Poetry

2007-05-23T19:47:00.001-05:00

2004-08-06T11:33:00.000-05:00

Alison, I like the rewrite / revision / whatever. It does somehow seem clearer, and I get more of a sense of Shaggy than I did the first time. The speaker's voice also seems to be more solid, and I like the almost weary tone that pervades the whole poem. I still love that final metaphor, too. Great.

I'm still working on something, but I got derailed this last week helping Tiffany get a couple of things together for our fall faculty conference. Fun.

Soon and soon and soon....

2004-08-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

OK. Here's one. more rewrite than revision. If I'm too far off this time, off to the burn pile we go.

Alison

Shaggy’s Soul Food Open Soon,
Said the Sign outside of Tallulah

I used to believe the message hand-lettered
on one side of a vacant building.
Now I put my money on the wrecking ball.
Since the four-lane opened a half mile
off the strip, only Bubba Suds Laundry
and Free Junque—an antique shop—remain.
No music but the blues for Shaggy.
With no prep work and no mouths to feed,
Shaggy could be anywhere. He could be
the reckless pilot of this duster that dives
with a roar before rising to shrink its shadow.
He could be cuffed to the chain gang
that picks the highway for its crop of trash,
or living at the motel between jobs.
You know the type. No money for food,
but able to scrounge change for a Lotto ticket,
figuring one day he’ll collect a windfall
of unlikely numbers. For now, it’s hard luck
in the land of the lone gas station
that sells shotgun shells and chicken wings.
Land of the blind man with a harmonica
for a mouth. He breathes the blues, I’m telling you.
Breathes the blues like he’s witness to what
pains us most. If he sent a postcard, the letters
would start out square and get smaller, a diagram
of trumpet sound, the volume down.

2004-07-28T19:32:00.000-05:00

Rob--

Uncross your fingers and write. I can't wait to read your new stuff. I'll have one for this weekend, maybe two. And I'm trying to finish of the definitive version of my chapbook soon. It's kind of an albatross.

A

2004-07-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

Alison,
I'm still here, just forgetful of looking at the Blog more often. I like the revisions to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" poem. I really love those second and third stanzas--just enough narrative to draw you along but with just the right amount of metaphorical heft. Nice.

I'm working on a couple of new pieces I hope to get up here by the end of the week. Fingers firmly crossed.

Later,
Rob

2004-07-27T19:43:00.000-05:00

Umm--Hello out there . . . Have I scared everyone off? Please someone put up a poem. Otherwise, I just feel like I'm talking to myself.

Alison

2004-07-10T10:28:00.000-05:00

Hey Rob--

I revised this poem with your comments.

Alison

Choose Your Own Adventure

You know the book—the one you read in secret,
last on the rack at the paperback exchange.
The rattlesnake uncoiling as you thumb
the corner pages warns you’re down the wrong path—
you’ve misread the horoscope, commandeered
the wrong scenario— you thought the stars
were saying “teach,” but they meant “learn
to play the saxophone,” or “hunt for trash
with petty criminals.” Your choice now is to skip
ahead or dabble in the work of it, more and more
a god of thieves as the temperature rises.

Convict or not, come lunch you could snooze
in the shade, or break for the tree-line and the refuge
you know must be written somewhere behind it—
a woodcutter’s cottage where you read old papers
and drink milk still warm from the goat.
If the bloodhounds break your wretched sleep,
no matter—open the book to another page, to a day
in your life as a wife gone fat to pad herself
against the Mister’s steel-toe alligator boots,
or work as a miner and spend your last page
trapped, the water rising like a tide of ink.

Open the book again and you are here,
in the spot you started, a hunter unable
to recognize as his own the tracks he follows.
You stand there, the world’s best dilettante,
part journeyman and part Quixote, posed
safari-style on a wildebeest crumpled by a blind shot.
Or scratch that and begin once more, in medias res,
as a cowgirl more freckled than her appaloosa pony.
We’d skim the book in every combination
to find why she pauses here, at this desolate crossroads,
facing west to a barn full of shadows.

2004-07-10T10:25:00.000-05:00

Rob--Thanks for getting back to me. I have written and unwritten and rewritten that damn poem so many times--I'm almost ready to give up. Thanks for your as usual on mark comments. I'm so glad you mentioned he ending lines and the windfall line--those are two places in the poem I was ready to cut because I was unsure. Maybe this poem needs to rest a while.

A

2004-07-09T13:44:00.000-05:00

Alison,
Again, sorry about taking so long to get back to you on this one, but blah blah blah, the usual.

Anyway, there's a lot I like about this one, but my overall reaction is that something is missing. I'm not sure exactly what it is I feel the absence of, but I think it's probably one of two things: on the one hand, it could be that I'm just not getting enough background on Shaggy himself. He's an interesting character, and while I realize that part of the point of the poem is that he's elsewhere, elusive, we also want to know something about him. On the other hand, it may be that we know too little about the speaker in the poem. Why, for instance, is he/she pinning so much significance to the opening of the cafe? I get the heavier symbolism in this failure, but I'm not quite getting the speaker's underpinning psychological need. What is it, in other words, that this sign has come to epitomize for him or her? I think that knowing this would also help the final simile have much more resonance--don't get me wrong; I love that final line, but it might have even more impact if I could more clearly link it to the heart of the poem.

