounter many people say:"I think it's neat, but I don't know what's going on." Reaction to me, as I hope to talk more about here soon, is the most important thing to art, I believe; as I told Todd recently, a poem doesn't mean anything if no one gets stoked about it. And, why certainly I don't need to know what's going on at all times in a poem, my lack of comprehension of the larger roles the language played in the dream songs left me tired, frustrated, and confused.

This is where Pinsky stepped in; this section about Berryman opened my eyes and my mind to a different way to understand and appreciate what Berryman is doing in these poems. Now, I think it best to work through a few of the key quotes of Pinsky's in order to get a better sense of where I am coming from.

The opening sentence of the Berryman section is "[t]o assign part of the poem to a voice or protagonist gives the attributed element a kind of autonomy, however illusory or conventional." I immediately thought of the links I had discovered and heard about between Henry and Berryman's real life self. With this method of speaking, Berryman allows himself to use his own life and feelings in way that might come off negatively or even unpoetic otherwise. By allowing this Henry character to speak and be spoken to, he gives himself more room to work, a smart and rewarding tactic, which likely aided him in producing the 385 highly-praised dream songs. Later in the paragraph, Pinsky takes this idea a little further suggesting "the quasi-autonomous element in the poem supplies a way to have one's self-dramatization and yet to judge it--or at least to stand a little apart from it."

Further complicating me during my first reading was the diction and syntax in the poems. While I enjoyed the playfulness and feeling they compelled, I was again lost in why they were used for the story/collection as a whole. Pinsky's explanation about the possible origin of this use was the final point needed for me to appreciate these pieces differently:

So, though the syntactical eruptions of baby-talk or ministrel-talk may seem to have some particular, special implication, Berryman's language seems to me to grow first of all from the poet's need for a vocabulary that does not restrict him or embarass him. And weight and strength therefore depend not on the words, in a way, but on areas between the words, on the disparities and oddball vacuums.

This new way of seeing these poems is applicable and helpful to this study and my overall growth as a poet, I think, because as both a reader and a writer, it broadens my understand of purpose behind voice. Persona poems are ones that I often have difficult with, unlike in prose, because often the story and the language (my favorite part of poetry: the leaps and risks one can take with this category) collide differently than I'm used to. Further, my own personas can be strengthened with this understanding by being more careful of and purposeful with my poetic mannerisms, an underlying point Pinsky seems to be making, as to enhance and make pop my sincerity, one of my most valued poetic elements.

Revised Poem

Below is a newer version of This Is So Romantic, which I talked about in the previous post. You can find the originally published version of This Is So Romantic here.

This Is So Romantic

Ride bikes with me!
Our helmets protect our heads
soft from the fossil fuel burgers:
we go fast through the suburbs
on the edge of our town,
dotted with daisies and driveway
cookouts already in April.
Our apartment building
behind us stands like the asylum
I visited with my girlfriend before you
when her Mom swallowed
12 pills that started with an E.
The ride there the last time
I felt comfortable in a car.
I saw a shirt once,
stick figures holding hands,
hearts around their heads,
lop-sided circles empty
besides two eye dots,
and the caption This Is So Romantic.
You ride closer as the sun inches below
the houses with their gold doorknockers
and gold Hummers parked out front.
A young boy hits a wiffleball
ahead of us. We swerve,
and you say, Yeah it is,
without opening your mouth.

Influence Vs. Imitation Vs. Showing Off

For my Independent study with Todd, I'll be reading a series of poetry books that have won awards early in writers' careers, are first books, or are early books on presses I dig, along with the Robert Pinsky criticism collection, The Situation of Poetry. We have decided to begin the semester with the Pinsky collection, using different elements of craft and style discussed in the book as possible conversation points for the poetry collections and my own poems. After reading each book or section, I'll blog in some manner about my reaction, my application, or something else about it.

The Introduction to Pinsky's book sets the stage for the rest of the book by explaining his usage of "Modern" and "Contemporary" in regards to the poetry in point. The main sketch he makes is about influence, with the primary example being two excerpts, one from Stevens and one from Moore, as examples of presenting metaphor and images in a direct, sincere way, a trend that came into being, Pinsky says, in the Modernist era. Furthermore, he uses images/metaphors from a poem by Robert Bly and another by Mary Swenson to discuss what he calls an "exhibitionist" approach to such poetic devices, how he contends that "the aggressive yoking of unlike things can sometimes amount to little more than showing off." To the first by Bly, he labels it "a kind of gaud or badge" the writer employs to establish oneself as a writer, exploiting "an inherited mannerism without full understanding it." To the second, it sees it as a sort of begging for admiration "of the writing for its own sake", void of a solid subject.

