Saturday, March 31, 2007

The Language of Last Call

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

What don't you understand about that? If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the language of last call.

Here's what is great about those lines. There is only word that is more than one syllable, and it is only two, and it has a happy (though in the case of this context, sad) long e sound at the end. These lines are direct. They are to the point. There is no camoflage or ulterior meaning. It means exactly what it says. The redunacy only comes because it wants to make sure you heard.

Oh, I've been reading your American poetry, and some of it is so ... so ... why would you want to alienate your reader? Come on. If you are not speaking to everyone, then you are elitist. LangPo, despite your prose theories (vide L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E) to be be for everyone, you are so elitist in your poetry. Why?

The language of last call speaks to the everyday and the genius. If you don't understand the monosyllabics of last-call language, then you shouldn't be writing poetry.

Oh, sure I love the LangPo experiments. They explore language. Charles Bernstein is at his best when he is being funny, not nonsensical.

The language of poetry should be the language of last call. It should be easy. To the point. Accessible. In the morning of the hangover, when the mind is most clear and not distracted, then it can concentrate on deeper levels.

If you don't understand last-call language, then you are prententious (pretending to be smart). The genius can explain the most complicated ideas in everyday-speak. The poet speaks no unnecessary words in no unnecessary grammar. The grammar of last call, even if not grammatically correct, is the most honest.

Last-call language is honest. It has an urgency. Nothing should be misunderstood at last call. You have one chance to get one more drink. That is it. To say "last call" it in any other means leaves people scratching their heads with empty drinks. At last call, there should be no empty drinks. At last call, there should be no empty language. At last call, the underlying meaning should be understood by context. "Hey, you wanna go" from a man to a man or man to a group of people is easily understood as, "Let's go drink more." From a man to woman or woman to man, it means, let's go drink some more and see what happens. It's that easy.

The last-call language is the language of poetry.

There's more to this, but last call approaches. There is always tomorrow to expand!

Friday, March 23, 2007

Years of Walking

After years of walking
where do shoes' soles go

Every memory with you
is in those stepped-out soles

I walk as well barefooted
I wonder why either I needed

You are as absent as my soles
though I wish to save my shoes

I could hang them on the wall
or on my closet floor clear a space

I will never again tie a knot
or slide my feet in those shoes

After years of walking
where did you go




Ok. So there's something this poem isn't doing. It's not going over the edge. Is the beginning too much/little? Is it boarding the sappy? Is "soles" drawing too much attention to "souls"? Is "stepped-out" the right modifier? What about "worn-down"? What about line 6. It sounds right, but is the inversion a problem here? A distraction? What is this poem trying to do? It's trying to parallel shoe soles with a lover who has walked out the door, right? But what doesn't come across is that the soles slowly disappear? Or does it? But where do those bits of missing soles go? There's no observable trace of the missing soles. You can look at the bottom of your shoe and see it worn down. But where are those pieces? Is there a trade going on? The shoes leave a little bit of themselves wherever they roam, and the wherever gives you back a memory?

I'm not sure if I can even nail down what this poem wants to do, but I intuit something significant is happening — but it's just not leaping over the edge of experience into profundity.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Dan Gerber and the Lyric

Wouldn't you know it. I found an American lyricist — a damn good one. He's got that Spanish soul. That old, dusty, bloody soul. He's got Machado, Lorca, and Jiménez all rolled up in him. And when he does the lyric or the meditative it speaks to the universe and to us. He's got what I was looking for, and I found it in A Primer on Parallel Lives (Copper Canyon, 2007 (just released)). My first impression: he's what I mean by the vertical poet — able to traverse lyric and narrative while speaking to us and the cosmos.

Here's a sample:

Six Miles Up

The shadow of a hand brushes over the mountains,
as if smoothing rumpled sheets.
And now I see that the mountains are clouds.

In my dreams,
I search for what I won't remember in the morning,
but I do remember the searching.