As for small stuff: "Sign" for "Sigh" in the title; in line 2, I'd get rid of "one of the ones" and bring up "living at the motel between jobs" since the line "you know the type" carries the connotation of typology; I'd also bring up "painted" to go with "hand"--the break is a little too jarring.

Otherwise, there's cool things here. The final stanza is great, especially the "I have lost all faith" and everything that follows. I also love "a windfall of unlikely numbers." That line alone is worth writing a poem to go around it.

I hope this ranbling helps!
Rob

2004-07-02T14:10:00.000-05:00

Hey Sean--

Congrats on the job. I'd love to see you, in Hot Springs or elsewhere. Aren't you in Governor's school right now? I've had a busy summer with the kids as I'm sure you can imagine. Ben is in to building things; Sam eats dirt. They both go to Montessori in the mornings from 8-11 which gives me time to write. I finished a chapbook. (I Think)

Alison

2004-07-01T21:54:00.000-05:00

Hey, I'll try to pitch in soon. I'm really happy you all are doing this. I got a job. That's the exciting stuff right now. I'll be working in Hot Springs at a gifted high school there. Come visit. More about the poems soon. Thanks for keeping it up.

2004-06-28T10:43:00.000-05:00

Hey guys--I could use some help if any of you have time to look at this.
Alison

Shaggy's Soul Food Open Soon,
Said the Sigh outside of Tallulah

Shaggy could be anywhere--
maybe one of the ones
living at the motel between jobs.
You know the type--no money
for food, but able to scrounge
change for a lotto ticket,
figuring one day he'll collect
a windfall of unlikely numbers.

As for his message hand-
painted on one side of a vacant
building, I have lost all faith.
The letters start out square
and get smaller--a diagram
of trumpet sound, the volume down.

2004-06-23T19:43:00.000-05:00

Rob--

It's so nice to be talking poetry again.

Now, on to some of your questions. I did think Bland Strawberries was the name of the town, but I also thought I was wrong to do so. So, I don't know if I would change the name of the town--I know I've sent mail to someplace called State University. One thing that popped into my head as a possible solution--Bland Strawberries, Indiana, Population 363. Or something like that. But you may not want to go there. My suggestion for the chronological is a thematic one, although now that you point it out to me I see why you did it the way you did. I just have this urge for tweaking things like that, so that could just be my neurosis creeping over into your poem.

I'm glad you recognize what Choose Your own adventure is--I was afraid nobody would. I'll try on the stanza breaks for a few days and see how I feel about them. I've been reading Fairchild lately. and I think I have slipped into his long stanza poem thing that he does. I'm glad you think the close works--it's not the original and I felt like I was reaching too far when I wrote it. I think the bigger problem is with the trope you point out--about making choices--I talk about choices in the poem, but really there is only one considered at length. I'll have to work on it. You're right about tube socks and roustabout ways and the circular forest. I was stretching.

As for metalworkers--I'll look at the places you said. All of these are good suggestion. The few lines about the circle house I was going to cut. I did intend Mr. Berretta to be engraved on the gun, not the manufacturer's stamp. Perhaps I should get a look at one of those things close up. Damn bout the serpent pipes. I rearranged like a third of the poem to get that in.

Ah well. Thanks so much for your feedback on these poems. I work all the time but never know if I am getting anywhere. I have the whole dining room table covered with drafts of a few different things, and then there's the chapbook fiasco, although I'm letting the book rest for a few weeks. By the way--you were asking about the title, weren't you? "Squeezers" is the name for playing cars with the little numbers in the corners--when cards started being made this way it allowed players to squeeze their hands together. The specific image I am referring to is the picture on the back of Bulldog Squeezers. It's these two dogs chained to their homes lunging at eachother, beneath a wicked looking moon. It's a woodcut image, and at the bottom of the card is the phrase "There is a Tie that Binds us to our homes" which is where the first poem/ sort of the title poem gets its title. I didn;t want to put all of that in a note at the beginning, and also, in the chapbook I am not talking only about card players, but also people who are sort of on the last dollar, hanging on, etc. Does any if this make sense?

A

2004-06-23T12:27:00.000-05:00

Thanks, Alison, for the feedback. You touched on some good points, and I think I'll need to go back and re-think some of the poem. Some questions, though: first, I did intend "Bland Strawberries" to be the town's name, but is that clear enough? If not, should I change it to something more clearly a town name? Supposedly, that's the real name of the place, and I really liked it; but if it's not working, it's not working. Second, when you suggest that I change the chronology so that we see the woman first, is this a suggestion for better clarity, or is it something you feel would work better thematically? I completely see what you mean about how the poem is really centered on her rather than the pilot (which is what I was going for), but I was also trying to make some sort of scenic movement from (1) pilot, to (2) woman, to (3) nature and the resolution. Again, however, if it ain't working, it ain't working.

