Sunday, November 30, 2008

Mad Lib Poetry

Today I offer an interactive activity!  One of the things that continues to amaze me about the poems I admire most is the precision of word choice.  As I child I loved playing Mad Libs during every road trip, so I decided to replicate the fun game with some of Robert Frost's most well-known poems.

The point of this word game is not to mock or parody Frost's poetry, but rather to demonstrate how easily the poem's entire meaning can be changed by replacing his nouns for others.  

I chose, "Mending Wall" and "The Road Not Taken". 

Mending Wall
by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost from The Norton Anthology of American Literature (W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2003.  Sixth edition), p. 1880-1881 and p. 1887.

I identified parts of speech in the first 11 lines of "Mending Wall" and the first stanza of "The Road Not Taken", and I asked friends and family to give me the first word that came to mind for the following parts of speech without telling them what poem their choices would become a part of. 

Mending Wall:

Noun:
Verb in the third person present tense:
Group of people (ex: hunters, Americans, etc...):
Object pronoun (him, her, them):
Animal:
Time of year (season, month, time around a particular holiday, etc...):

The Road Not Taken:

Plural noun:
Infinitive verb:
Singular person (hunter, doctor, etc):
Adverb:
Preposition:
Location:

Please feel free to add your own in the comments section!

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Pronouns

Today I want to share Dunya Mikhail's poem, "Pronouns" from The War Works Hard (p. 75, A New Directions Book, 2005.  Translated by: Elizabeth Winslow).

Pronouns
by Dunya Mikhail

He plays a train.
She plays a whistle.
They move away.

He plays a rope.
She plays a tree.
They swing.

He plays a dream.
She plays a feather.
They fly.

He plays a general.
She plays people.
They declare war.


The progression of each strophe is dialectical.  While the first two lines of each strophe are not in opposition to each other (as would be a thesis/antithesis), there is a tension or incompatibility evident in their relationship that is ultimately resolved by the final line of each strophe (synthesis).  The last line of each stanza depends upon the first two: e.g., without a rope and a tree they could not swing, without a feather and a dream they could not fly.  

I love the formula of this poem: 
He plays ________.
She plays _______. 
They ___________.

The synthesis occurs not only in the material that fills in the blanks, but also most explicitly in the pronouns.  The pronouns follow a much more conventional dialectic: "he" and "she" are in opposition, and "they" appropriately synthesizes the two preserving the plurality while negating the gender and individuality of "he" and "she".  

Four strophes is convincing without being overly repetitive.  If the poem were to continue with this pattern for much longer, its point would become belabored and less compelling.  As is, the poem progresses in its verbs from "move away" to "swing" to "fly" to "declare war".  The poem itself moves from the whimsical and lighthearted world of whistles, trains, and swings to the resolute declaration of war.  The quick progression mirrors the haste that often dictates war. 

The repetitive pronoun/verb construction demonstrates the routinization of warfare and the ease of warfare to exist simultaneously against banal, innocent activities of play.

Finally, the choice of the verb "play" as the consistent verb throughout is a distinct determinant of the poem's meaning.  The OED lists thirty two distinct (with subpointed variants) definitions of the verb play.  It is defined by everything from movement ("move away") to fly, and is definitionally interpreted in a way that warrants each of the poems' unique uses.  

Evoking the imagery of "play" in relation to warfare, makes an interesting argument about war as a game or a simulation.  The relationship between a general and the people demonstrates the capacity of one man to mobilize an entire people toward warfare on a whim.  This poem expresses the injustice that war is instigated under seemingly capricious, playful behavior yet exacts consequences incompatible with "play" -- death, destruction, etc.  

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

A couple of posts ago I wrote about my own relationship to poetry.  Now that I'm home and memories are canvassed around me, I decided my next couple of posts would be an appropriate forum to reflect upon how I arrived at my current fascination with poetry.  

First semester of my sophomore year in high school, I stumbled clumsily around the dark room trying to create something meaningful in black and white. Photography was fun. I enjoyed composing photos, but I felt an extreme disconnect between myself, my camera, and the ultimate image these wonder chemicals produced. I hesitate to say I quit, but I temporarily retired my Nikon and adopted pen and paper as I enrolled in creative writing, which I quickly became immersed in for the rest of high school.

