tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76634902024-03-07T20:20:15.477-08:00elephan' twirla tale of some reading and
a commonplace blogRodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.comBlogger143125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-79555165490401282362007-03-16T15:52:00.000-07:002007-03-16T16:09:32.967-07:00James TateJames Tate's second full book was <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">Oblivion Ha-Ha</span>, published in 1970 by Little Brown. It has an orange and blue dust jacket with a picture of kite flyers. The back cover is a full page photograph of the romantic young author.<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The book is most famous for three poems, "The Blue Booby," "Little Yellow Leaf," and "The Wheelchair Butterfly ('Beware a velvet tabernacle')." At first glance the book is full of funny surrealist poems, the song of a manic whipporwill. Its all of the same sequined cloth. However, just below the surface of so many of the poems there is a sad and lovely melancholy. The words which appear most are Orange, black, dark and darkness. The poems are in the same category as and somewhere in between Ashbery and Simic. In these poems bread sighs, a "rollerskate collides with a lunch pail," " the dark is an available religion," and "chameleons can walk around a small room." These are tall skinny poems of delight and despair. I particularly liked the following poems:</span><br /><br />1. Poem, which starts of the volume, is terrific:<br /> "He did the handkerchief dance all alone<br /> O Desire! it is the beautiful dress<br /><br /> for which the proper occasion<br /> never arises.<br /><br /> O the wedding cake and the good cigar!"<br /><br />There's a little Kenneth Koch there too.<br /><br />2. "Prose Poem," which is of course lineated and racous [raw cuss].<br /><br />3. "The Tryst," in which the word 'baleful' is perfectly used.<br /><br />4. The manic, maniac "Shadowboxing," sweet and lonely.<br /><br />5. "Twilight Sustenance Hiatus" in which the colon is well placed:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> " There is so little news fit to print:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Yesterday a moth caught fire."</span><br /><br />6. When Kabir Died," " Failed Tribute to the Stonemason of Tor House, Robinson Jeffers," "Conjuring Roethke," "No End to Fall River," and the long last poem "Bennington."<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">"Hello again, mad turnip,"</span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1171936283957265162007-02-19T17:49:00.000-08:002007-02-19T17:52:37.366-08:00Zuk on exams"'Exams' on principle are offensive to the intellect, that must proceed from--- not towards---what it knows...might ask stew dunces: A. WHAT DON'T YOU KNOW? AND B. WHAT ARE YOU ALMOST SURE YOU KNOW WRONG. WAKE'EM UP<br />Louis ZukfoskyRodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1171835372129346052007-02-18T13:47:00.001-08:002007-02-19T17:48:50.470-08:00RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1171835365862568522007-02-18T13:47:00.000-08:002007-02-18T13:49:25.963-08:00Ashbery quote"For the most dissonant night charms us, even after death.<br />This after all, may be happiness: tuba notes awash on<br />the great flood, ruptures of xylophone, violins, limpets,<br />grace-notes, the musical instrument called serpent,<br />viola da gambas, Aeolian harps, clvicles, pinball ma-<br />chines, electric drills, que said-je encore!<br /> John Ashbery "The Skaters"RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1171121630529238202007-02-10T07:29:00.000-08:002007-02-10T07:34:48.700-08:00Another Selection from Davenport". . . how do I know the things I know. . . If she means history and geographical detail, the answer is books, travel and stealing. If she means psychology and the behaviour of people, I make it up. . . . I describe an alternate reality allowed for by nature but not by Janet Reno.<br />The formula is: an image or idea to go with. Walt and Sam were two very sophisticated French boys at the Brasserie Georges V. It was a lovely late afternoon. . . . I remarked and BJ agreed, that the boys were from Gide--too brainy (they had satchels and books) for De Montherlant, too pure an innocent to be from Proust.<br />. . . then, back home a year of so later, I made up the rest of it."<br />Letter to James Laughlin.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1171056384349486672007-02-09T13:19:00.000-08:002007-02-09T13:27:19.776-08:00Guy Davenport to James LaughlinI can highly recomend the new collection of letters between Guy Davenport and James Laughlin, published by New Directions, just. It is one in a series of such letters by various writers to Laughlin. Both men are charming and easy, voluble and loquacious. Especially Davenport, who is nicely all over the place. My friend Cathy Henderson of the HRC in Austin appears: "Cathy Henderson has sen me a pebble from Kafka's grave." The various comments by Davenport about various people are hysterical (on Susan Howe: "She has read entriely too much Olson.") He pokes a little fun at Anne Carson too, which is very salutary, given the slight overexposure of said writer. He calls her "St. Anne" and "La Carson." He apparently watercolored a facsimile copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer! He had this to say about originality:<br /><br />"Printer's ink isn't ever going to duplicate an artist's colors, and color film isn't ever going to get them right. A CD is not a symphony orchestra and the eye has never seen what a camera catches. I've always llived in the something-better-than-nothing compromise." smart.