My Poetry on this Blog Sucks

Read the books. They are good. Don't read the posted poems. Oh [head slap] they are so bad. The prose, however, is good and interesting.

Tom Holmes' Pre-Dew Poems

Tom Holmes' newest book of poems, Pre-Dew Poems, was recently released by FootHills Publishing.

Here's what I wrote about it:

At last, a man who can express love without getting me sick. I’m sure the poems speak on some sappy personal level for Tom, but to me they express love in the universal. These poems confront the myths, the imaginings, and the realities of love. Pre-Dew Poems is fulfilling, like a good fuck.

The Bird in the Chimney

Rattling in the chimney.
A bird is flapping its wings
against the metal
like drum taps
for an execution.

The flue is open.
I can see the sky,
but I cannot see this bird.

This bird, however, is in the chimney
wedged, chirping
its death song.

After hours of listening,
I’m sure it’s a sparrow
who fell with the Easter snow.

I cannot save this bird,
nor release it
to let it fly,
to not hear its wings
span the wind.

I’m so desperate to write
a poem
about anything
to quiet the pounding anxiety —
You must write.

This bird will quiet.

There’s nothing I can do
for this bird,
save reference.

There’ll always be the panic,
the beating,
the echo in each bird.

Journals

I met with a group of good people and fine writers tonight at Lift Bridge Books in Brockport, NY. The names I remember: Bill (who seems a devotee of writing and apparently quite a famous poet), Frank, Dan (a Kerouac fan), David (who went to seminary school and is a psychologist, or something in that vein), Joe who also went to seminary school and who has published novels, Margay an anthropologist, some other nice lady whose name I didn't catch, Sibyl who was quite quiet, Joe (who runs the book store, but who was only there a short while), and another lady and man (John?) whose names I didn't catch. All were intelligent, all seemed into writing.

Today's discussion was about journal entries. People shared samples of their journal entries. They were quite good, surprisingly. (And it wasn't like they were trying to show off with their best stuff.) You'd think journal entries wouldn't be so ... clean and sensical, but I guess that is what constant writing does. Keeps you close to language, and as you continue to write, the first draft becomes better and better. And these people are writers. Not poseurs.

I did notice this about the journal entries. Most were narratives. Nothing wrong with that, except I thought there would be more meditative pieces. Are these the only two types of journal entries: meditative and narrative? Perhaps observational, but wouldn't that necessarily fall into one of the two mentioned types, unless it was strictly objective observational, like Thoreau might do at times, before an epiphany, when it then turns meditative.

The other discussion was about writing the journal. By hand or on the computer. Most people at the meeting tended towards the computer. By computer, I mean like in a text editor of some sort, Word, notepad, wordpad, whatever. Me, I'm kinda digging this blog journal entry writing. I like the flow. I like that I can access it from most places I go. But I still write all my poems by hand.

Without Difference

Clouds carry sunlight
even if it rains.
When it does rain,
its drops of sun,
and what’s here grows
without difference,
as if a flood
never occurred,
as if no Sundays
isolated us
to hopes and prayers,
as if the sun
is a matter
so indistinct
from language
that what grows here
will only guess
to what arrives,
as we only guess
within the clouds
of electrons
or with the matter
of a god.

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!

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.