My school’s creative writing curriculum rotated thematically every year, moving in cycles from play writing/screenwriting, to nonfiction, to fiction, to poetry. As I dove in second semester, day one I was assigned to write a poem. I came home eager to write, but immediately grew frustrated by the cursor aggressively flashing against the stark white of my word processor. Writing had always flowed from my fingertips, but suddenly with the challenge of poetry I was obsessively self-editing. No more than twelve characters made it onto the page before they were quickly erased with the staccato press of rapid backspacing. This was my first serious attempt at art that required no materials I did not already innately possess. Simultaneous feelings of horror and exhilaration arose knowing my finished product would not depend on film, paintbrushes, or popsicle sticks. My creativity was my only instrument, and I felt like mine was out of tune and missing some strings.

My first written, artistic attempt was okay – perhaps better in idea than execution. I wrote what I then thought to be an edgy list poem, “23 Last Suppers” chronicling the imaginary last suppers of the twenty-three prisoners executed the previous year under the Texas death penalty. My relationship to poetry had evolved past my three cherished volumes of Shel Silverstein, but still read like a greatest works anthology filled with William Carlos Williams’ apologies for eaten plums and Rupert Brooke’s nationalist fervor. Writing poetry taught me the tools I needed to be a more critical reader. At first, I seldom looked to professional examples, but I learned valuable lessons from the work of my peers. Familiar with a whole new vocabulary of techniques and styles – pantoum, slant rhyme, anaphora – my first significant opportunity to engage poetry came in my Spanish literature class. Reading Bécquer and Neruda, I realized the extent to which poems lend themselves to intellectual play in interpretation.  This tale is to be continued, but in the interim, I'll share the aforementioned poem:

Twenty-Three Last Suppers

God is good, God is great, and we thank
Him for this food we eat.
Food characterizes life…

A gallon of pistachio ice cream,
Plump and juicy hot dogs,
A deliciously roasted turkey leg,
Four greasy fried empanadas,
A savory sirloin steak,
Twelve jumbo Big Macs,
Thirty-two sticky vegetable dumplings,
A decadent chocolate cake,
Helpings of handmade spinach ravioli,
Rich cheese enchiladas and refried beans,
One box of Hostess Ding Dongs,
A pint of creamy New England clam chowder,
A scrumptious serving of chicken cordon bleu,
Eleven slices of pumpkin pie,
Exquisite prime rib,
Half a dozen freshly baked sesame bagels,
Sixty-four ounces of wiggly blueberry Jello,
Three bowls of sweet Lucky Charms,
Lamb chops with mashed potatoes,
A short stack of gingerbread pancakes,
An enormous Cesar salad,
One quiche Loraine,
Chicken nuggets and French fries.

…The glorified final meal characterizes death.
And now you lay me down to sleep. If I should die
before I wake, I pray to you my soul to keep.


Texas catered to the dining wishes of its twenty-three
citizens executed in 2004.
The Lone Star State single-handedly prepared an
overwhelming forty percent of all Last Suppers
for the entire country. 

Monday, November 24, 2008

Homeward Bound!



After a long four months of school, tomorrow afternoon I am headed home and could not be happier. For your listening enjoyment I recommend Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound", and for your poetry enjoyment I share Es'kia Mphahlele's "Homeward Bound".

Mphahlele was born in South Africa in 1919 and applied for a permit to leave his country permanently in the mid 1950s before entering into exile in 1957. He lived all over the world before deciding to return to South Africa in 1978.

While its perhaps insensitive to compare my own excitement about going home for Thanksgiving with the much more complicated emotions of a patriot in exile returning to his homeland, I think both create an opportunity to interrogate our own relationships with "home" and the relationship we perceive others to hold with their own homes.

Also, as the holidays approach I invite you to keep all those who for whatever reason cannot return home: remember refuges, soldiers, alienated families.  I hope everyone finds peace in a feeling of "home" that brings the same comfort and happiness as would a physical presence.  

I read Mphahlele's poem as a profound gesture of acceptance; he distinguishes between expectations and reality and accepts the imperfections of his homeland.  His emphasis on topography (mountains) seems to reveal a preoccupation with the surface compared to what lies below and behind the surface (e.g., the sky as a permanent yet changing background for the mountainscapes and the emphasis on imagery of light).  The speaker seems to have reached a peace with his "home" by the poem's resolution, "you need not look just the way I want".