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1170859828737944862007-02-07T06:44:00.000-08:002007-02-07T06:51:08.496-08:00An Anthology<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Don't Ask Me What I Mean</span>, edited by Clare Brown and Don Paterson is a collection of author's statements (actually excerpts from the back issues of the Poetry Book Society's Bulletin). Each author talks about the background for his or her book (e.g. Geoffrey Hill on King Log, Mercian Hymns, etc., or U. A. Fanthorpe on Neck Verse). Not overlong, the selections are usually to the point and specific. Included are "Almost all the major poets published in the U.K. in the last 50 years." There are in factr 120 poets from Betjeman to Fred D'Aguiar, but "the postmoderns will gripe at the ommission of thier stars." Indeed, but this is the only weakness of an otherwise fine and varied collection. For some reason a half dozen Americans are also included (Charles Simic, C. K. WIlliams, Merwin, Mark Doty and a few others). Why is there apicture of a Joshua Tree on the cover of this very and mostly English anthology.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1170551373491835372007-02-03T17:07:00.000-08:002007-02-03T17:09:33.503-08:00Phrases from Finnegans Wake<span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">met him pike hoses</span><br /> <br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Humptydump Dublin's grandada of all rogues</span><br /> <br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Tuck up your sleeves and loosen your talktapes. </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">and don't butt me-hike!---when you bend</span><br /> <br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">muy malinchily malchick</span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1169499088476591842007-01-22T12:47:00.000-08:002007-01-22T12:52:23.060-08:00Variegated Garments<span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">" A frank, open exposition of herself is distasteful to Nature, who, just as she has withheld an understanding of herself from the uncouth senses of men by enveloping herself in variegated garments, has also desired to have her secrets handled by more prudent individuals through fabulous narratives. Accordingly, her secret rites are veiled in mysterious representations so that she may not have to show herself even to initiates." </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Macrobius. </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Commentary on the Dream of Scipio</span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"> (C.E. 1150)</span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1162823919231299692006-11-06T06:37:00.000-08:002006-11-06T06:38:39.246-08:00An AnthologyConrad Aiken’s <span style="font-weight: bold;">A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry</span>, was originally published in 1929 and revised in 1944. It was published by the Modern Library, as its number. 101. It is a companion volume to Twentieth Century American Poetry, no. 127 in the Modern Library. On first glance looks a little too small for the whole of American. Suprisingly, but it consists of nearly 500 pages. And small type.<br /><br />About anthologies, we usually ask what they cover and how big are they. In the Introduction Aiken makes the claim that this is the first anthology covering the totality of American Poetry. But What about Rufus Griswold’s Poets and Poetry of America (1842) and his Female Poets of America (1848). Perhaps Aiken was talking about contemporary anthologies. In any case, in the mid 19th century there was less to be comprehensive about. That said, Aiken’s anthology is, on some level (white America), interestingly appealing and sensible.<br /><br />The anthology is Aiken makes a distinction between what he feels to be are the good poems in and of themselves and those included for historical reasons: “Should the Connecticut Wits-for example- be represented simply on the ground that they existed, and that they enjoyed for a time a kind of popularity. Or should he frankly admit to himself that their work was almost wholly without esthetic value, and ruthlessly exclude them.” But after all, this anthology is pretty much just an intelligent, perceptive man’s look at the canon of American Poetry.<br /><br /><br />Here and there, little pockets of (mostly male) poets, now unknown or ignored, poets. Following on after Helen Hunt Jackson we find: Edward Rowland Sill, John Townsend Trowbridge, George Henry Boker, John Vance Cheney, Stephen Collins Forster and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. A plethora of three named male poets. And again, following on after H. D. another group, Louis Untermeyer, John Hall Wheelock, Cale Young Rice. Near the end of the volume we come across two more: John Malcom Brinnin and Lloyd Frankenberg. I doubt that any modern anthology would have any of these poets<br /> <br />For the most part, the number of pages allotted to each reader seems balanced with the largest number being given to Poe, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Trumbull Strickney, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Pound and Eliot. Trumbull Strickney?