:: Poetry ::

:: Thursday, December 18, 2003 ::

This Poem is a Passing Train

This is the poem about the boy on the passing train.
This is the poem about the girl in the pretty dress.
Here's the part where she looks up from her book
to see the most lovely boy on the opposite train--
his eyes blink past like coins falling through air
and her irises swell like the darkened lip of a well.
In the book in her lap, the characters stop
and watch the boy on the train--they fix a pot of tea
and smile to each other remembering how they first met
on page 24, the Countess with a knife to the young man's
throat. A shiver playing through the tendons of his neck
told her he was not the intruder she thought him
but the man she would one day marry in a field
by the River Seine. And you've read this poem before, right?
The boy on the train doesn't see her, the train keeps moving,
the boy is lost to the young girl in the pretty dress,
but just as the boy's face blurs into a bright ribbon
the couple in the book kiss not knowing, either of them,
that the intruder has a heart of darkness and evil
and that try though she might to avoid it, she will be destroyed
with unbearable pain over the next 249 pages which flutter
in the tunnel light in the lap of the pretty girl.

:: Sean 12/18/2003 07:11:00 AM [+] ::
...

Yeah, the title is shit. So fix it. Damn. What are you people doing out there!!! Thanks for all your good work on this. I'll do all that stuff you say. The title used to me "The Last Thing I remember" but I dropped the bit about the blood, so she's just there at the end, and I never knew what that meant anyway. So, I'm really stumped right now. I have a poem I really like right now, so I might put it up in hopes that you'll just do a quick read and drive-by comment and move on to your own stuff. Sorry if I've been too productive--sue me. Damn.
:: Sean 12/18/2003 07:11:00 AM [+] ::
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Sean,
I really like this one, I think. The idea of fear and reticence when faced with the world is pretty universal, or at least they feel that way to me most of the time. The idea that everyone is watching you and that everyone will be “inconvenienced” by your mistakes or inactions speaks to an emotion that, I think, is pretty powerful yet overlooked.

I also like the turn from that kind of public fear to the private fear of the speaker with the lover in bed. That, of course, is the more important fear in many ways. However, I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to make of what happens in the final stanza. I’m with you up until right after the point where the speaker is both relieved and scared that the lover has turned to face the wall—I think that’s a great moment. But I’m not sure how to read what happens afterwards. Other than the fairly clear image of the freckled back, I don’t quite get the resolution of “blood” and “light.” The metaphorical language seems to come out of left field here, and I’m not quite prepared enough by the rest of the poem’s language to interpret this part. If there were some more obvious metaphorical foreshadowing, I might know better how to read those final two lines and get more resonance from them.

Otherwise, this one seems to work all of the way through. I especially like the line, “but you’re blowing / in my ear so brave and dirty.”

:: Rob 12/09/2003 07:07:00 AM [+] ::
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Sean,
Unfortunately, I head back to the States next Wednesday. I'd love to come visit, but cash is short to non-existant at this point. How long will you be over there? Coming home for any visits? If so, come stay in Evansville for a few nights. We can actually put you in your own beds this time, and there's a good place to go drinking within walking distance of the house.
:: Rob 12/04/2003 10:18:00 AM [+] ::
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Wait. You mean our Paul was there? Damn. I wish I could've come over. I'm just now getting a tiny bit of extra change. When do you leave Rob? Maybe we could meet in Paris or something. I don't know. You can't get here can you? So, fellas, sorry I missed you. I was just thinking that last year, we had a good time the weekend before Tgiving when I shot through on my way home. I did miss being home this last week. Looking forward to yinz upcoming poems.
:: Sean 12/04/2003 08:16:00 AM [+] ::
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"Oedipus, Billie Holiday, Charles Foster Kane and You"
OK, I'm finally getting back to it--end of the semester crap here has been getting in the way of doing good things like writing or reading poems. Also, Paul was here until yesterday, so we've basically been fucking off for a week, which was great. If I hadn't had to teach this semester, this trip would have been about perfect.