Homeward Bound
by Es'kia Mphahlele

The mountains that I like
and do not fear
don't stoop over me
like giant apes marooned
on a patch of Time;

they are the forms beyond,
holding down
the edge of blue
and etching with a light
of ever-changing tints;

--they can look the way I want them.

I do not like the lights
that come at me
and stab and flail
and blind the eyes of night
that bounce and cling on tarmac;

those shimmering faraway bodies
softly throbbing
tell me and love
that coffee's on the boil,
she's listening to my footsteps;

--they can look the way I want them.

But you beside me here--
the contours of
your mountainscape
lead me to sniff at the corners
of your passion and sprawl
in the light and shade of your valleys
reminding me clearly
distant sights
can easily become
explosions of a mood;

so let us ride along 
through dewy midnights
dewy dawns
and tumble gently into
disemboweled noontides;

--you need not look just the way I want.

Mphahlele, Es'kia. "Homeward Bound." Against Forgetting : Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. Ed. Carolyn Forche. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 1993. 718-19.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Poetry and the Self

I am growingly attracted to autobiographical poetry.  Poems like Nazim Hikmet's "Autobiography" and Adam Zagajewski's "Self-Portrait" are so richly personalized, the specificity of their accounts conveys a creative ownership over experience that inspires me greatly.  I have reached an impasse in my own writing: I am eager to create poetry, yet can't get past a few lines that I self-edit incessantly.  My insecurity stems from questions of entitlement and experience.  I have always been told to write what I know, but find I know a few verses (occasionally a stanza) for a poem about any experience or observation and am unable to reach closure with any attempt.

This creative muzzle is entirely self-imposed, and I know it is entirely up to me to remove.  My desire to create something meaningful is paralyzed by my own feelings of inadequate content, but reading poems like the two mentioned above encourage me that the sum of experiences that are wholly and fully mine can yield poems that are extremely instructive for broader audiences. 

While my creative standstill leaves me in no place to instruct the creative process of others, I find "Autobiography" and "Self-Portrait" extremely encouraging that we ALL have the content and material to create, share, and recreate our own experiences in forms that are not purely self-indulgent.  

Autobiography
by Nazim Hikmet

I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as a guest of the Tcheka
       Party
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some about fish
        I know separation
some people know the names of the stars by heart
I recite absences
I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels
I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no
food I haven't tasted
at thirty they wanted to hang me
at forty-eight to give me the Peace Medal
which they did
at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in
half a year
at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours
I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24
in '61 the tomb that I visit in his books
they tried to tear me away from my party
it didn't work
nor was I crushed under falling idols
in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death
in '52 I spent four months flat on my back with a broken 
heart waiting for death
I was jealous of the women I loved
I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit
I deceived my women
I never talked behind my friends' backs
I drank but not every day
I earned my bread money honestly what happiness
out of embarrassment for another I lied
I lied so as not to hurt someone else
but I also lied for no reason at all
I've ridden in trains planes and cars
most people don't get the chance
I went to the opera
most people can't go they haven't even heard of
the opera
and since '21 I haven't been tot he places that most people
visit
mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers
but I've had my coffee ground read
my writings are published in thirty forty languages
in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned
cancer hasn't caught up with me yet
and nothings ays that it has to
I'll never e a prime minister or anything like that
and I'm not interested in such a life
nor did I go to war
or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night
and I never had to take to the roads under driving planes
but I fell in love at close to sixty
in short comrades
even if today in Berlin I'm croaking of grief
I can say that I've lived like a human being
and who knows
how much longer I'll live
what else will happen to me.

This autobiography was written in East Berlin 
on September 11th in the year 1961.


Self-Portrait
by Adam Zagajewski

Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers--but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor's profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife's face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don't know.
I'm truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that--so far--
belongs to me.


“Self-Portrait” from Mysticism for Beginners by Adam Zagajewski, translated from Polish by Claire Cavanaugh. Translation copyright © 1997 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15866

Thursday, November 20, 2008

American History

The National Museum of American History reopens tomorrow (21 November) as Americans hopefully anticipate the conclusion of a dark chapter of American history.  President Bush spoke at the dedication of the new and improved museum yesterday, praising the patriotism and educational value of the institution.  Soon, his administration will be a series of artifacts chronicled on the walls of museums and in the pages of history books.  

How would you curate an exhibit documenting the last eight years of America?  How and what should we remember?  Which details need be incorporated into our national biography?