<br /><br />Aiken pays more attention to the long Poem than anthologists generally do (except for the two great ones, The Cantos and The Waste Land, each most likely rejected for different reasons). He does however begin with Anne Bradstreet’s “Contemplation,” a long poem in 33 stanzas, 7 rhymed lines per stanza. He also includes Allen Tate’s Ode to the Confederate Dead” and 4 sections from Hart Crane’s The Bridge. Less famous long poems are also included: Edward Arlington Robinson’s “Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford,” and Archibald MacLeish’s “Einstein.” <br /><br />Sensible and appealing.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1160977404889841312006-10-15T22:42:00.000-07:002006-10-15T22:43:24.903-07:00Elinor Wylie’s Angels and Earthly Creatures (New York: Knopf, 1929)Her fragile poems were titled such as “Beauty,” “Address to my soul,” and “Trivial Breath.” Along with Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lola Ridge, Dorothy Parker and others, Elinor Wyle (1885-1928) cultivated the looks, behavior, metaphysical attitudes and the discontent of the new woman of the Twenties. The first twenty-five years of her life were spent in the High Society of Washington D. C. and the history of her romantic life was tumultuous and sometimes embarrassingly public (flights and divorces from her first two wealthy husbands were fodder for the daily newspapers and for gossip columnists). Often aloof, self obsessed and narcissistic she developed an aura of glamour around herself, buying silver slippers, mirrors and Balenciaga gowns. Yet she was as obsessed with poetry and with other literary concerns during her short writing life of less than ten years.<br /><br />Many of the literary tastemakers of the times were in thrall to her and her delicate poems. Anthologist Louis Untermeyer devoted almost as many pages to her as to Eliot in his Modern American Poetry anthology of 1930. He characterized Angels and Earthly Creatures, the volume she readied for publication in the last months of her life:<br /><br /> “Here are the cunningly poised and polished syllables, here are the<br /> old concerns with freezing silver, frail china and pearly monotones,<br /> but here is a quality that lifts them high above themselves. . . . the poet<br /> transcends her influences and develops a highly personal mysticism.”<br /><br />Carl Van Doren, Professor of English at Columbia University and editor of the Nation and Century magazines not only printed her poems, and reviewed her books, but developed a close personal friendship with her. “She respected the passions, she respected the mind and manners,” he said. Edmund Wilson, whom she once called “Bunnius Agustus” published many of her poems and was devoted to her and her work. She was classed by Horace Gregory, with English poets Thomas Love Peacock, Walter Savage Landor, Lionel Johnson. She was in fact obsessed with the poet Shelley, writing a novel about him and in what she felt was his style. Wylie carried on a complicated friendship with Edna St. Vincent Millay whose devotion to Wylie was admirable. Millay learned of her friends death just before she was to read in public and began her reading reciting by heart her friends poems. For poetry as well as love, she married her third husband, poet William Rose Benet in 1923. He once noted that “Her spiritual home lay west of the moon” and was a careful protector of Wylie during her lifetime and of her literary reputation after.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1160015891560206262006-10-04T19:37:00.000-07:002006-10-04T19:38:11.570-07:00Neutra<span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">The most influential and important of California architects, Richard Neutra (1892-1970) was born in Vienna and educated and worked in Europe until he immigrated to the United States in 1923. His fascination with America was highly motivating. He worked in Chicago where he studied and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright before moving to Los Angeles, where he worked for the major Southern California architect Rudolph Schindler. His formidable book, Wie Baut Amerika was both a manual and a vision, a survey of American architecture. . Neutra, along with Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Schindler were , in the twenties to develop and promote the International style in architecture. In the last years of the decade his Lovell (or Health) House was a legendary modernist building. In regard to his first project, the Jardinette apartments he stated “Into the modern whirl of machinery comes the demand for better homes within the very network of this mechanism.” </span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1159636701467592622006-09-30T10:17:00.000-07:002006-09-30T10:18:21.483-07:00Elinor WylieHer fragile poems were titled such as “Beauty,” “Address to my soul,” and “Trivial Breath.” Along with Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lola Ridge, Dorothy Parker and others, Elinor Wyle (1885-1928) cultivated the looks, behavior, metaphysical attitudes and the discontent of the new woman of the Twenties. The first twenty-five years of her life were spent in the High Society of Washington D. C. and the history of her romantic life was tumultuous and sometimes embarrassingly public (flights and divorces from her first two wealthy husbands were fodder for the daily newspapers and for gossip columnists). Often aloof, self obsessed and narcissistic she developed an aura of glamour around herself, buying silver slippers, mirrors and Balenciaga gowns. Yet she was as obsessed with poetry and with other literary concerns during her short writing life of less than ten years.