OK, onward. "Choose Your Own Adventure"--I remember loving these crappy books when I was a kid, and I even got to the point that I would cheat. I would make a choice, turn to the page indicated, but only tip up the corner of the paper to see if there was a "The End" printed at the bottom of the page. Anyway, I think it's a pretty cool idea for a poem, and I really like how you almost immediately make something more out of it than a solipsistic reminiscence. The overall movement and rhetoric of the poem seem right, and that resolution is fantastic (everything from "You'' be the world's best dilettante" onward)--I love the "en media res" part, and the final image is beautiful and haunting too.

As for criticisms, they're few and mainly nit-picky stuff. First off, I'd break this poem into stanzas in order to better emphasize the rhetorical and scenic shifts. For instance, I'd insert breaks after "convicts on the highway, "straight into your mouth," and "circular forest." The main reason I say this is the momentary confusion I get after the first 8 lines. In those lines, you set up the controlling trope, and you give us a few potential "choices": teach, bagpipes, and convict on highway. However, I'm not fully prepared for the shift where we stay in the convict's perspective for the next 10 lines or so. A stanza break there would help me as a reader understand that there's a fairly cohesive chunk of narrative coming up, and I don't think I'd be as unprepared for staying with the convict. Does that make sense?

Next, some small stuff: the line break after "wet your jumpsuit" may have some unintended scatalogical humor. I imagine you meant wet with perspiration, but there's that momentary hangup where I think he's pissing himself. Also, I'm not sure I understand the lines "in the tubesocks .../ ...roustabout ways." There's something I'm missing here, but it could just be me being stupid. Finally, I like the line about the hunter uable to recognize his own footprints, but it may be pushing too far to include the "circular forest bit." Somehow the image seems stronger without that tacked on. And the conclusion, as I said before, is lovely and resonant.

Onward: "The Metalworker's Epitaph"--this will be brief because this doesn't need much tinkering. I love the three stories, and I love the fact that they're welded together through Gaynel's memory the way the steel is welded together in the final few lines of the poem--really nice. Again, like the previous one, I think the poem might work better in stanzas, broken at the junctures of the narratives. I know that sounds like it works against what I just said above, but I think that in this case it's okay to sacrifice some structural symbolism for clarity. Otherwise, it's all small potatoes--
--is there a name for that particular MS River bridge? For instance, there's one in Memphis called the Hernando Desoto Bridge. It might localize it a little.
--the electrical shock; was he working on power lines, get shocked, and then fall? It seems that's the case, but it might be clearer.
--I'm not sure what a "circle" house is
--I'm also not sure what you mean when you say "author of the meanest gates"
--is the pistol really engraved with "Mr. Berretta"? or is it a kind of joke meaning just the manufacturer's imprint?
--not sure if "serpent pipes" is fully working

But there are great lines all through this, really beautiful and visceral descriptions. I love it.

2004-06-22T10:01:00.000-05:00

The Metalworkers’ Epitaph

This is for Gaynel Jackal’s first husband,
the one she loved, who dropped like an anchor
from a peak of the Mississippi River Bridge,
electrical shock’s marionette jangling
the long way down until he hit the water,
the commerce below him never pausing, not
the dredger spewing a fan of silt,
or the tugboats, or the patchwork of barges.
And for Mr. Jackson, very black black
man with a fluid, pink, post-explosion face.
Once he drove a Cadillac with spoke wheels
to the snowball stand and offered to pay
for everybody in line. From behind
he was a black man in a baseball cap,
but if he moved—his hands or his face—all
was pink, pink as a newborn mouse, except
his absent eyelids, and his lips—remade—
forced open in a constant, gold-tooth snarl.
Mr. Jackson built a red brick circle house
on a double lot in Timberlane Estates,
the sole black man allowed behind
those gates, iron wrought with curlicues
and fleur-de-lis. And most of all Chester,
author of the meanest gates, blasphemer
of the nuns behind their convent fences
until he busted both knees in a crash. Forget
the convent and the crippled legs. The picture
to keep is the one of Chester kneeling
in a rain of sparks before his father’s safe,
the man dead a week before anyone noticed.
No key, no combination, no other way
to get at the stash of worthless things inside,
like that pistol engraved Mr. Berretta.
Now Chester sleeps in a chair with that gun,
a bulge beneath the quilt warming his legs
that twist like serpent pipes, comprehending
the figure—friend or foe—at his front door.
Chester, commando of the switchblade,
who fastened bridges with the suicide kings
and shipped offshore from Avondale to lower
himself into holes as tight as overcoats.
The novices handed him tools. They learned
by mimicry—the focused burn, the blue
heart of fire, the mirage within it
cascading, more water than the steel it marries.

2004-06-22T09:48:00.000-05:00

F-16 CRASHES OUTSIDE BLAND
STRAWBERRIES, INDIANA

-- May 17, 2004

His chute still furled but trailing as he drops,
He is an exclamation point plunging
Down the sky’s blue page, his smoke-wreathed jet
A pencil smudge arcing off the margin
To crash across the Wabash. Letters unsent,
A woman leans against her mailbox, numb
With disbelief, and watches his silhouette
Be swallowed up by fields of early corn.