How will our recent history be retold internationally?  With wide-spread international support for our President-Elect, how will this narrative change?

As we continue to process these and other questions of national identity, I offer international insight in Pablo Neruda's constructively critical poem on America's foreign conduct and responsibilities.

America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope

America, I do not cal your name without hope.
When I hold the sword against the heart,
when I live with the faulty roof in the soul,
when one of your new days
pierces me coming through the windows,
I am and I stand in the light that produces me,
I live in the darkness which makes me what I am,
I sleep and awake in your fundamental sunrise:
as mild as the grapes, and as terrible,
carrier of sugar and the whip,
soaked in the sperm of your species,
nursed on the blood of your inheritance. 

"America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope", Pablo Neruda as translated by Robert Bly.  As appears in Carolyn Forché's Against Forgetting (W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 1993).

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

“Whims” and Finding Presence in the Present

Khaled Mattawa’s translation of Saadi Youssef’s “Whims” engages distinct styles of temporal organization that offer diverse readings of the past, present, and future both within and beyond the poem. Multiple interpretations of time are at work at any given locus in the poem, each competing for authority. The interplay of tense, word choice, chronology, and organization constructs time within the boundaries of the past and future, ultimately culminating in a vehement affirmation of the present.

No formal introduction of the measures of time is introduced until the third strophe with “days” (18) and “months” (19) and finally “today” (22) and “tonight” (25) in the fourth; yet, the poem’s tense and progression from numbered chapter to numbered chapter quickly introduces its temporal concerns. The first three chapters are written in the past: preterite and pluperfect. While the content is stuck in the past (“he wanted” (1), “she was told” (16)) its retelling depends upon the future jumps from chapter to chapter. The reader is forced to look ahead into the future of the poem to further understand this past narrative. This anticipation of the past exists most explicitly in the ellipses at the end of the first strophe, as the past will only be understood completely through the progression of the poem.

Two more occult calls to move forward appear in the use of the infinitive and the conditional. The repetition of the infinitives: “to ask her, to slap her, or to offer himself to shield” (2-3) present tense-less possibilities, which demonstrate the necessity to read on to resolve their appropriate tense. Furthermore, the infinitive in and of itself represents a grammatical turn to the infinite, which can only be realized in the future. The use of the conditional in the second strophe—“his world would have rained” (9), “his eyes would have closed” (11)—emphasizes the past is in fact a “condition” of its future retelling.

Aurally, “Whims” is peppered with “d” sounds. The strong “d” sound occurs most frequently in the morpheme, “-ed”, as a suffix of a verb to convey past tense, this familiar aural association with the past is repeated again and again in different parts of speech. In the first three chapters: “wanted”, “middle”, “shield”, “wondrous”, “forehead”, “walked”, “remained”, “word” (four times), “world”, “would” (twice), “rained”, “closed”, “told”, “had”, “arrived”, “passed”, “days”, “waited” (twice), “disappeared” accost the reader with “d” sounds over and over. There is a clever combination of associations here: in addition to the aforementioned association with the past, the emphasis of repetition gestures toward the future as the reader grows to expect the “d” sound.

Finally in the last chapter of the poem, the speaker shifts to the present tense: “I laugh” (22), “I write” (22), “I say” (23). In the entire strophe there is only one “d” sound, and that is in “today” (22). “Today” is important for a number of reasons. First, “today” is entirely present and the meaning of the word overwhelms the association of the “d” sound with the past. Furthermore, “today” terminates “d” sounds for the rest of the poem, which explicitly rejects the repetition that gestures toward the future.

The final chapter represents a duality of time. Its dominant stylistic differences—present tense, first person—differentiate it from the previous three chapters, yet it simultaneously responds to and depends on them. In asking what he writes tonight, the answer inevitably takes the form of the first three chapters. I initially questioned the chronology of the chapters. Why does chapter four not inspire the poem? Why do the first three chapters not follow as a response? I found my answer in the poem’s title: “Whims”. I read the first three chapters as the product of a sudden, unexplained desire to write, to create. I find support for this overwhelming passion for the word in the praise of the second strophe and in the only aberration to the past tense, third person construction. These words ring like a chorus: “O word he loves,/O single word./All my life is a single word./O single hope. (12-15). This celebratory disruption resonates as a tribute to the poetic process, an overwhelming gratitude for the speaker’s ability to write; and the stylistic shift introduces the affirmation of the present confirmed in the poem’s resolution.