<br /><br />Many of the literary tastemakers of the times were in thrall to her and her delicate poems. Anthologist Louis Untermeyer devoted almost as many pages to her as to Eliot in his Modern American Poetry anthology of 1930. He characterized Angels and Earthly Creatures, the volume she readied for publication in the last months of her life:<br /><br /> “Here are the cunningly poised and polished syllables, here are the<br /> old concerns with freezing silver, frail china and pearly monotones,<br /> but here is a quality that lifts them high above themselves. . . . the poet<br /> transcends her influences and develops a highly personal mysticism.”<br /><br />Carl Van Doren, Professor of English at Columbia University and editor of the Nation and Century magazines not only printed her poems, and reviewed her books, but developed a close personal friendship with her. “She respected the passions, she respected the mind and manners,” he said. Edmund Wilson, whom she once called “Bunnius Agustus” published many of her poems and was devoted to her and her work. She was classed by Horace Gregory, with English poets Thomas Love Peacock, Walter Savage Landor, Lionel Johnson. She was in fact obsessed with the poet Shelley, writing a novel about him and in what she felt was his style. Wylie carried on a complicated friendship with Edna St. Vincent Millay whose devotion to Wylie was admirable. Millay learned of her friends death just before she was to read in public and began her reading reciting by heart her friends poems. For poetry as well as love, she married her third husband, poet William Rose Benet in 1923. He once noted that “Her spiritual home lay west of the moon” and was a careful protector of Wylie during her lifetime and of her literary reputation after.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1159314132369827002006-09-26T16:26:00.002-07:002006-09-26T16:47:26.320-07:00MarjoriePerloff has a fairly long, or maybe medium sized review of David Lehman's Oxford Book of American Poetry. It begins with a good review, or survey of the large anthologies of the last 50 years or so. She does a good job with this, dry stuff, but important. She sideswipes Lehman's insistence in the Introduction to the anthology: "Not one selection was dictated by a politcal imperative." To which Perloff quips "It all depends, on what you mean by 'political in all fairness." Indeed. Lehman of course is one of the most influential, some might say careerist (certainly the most careerest of any living poet). So many of his choices have to have been made with back scratching in mind. Well, anyway he does have a lot of energy, but one is a little dismayed to find him so<br />central to present-day canon forming. But, back to Marjorie, who does a bang up job of chiding DL for his lack of attention to long poems. Her list is spectacular. She objects to Tom Cark's inclusion and I have to heartily agree with her. The small tip of the hat to Creeley and Snyder is not understandable, as MP says. And only four pages to LZ. not good. She picks, rightly on a short Jean Garrigue poem. Its not very important. Which is not to say that Jean Garrigue isn't important, but really. L's treatment of Pound and Stein is incomprehensible, which she doesn't exactly say, but I do. As I also say: "Who is Aaron Fogle." One thing I would like to know more about is her assertion that Donald Hall ". . .did all he could in the 1950's to block their publication [Ashbery and O'Hara].<br />And last but not least "Molly Peacock" instead of "Marjorie Welish?" says Marjorie P. The reason of course should be apparent. MP has more to offer DL in the Poetry game than Marjorie W. Its sad. And why two poems in the anthology with Bitch in their title? I don't even want to go there. Read Marjorie's article in the TLS of September 1, 2006. You go girl.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1158505286861295852006-09-17T08:00:00.000-07:002006-09-17T08:01:26.873-07:00"But you haven't told me yet, how's Merrier?"<br /><br />"A shell . . . dead . . . poor chap."<br /><br />"And the anarchist, Lully?"<br /><br />"Dead."<br /><br />"And Dubois?"<br /><br />"Why ask?" came the faint rustling voice peevishly. "Everybody's dead. You're dead, aren't you?"<br /><br />"No, I'm alive, and you. A little courage. . . . We must be cheerful."<br /><br />"It's not for long. To-morrow, the next day. . . ." The blue eyelids slip back over the crazy burning eyes and the face takes on again the waxen look of death.”