Anyway, the poem: I like this one alot, but the long lines don't seem to cohere somehow; they want to break somewhere in the middle. This may be way off base here, but I imagined that you were using the long lines as some kind of analog to Homeric lines--long, narrative, etc. However, they don't seem to work here. Really, the only suggestion I have is to try breaking these differently--if you do, you might generate a little more energy in the poem and stave off the prosiness that they're creating right now.

I'll get back to you on the new one.
:: Rob 12/02/2003 05:55:00 AM [+] ::
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OK, forget those. I agree, the one about the speaking is very flat to me. I agree also about the lack of need for more poems about the strangeness of language. So, throw that out and consider this, and I'll be quiet for a long time. Maybe.

The Electric River (I dunno?!?)

At four, I shattered a jade green bowl
on the steps of Terry Village, my first school.
Crying in the dirty sunlight, I waited for my parents
to forgive me. Today, when the kinetic waitress
bumps me--fear dips me in electricity.
I lower my eyes, sorry, slow and clumsy.

Afraid to cough in movies, I dream fits,
a thousand heads swivel in the dim light.
I cough, shut my eyes. Walking up the stairs
I know I will soon trip, trip others, inconvenience
the world. I am afraid of you, your head up
your nails filed. The light comes off you
like halogen, your teeth shine.

I’m blinded with fear at night. In bed,
you say my name and blood thuds the walls
of my heart. You blow in my ear. I flinch
like a dog. As the wind paws the curtains
I tell about the bus ride home--sirens
and lights surrounded us, but you’re blowing
in my ear so brave so dirty.

As a child I walked a frozen lake, jumped
from a plane I whisper. You do what I hope
and fear: you turn and face the wall.
So dark but your back glows. I catch
my breath, lean close, study the constellation
of freckles. I see scratches of blood;
light pours from you.

:: Sean 11/30/2003 08:32:00 AM [+] ::
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Sean,
I'll begin by apologizing: I might have to break off in the middle of this critique to talk to students coming in, so if I trail off in mid-sentence, you'll know what happened.

Language Lesson #18: I think this poem ends well (that's where I feel we finally get your normal virtuosity with language), but I think my overall problem with it is twofold. On the one hand, it feels awfully prosy up until the last 4 lines. The colloquial feel is a plus, but there's something a little slack about the pacing and the metaphorical language. I don't know, but it just seems somehow more like a prose paragraph broken up into lines than anything. This is kind of a superficial suggestion, but a regular meter might help compensate for the prose tendency of the poem. In lieu of your usual strong imagery, meter might help tighten the poem and give it the aural tension it needs. Maybe? The second problem I'm more reluctant to bring up because I myself have been recently guilty of a similar thing--that is, the poem contemplating lanugage itself. I know, I know, I did one earlier this semester too; it's kind of hard not to be thinking about it when you're living in a different country. However, my question in this instance (and in my poem too) is, do we really say anything unique about the experience in the poems? In other words, have we really gone beyond the idea that, yeah, it's pretty weird not knowing the language? I don't know, I'm just beginning to think that something more has to come out of it in order to make the poem justify itself.

"Oedipus, Billie Holliday, Charles Foster Kane and You":
Great title--not many poem titles recently (from anyone, not just us folks on the Blog) have really made me want to read the rest of the poem. This one demands a good read.

I'll get back to the rest of it soon...
:: Rob 11/26/2003 04:44:00 AM [+] ::
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sorry, I was out of town and stuff. Here are two. Let me have it:

Language Lesson #18

The men of Greece shout into each other
red-faced, contorted, and I am ignorant
as a two-year-old discovering language.
I stare into one man’s shining face as he
tries to discover just who is sleeping
with his wife, or who said what
about the alleged size of his dick.