And even though he falls no further off
Than fifty yards or so, she hears no sounds
Except her own hot pulse within her ears
And the ceaseless wash of summer breeze—
That machinery of May that breathes and hums
As if to say that nothing new could happen.

Rob--

This is a great idea for a poem. As usual, I am jealous. I only have a few nits and questions, so 'll start with those. Here's a dumb one, but I have to ask--is "Bland Strawberries" the name of a town? In the title it seems like it is. If not, I would but the name of the town in the title of the poem, because I think it has something to do with the emotion the poem conveys, esp. in sestet. Even thouh I know you have it there for metrics, I'd cut the "and" in line nine. Ditto for "own" in line eleven. It feels like padding to me. I ove the close--how the poem becomes more about the woman than the man falling out of the sky. (Landscape with Fall of Icarus?!)

In the first two lines, the image speaks to me perfectly, but the grammar of the lines has me wanting to misread them, or at least makes it difficult. I don't know how to tell you to fix it, but do you see what I mean? And you will hate me for this too, but I feel like the woman should be first in the poem, not the man, although I know this rearranges everyting in a bad way. But do you see why I am saying that? "Be" in line eight doesn't belong.

"The Machinery of May" is one of the best lines I've seen ever. I just love it, and as for metaphor, it fits the poem perfectly. I also love the understatment of the last line. "The sky's blue page" is also amazing.

This is such a good poem--you handle it perfectly--I would have been tempted to go overboard with the crash and the fall and everything else. I never would have thought to make this a sonnet.

Alison

2004-06-22T09:45:00.000-05:00

Choose Your Own Adventure

You know the book—the one you read in secret,
last on the rack at the paperback exchange.
The rattlesnake uncoiling as you thumb
the sour pages insists you’ve taken the wrong path,
misread the horoscope, hijacked the wrong scenario—
all this time you thought the stars were saying “teach”
what they really meant was “learn the bagpipe”
or “stab trash with fellow convicts on the highway.”
Would you skip ahead or wet your jumpsuit
with the work of it, becoming more and more
a god of thieves as the temperature rises?
Come lunch, you could snooze in the shade
or break for the treeline and the refuge
you know must be written somewhere behind it—
a woodcutter’s cottage where you read old newspapers
and pump goat milk straight into your mouth.
If the bloodhounds break your wretched sleep,
no matter—open the book to another page, to a place
in the tube socks of the one you “let get by,”
his wife gone old with the gripes of the twins
mirroring their father’s roustabout ways,
or be a coal miner and spend a few seconds trapped
underground, the water rising like a tide of ink.
Read the book enough and you’re right back here,
in the very spot you started, like a hunter unable
to recognize as his own the footprints he tracks
through the confusion of a circular forest.
Keep up with these one night stands of life
and you’ll have a birthday for every creature
of the zodiac. You’ll be the world’s best dilettante—
part journeyman, and part Quixote. What if
your life began again today, in medias res,
and we, your audience, must read the full book
to find why you pause here, at this desolate crossroads,
facing west to a barn full of shadows.

2004-06-21T16:15:00.000-05:00

2004-04-20T12:37:00.000-05:00

2004-04-20T12:32:00.000-05:00

Paul--

As per your instructions . . .

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Jackalope

1
At a tag sale, rising from a hammock sea
with a dartboard star behind it,
the jackalope sticks its arms out: Mama.

2
Jackalopes in the wild, you never spot them.
They’re still, like anthills,
and move only when the tumbleweed shivers.

3
This one’s taller than all my books,
so I stand it on the curio shelf
next to the Blue Bird of Happiness.
Almost. It almost looks right.

4
Any taxidermist can tell you
how to make a dead thing
look alive. It’s all about
choosing the right horns for the job.

5
The strangest thing.—
Rather than lucky sevens at the slot machine
I see jackalope, jackalope, jackalope.

6
Windchimes bellow in the side yard.
The motion lights click on, but spot nothing.

7
There’s the tale of the wolverine’s disguise—
antlers fashioned from branches.
It crept to the watering hole
without spooking a single antelope.

8
In another story, the carnivore’s horns
are made of wax, and they melt
when it huddles too close to the fire.

9
Jackalope is hungry.
My sons offer it grilled cheese and cat food.

10
The startled-looking shoulder mount,
the coonskin cap and tail-feather jewelry . . . .
Something in the hardware store
reminds me of home.

11
Postcard from Wyoming:
St. Francis of Assisi bushwhacking through the forest
on the back of a godzilla jackalope.

12
Jackalope wears dust like an outlaw’s vest.
Spiders frame bizarre webs on his antlers.
Still, he needs something—
either fangs or a boutonniere.

13
Those pine trees you see
buffing the moon with paintbrush shadows—
look again.

2004-03-10T07:57:00.000-06:00

Paul--

The poem is great--I've been carrying around a folded up copy of it in my purse for weeks now. And, as per your instructions, I've started on the Jackalope poem. Are you going to Fayetteville this weekend?