In Venice I ate cuttlefish, steamed
in its own black ink,
and now it's coming out of my fingers.

Across the aisle in a window seat,
a man like me is
reading a book in which words appear,
tracing an indelible line
through the invisible sky
while the pilot's skill keeps us flying.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Rock and Roll Poets

I've learned a new Americna term — Rock and Roll. (Or as I just saw on a very funny tv show called "The Simpsons", Rev. Lovejoy called it "Rock and/or Roll" when an organist started playing an I. Ron Butterfly song. I think it a joke of some sort. It did make chuckle, but only intutively, as I'm still learning about America humor, almost in a similar fashion as Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Does anyone get the feeling that Tom Holmes, my only American friend right now, is corrupting me?). Anyhow back to Rock and/or Roll.

I've noticed Americans use the Rock and Roll in relation to celebrityhood. "I'm wanna be a rock and roll star in this or that field." While I've heard no poet say it, I sometimes sense that American poets strive for that. I exclude professors, as they publish so as to not perish. (Is that how the saying goes?) So here's the question for the American poets — do you guys publish to gain fame? or do you publish to put beauty into the world? The former seems the case to me. Sometime this month I met a poet, I forget where as I've been drunk alot lately — you know trying to fit in (some things are universal — poets get drunk every where!). Anyhow this poet said of poems in journals, "There's a lot of good first drafts out there." I wish I could remember who said that, but I don't. Probably just some drunken shadow. But I think the shadow is right, for the most part.

Anyhow what's the urge to so quickly send poems out there? And why the urge to send to "the big journals." I've been reading about William Stafford, and he didn't seem to care where his poems were published, just as long as they were out there. His ego did not seem dependent on publishing, and less on where it was published. The story goes, as I heard it from Tom, that at SUNY Brockport's Writers Forum, he read a poem. People applauded when he was done. He then read a list of like 20 literary journals. Then he noted that all these journals passed on the poem. Then he read the name of some obscure journal, one that probably doesn't even exist anymore, and he said these guys took it. Why aren't new American poets like this? What's the obsession of being famous? What's the rush? Why care? What about just putting more poetry into the world?

I'm reminded of the most important thing poets from my land are concerned with: The most important thing when writing poetry is to lose the ego.

Here it seems to be to feed the ego.

Why the need for the Rock and Roll Stardom. It's poetry, right? It's bigger than you, and more important. Isn't that the point — to make the world better, not the ego? Do you need to be famous? Do you have to be published ... now. Do you need books ... now? Can you stare some more at your poems and books until you know they will affect someone other than yourself? Why not the perfect poem that is beyond the ego, and much smarter? "Stare and Listen", that's another saying from poets from where I come from. Get it right, then get it published.

Just some concerns and obsevations about the rush to Rock and Roll Poets. (Hint hint, Tom.)

I could be very wrong here, too. This whole place is new to me.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Horizontal and Vertical Poets

Years before Gegôré was overthrown, I sensed that it would be overthrown. It was somewhat obvious that the young lad, who is now the self-appointed president, was making strides, gaining energy, and convincing the public of new ways to run the country. So early on I knew I would I have to move. Luckily, I met Tom Holmes through our "literary wormhole" (vide infra). He told me places to go, eventually Brockport, NY, and he also sent me books to read. I've been reading voraciously in American poetry, especially in contemporary American poetry. Recently at AWP (vide infra), we had a discussion about horizontal and vertical poets. And here I would like to think on the page about it. So here goes.

I want to speak to poets about these angles of writing — horizontal and vertical. Neither has to do with content or how the poem moves or with Li-Young Lee's vertical moment. These observations/ponderings will deal with how we poets write, most especially the younger poets — somewhere around 40 and younger.