Or perhaps he's shouting, "I'll do it!
I'll kill the American! I'm waiting
for just the right moment!"
But, my friend tells me,
what they're really talking about
is the price of parsley.

Now I walk alone through these crowds
to come up with something even better
than the price of parsley. My genius
is often argued. Whether I deserve
monetary rewards for my job
of walking the streets of Athens
was the topic last night.

They end these intensities with a pat on the back--
quite un-American and disappointing--
where are the blows, the tears? I mope
towards my part of town, imagining
words for brother, for compassion
the word for thank you, the word for home.


Here's another one:

Oedipus, Billie Holiday, Charles Foster Kane and You

Oedipus, limping, that old pain burning in his heel, hears a carriage
round his dusty bend of road. He stops under the olive tree,
a lost goat bleats in the distance, the sun swings above. The perfume
weaving through the wind is a scent he can’t place so he stops.
Stooping to gather a husk of locust, he stares at the passing men.

Billie Holiday walks with a smile through the noon brightness
stopping to talk to the shopkeeper on the corner about the price
of bananas. The light on the window shines too bright to see through
but ring the door open, find her swaying, moving her arms.
She erupts with a smoky laugh. Quietly at night, she sings in her bath.

Charlie Kane, playing in the snow, runs his sled up and down
the glistening hill as a dark car quietly rolls right on past
the quaint scene, and the driver remembers his mother’s snow globe,
feels the heft of it in his tiny hand. Two blocks back
and getting smaller, the boy fades into whiteness.

And you, walking down the street toward your mother’s apartment,
carrying your armload of flowers before you like the sun
don’t slip on the curb, don’t look up to see me as I reach
for your bouquet of sunlight in the street. You just glance
as I walk past, a smile of something like sorrow on my lips.
:: Sean 11/23/2003 11:20:00 AM [+] ::
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Sean,
What happened? You were all concerned about Blog attendance, but you yourself have gone bye-bye. Where you be, man?
:: Rob 11/23/2003 08:04:00 AM [+] ::
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Sean,
Sorry to hear about the Stallings job, but that's pretty cool that you're going to do voice for children's books. Just think, if the people you work with don't know English too well, you could slip in some interesting stuff: "Then the Mama Bear took Baby Bear by the hand and said, 'You little Motherfucker. If you eat that porridge again, I'll let Daddy touch you in that special place again.'"

Ok, maybe I need help.

As far as Blog workshop goes, it looks like maybe Paul has opted out, or maybe end-of-term workload is pretty high. Either way, I'm willing to start a one-on-one rotation if you are--and you didn't say too much. Believe it or not, I'd much rather a piece of shit be called a piece of shit. If you don't, there's not much point in workshopping, right?

Put one up if you're ready, and I've got one waiting in the wings after that.

