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.

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.

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.