From what I've read and know of your (American and western poetry), most of the older poets — over 40, over 100, six-feet under — wrote with pen or pencil on paper. They stared down at the page. Their eyes staring into the words/page (perhaps beyond). They hovered over what they wrote and revised. The back of their heads faced the universe, gods, and infinity. Of course there are exceptions — Pound typing in prison camp near Pisa, Dr. Carlos on his typewriter composing those triple lines. Pound and Dr. Carlos (W. C. Williams) faced the page and stared with a smiliar intensity as the pen/pencil poet. Poets like Ez and Dr. Carlos are horizontal poets. The former (the pen/pencil poets) are vertical poets.

Today there seems to be more horizontal writers — and many of them write on the computer screen, as I am doing now. (Perhaps we should call them neo-horizontal poets as they use the screen instead of a piece of paper curling in front of them.) The neo-horizontal poet stares into the screen. So how does this new relationship with the written word do to the new poetry?

This isn't a question about the computer. No! I think all of us poets eventually use the computer. For instance, the veritcal poet (or should I call them the neo-vertical poets, as we shall see why). Typically, the neo-vertical poet writes as their predecessor verical poets, however the young vertical poet will eventually revise on the computer screen (hence neo-vertical). Typically (for the seond time ... hey, I'm getting somewhere, I think), the neo-vertical poet will write by hand write and revise and revise and revise until they think the poem is done. At that time, the neo-vertical poet will take their piece of paper with the final poem to the computer and type the poem on the screen. Now, the poem can be seen on the screen. Now the poem's shape can be approximated as to how it will appear in print in a literary journal or book. They can with ease and brevity style the shape. They can continue to sculpt the poem into the shape they need — a shape that fits their need, the poem's need, or the content's need. They can, oddly enough, arrive more quickly to the poem's organic form. (How odd is that?) They can then print the poem to assure what the screen suggests. They can easily grasp how a reader will read the published poem. How the eye will move in relation to what the ear hears. They can then align the eye-ear movement or they can create a greater tension between eye-movement and ear-response.

So what does this all mean?

Well, there are now more horizontal poets in America than ever before. As far as I can tell, this horizontal (neo-horizontal) movement is neglecting the universe. What I've noticed is the dying of the lyric (at least comprehensible, non-ellipitcal lyric) and the predominance of the narrative, especially the narrative about the individual. There is nothing wrong with any of this, except the universe is being neglected and the lyric is disappearing. (The lyric is your oldest form of poetry, no?) With the neo-horizontal poets, there is more dedication to time instead of the obliteration of time. I mean, don't all us poets want to obliterate time? When are we at our happiest? When we are writing. When we come out of our half-unconscious, mostly hypnagogic, state and realize that hours have gone by, when it only felt like 20 or 30 minutes. The lyric poem best destroys time.

I'm not saying the vertical poet can't be personal and narrative. They have been. But they are more often in both veins lyrical and narrative. (I'm including meditative under lyrical, by the way). But with the rise of neo-horizontal poet has come the decline of the lyircal poem and the connection with the universe.

So what I'm wondering here is whether our conduit (the back of the head (a receptor? a transmitter?)) is being severed from the universe. What I am wondering is how neo-horizontal poets are dominating the traditional vertical poets. What I am wondering, does the neo-horizontal poet tend toward the narrative, personal, and social? and if so, how can they more often talk to the universe?

New Book

Before I moved to Brockport, I corresponded with Tom Holmes. During that correspondence he translated some poems I sent him. Poems that explain the world I lived in. The book, Negative Time, has recently been accepted for publication by Pudding House and is due out soon. Costs $10.

Here's the preface:

The following poems were sent to me from another universe. They are part of a correspondence between Semlohsa Moht, former Poet Laureate of the former Gegôré, and myself, as we tried to explain our lives, cultures, sciences, and politics to each other. I have translated Moht’s poems for this collection. As will become obvious, as it did to me when translating, his universe is similar to ours except time moves in a contrary direction to ours. I hope these translations have captured what he was trying to share with me. And I hope I have provided a literary wormhole between our universes.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

First Poem that Includes My New Home Town

Brockport Bridge

On a bridge in Brockport
arching the Erie Canal,
I consider the sunset
with my retreating shadow
and my unforgetting.