Later,
Rob
:: Rob 11/14/2003 06:08:00 AM [+] ::
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Rob, as many things work in Greece, I haven't heard from him again. This after saying, don't worry, I will call you on Wednesday. I know he's busy etc. So, I'm not counting on anything there and just intereviewed to do some voice work--recording textbooks for children, and I'm very excited about that. There is some more info at seaingreece.blogspot.com if you have time to look. I've been writing quite a bit and would like someone to look at it, but I don't know what's up with this site. Should we stop it or what? I just hadn't heard from anyone, and I was worried as usual that I said too much, so I don't know. Let me know what you/you all'd like to do.
:: Sean 11/14/2003 05:52:00 AM [+] ::
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Sean,
That's great that you met Stallings--have you read her book yet? That's also cool about the potential job--when would you start, and would this mean that you'd stay longer?
Rob
:: Rob 11/12/2003 11:45:00 AM [+] ::
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Did I screw everything up? Where are my friends?
:: Sean 11/11/2003 02:36:00 PM [+] ::
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I love the "doppler" as verb bit, Rob. I think that when I hear of the soft grey skies, I think of a cloudy sky, so I'm not sure, we'll wait to hear Paul on it as well. I also get confused with Venus being a chip of ice--I think maybe I'm not with you on the pond as much as I should be. You know? I love silk night, but after that It gets a bit wonky (as you are no doubt saying all the time) to me. "but in array they're" is there a way to say that faster? I like the end; it has a nice lyric tone, but I wonder if someone told me that I'm more lovely far away if I'd like that. I'm sorry to be somewhat rushed to you too Rob, and I'll try to think on it more. I'm getting right to where it doesn't work for me, so sorry if I come off harsh. You know I love you.
:: Sean 11/01/2003 02:41:00 PM [+] ::
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Jeez, I'm sorry. I'm in the cafe, and I don't have much time, but I did want to add or say that I really like the last two stanzas of your poem very much Paul. I had read about the ants being needed and always loved that, so I'm really happy you used it. I wonder if you could just start with "Irises undo their . . ." etc. Rob may have mentioned this, I can't remember. I might prefer "They will shrivel in July / hang to the ground etc." but I'm not sure; it feels a bit prosey there to me, but the close with the cicadas is excellent to me. I'm also not sure about cages--I tend to think that the moods very solid without it, but you may have already agreed. Maybe "This removal, not renewal / is a peepshow with side access: . . . " Very nice and sexy near end of stanza two. I hope all this quick rambling helps. I've been actually busy for a change--writing and teaching and tonight I'm hungover from Alicia Stallings' party which is nice for a change, to be hung over, and to have a new friend, so thanks again Rob for mentioning that I write her. I may get a job with her husband at The Athens News. Again, sorry to be so lax. I'll try to get to Rob's sweet poem soon.
:: Sean 11/01/2003 02:34:00 PM [+] ::
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OK, here's a new one--no explication and only a brief apology for the obsessive English theme.
Rob

PARALLAX

Astronomy--an apparent change in an object, caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight.

The English dawn trembles behind the poplars
And drowns the stars, one by one, in milklight
As I walk out across the heath, scattering
Rabbits and one startled lapwing, which dopplers

From left to right and back again in fear.
The pond beside the house is still, reflects
A sky as grey and soft as wool, and only
Venus—that bright, cold chip of ice—appears

Upon the surface. Four thousand miles away,
You sleep, and when you wake in that silk night
Of Midwest heat and see a smattering
Of stars, they’ll look the same, but in array
They’re slightly changed. You too—your eyes, your neck,
More lovely with distance and lonely skies.

:: Rob 10/30/2003 09:03:00 AM [+] ::
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Paul,
I really like the tone of this poem--if it were music, it would be one of those songs played mainly in minor chords that sound so mournful yet so beautiful. I feel kind of guilty, but my comments are mainly small technical ones since it seems like most of this poem is working the way you want it to; but here goes, for what it's worth:

Great title and some great lines--my fave's: "crispy dresses," "garments are gone, / bees are done," "belt of buds," "as its replacement wets its lips," "still shuddering / on their stems like eyes / shut hard," "Before they shrivel...weight of their petals," and "choirs of dust."

As for your concerns about "spiked green cages," I'm with you--it's problematic. Without your explication, I'm not sure I would have figured that one out, and obviously you can't include an explanation with the finished piece. I think you really only have two options here. One, you could simply forego the violence idea and describe the leaves more clearly (not a great option, granted); or, two, you could tack on some sort of technical or clinical detail that helps to clarify. For example, "among the spiked green cages of their X's." Now, I have no idea what those thingamabobs are called, but I imagine that they've got some sort of botanical name, right?

I'd also change "it's" in line 7 to "but" to help confirm the rhetorical shift there. But I'm not sure what "side access" is in that same line. I'm imagining something like a carnival tent where kids can look into the peepshow by pulling up a side of the tent, but I don't really know if that's what you're going for. I'm also not sure about the language of "pimps" in the third stanza. It kind of goes with the figurative language of "peepshow" (though not completely as those things would not mix & match in the real world), but it doesn't really work with the carrying away of the wax--I keep asking myself why pimps would carry wax away, or (figuratively) what is it they're supposed to be carrying away? Likewise, the phrase "behind the door" in stanza 2 seems to hint at the peepshow again, but it's not quite clear and actually may detract from "wets its lips."