Alison

2004-03-08T11:44:00.000-06:00

Alison,

Actually, I'd seen that essay before (New Orleans Review, I think, is where it firsts was) and liked it, mostly because when Jones' book Apocalyptic Narrative came out, and I bought it (way back in '92, I think) I noticed that it is in part dedicated to Maddox. Later I found the essay, wherein Maddox's pipe "smokes like a revolver" and he basically moans like a jilted debutante. The poem is damn good, isn't it?

Onward

2004-03-01T08:52:00.000-06:00

Paul--

You are the best--your comments are a big help. But more than that I'm excited that you like the idea of thirteen ways of looking at a jackalope. The idea seemed so dumb in my head that I was embarassed to spend time working on it--this was in November or so. But now the thread is renewed and I'm hot on the topic. I looked up the Maddox poem and found it online--it is very very fine. Before you mentioned it I had no idea that anyone wrote a poem like that before. You know, on the Everette Maddox website there is a long essay by your teacher Rodney Jones. You should read it. I can't remember the name of the site, but if you type in Thirteen ways a Possum looks at me it should come up. Apparently, Maddox kep Possum in his house.

Alison

2004-02-24T10:30:00.000-06:00

Alison,

First, sorry to be so late in getting back to you. What I have to say here is not very insightful, so the wait may not be worth much.

This is going to sound pretty nerdy, but I think Rob's problem with those first couple of lines (and when I say "Rob," I mean me) is that it sounds like the guy is itching the music as well as muzzling it, which sounds cool but probably not what you mean. Anyway, and again this is a tiny thing, you could just say, "They make me itch, and I want to muzzle the music she makes," or some such serviceable phrase.

Other minor comments:

“I’m sniffing for blood on the air” could be “I’m sniffing the air for blood.” Then again it could be “I’m sniffing my blood for air.”

I wanted at first to cut “on” in “it fevers on my soul,” but now I kind of like the guy’s general depression fevering ON his soul, like it’s some kind of dance.

“Horns branched wide as a wishbone” is just so damn good, on about three levels. Up with metaphor!

The ending, by the way, is its own killer pose. You might think about setting up the beer can as crystal ball image. So instead of “But if my beer can were a crystal ball,” you could say “But if I really needed to know, / if my beer can were a crystal ball…” I don’t know how much of an issue setting up this image is now that I’m looking at the poem again. It’s easy enough to make the leap from the guy’s dream to his realization of reality, but I remember thinking the first time I read this that a little more voice from the guy right there might ease the transition. Jesus, sorry to bring up a composition word there. Too much grading lately.

You should try "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Jackalope," or maybe "Thirteen Ways a Jackalope Looks at Me." A New Orleans poet who died a few years ago, Everett Maddox, I think, wrote a poem called "Thirteen Ways a Possum Looks at Me." I shouldn't know that, but my old teacher, Rodney Jones, was good friends with this guy and thinks that his poem is better than the Stevens one. Anyway, I like yours quite a bit and wish I could pull off domestic oddities as well without dragging people out to the garden to wonder over the fresh loam or languish in the kitchen as their thin marinara boils over.

Paul

2004-02-10T09:31:00.000-06:00

Rob--

Thanks for helping me with the poem. After your comments on it the first time, it was so easy for me to see that I needed to cut it in a major way--I don't know why I can never figure that out on my own. Once it hit me I was able to revise a full draft of the poem in a day--for me that's really fast. I'm not quite satisfied, but I feel like I'm almost there. In a way, I don't want to finish this poem, because I've made all these notes on a new poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Jackalope," which I know is stupid, but I just can't resist.

Alison

2004-02-09T13:58:00.000-06:00

Hey Alison,
Sorry I couldn't get to the poem this weekend--the usual. Anyway, I like the new version of this poem. It seems tighter and stronger than the version I saw last time. I especially like "fevers on my soul," "six-in-the-morning-voice," and "tracks blurring." Really good lines, and they sound exactly like I would imagine this guy talks--lyrical but realistic. My only problems come in the first few lines. It's good, but the part between "itch" and "music she makes" throws me off somehow. Maybe it's the "and muzzle" when I keep wanting to read it as "to muzzle." Not sure. Nitpicky, I know, but a comma after "she makes" might also clear things up a bit for me. Otherwise, I like it a lot.

Rob

2004-02-06T10:02:00.000-06:00

Sean--

Thanks for the welcome. Things here are great--Mardi Gras starts next week, and that's always fun. You don't have to air out the room or hide the mags just because I'm here.