The poem concludes immersed in the present, and the speaker’s shift to the personal pronoun “I” evidences an ownership over the present moment. “I laugh” (22) supports the whimsy suggested by the title, while conveying an enthusiastic embrace of the present. While there is a temporary shift to the third person in the spoken text: “I say: ‘Saadi,/my reasonable sir,/what are you writing tonight’” (23-25), I read a self-referential confidence substantiated by his naming and the complimentary description of a “reasonable sir” (24). Coupled together, the two demonstrate a respect that asserts the speaker’s subjectivity in a way that lends legitimacy to his personal affirmation of the present. Appropriately, this is the only poem in the collection that is both dated and time stamped: Basra, 15/3/1961, 1:20 AM.

Youssef, Saadi. Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems. Trans. Khaled Mattawa.
New York: Graywolf P, 2002. 18-19.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

First Snow

In honor of DC's first day of snow (even if just a few flurries), enjoy Saadi Youssef's "First Snow".

First snow swarms the street;
its flakes speckle the trees,
and teh girls' cheeks redden.
Who can ask a flower how it bloomed?
Snow tumbles
and the fallen leaves swirl.
Snow...
and you pass by, warm,
wrapped in your leather coat
until the street ends.

Snow...
and on your writing papers
the girls' cheeks redden

From: Youssef, Saadi. Without an Alphabet, Without a Face : Selected Poems. Trans. Khaled Mattawa. New York: Graywolf P, 2002. 81.

Scrabble


A friend and I created our own version of magnetic poetry using Scrabble letters.  Focus on whatever words grab your attention; it's like a vertical/horizontal/top-down/bottom up, choose-your-own-adventure poem!

Monday, November 17, 2008

Poetry and Packaging




As a petite literary experiment, I typed "poetry" into my google news search bar and was really surprised by my results.  

The very first result was about a small Canadian winery, Southbrook Vineyard is launching a line of wines with poetry on the labels.


11 Canadian poets will be featured on the labels of this limited lin
e of vintage wines.  Plastering poetry on a wine bottle is a pleasant surprise and a sensible combination.  Poetry and wine seem compatible (the abundance of poetic invocations of Dionysus alone demonstrate the leap is not to grand); the link of poetry next marketing scheme I happened upon (the fifth result of my google query), seems a little more tenuous.


Apparently McDonald's is redesigning its packaging to include storytelling!

Can you imagine Yeats on your Big Mac or Ginsberg on your fries?  I'm all for the inclusion of poetry in the public sphere and increasing exposure to
 literature (even if as a byproduct of mass consumption), but I'm skeptical of the conflation of fast food with literary language.

I'm anxious to see the stories told as poetry moves to the vine and to the deep fry line!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Dada Poetry

Hankering for a craft project after what feels like forever of crummy weather, I decided to try my hand at creating some Dada poetry.  I scoured a copy of the Georgetown Hoya for interesting words and then randomly picked them out of a cup and pasted them in order.  There are moments that almost make sense and a number of places that would be perfectly clear after swapping just a word or two.  

To try your hand at Dada poetry without the risk of paper cuts, visit the Dada Poetry Generator

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Revisiting Obama's Poetry


This is a great podcast by the Poetry Foundation and an interesting follow up to my previous post about the poetry of Obama's Presidential campaign.  Three poets are interviewed and share the poems they suggest President-Elect Obama read as he takes over the burdens of the Presidency.

Charles Bernstein recommends:  "The Bomb" by Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Patricia Smith recommends: "For My People" by Margaret Walker Alexander 
Forest Gander recommends: "The Blaze of the Poui" by Mark McMorris 

To listen, visit Poetry off the Shelf.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Romero Britto

To show a brighter side of Brazil, add some color to the blog, and honor the contemporary Brazilian artist that visited Georgetown today, enjoy these pictures!


Vita and Catarina's Dictionary

João Biehl's book Vita (University of California Press: 2005) traces zones of social abandonment in Brazil.  Biehl provides a compelling anthropological account of one woman's journey to and in Vita where she is left to die.  Through Catarina's story, this work adequately problematizes the societal and familial forces that actively purge members deemed unproductive.  Successful insofar as it exposes an otherwise unidentified issue of human rights and human agency, this book's attempt to give Catarina a voice by publishing her "dictionary"* ultimately reduces the value of her expression to its production output, reifying the same calculation that rendered her expendable.