I might also change the line break in stanza 3 to read, "still shuddering / on their stems like eyes shut hard /" In stanza 4, I think you can safely remove "though" from the first line--it's not adding much. Finally, the tense in line four of the final stanza should probably read "will cling," and I would take out "looking up" altogether. Grammatically, it makes it seem as if the elms are looking up instead of the cicadas. Of course, if you take that out, you'll have to rework the final line so that "bronze and hollow and sightless" doesn't refer back to elms either, though I think that's a fantastic last line for this poem.

Rob
:: Rob 10/25/2003 08:46:00 AM [+] ::
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Paul, sorry I've been so remiss. I'll get to you poem soon. Perhaps today?
:: Sean 10/24/2003 04:09:00 AM [+] ::
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Rob, why don't you put a poem up, and maybe Paul can join us later. I'm back from Crete and windburned, but happy.
:: Sean 10/13/2003 03:53:00 AM [+] ::
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|More later, Rob. I'm in Crete or Santorini. Talk to you at length soon.
:: Sean 10/11/2003 01:18:00 AM [+] ::
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Echo echo echo....
:: Rob 10/06/2003 10:30:00 AM [+] ::
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Guys,
I am so sorry that I'm only now making a reply to your generous and, as usual, right on-target comments. I have not been, as you might have imagined, brooding morosely over your comments,wondering why you don't sprinkle me with nuttin' but praise. No brooder, I.

In fact, I've been out of town the better part of the past week seeing cool stuff and wishing I had more money and less work to do. But I digress.

OK, yes, as I said, great comments, and you put your respective fingers on problems I had either worried over or simply hadn't been able to articulate yet, so this is great for me (and it is all about me, right?). I'm going to keep up with this one, and maybe later in the semester I'll repost the revision and see what y'all think.

Onward. Sean, I really like this piece you've posted. I love the dramatic situation, and I love the mythic tone it takes on without going all whimsical and surrealistic--I don't know a better way to say it, but it's mythic and muscular in that same way Heaney's Beowulf is (I do, of course, realize that you're talking about real history here, but it's hard not to take on the mythic when you're awash in this kind of subject matter). The title, however, might be a tad too much in the other direction. It doesn't, somehow, seem quite right for this poem, perhaps suggesting something lighter and less real than what you give the reader. Even something simple like "Silent Marble" might work better, but maybe Paul can give us some suggestions (or maybe he'll tell me to fuck myself; either is good).

As far as other "global" comments go, I would only say that there's a momentary stutter in the way I understand the poem when we move from "ribbed halls," which gives me that impression of a cavern of some sort, to "dead quarry." I eventually understand that the quarry is in a cave, but since that seems a little unusual, I initially get two different images in the first few lines. I don't know. You might try a really short epigraph to clear this up, but then again you know my problem: I'd put an epigraph on my dick "to help people understand what it means."

Smaller stuff: I really like the first two lines; their stength of diction launches the reader right into the poem, and I especially like "ribbons of bone." I'm not so sure about "speaks of the past" though. It's weaker than the first two lines, and the phrasing is a little cliched. But, it might be the simplest way to get the point across.

"Meat-colored" really great, especially considering what it's in reference to.

Also, I love "cragged teeth" and "shouldered forth" but grammatically it sounds like the teeth are being shouldered forth, and that juxtaposition doesn't quite work for me. I think you mean that the walls are being "shouldered forth," which would work perfectly; but, syntactically, it's not quite there yet.

