I am mulling over in my mind a number of questions relating to poem revisions. I am not sure if I will be finished with this and ready to post over the weekend or not, but just to alert you, I hope that when I do, it will be something that will create further discussion.
Is is Friday isn't it.... yep! [supersized-sigh]
I looked at the Fred Thompson campaign site yesterday. Very nicely put together and very void of specifics on issues. I guess he believes people will just like his down home style and to hell with where he would take us. Do I sound cynical yet?
This is good news: Judge Rejects Parts Of New Patriot Act
The government investigators must have court's approval to order businesses such as internet service providers and telephone companies to turn over records without telling customers.
The court found that government orders must be subject to meaningful judicial review and that the recently rewritten Patriot Act "offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers."
For John Ashbery fans: check out-> Perennial Voyager
Friday, September 07, 2007
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Review of the Dana Goodyear Event
Last night I joined a full house in the Helzberg auditorium in the Central branch of the Kansas City Public Library to hear Dana Goodyear, poet, staff writer and senior editor at The New Yorker.
My previous exposure to Goodyear was limited to a handful of poems and an essay or two. The poems tended toward the edgy side and often melancholy, something I am often drawn to.
She read from her first book, Honey and Junk as well as a couple of newer poems and to my delight, what she shared proved my earlier samplings of her work did not deceive me, she is a poet of immense depth and talent. Her voice commands a sense of frankness and is not without the capacity for wit.
If there was any surprise in what I saw, it was a young woman that was quite capable of an exuberance that transcends the more staid side often seen in her poetry.
She took questions after reading and her responses revealed much about her approach to poetry as well as her career as an editor. An enjoyable evening overall. Oh, did I mention the wine and cheese?
My previous exposure to Goodyear was limited to a handful of poems and an essay or two. The poems tended toward the edgy side and often melancholy, something I am often drawn to.
She read from her first book, Honey and Junk as well as a couple of newer poems and to my delight, what she shared proved my earlier samplings of her work did not deceive me, she is a poet of immense depth and talent. Her voice commands a sense of frankness and is not without the capacity for wit.
If there was any surprise in what I saw, it was a young woman that was quite capable of an exuberance that transcends the more staid side often seen in her poetry.
She took questions after reading and her responses revealed much about her approach to poetry as well as her career as an editor. An enjoyable evening overall. Oh, did I mention the wine and cheese?
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Bukowski's Poetry & more
- Interesting take on the prolific Bukowski - Don't blame Bukowski for bad poetry.
- Collection of previously unknown poems by a young WH Auden found - Auden: The lost poems .
Quote for the day....
"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Tuesday & the times they are a changing...
- At the center of each poem is a mystery - Mark Strand on poetry [here]
- Poet's Choice - Robert Strand examines a James Hoch poem [here]
- Poems analysed in search of clues to suicide [here]
- Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness Treatment and the Creative Process - [here]
- Songwriter and protest icon embraced and taught in British schools as poetry - [here]
Monday, September 03, 2007
On another look...
Last Thursday night, I picked up Donald Hall’s The Painted Bed when I couldn’t sleep. I shuffle through various poetry books on my night stand, even after reading them, going back to them again and again usually proves to be worthwhile.
I read three poems that night at random. All poems I have read multiple times before. That night there were things that resonated in two of these poems that simply did not do the same for me in earlier reads.
In Wool Squares where the voice talks about going through a “muddled heap of women’s work and finding wool squares she used to knit while he sat opposite. And this is one of those poems that one assumes Hall is writing from his own persona. Jane has succumbed finally to leukemia and he does a most interesting thing. He evokes Young Caitlin, wife of Dylan Thomas. It is so odd that this did not strike me as particularly profound in earlier readings. Hall finds himself in Caitlin here the widow with the “leftover life to kill.” His final stanza…
“At seventy I taste / In solitude / Starvation’s food, / As the land goes to waste / Where her death overthrew / A government of two.”
My recollection is that in earlier reads I focused on the wool squares themselves and the visual of the two of them sitting in the same room, he recalling her work on them. I also connected with his solitude. It is hard not to read Halls late work especially and not feel the grayness. But in this last read I was struck by his metaphorical view as the two of them a unique government that was overthrow by her death. These are not profound discoveries in this poem, but they provided a more salient view for me then before.
The other poem was Ardor. Hall unleashes all the accompanying feelings; the outrage, the desire. The inability to work, to love or die. “Each day lapses as I recite my complaints / Lust is grief that has turned over in bed / to look the other way.” A very strong final line in the last stanza. The magnitude of it seems so real in my latest read.
People will often say that Hall is a downer to read. Certainly, isolated to an individual poem or two, one can easily reach this conclusion. But even in Hall’s later work, the underlying motive is love. There few contemporary poets that have the command of love either in abundance or loss that he has.
I read three poems that night at random. All poems I have read multiple times before. That night there were things that resonated in two of these poems that simply did not do the same for me in earlier reads.
In Wool Squares where the voice talks about going through a “muddled heap of women’s work and finding wool squares she used to knit while he sat opposite. And this is one of those poems that one assumes Hall is writing from his own persona. Jane has succumbed finally to leukemia and he does a most interesting thing. He evokes Young Caitlin, wife of Dylan Thomas. It is so odd that this did not strike me as particularly profound in earlier readings. Hall finds himself in Caitlin here the widow with the “leftover life to kill.” His final stanza…
“At seventy I taste / In solitude / Starvation’s food, / As the land goes to waste / Where her death overthrew / A government of two.”
My recollection is that in earlier reads I focused on the wool squares themselves and the visual of the two of them sitting in the same room, he recalling her work on them. I also connected with his solitude. It is hard not to read Halls late work especially and not feel the grayness. But in this last read I was struck by his metaphorical view as the two of them a unique government that was overthrow by her death. These are not profound discoveries in this poem, but they provided a more salient view for me then before.
The other poem was Ardor. Hall unleashes all the accompanying feelings; the outrage, the desire. The inability to work, to love or die. “Each day lapses as I recite my complaints / Lust is grief that has turned over in bed / to look the other way.” A very strong final line in the last stanza. The magnitude of it seems so real in my latest read.
People will often say that Hall is a downer to read. Certainly, isolated to an individual poem or two, one can easily reach this conclusion. But even in Hall’s later work, the underlying motive is love. There few contemporary poets that have the command of love either in abundance or loss that he has.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)