Here is an excerpt from her "dictionary" (p. 5-6):

Computer
Desk
Maimed
Writer
Labor justice
Student's law
Seated in the office
Law of love-makers
Public notary
law, relation
Ademar
Ipiranga district
Municipality of Caiçara
Rio Grande do Sul

...

Hospital
Operation
Defects
Recovery
Prejudice

...

Frightened heart
Emotional spasm

Whether or not this or similar entries is a poem is not as important to me, as why Biehl insists on characterizing her "dictionary" as poetry.  Her patterns of word association and her choices of what to report seem very meaningful from a sociological, psychological, and even linguistic perspective for this is the greatest first hand account the reader has of Catarina's voice.  At times her words do have poetic resonance, which I respect and appreciate, but I take issue with Biehl's presentation of this material (literary or otherwise).  He seems to offer this "dictionary" as a way to prove Catarina's worth.  It is as if Biehl is saying: even alienated, paralyzed, and in deteriorating health Catarina constructs these verbal matrices that are beautiful.  And it is presented that because of this beauty the reader should be outraged she has been left to die on the outskirts of society.  Even in the exposition and criticism of human rights abuses and a society that disposes of nonproductive members, Catarina's production value (creating something beautiful) remains a prerequisite for her access to those fundamental rights.


* Explanation from p. 5 of Vita's Introduction: "Catarina told me that she had begun to write what she called her 'dictionary.'  She was doing this 'to not forget the words.'  Her handwriting conveyed minimal literacy, and the notebook was filled with strings of words containing references to persons, places, institutions, diseases, things, and dispositions that seemed so imaginatively connected that at times I thought this was poetry."

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Violence is Never Sexy

This is a pantoum I wrote about 2 years ago under the inspiration of Aristophanes' Lysistrata and having then recently read about Columbian women's Crossed Legs Movement (sex strike).  This applies the historical conflation of sex and violence to the nuclear age.  Since writing the poem, I've learned that the form of a pantoum does not demand repetition and replacement as strict as I have written; so am interested in revisiting and revising this poem, but here it is in its original state.  

Violence is Never Sexy

Violence is never sexy.
Missiles fire erotically erect
through tight canals
leaving shards of shrapnel.

Missiles fire erotically erect
wrecking flesh and blood
leaving shards of shrapnel
scattered far from the silo.

Wrecking fresh and blood
our trigger-happy husbands 
scattered far from the silo
birth impotent warriors.

Our trigger-happy husbands
spew radioactive ejaculate to 
birth impotent warriors --
failure to launch

Spew radioactive ejaculate to
carpet bomb the enemy;
failure to launch:
swift blow to ones virility.

Carpet bomb the enemy,
and we won't move our hips.
Swift blow to ones virility
when we block the target.

And we won't move our hips
simulating play with thunder rods;
when we block the target 
our husbands will writhe.

Simulating play with thunder rods
they'll masturbate for peace
when we block the target
our husbands will see.

They'll masturbate for peace
until the weapons are gone, then
our husbands will see
violence is never sexy.


Monday, November 10, 2008

Dante: Part Deux

Now it's time to discuss Akhmatova's poem, "Dante".  

Here, I am curious how the poem's title influences my own reading of the poem.  Beginning the poem with the title, "Dante" I read it with an understanding that the poem is about Dante Alighieri, thought showers rush in about the Inferno and other stages of the Divine Comedy.

As a reader at best only vaguely familiar with Dante's life and work, I want to highlight the context clues within the poem that reinforce the title, while simultaneously exploring the more universal themes within the text.

* "Even after his death he did not return/to the city that nursed him." (1-2): This immediately suggests exile and expatriation.  The use of "nursed" implies a maternal sensibility that links one's homeland with vitality (as if the city is responsible for both birthing and sustaining life).   Specifically, in reference to Dante -- he was condemned to permanent exile from his native Florence.  Furthermore, his city is continually referred to with feminine pronouns (e.g., "her streets", "sent her a curse"), which reinforces the maternal function of a city.

* "his beloved Florence" (11): This seems to be one of the most explicit connections to Dante, as he is inextricably linked to his Florentine identity.