So here's a poem. Alison

Jackalope, Farewell

When Jess dresses skimpy for bed,
I hear wolves calling. They make me itch
and muzzle the music she makes
begging me to sell the glitter boat
and put the money on a minivan.
By the time she starts dropping hints
about her mama’s health gone bad,
I’m sniffing for blood on the air
and ready to chew off a foot.
I’m supposed to say it’s fine,
But instead it fevers on my soul—
the thought of her mother
stirring the pot with salt cooking
and her six-in-the-morning voice. No doubt
I ought to volunteer my den
as an extra room for an infant
or an invalid. I should tear the antlers down
and dump the trophy fish at sea.
As for the jackalope, I don’t know how
to make him disappear. Stuffed in a killer pose,
horns branched wide as a wishbone,
he reigns from the cedar mantle.
Snowshoes pace behind him
waiting for ice. I dream of following,
of my tracks blurring as they fill with snow
that when you breathe it tastes like fire.
But if my beer can were a crystal ball
I’d only see myself in it, going nowhere,
a mad dog chained just tight enough
to keep the mailman safe

2004-02-06T04:56:00.000-06:00

Dang, now we have to pick up all the Bud cans and open a window. And put away those magazines. And yes, did Rob tell you? You have to post all the poems. We just talk about them. Looking forward to it. --Really excited to have you here. Hope all are well?

2004-02-05T12:22:00.000-06:00

Hey guys--

Rob just sent me an invitation to this spot. I'm happy to blog with you guys as long as you don't mind someone who is new at this. Rob said I have to post a poem?

Alison

2004-02-05T05:14:00.000-06:00

Josh is such a dick. I'm sorry I ever invited him. Ass. Anyway, hell yes, bring that southern cracker on in here. I think it's a great idea. Have you talked to her about it? Make her put a poem up. She's so cool. You all are. Hell, I am. We're so cool. But sometimes we're jerks. I know I am. I know you two are, but I'm not sure about Alison. We'll soon find out. Signed, Jerk.

2004-02-04T09:17:00.000-06:00

I doubt it although Alison is the delicate-natured type, easily offended and all.

2004-02-03T13:24:00.000-06:00

That sounds like a great idea, but does this mean we have to stop swearing?

Paul

2004-02-02T15:13:00.000-06:00

Boys,
I've got a proposition for you. Since we've lost our Josh, at least for the time being, how would you feel about asking Alison to join our little group?

Rob

2004-01-20T10:52:00.000-06:00

Sean,

By the way, I would cut "then," and I think it's a good idea. I may have some bigger problems for a bit, though.

2004-01-20T10:51:00.000-06:00

Rob,

I like your poem a lot, and I have some few things to say about it, but let me say thanks to you guys first for the good comments on my poem. You put your collective critical finger on the problem(s) I thought I might have with that one. Rob, your biographical concerns are not anal (well, not in a bad way). And Sean, I think the poem is discombobulating to you in the same sense, that is, in the sense that the dramatic situation is not clear. This is my perpetual problem, especially with short poems, and why I want to say STAMOS! to you, Rob, for being lucid in your poem: I just can?t be clear. I wanted her sitting by a window, watching the late afternoon winter sun, not in church or watching tv. The organ is wrongheaded right now, but I want some kind of mixture of sight and sound (which that poem that the quote comes from suggests), so I need to de-literalize the organ so that the suggestion of ?cathedral tunes? comes across but doesn?t put her in church proper. Anyway, thanks again, fellas. Those were right helpful comments. And now on to your poem, Rob.

I can see why Sean says what he says about time: the first stanza could come off to some as suggesting that he was lighting the stove most nights now since the weather was generally getting cooler, but I?m pretty sure you mean just this one night. If you said ?would light the chapel?s boiler,? we?d know you meant a continual past, but the ?lit? pretty much signals the one night. Ok, enough about tenses.

Sean?s comment about rhythm seems a good place to start. Some lines feel forced into pentameter while others are spot-on. The first stanza is especially good, natural, loosely iambic in that way that Frost used to cheat with (more so the second and third lines, I guess, than the first, though the first and fourth are still good in their regularity). The first line of stanza 2 starts to ?shuffle? though the larger problem is not so much metrical as it is numerical: ?the pastor? seems to fill out the syllable count unnecessarily, especially since we?ve seen that word in line 2 of stanza 1. A digression: I really like ?high windows, let out the dark? (deliberate Larkin allusion?), but I don?t feel as convinced by ?false night,? which feels more ponderous. Of course it?s a nice touch that he?s ?lost? because he is, in more ways than three. To return: Notice that the last line of this stanza becomes more regular. The others (excepting line 1, again) are looser, but not sloppy. I think this last line slackens because of the ?fixed and cleaned? syndrome we sometimes use to fill out lines. There?s a bit of this in the first line of the poem, ?burned away and nights,? but there the motion doesn?t feel as redundant. You see the ?and? in line 3 of the last stanza with the compound predicate. The last two and a half lines of the poem (because ?rock bottom? seems less imaginative for you) are very fine. I don?t know why the shade detail sticks with me, but it does. Nice gesture.

So, narrative comments: This is very efficient, and the details are working in your favor. The boiler is a nice reminder of bottled up corruption, for instance. Here?s what I?m wondering. Are his trips to the track also a rumor? In other words, the gossip mill has him writing bad checks, but do the ladies know he?s also been betting on Santa?s Little Helper? If they know, does he know they know, or think they know? I?m guessing he does fear this, but it?s not quite clear if the p.o.v. in ?Since June, / He?d played the church?s cash on dogs and hit / rock bottom? is the narrator?s or sopranos/altos/contraltos?. If they all know this, his hanging feels coherently placed. If not, it comes a little abruptly.

