Poetry Hit Rate

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
I want to say something about the gulf between the poetic and poetry, at the risk of penning an entry more suitable to "the other thread". But this issue of form and the way that it dazzles. In brief, I distrust it. I think that form blinds, and that the formal assignment of poetry mystifies, by foregrounding a technology of poetic capture (grammar, syntax) at the expense of the poetic itself... the plastic bags blowing through the supermarket carpark, etc. Does this make any sense?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

(Can't fuck with Shakes. Even the commas are perfect.)
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
I want to say something about the gulf between the poetic and poetry, at the risk of penning an entry more suitable to "the other thread". But this issue of form and the way that it dazzles. In brief, I distrust it. I think that form blinds, and that the formal assignment of poetry mystifies, by foregrounding a technology of poetic capture (grammar, syntax) at the expense of the poetic itself... the plastic bags blowing through the supermarket carpark, etc. Does this make any sense?
yes
that is it exactly

in the dark you can tell poetry from prose and your ear cannot see scansion
it something other than formal qualities that distinguishes the two
i say it is magik in poetry that isn't in prose
or a certain being for itself instead of using words in service of ideas
 
haha^^^ :)

>>>


The only thing I miss about Los Angeles

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing

--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars

--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow

through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep

and you on top; the air
now clean, for a moment weightless

without memories, or
need for a past.



The need for the past

is so much at the center of my life
I write this poem to record my discovery of it,
my reconciliation.

It was in Bishop, the room was done
in California plush: we had gone into the coffee shop, were told
you could only get a steak in the bar:
I hesitated,
not wanting to be an occasion of temptation for my father

but he wanted to, so we entered

a dark room, with amber water glasses, walnut
tables, captain's chairs,
plastic doilies, papier-mâché bas-relief wall ballerinas,
German memorial plates "bought on a trip to Europe,"
Puritan crosshatch green-yellow wallpaper,
frilly shades, cowhide
booths--

I thought of Cambridge:

the lovely congruent elegance
of Revolutionary architecture, even of

ersatz thirties Georgian

seemed alien, a threat, sign
of all I was not--

to bode order and lucidity

as an ideal, if not reality--

not this California plush, which

also

I was not.

And so I made myself an Easterner,
finding it, after all, more like me
than I had let myself hope.

And now, staring into the embittered face of
my father,

again, for two weeks, as twice a year,
I was back.

The waitress asked us if we wanted a drink.
Grimly, I waited until he said no...



Before the tribunal of the world I submit the following
document:

Nancy showed it to us,
in her apartment at the model,
as she waited month by month
for the property settlement, her children grown
and working for their father,
at fifty-three now alone,
a drink in her hand:

as my father said,
"They keep a drink in her hand":

Name Wallace du Bois
Box No 128 Chino, Calif.
Date July 25 ,19 54

Mr Howard Arturian
I am writing a letter to you this afternoon while I'm in the
mood of writing. How is everything getting along with you these
fine days, as for me everything is just fine and I feel great except for
the heat I think its lot warmer then it is up there but I don't mind
it so much. I work at the dairy half day and I go to trade school the
other half day Body & Fender, now I am learning how to spray
paint cars I've already painted one and now I got another car to
paint. So now I think I've learned all I want after I have learned all
this. I know how to straighten metals and all that. I forgot to say
"Hello" to you. The reason why I am writing to you is about a job,
my Parole Officer told me that he got letter from and that you want
me to go to work for you. So I wanted to know if its truth. When
I go to the Board in Feb. I'll tell them what I want to do and where
I would like to go, so if you want me to work for you I'd rather have
you sent me to your brother John in Tonapah and place to stay for
my family. The Old Lady says the same thing in her last letter that
she would be some place else then in Bishop, thats the way I feel
too.and another thing is my drinking problem. I made up my mind
to quit my drinking, after all what it did to me and what happen.
This is one thing I'll never forget as longs as I live I never want
to go through all this mess again. This sure did teach me lot of things
that I never knew before. So Howard you can let me know soon
as possible. I sure would appreciate it.

P.S From Your Friend
I hope you can read my Wally Du Bois
writing. I am a little nervous yet

--He and his wife had given a party, and
one of the guests was walking away
just as Wallace started backing up his car.
He hit him, so put the body in the back seat
and drove to a deserted road.
There he put it before the tires, and
ran back and forth over it several times.

When he got out of Chino, he did,
indeed, never do that again:
but one child was dead, his only son,
found with the rest of the family
immobile in their beds with typhoid,
next to the mother, the child having been
dead two days:

he continued to drink, and as if it were the Old West
shot up the town a couple of Saturday nights.

"So now I think I've learned all I want
after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things
that I never knew before.
I am a little nervous yet."

It seems to me
an emblem of Bishop--



For watching the room, as the waitresses in their
back-combed, Parisian, peroxided, bouffant hairdos,
and plastic belts,
moved back and forth

I thought of Wallace, and
the room suddenly seemed to me
not uninteresting at all:

they were the same. Every plate and chair

had its congruence with

all the choices creating

these people, created

by them--by me,

for this is my father's chosen country, my origin.

Before, I had merely been anxious, bored; now,
I began to ask a thousand questions...




He was, of course, mistrustful, knowing I was bored,
knowing he had dragged me up here from Bakersfield

after five years

of almost managing to forget Bishop existed.

But he soon became loquacious, ordered a drink,
and settled down for
an afternoon of talk...