* "But never, in a penitent's shirt,/did he walk barefoot with lighted candle" (9-10): "Never, in a penitent's shirt" suggests Dante's refusal to express sorrow or regret for his actions.  He believed he was not guilty for the accusations that forced his exile, so refused to pay the fines or confess.  More broadly, this statement seems to express a dignity of those wrongfully accused (or abused) and illustrates the refusal to return as a stranger to one's wrecked home.  Walking "barefoot" and with a "lighted candle" both emphasize a profound disorientation.  To require a "lighted candle" assumes darkness has fallen upon one's city and there are no relics of familiarity or recognition.  Furthermore walking "barefoot" demonstrates the profound lack of a citizenry expelled, forced to return to nothing with nothing.  The lighted candle toward the end of the poem is contrasted with the "torches" (5) at the beginning.  As he is sent from his city torches illuminate the night, which implies a certain lucidity as he leaves, but if he were to return the darkness would only be interrupted by a single flickering candle.

* "He sent her a curse from hell/and in heaven could not forget her." (7-8): The reference to hell and heaven are explicit gestures to the Inferno and Paradise of Dante's Divine Comedy.

The clues in this poem are undeniable; the subject Dante could be derived with or without the title.  This poem is extremely well written and resolved, yet I feel the risk of its title is that it tempts the reader to particularize the poem to Dante, closing it off to a more universal reading.  Instead this poem should be read as an allegorical account that represents the challenges of exile, namely how to reconcile one's relationship with the city he or she has been expelled from.

After two seemingly unrelated commentaries on two Dante-inspired poems, I have a series of questions:

Are both poems about Dante Alighieri?  What clues in "Identity Check" might support that reading?

How would a real character, Dante, affect the task of representation "Identity Check" attempts to resolve?

These poems are drastically different: one is originally Russian, one german; one was written in 1936, one is much more contemporary.  Can these differences be resolved?  Can these poems be compared in a way that is productive and yields new understanding?

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Two Dantes

Today, I want to draw from two poems, by two distinct authors that glean inspiration from a common source: Dante.  

The first is "Identity Check" by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.  

Identity Check

This is not Dante.
This is a photograph of Dante.
This is a film showing an actor who pretends to be Dante.
This is a film with Dante in the role of Dante.
This is a man who dreams of Dante.
This is a man called Dante who is not Dante.
This is a man who apes Dante.
This is a man who passes himself off as Dante.
This is a man who is the very spit and image of Dante.
This is a wax figure of Dante.
This is a changeling, a double, an identical twin.
This is a man who believes he is Dante.
This is a man everybody, except Dante, believes to be Dante.
This is a man everybody believes to be Dante, only he himself does not 
fall for it.
This is a man nobody believes to be Dante, except Dante.
This is Dante.

As appears in: Twentieth -Century German Poetry edited by Michael Hofmann (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2005).  "Identity Check" by Hans Magnus Enzenberger, Translated by Hans Magnus Enzenberger.

The second is Anna Akhmatova's  "Dante".  

Dante

Even after his death he did not return
to the city that nursed him.
Going away, this man did not look back.
To him I sing this song.
Torches, night, a last embrace, 
outside in her streets the mob howling.
He sent her a curse from hell 
and in heaven could not forget her.
But never, in a penitent's shirt,
did he walk barefoot with lighted candle 
through his beloved Florence,
perfidious, base, and irremediably home.

From: Poems of Akhmatova translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward (Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1997). 

I will start with "Identity Check" and leave "Dante" for tomorrow.  

This is a poem.
This is a poem about a poem written about Dante.
This is a blog attempting to analyze Dante: real and imagined.

I could continue ad infinitum with this attempt at humorous insight, but am more interested in what the Enzensberger is trying to achieve.  The first line "This is not Dante" immediately draws me to Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" and subsequently reminds me of Foucault's This is Not a Pipe.  While both were immediately concerned with visual imagery and representation, this piece of literature continues to interrogate the relationship between reality and representation.  

The poem begins in negation and then proceeds with exclusively affirmative sentences, until the exact opposite concludes the poem, "This is Dante."  I see two different ways to read the poem: progressively with each line accruing meaning until the poem is viewed in entirety or as a series of disconnected sentences (disconnected insofar as each is to be read in isolation, as if each is competing to represent "this" most truthfully).  

This might be a bit unusual (Hegel might be rolling in his grave), but I propose to read this poem as an inverted dialectic.
Thesis: This is not Dante.
Antithesis: This is Dante.
Synthesis: Everything in between: "photograph of Dante", "man who dreams of Dante" "wax figure", et al. 