I have one final comment, and you?re going to hate it. Could some more of the story be unpacked--enough, anyway, to characterize the pastor some more? I don?t mean that you have to turn this into a ?sequence? or ?suite? or sonnet crown about the persistence of church corruption into the 21st century, but I?m interested in the guy, and a little more about him would be nice, I think. You could still keep the excellent compression you?ve got, but unpacking some of the story might give you some breathing room. Just a thought.

2004-01-20T04:02:00.000-06:00

Oh, yeah. Paul, how would you feel about cutting "then" off of line whatsis the line about "the minor key / then bumped" or something. Just a thought for this day.

2004-01-19T05:11:00.000-06:00

Rob, I like this poem as well. Is it based on real life? I think so. You could get away with an anapestic substitution with the line: "Rock bottom. Today, he hung himself in shade". Lovely ending and lovely start, but I can't be sure about all the time movement. It's sept and he's been betting since June and it's now October or so. I don't know if there's an elegant way to show this more clearly, or if it's just me who's confused. Let's listen for Paul's comments, shall we? Sometimes I'd fuck with the rhythm a bit to break out of the iambic shuffle. Let me know what you think.

2004-01-19T05:00:00.000-06:00

Paul, I too like this poem. I didn't have the reaction my crazy friend Rob had, but I wanted to suggest, and this is weird, but what about "What Light May Have"? I think that I don't see a line broken line used much, but I think it could be cool, and that line stayed with me all through the weekend, through cabs and bars. "What Light May Have" ahh, it's interesting, no? Let's see, I can't get comfortable with "fit to be tied" but I'm such a conservative when it comes down to it. I'll play dumb guy here. She's watching the organ, right, and there's a stove in there, now she pauses it for a rest, right, so is she watching the organ on TV in her house; does she have it on video? And that's why the room goes dark? No, I think it's in a church, so Rob is confusing me. I don't know. I love the language, and I love the sparseness, so don't add much--again, the title could add more if you don't use my idea. My very good idea. If a church, I don't see a stove, if at home, I don't see long-angled sunlight (I see cathedral windows for that). God, booming dome is great. I think the tone is too grand for "fit to be tied" but maybe that's just me. Anyway, I don't know how off I am with all this, so dispose at will.

2004-01-18T18:51:00.000-06:00

OK, here's a new one. I don't think, at least, that you guys have seen it.

BROKEN

Before September burned away and nights
Grew long and cool as tombstones, the pastor lit
The chapel’s boiler, a gut of iron and fire
So choked with soot from harder years it coughed

Black smoke all through the church. The pastor, lost
Within this false night, staggered to open
High windows, let out the dark. He paid
To have the boiler fixed and cleaned, but soon

The rumor ran around the women’s choir
That Pastor’s check had bounced. Since June,
He’d played the church’s cash on dogs and hit
Rock bottom. He hung himself in shade
Beside his house, the fields so full of light
He half-believed there was no such thing as sin.

2004-01-18T18:48:00.000-06:00

Paul,
You're a diamond geezer from bandit country, and God love you for it. Like my comments for Sean's poem, I have little in the way of criticism. This is one of the best poems I've seen in a while, and there's little I can think of in the way of improvement. But here goes some nitpicky stuff:

--The title has to go, I think. Compared to the poem, it's flat and very dead. Even worse, it reminds me way too much of the kind of angst-y shit I'm getting from my freshmen right now.

--The organ. Where is it? Church? If so, I'm going to go ahead and make an ass of myself with a really pedantic question and comment. Specifically, how old is she supposed to be here? If she's young, I have no problem. But, if she's supposed to be older there's the problem that she didn't go to church--she gave it up about the time she went to school. I know, pedantic and anal. Maybe the title could give some indication of age; age, too, might help make the final line of the poem more resonant.

Otherwise, there are some fantastic lines here, and I love the resolution--it's very Dickens-ian, but you've made it all your own.

2004-01-18T18:33:00.000-06:00

Sean,
Sorry I've been remiss in commenting on your "Train" poem, but I've spent the last 4 weeks convincing myself that I really am back in the States and that I actually have to do some work this semester. Yargh!

Anyway, I don't really know if I'm agreeing or disagreeing with what Paul had to say about this poem, but I like it a lot. In fact, I think you pull something off that I see mangled all the time--the postmodern self-referential poem. Usually, the tone of such a poem is all self-important and pretentious, but you've struck what I think is just the right balance between seriousness and lightness. In fact, it really reminds me of Italo Calvino and his kind of tongue-in-cheek self-referential stories.

The only criticism I really have is that I would love to see you go further with this one. Give us more of the story of the chacaters in the book, and make us care about them in the same way we might care about the girl on the train. I don't mean a whole lot more, but maybe one more bite, a medium sized one.

Cool poem.

2004-01-14T10:47:00.000-06:00

Now, Seanie, don't be upset. I didn't mean that you had to take that line out. I happen to like it a lot, in fact, but got a little obtuse I guess, wondering if irises swell. I am happy that you see the world my way now, by the way.

Ok, so I'll throw one out here.