To me, Pinsky, already, makes several valid points, at least valuable to think about in my own writing. For instance, where in my aesthetic does the practice of images/metaphors fall, and with what methods/style? I'm of the mind that one thing writing needs is an excited audience, one who wants to read more, wants to buy books, wants to talk about the writing, wants to let the writing be purposeful and helpful in some way in their lives. While I see many approaches to do this, the importance of metaphors/images, certainly a large part of our current society's everyday life, seems a valuable avenue (I'm thinking of TV in particular). Pinsky admits that the way Bly and Swenson use these devices does not necessarily need to be a forbidden practice, but one acknowledged. It is often easily "identifiable when least assimilated," and holds importance and familiarity in contemporary poetry writing, which helps point to influence.

For my own writing, my main way of attempting to get people excited about writing is to capitalize on the elements that my readers find most engaging and thought-provoking. Today's reader, or at least the ones I see my poetry most fit to connect with, are flooded with poems, not to mention all of the other, likely higher-prioritized, means of interaction with the world. The poems I've been writing lately seem to be finding the balance between attention-grabbing, often startling or thought-provoking, and tightness, in terms of language use and "point." In this way, I believe my influences will be intact and honored, while still assimilated in a manner that adds to the complexity and excitability of the piece.

After reading this intro, I sat down to do some writing, and one poem in particular struck me as in need of some serious editing, though I do feel like it is worthy of being included in this project, if I work hard enough on it. It's the poem "This Is So Romantic," which appeared late last year in Novelletum, in an admittedly less-tight and sometimes superfluous version. The part that startled me, as it threw up the Pinsky flag, was the beginning of original published version:

Ride bikes with me
with our helmets like oyster shells
protecting our pearl heads
with our feet hugging metal pedals:

After not reading this poem for awhile, coupled with Pinsky's poignant discussion, the metaphors and images jumped out as over-the-top and useless, especially in the context of the rest of the poem. The use of "like oyster shells" and "pearl heads" was weightless, lacking the purposefulness, like what does this say about the characters/speakers/the situation?, and irrelevant, as it's talking about riding bikes in the suburbs. The last excerpted line seemed way to dramatic, an attempt perhaps, with the affection theme, to get "hugging" into the poem. I felt that the beginning lacked the directness and relevancy to push the poem to the point of connecting with the reader, an valuable part of a good opening.

After tinkering around with it, the newer draft, though certainly no final draft now, appears as such:

Ride bikes with me!
Our helmets protect our heads
soft from the fossil fuel burgers:

I made the decision to cut the metaphor about our helmets/heads to a more direct line, complemented by the (hopefully) weightier and more poignant "soft from the fossil fuel burgers," a line that is not nearly as direct but also holds some connotations, with the bike riding, the suburbs, and other images that have been reworked or added into the poem. This change, I hope, starts the poem off on a different foot, adding to the focus and hopefully impact the rest of the poem shapes into being. While I certainly think the type of images/metaphors Pinsky describe Bly's and Swenson's as have their place and purpose, the biggest thing I take from this introduction is to be more careful and considerate of my image/metaphor usage.

Independent Study Book List

So, I'm super stoked for this opportunity to read some good first/early books and put together a sort-of manuscript, as I prepare for grad school.

Todd and I decided on the booklist this week. Here it is:

*The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg: Still, I haven't read a Schomburg collection, though I love practically everything I've seen in journals. Excited to see how it all started.

*Four of a Kind by Mark Neely: Saved this one for the class. Neely is my professor, and I think the concept behind this chapbook is great. Excited to see how the poems are.

*Legend of Light by Bob Hicok: Not technically his first book, but an early prize winner for Hicok. Stoked to see his early work more.

*Smiles of the Unstoppable by Jason Bredle: I love Magic Helicopter Press, and though this is Bredle's third book, I wanted it on the list, as MH is a press that I would be interested in submitting to.

*The Cow by Arianna Reines: This list, I know, is dude-heavy and that's a little unfortunate. Hopefully, this suggestion by Daniel Bailey will help.

*THE SLEEP HOTEL by Amy Newlove Schroeder: Winner of the 2009 FIELD Poetry Prize; the contest looked real cool, and the sample poems were nice.

*Sweet Ruin by Tony Hoagland: Though I've read this before, I wanted a chance to study Hoagland's first book with Todd.

*The End of the West by Michael Dickman: Another I've read, but I love this book and I can't say why, so I wanna explore it more.

*The Situation of Poetry by Robert Pinsky: Todd wanted to add a prose-on-poetry book, and since this is Pinsky's first, he chose this one.

I'm excited for this class so muchhhhhhhh.