He liked Bishop: somehow, it was to his taste, this
hard-drinking, loud, visited-by-movie-stars town.
"Better to be a big fish in a little pond."

And he was: when they came to shoot a film,
he entertained them; Miss A--, who wore
nothing at all under her mink coat; Mr. M--,
good horseman, good shot.

"But when your mother
let me down" (for alcoholism and
infidelity, she divorced him)
"and Los Angeles wouldn't give us water any more,
I had to leave.

We were the first people to grow potatoes in this valley."

When he began to tell me
that he lost control of the business
because of the settlement he gave my mother,

because I had heard it
many times,

in revenge, I asked why people up here drank so much.

He hesitated. "Bored, I guess.
--Not much to do."

And why had Nancy's husband left her?

In bitterness, all he said was:
"People up here drink too damn much."

And that was how experience
had informed his life.

"So now I think I've learned all I want
after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things
that I never knew before.
I am a little nervous yet."



Yet, as my mother said,
returning, as always, to the past,

"I wouldn't change any of it.
It taught me so much. Gladys
is such an innocent creature: you look into her face
and somehow it's empty, all she worries about
are sales and the baby.
her husband's too good!"

It's quite pointless to call this rationalization:
my mother, for uncertain reasons, has had her
bout with insanity, but she's right:

the past in maiming us,
makes us,
fruition
is also
destruction:

I think of Proust, dying
in a cork-linked room, because he refuses to eat
because he thinks that he cannot write if he eats
because he wills to write, to finish his novel

--his novel which recaptures the past, and
with a kind of joy, because
in the debris
of the past, he has found the sources of the necessities

which have led him to this room, writing

--in this strange harmony, does he will
for it to have been different?

And I can't not think of the remorse of Oedipus,

who tries to escape, to expiate the past
by blinding himself, and
then, when he is dying, sees that he has become a Daimon

--does he, discovering, at last, this cruel
coherence created by
"the order of the universe"

--does he will
anything reversed?



I look at my father:
as he drinks his way into garrulous, shaky
defensiveness, the debris of the past
is just debris--; whatever I reason, it is a desolation
to watch...

must I watch?
He will not change; he does not want to change;

every defeated gesture implies
the past is useless, irretrievable...
--I want to change: I want to stop fear's subtle

guidance of my life--; but, how can I do that
if I am still
afraid of its source?
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
fokse vektaire xeven, why are you so interested in Craner's member?

my mother warned me about people like you, keep back!
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Reading over this thread again I've become more interested in the technical aspect of poetry that Craner is speaking about with regards to what makes a poem and what doesn't. Any good resources for this? The small amount of poetry I read, I usually enjoy in mostly a visceral kind of way, with no real knowledge of the form.

EDIT: That being said, I took this English Lit class where the prof covered Wasteland and Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, two poems that I really enjoy and ended up basically boring the living shit out of me. This could just be that the professor was a bit of a boring bastard (which he was), or it could be my instinctual suspicion of academic types. I suspect both.
 
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luka

Well-known member
to be honest, id much rather read me than mina loy. a few weeks ago i was trying to bine up on some modern poetry, ie post wwII and then after a frustrating search came upon the lyrics to ll cool js big ole butt which was very refreshing. im not sure its poetry exactly but its a lot better than rezikoff or something
 

luka

Well-known member
Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day's work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

vs

I was at the mall, sippin' on a milkshake
Playin' the wall, takin' a break
Admirin' the girls with the bamboo earings
Baby hair and bodies built to swing
That's when I seen her
Her name was Tina
Grace and poise kinda like a ballerina
I said, "How you doin', my name's Big L
Don't ask me how I'm livin', 'cause, yo, I'm living swell
But then again I'm livin' kind of foul
'Cause my girl don't know that I'm out on the prowl"
To make a long story short, I got the digits
Calls her on my car phone and paid her a visit
I was spankin' her and thankin' her, chewin' her and doin' her
Layin' like a king on sheets of satin
That's what time it is, you know what's happenin'
She had a big ole booty, I was doin' my duty
I mean, yo, I admit that my girl's a cutie
But Tina was erotic, Earl's my witness
With the kind of legs that put stockings out of business
When I went home, I kissed my girl on the cheek
But in the back of my mind it was this big butt freak
I sat my girl down, I couldn't hold it in
And said to her with a devilish grin...

TINA got a big ole butt
I know I told you I'd be true
But TINA got a big ole butt
So I'm leavin' you
TINA got a big ole butt
I know I told you I'd be true
But TINA got a big ole butt
So I'm leavin' you
 

luka

Well-known member
i read a book on saturday i'd really recommend. its called the real work and its a selection of interviews with gary snyder.
i think as a poet, he doesn't even reach the mediocre, but he gives very good interviews.
 

luka

Well-known member
id also be interested to know if anyone here has made any headway with olson. i'm considering buying maximus when im in the uk but im not sure its worth my while. i don't like any of the people associated with him, not even bunting or zukovsky, both of whom get a lot of love from people whose opinions i respect.
i enjoy david jones very much. i have all his books, which i consider an acheivement in itself. they're not easy to come by.
i've got the whole first section of the anathemata typed out if anyones interested in having a look.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Don't start on that Zukofsky thing again!

I was banging my head against Larkin again yesterday. Just to confirm that I detest his poems: in style and content. I was getting quite aggravated.
 
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