The verses in the middle of the poem seem to both cancel and preserve the differences of the first and last verse, which ultimately elevates Identity (however indeterminate that might be).  This poem acknowledges textual representations of Dante are inherently imperfect, yet in its attempt to do just that sets a precedent to constantly interrogate familiar modes of representation.


Thursday, November 6, 2008

"Prayers" by Rae Armantrout

The following poem will appear in the November 10th issue of The New Yorker.  The author, Rae Armantrout , is an American poet and professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Despite its overtly religious title ("Prayers") and use of "resurrection" (2) this poem remains surprisingly secular.  In its immediate lines, "We pray/and the resurrection happens" (1-2) introduces the successful wish-fulfillment of prayer: that which is prayed for is realized.  The repetition of "g" sounds evidences a pattern to the power of prayer.  Aurally, "young" (3), "again" (4), "sniping [...] giggling" (5), "tingly" (6), "ringing" (7), alternating between the hard "g" sound and the "g" at the end of the word the ear grows accustomed to and begins to expect the "g" sound again and again.  This repetition suggests a known or guaranteed outcome to prayer within the poem's first chapter -- a resolve absent in the second.

The key shift in the opening lines of the second chapter is from prayer to "ask" (8).  While the "g" sound is initially present in "thinking" (9) its repetition grows more sporadic and eventually absent ("targets" (11), "recognized" (14), "triangles" (16), "rug" (17), "repeating" (18), "coming" (19)).  Initially there seems promise that to "ask" might yield the same outcome as prayer, but this confidence disappears in the last two stanzas: "The fear/that all of this/will end.//The fear/that it won't" (23-27).  

To "ask" creates an opportunity for either affirmation or denial and this indeterminate response creates fear and anxiety.  "Coming up..." (19) marks a shift from the poem's attempt to sustain and repeat the status quo; suddenly the poem's resolution can only be achieved through discussion.  The reader names a discussion "on the uses of torture" (21-22), but the italicized "this" (24) is overdetermined and representative of many divisive subjects. 

Ultimately, this poem seeks answers.  While textually there is only one prayer, the title "Prayers" is applicable insofar as the poem itself prays for the strength to change modes of interrogation and action.

Prayers
by Rae Armantrout

1. 
We pray
and the resurrection happens.

Here are the young
again,

sniping and giggling,

tingly 
as ringing phones.

2. 
All we ask 
is that our thinking

sustain momentum,
identify targets.

The pressure 
in my lower back
rising to be recognized
as pain.

The blue triangles 
on the rug
repeating.  

Coming up,
a discussion
on the uses of torture.

The fear 
that all this
will end.

The fear
that it won't.



Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Post-Election Poetry

Voting was anticlimactic.  Despite being my first Presidential Election, x-ing boxes on my absentee ballot with a ballpoint pen in the silence of the library (weeks before America would decide) seemed a perfunctory civic duty.  I eagerly sealed and signed my envelope then bounced to the mailbox, confident and enthusiastic with my decisions; but yesterday I missed standing in line with my fellow voters and making idle conversation with the volunteers at my polling center.  I envied red, white, and blue stickers on lapels reading "I voted".  Choosing to vote in my home state, I alienated myself from a collectively transformative display of democracy settling for a much more individualized demonstration of political participation.

For the past twenty-plus months we have heard the repeated mantra, "Yes, we can!" and last night that chant changed to, "Yes, we did!".  These two phrases are emblematic of Obama's campaign, and their sounds will continue to echo into his forthcoming presidency.  While not expressly a poem in and of itself, the repetition of "Yes, we can!" is expressly political and those three simple words bear significance above and beyond their dictionary definitions.  

Poetry is often conflated with politics, but here politics is demonstratively poetic.  Millions of Americans confidently projected hopes and dreams of opportunity and change into "Yes, we can!".  The meaning of this phrase is overdetermined, so what does it mean to you?

For those interested, here's some of our President-Elect's own poetry.

A Very Short Introduction to Poetry & Praxis

To craft a manifesto for this project in its incipient stages would invariably risk establishing expectations that inhibit its organic evolution.  My goal is for Poetry & Praxis to provoke creative discourse and experimentation in the interpretation of poetry.

The strength of its resonance will depend on a virtual community of contributors, so please share your thoughts and ideas.