<br /><br />-----------------------------------------<br />In 1917, the 21 year old Harvard student John Dos Passos began his service as an ambulance driver for the private ambulance service Norton-Harjes. In doing so, he joined other writers and artists such as Dashiell Hammett, E. E. Cummings, Malcolm Cowley and Harry Crosby. His novel/memoir of this time was published in London in 1920 and in New York in 1922. Dos Passos was shocked, embittered and incensed by what he saw of the reality of war, mounds of dead bodies, screaming soldiers, horses dying from poison gas and other atrocities. He was, unlike many of his compatriot writers, also enraged at the nationalist fervor of the press, the government and other official bodies. This rage fairly jumps off the page of <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">One Man’s Initiation</span>, which as published was less fiery than originally written (the printers required considerable changes in the language). The novel was largely ignored and sold poorly, in contrast to the angry reception and indignation which Three Soldiers was to cause. The impressionistic. experimental style of the book was to be further developed in Dos Passos’ masterpiece, the three volume<br />U. S. A. (1930-1936), a more trenchant criticism of the triumphal materialism and hypocrisy of American Society. This materialist ethos as well as an angry criticism of it were born in the Twenties.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1156817479708885782006-08-28T19:01:00.000-07:002006-08-28T19:16:14.426-07:00The Director of LoveRichard Siken's <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Crush </span>is an amazing book. The long lines are merciless and perfect. They are so elegantly crafted they remind me of the beautiful strokes of paint of De Kooning or Frankenthaler. They also seem to be the work of a master cinematographer.The book is of course about unrequited love, about the need for love, about the failure of love. But it is also about using form to discover what is important. To save yourself, one's self, his self. The hypnotism of the lines, the density of the texts makes us complicit, and proves a queer sort of intimacy. Does it matter that the tumultous and turbulent loves told about in the book are same sex? Yes and no. I don't know. It should. But I can see how it doesn't also. The structure of this book is the story, the story board even. It is no accident that the first poem is entitled Scheherezade. Siken's Thousand and One Nights are told with a combination of ferocity and sentimentalism (in the best sense of this poor word), and he saves himself from the worst excesses of romanticism and expressionism by the use of a variety of directions. Imagine this, look at that, etc. The Director of Love. The books ends hopfully, you will see.RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1154143679897401662006-07-28T20:18:00.000-07:002006-07-30T10:38:03.983-07:00Poetry<span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 51);">"We work as poets and take seriously what seems to most men the one ground surely not to be taken seriously. . ."<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"> Robert Duncan. The Truth and life of Myth</span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1153085761586695802006-07-16T14:28:00.000-07:002006-07-16T14:38:33.296-07:00Cuckoo<span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 153);">Peter Streckfus' book <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Cuckoo </span>was published in 2004 as one of the Yale Younger Poets chosen by Louise Gluck. </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 153);"><br />It is an astounding book, original, delicate and diabolical. It's full of Koans and parables, admonitions and advice, sounds, devices and delights (fear these). Sayings and doings, not riddles. Nor even puzzles. Crying motorcycles, talking trees, people padding across heaven, humiliation and short jubilations. Penises. The Pure Land Cloister of Lo-Yang. In the tradition of the Koan, here are some lines from different poems: </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);">"The perfect boy who drew me to the ground returned to his bath unopposed. "</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);">" Trust the moth that flutters in your shirt"</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);">"We, in the truck with the celery"</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);">"Why did you have to use your tricks to harm me"</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);">"I'll speak nonsense. You speak truth. We'll see what comes of it." </span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A remarkable book, and I didn't even read Gluck's introduction until . . .</span><br /><br /></span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1151260222896705642006-06-25T11:27:00.000-07:002006-06-25T11:32:10.446-07:00<span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 102);">"Ideas which cannot be stated in direct words may be brough home in reckless ectasies of thought."</span><br /><br />---------Marie Corelli as quoted by Carl Sandburg in <span style="font-style: italic;">Reckless Ecstasy</span> (1904),<br /> a small pamphlet of 40 pages and his first separate publication.<br /><br /><br />*RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1150994389622854372006-06-22T09:36:00.000-07:002006-06-22T09:42:54.230-07:00OLSON UN-DONE<span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">In response to Charles Olson’s Maximus Poems for a class with Charles Alexander</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">at Chax Press, it seems to me that </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">the heavy emphasis in ‘projective’ verse </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);"> on the breath determining the </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">line----------is one thing---and the idea of “composition by field”------ another. </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">How do these two concepts square </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);"> with each other. OR MAYBE they don't or don't have too. One concept </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">seems primarily or even totally visual, and the other </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);"> primarily aural, or physico/aural. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">The determining idea of breath seems to be </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">one that can be viewed as ‘descriptive’ of most, or all , poetry?</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">(e.g., the line stops when your breath stops---seems natural). </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);"> Composition </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">by form seems to be a more prescriptive or </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">methodological concept and </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">to be more truly inventive and revolutionary.<br />And aesthetically pleasing. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">In his amazingly acute, (as always) essay </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">on the Maximus Poems, “Undone Business” Charles </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">Bernstein talks about some of this in a different way: </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">“Olson’s overly literal insistence on breath and place too often distracts</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">from the enactment of line and space as facts primarily of a text.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">‘Olson’s “heroic” stance bypasses the syntactic revolution already achieved,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">by the star of Maximus, by Stein, Zukofsky and others.’</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">“. . . the heroic stance translates into a will to dominate language rather than l</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">et it be (heard). . . “</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">“ . . . the poem ceases to be an arena of action (or inaction) valued in and for</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> itself, realized by its own internal necessities (which is my understanding of </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">composition by field)---and is instead a repository of indications, specially </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">marked references leading everywhere but…to its own durational integrity. </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Maximus is as far from the word-effacing practices of conventional writing </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">could be. Yet its scattershot of information to often leads away from </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">acknowledging the specific tonal values of the textual materials at hand</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> …in its effort to use these materials as tags for Olson’s many </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">geographic, philosophic, mythopoetic and historical ideas. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">“But the promise of The Maximus Poems is to create a collaged “hyperspace,” </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">such a transubstantiation remains larely theoretical—undone business.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">I am as always, amazed by the brillance of thought and the sharpness </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">of perception that Bernstein brings to his analyses. Perhaps he should </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">be the next Poet Laureate? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> </span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1149345635237058322006-06-03T07:39:00.000-07:002006-06-03T07:40:35.250-07:00Poem<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">A Sense of the Decorous among Hummingbirds </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">An armada of silver cholla, like the sea encited </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">was mysteriously beckoning </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">almost, to some of us. The harps </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">like swans prepared for battle, the denisons </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">of the great encounters, sisterous & bebibbed. </span><br /> <br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">That sort of epiphany can be treacherous. </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">What, though are the birds doing in there?