If I'm reading the poem correctly, it also looks like there's a big sentence fragment from "The stones burned from within" forward to the end of the poem. I'm not necessarily against fragments, but in this case the lack of a main verb sets up an expectation that is never fufulled, perhaps making the resolution a little less satisfying than it could be. I don't think the "average reader" is really going to notice, but he might have an unconscious sense of something missing. But this could just be me, as Collins points out.

OK, I have a dirty mind, and while I like the idea behind the line "palmed and caressed this bone back to life," there's one reading of this section that might not be what you want. If you do want the sexual connotation, I think you need to set up that expectation a little earlier in the poem.

I do, however, love the Persephone echo in "what it means to be pulled /
from life beneath the earth to life above." It's a very light touch, but it still brings back the resonance of that story without beating the reader over the head with, "Get it? Get it? Greek myth!" Nice.

The resolution is fantastic, paced just right and framed so as to branch out to universal significance. Lovely and meaningful.

Overall, I think this is great. The language is distinguished, and the metaphorical content is more than merely ornamental--it's beautiful and significant all at the same time, you bastard.

Greece is evidently treating you well. Have you read any poems by A.E. Stallings? She's an American poet, about our age, who's first book was mainly about Greece, Greek mythology, and Greek geography (she was a classics major, I think). She lives now in Athens; if you like her poetry, you should look her up.

Rob



:: Rob 9/28/2003 06:08:00 AM [+] ::
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You know, I made a mistake and didn't even see her in the poem at first. I wonder if there's a way to have her come back one more time near the end? I have really fallen for the line "her lashes, blurred / by wind to grasslands gold and brown" that's so lovely. Nature's blank stare is really good now, that I've read it better. Disregard the other comments and I'll try just to do this when I have free net. It's better, the stare, to me now because nature now becomes sort of an interloper, a third wheel in a funny way. Have you been revising this? What is up? "goes unheard" still doesn't quite work for me, but I can't find something for it--dirt, turd, purred etc.
"his love song, lifeless as a turd"??? Maybe? Nope. The count's wrong. And where's Paul?

Anyway, "to say how he feels" not "to tell her"?? for count or "to detail" I don't know. Are you doing a anapestic substitution in that line? Tell me.

"to try describing her lovely" isn't as smooth as the rest to me. Can you fix it? "to try to paint her lovely face" That's kind of funny. I'm trying though. "to annotate"? I really don't know, man.

I've rambled on enough. My job here is through.



:: Sean 9/26/2003 09:05:00 AM [+] ::
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I don't want to move on from Rob's poem. I'm interested to see what you think, and Paul of course I want to hear your thoughts on Robs poems, Rob's counter, your parry, his thrust etc., but I also am bored, and am sitting here with some free time (not paying for it) and thought I'd go ahead and stick mine up. Perhaps it would be better just to have more of a free for all since the "I think it's your turn" slowed us down? Also, I just want to post this of course. I've been thinking about it too much. Hope this is all right. If not please let me know, and I'll take it down for awhile. Later.

The Silent Breath of Marble

Great ribbed halls beneath the earth
buried ribbons of bone under Paros
speak of the past. The dead quarry’s
meat-colored walls, the cragged teeth
tell of being shouldered forth
into four-thousand years of sculpture
and light. The stones burned from within
through the blinding light of day,
in the Cycladean starlight while slaves
stacked the earth’s bones to be sailed—
heavy burden carried by the wind—
over the Aegean northwest to Athens
and the carvers who chipped and smoothed
palmed and caressed this bone back to life
back to breath and back to stillness
as a frieze, cornice, pediment, goddess
where they loom still and silently
whisper of death, permanence
and what it means to be pulled
from life beneath the earth to life above,
mute witness to this spinning world
of sorrows and light.