The canal is thawing low
between rocky banks,
between broken buildings
and aspiring pines,
beneath my hung stare.

The ivy’s beginning to cling
like an uncertain wife.
The Erie Canal, a profitable scar
running New York’s edge,
turns purple and orange — it trembles.

Miles away, Lake Ontario
always a season behind —
spring it freezes, summer it thaws,
fall it warms, winter it returns driftwood —
today, along fissures, it moans.

The sun is gone, the wind arrives
ripping the canal,
a metal echo through the bridge,
as Venus appears
confident, alone, and bright.

The bend in the canal
has disappeared
under another bridge?
where maybe no one stands?
The Erie Canal at twilight.
I wish I could regret her.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

First American-English Poem

Night Trades

Reenlightened from the night
when a shadow retreated or crept
into a telephone pole, or climbed
into what it imagined
to be a tree in a front yard
humming all day and night, a melody
of voices and web pages,
from here and other countries,

cajoling each corporation
that usurps the lands
they turn to steel and plastic.
The market that financed
them turned the land, as well,
shares the stock broker traded
after a mild uptick.
This other melody,

a poem to a lover
in absence, draped in blankets
without the other,
one believing the other is there.
But here’s the shadow
who did and did not write the poem,
all its substance in the cedar
and drooping wires with a melody

silent and invisible in the cold air
with snow falling on every uptick.
Some acts should be unforgiven.
Shadow birds sing on
the wires. The broker
doesn’t hear them. They make
him feel something other
than profit accruing on an uptick

could ever do. Shadows are more
than absence or shade. Perhaps
that’s what substance is: not
a body to cast,
for what’s a shadow have
that humans don’t. Dial,
then read the poem, and, if the other
listens, it’s the embodiment

of what’s been absent. Appeal
to the shadow in the cedar,
ask of his face in the tree
in the snow-covered yard
if poems for a lover
silhouette its face, if
love is worth it. Birds ruffle
their wings, but the shadow face,

can it have shadow tears,
is it cashing in on an uptick the broker’s
trying to trade while listening
not to some poem. Counted profits
from shares in plastic and steel,
the broker, the usurpers, and the market
use the snowy wire,
where poems could move,

to turn those upticks into points
and not mention a word
about reenlightenment. Not a word
returns save what’s absent —
a poem, lovers, a melody
that won’t turn to plastic or steel
but will satisfy the perched birds
clutching the shadow of love.

AWP Conference

I was just at the AWP conference in Atlanta. I met some wonderful people. Matthew Schmeer from Poetry Midwest, Chad Prevost from C&R Press, Laura McCullough (a poet who is also interested in mirror neurons), Gregory Orr (a helluva poet) very briefly, Kurt Brown also briefly, Cindy St. John and Beth Marzoni from Third Coast, Stan Rubin and Judy Kitchen, Mike Dockins with his new book and with Redactions: Poetry & Poetics (which has great ribbon magnets that read "Support Poetry"), Thom Caraway at Sage Hill Press (Dockins' publisher), Michael Robins (who was also with a new book, winner of the 2006 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry), Cory Green with his t-shirt that read "Smile if your Gay," Jaime Iridell and Travis Wayne Denton from Terminus, Thomas Lux, Ginger (Lux's girlfriend or friend), Christopher Howell, almost Dana Gioia, Sandy (a man) an editor for Marshhawk Press, Ralph Black, Sam Lignon from Eastern Washington University, Adam O'Connor and Zack from Willow Springs, Linda Frost from PMS, Beth from The Academy of American Poets (she bought my friends and me drinks), and a bunch of other people I can't quite remember due to the excessive drinking. Yes, American poets and writers have just as much passion and ability to drink as poets and writers from the rest of the world.