</span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">They, like the lizards </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">seem unerring in a split second </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">sense of decorum, or technical knowledge. The sheer</span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">drapes are flighty and cascading out in flagrant</span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">misreading of the climate. A common occurrence </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">among the bewildered, a moment smaller than before. </span><br /> <br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">So, hummingbirds retain</span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">their good manners no matter what, the little </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">gyroscopes in love with red tablecloths, </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">and t shirts as such, misred as honey, </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">cantankerous, spicy and langoured,</span><br /> <br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">a certain lack of concern, a demagogic </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">appeal to the ones who can’t fly, decoupaged. </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">Which might be flattening if it wasn’t </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">so rancorous a craft, the lunar inner tube is </span><br /> <span style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">fattening the flies up with phosphorescence. </span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1148994720985345622006-05-30T06:11:00.000-07:002006-05-30T06:13:25.243-07:00<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br />Dixie Chicks Yes, <span style="color: rgb(255, 204, 0);">Reba NO.<br /><br /><br /></span></span></span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1148756237161301172006-05-27T11:51:00.000-07:002006-05-27T11:57:17.173-07:00Still Valid Advice from Ezra Pound<span style="color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">"Don't use such an expression as "dim lands </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">of peace</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">." It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">adequate </span><span style="color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">symbol." </span><br /> <br /> <span style="color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">"Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably dificult art of good prose by chopping your compostion into line lengths."</span><br /><br />----------------<span style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);">Ezra Pound. from "A Retrospect</span>" in <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">Pavannes and Divigations </span><span style="color: rgb(153, 102, 51);">(1918)</span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1148614008350141752006-05-25T20:25:00.000-07:002006-05-25T20:29:05.683-07:00Glynn Maxwell on Hart Crane<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">"</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Hart Crane brings a really bizarre kind of collection </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">of influences to his work. He has this Webster, Jacobean line, the sort of </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">richness of that line, he has the French thing, and it’s not really like </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">anyone else’s. It doesn’t resemble anything that was around at the time. To </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">me it’s a beautiful gateway that hasn’t led anywhere. But I think it’s terrible </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">that it hasn’t led anywhere. Crane should have been one of the people that is </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">most looked up to. I think that’s just exemplary in terms of reading deep </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">into the past and building your style out of that, rather than glancing around </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">and saying, “Okay, this is what poets are doing now, is to be elliptical and </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">to give out very little.” I think people who cite their influences from their </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">own generation are quite suspect. Just go to a library, just put your feet in </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">the past. It will just give you more range, it will just give you more </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">reach."</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">----------------------------from an interview in CPR</span>RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7663490.post-1148135009201636402006-05-20T07:16:00.000-07:002006-05-20T07:25:53.403-07:00Rae Armantrout in the New Yorker!Startling occurrence: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Rae Armantrout</span> has a poem in the <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">New Yorker</span>!</span> It is entitled "The Ether" and is on page 74 of the May 22, 2006 issue. It is a sensitive and mercurial piece. Can we now hope for a more varied presentation of American poetry from the magazine? Since so many "general" readers get their idea of poetry from the poems published in the <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">New Yorker</span>, it would be nice if it was more democratic, actually representative of the "scene."RodneyPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16116447356293467050noreply@blogger.com4