:: Sean 9/24/2003 07:16:00 AM [+] ::
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I'm scared of epigrams (perhaps 'cause I can never remember if they're epigraphs or what), and I like the first bit of this here--is it too much to cut it down to "words are signs of natural facts"? I'm on the clock here, paying for this, so sorry to be so brief.
"to take to his poetry" perhaps in line 13 (sorry, can't figure out the right count, but maybe one word would work?
"nature's blank stare" seems familiar to me
"for apt comparison" feels like it's alread been said to me. Can you use this space for more?
maybe "he feels the waste" seems more of the moment to me. (14)
is it true there will be "no embrace"? damn.
And the final thing you might mess with is the "song goes unheard" I know you've got to find a rhyme, but he hasn't been able to say anything, right? I mean, it's not that it can't be heard, but he can't speak it.

But, Rob, this is a beautiful start, and I think a very strong one. I hope you throw stuff you don't need from my post, and know I was in a hurry, but there may be some things you've been saying to yourself that I'm backing up. Anyway, can't wait to see more of this. Beautiful subject for a villanelle.

Dang.
:: Sean 9/23/2003 10:49:00 AM [+] ::
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OK, I'll put my head on the chopping block first. Like I said, I've been working in form almost entirely--something new for me--so here's a villanelle.
Rob

LOVE SONG IN GRANTHAM, ENGLAND

Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, Chapter IV

Without the names of the flowers, trees, or birds
That populate this tranquil, foreign place,
He walks the autumn fields, devoid of words

To tell her how he feels. It would be absurd,
He thinks, to try describing her lovely face
Without the names of flowers, trees, or birds

For apt comparison. Her lashes, blurred
By wind to grasslands gold and brown, grace
Their walks in autumn fields. Devoid of words,

He smiles and talks of nothing, hopes she’s heard
What’s not been said. There will be no embrace
Without the names of flowers, trees, and birds

To make his poetry. Love-struck, deterred
By nature’s blank stare, he knows the waste
Of walks in autumn fields, devoid of words

To touch her heart. His love song goes unheard,
He talks in circles in his futile chase.
Without the names of flowers, trees, or birds,
He walks the autumn fields, devoid of words.

:: Rob 9/22/2003 11:09:00 AM [+] ::
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I'd love to buddy. I just thougt I'd check in. Just to see. I'm at sbchapm@yahoo.com Hope England is grand. Athens is. Talk to you soon. (josh sucks)
:: Sean 9/22/2003 07:22:00 AM [+] ::
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Hey guys, is anyone still out there? If so, interested in starting this back up? Let me know via email at rg37@evansville.edu. Also, congrats to Josh on the Wisconsin fellowship! Good year!

Rob
:: Rob 8/10/2003 07:00:00 PM [+] ::
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Just thought I'd let you all know that our friend Josh's book _No Planets Strike_ is forthcoming from Zoo Press. Now, who's next?
:: Sean 2/25/2003 11:26:00 AM [+] ::
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If any of you boys is still alive, I sure would like some help with this. Love, Sean


Looking at the Window
"How you say Jack, 'you look at the window'?"
"In this case Bob, you do say that."
-- from Down by Law

In the movie, the Italian murderer--sad, beautiful,
and new to English--draws a child-like image
on the cement walls of the jail cell--an open window,
lines of chalk looking out to nothing.

The sorrow and beauty of poetry is just this:
the window, dust collecting on the panes,
smudges of prints of the people who lived
here before, the knife of sun trying its way

into the darkened room and my morning,
me scratching at the cold shards of snow
on the landing with a dollar store broom,
imagining you in the arms of the other man

his laughter filling the slick halls with yours,
and my afternoon in this office of gray walls
and cinder block with no window to let light in
or out, all of this gentle construction of paper

and ink, lovely lines to cut along, might be false.
In the world outside this window of paper
it could be me lying in the arms of someone new
laughing the words of a favorite song and not you.
:: Sean 2/24/2003 12:00:00 PM [+] ::
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Hi! I’m Rob Griffith.
You may remember me from such on-line workshops as “Cry Uma!” and “Johnny Doesn’t Live Anymore.” I’ve recently returned from a 3-month masturbation training session, and though my hands are chapped, I’m ready to painfully type responses to the poems and comments you more responsible chaps have been putting up faithfully week after week.

I am using humor to deflect anger about my lengthy absence.

Please forgive me and allow me back into the warm glowing, glowing warm of your writing circle.

First, Sean’s poem of 9/21/2002: Four score and twenty years ago Sean brought forth this poem into the workshop, and since it’s probably since been published in Poetry, anthologized in The Best American Poetry of 2002, and lauded worldwide, there’s probably little reason for making any suggestions for improvement. However, in the interests of helping you assemble your notes for your Selected Works book, here goes: like Josh, I’ll refrain from a litany of all the good lines I find in the poem. There are many, especially in the revision. Enough said. In fact, I really have only two suggestions for improvement since this seems to be a fairly finished and polished piece. First, because I love the specifics in the poem, the “with understanding” in line five falls a little flat for me (even in a poem essentially about boredom). Something more concrete here could help ground the scene and, especially concerning all this conversation about ‘ol Prufrock, dare I say (or eat a peach) that it might be a good place for an objective correlative? I dare. Second, the jaunt into the open breathes life not only into the speaker but into the poem as well. However, the clamoring air and heavy, gray mist is all too brief. I’m sure that’s part of the poem’s “message,” but I want just a line more of freedom to help contrast the return to the office and subsequent key-tapping.

Next, Paul’s poem of 10/21/2002: This, too, I like. Ironically, what I like best is also what I think needs a bit more work; specifically, like Sean, I’m always too much of a poof to get seriously political in a poem, so I’m always thrilled to see a political poem that seems fully realized on the page (i.e., not simply an open-mic night rant about the political problem de jour). However, I think you can go further and get even more political. Don’t get me wrong, I like the fact that the “President” is never mentioned by name, nor is the specific war that is being sold to the American people. That kind of vagueness works for the poem, for the dramatic situation, and for the elegiac tone. But you could indict with a bit more venom, or at least clarify a bit. I like Sean’s idea of overwriting then employing the paring knife. Moving on, I love the academic dramatic situation, and it is perfectly embodied in lines like, “always fall in the halls of literature….” How apt and true. But what about a more explicit return to the academic involvement in the final lines of the poem. Specifically, a little overt nudge to the reader about the particular appropriateness of Swift’s Houyhnms couldn’t hurt even the most alert and well-read reader, and it would probably help deepen the poem’s context for the “average reader” like myself.

Josh’s poem of 11/20/2002: You bastard. It’s not fair that you should have this kind of imagination. If my life were more like the action/adventure/romance novel that it should be, I would be a super-villain and create a giant, laser-based machine to suck the imagination out of you and pour it into my over-ripe, bald head. But since my life isn’t really like that, you’re safe and all I can do is make some lame comments on your poem. I love this poem up until the last two strophes. To be more particular, I like the narrative that gets built up about the woman, and I really like the strange, almost hallucinatory incantation involving lipstick and a Lexus. However, it all kind of seems to fall apart in those last 3 lines – at the very least, I could say that those lines don’t deliver the kind of narrative payoff that the rest of the poem promises. I think you can still find some way of working in “and the earth speaks with its mouth full,” but otherwise I might suggest coming at the poem’s resolution from a completely different angle and seeing what happens. Smaller comments: I agree with Sean about omitting the word “takes” on line two. I love the cleverness and humor of “thinner / than the book based on the movie.” Really nice stuff.

Response to Sean’s suggestion of 12/1/02: I like the idea of a chapbook. Fuck the stigma of self-publishing. All we have to do is come up with a publishing company name that sounds respectable. How about Sarabande or Knopf?

I will post a poem soon, but after a respectful waiting period considering the fact that it has taken me so long to get these meager comments out.

Rob

:: Rob 1/11/2003 08:17:00 PM [+] ::
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