“There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons—”
—Emily Dickinson

Despair Unsealed

There she sat in Massachusetts winter,
watching the organ
bellow through long-angled sunlight,
a booming dome
that buried her soul one season deeper.

And if there was a sonnet of remembrance
to overlay the cold,
a pretty picture of the summer
to think about,
she heard the cracking trunks, not bird choirs,

felt the numb nerve twist in the muscle.
The minor key
then thumped the stove and stoked her hope for thunder.
What light may have
fallen she felt would some day get back up.

A few leaves may have trembled in the din.
Not her—she dashed
the afternoon to dark, paused it
for a whole rest,
and death looked on and on, fit to be tied.

2004-01-13T05:04:00.000-06:00

Thanks, Paul. I cut one line and made your changes. I hope you're happy now. I am. I'm waiting for your poems. Thanks again, very much. Ignore blank line if you see it. I can't get rid of it. Write soon.

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 blinking past like coins falling through air.
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 to be
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.

2004-01-09T16:22:00.000-06:00

Sean,

I hate to slight you but, as you say in the poem itself, "you've read this poem before, right?" I can't say that I have "global" concerns for you. That we have seen this kind of poem before isn't the slight. I do have some nits to pick, though, for what it's worth. They seem minor, but you may want to think about them.

Do irises swell? If so, does a well? Or do you mean her irises pull back and her pupil dilates into something like a well? That's not nearly as sexy, and I'm no eye doctor, so tell me to fuck off if I'm wrong.

In line 9, put a comma after "other."

In line 12, put "to be" after "him."

In "and that try though," put a comma after "that."

I know that these sound like trivial things, which they are, really, but I like the poem, its idea (even though, as we've established, we've seen it before), and the way you pull it off. To look for things to say just to be saying them seems wigged, yo. Anyway, onward, as Jim used to say.

Paul

2003-12-18T07:11:00.001-06:00

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.

2003-12-18T07:11:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-12-17T14:53:00.000-06:00

Sean,

Iâ€™m impressed again, and I think youâ€™re hitting some kind of stride. This poem has a strangeness about it thatâ€™s not identical to the previous one but still is in the same field. The poem â€œworksâ€� for me on the whole, and I canâ€™t think of much right now to offer as a large revision suggestion. The tone is more or less consistent throughout, and this sort of fear that the speaker obviously is fascinated by gets expressed all the way through. As the first stanza suggests a genesis of this kind of fear and apprehension, you might consider coming to back to that, not in imageryâ€”no need to bring out the shattered bowl and its shardsâ€”but maybe in some nod to the original idea, just for a sense of closure. I like that the loverâ€™s back shines emanates light at the end, which is reminiscent of the bowl, so maybe you are thinking about echoes. So now that your poem has my approbation, let me dispense some minutiae.

It may sound like a minor detail, but the dash in stanza 1, line 5 seems unnecessary but desired in the next line after â€œeyes.â€� Switch comma and dash and see if anyone notices. Line 1 of stanza 2: Does the speaker dream fits in the transitive sense, or is it something closer to â€œin fitsâ€�? In the 3rd line of that stanza, a comma after â€œstairsâ€� would clear up confusion since weâ€™re watching the speaker walk up the stairs THAT he knows he will soon trip. I donâ€™t know whether to laugh, cringe myself, or turn the lights off and let these two get busy in the third stanza. Nice work there.

So thereâ€™s my belated half-pennyâ€™s worth. Iâ€™m digging it phat, though, and I wish the speaker many more nights of scary cuddling.

Oh, one last thing. I'm not sure that "Electric River" is working. I get the sense that, like a river, the fear flows and flows for the speaker, but the concept doesn't quite transfer to the poem.

Paul

2003-12-12T15:50:00.000-06:00

Ok, as I said before, I like OBHCJFK&YOU quite a bit, mostly I think because it has a little bit of the “deep aha” in it: I’m not sure, not in a linear or prosaic sense, how the personages in here connect, but they do somehow on a level I can’t quite articulate. Maybe it’s a taste thing, too; the slightly ominous, portentous beginning (“husk of locust,” “sun swings”) and the absurdist juxtaposition take a risk that I don’t think is either calculated or incoherent. Finally, I think what holds the whole thing together is that there is some kind of revelation or coming into being at the end of each stanza, as if we’re at that moment, or just before, when something or someone is about to turn into something that it wasn’t before. Of course this happens all the time (never in the same river twice, etc.), but in this poem the moments are, well, more momentous than “this or that.” But enough about me. Let’s move on to your lovely poem.

In line 2, I’d do something with “round his dusty bend of road.” Descriptively, that phrase works just fine, but I’m waiting for tumbleweeds to round the bend also, or maybe someone to hum “She’ll be comin’ round…..” Oh, a good thing in the next line, though, is that the sun swings instead of spins or moves or some other such predictable verb. I like swing, not only because it’s more surprising than other choices, but also because it suggests that, like an object swinging, Oedipus is never very far away (or not as far away as revolving would take him) from his, dare I say it, fate. As for other choices in this stanza—there aren’t enough goats in poems anymore.

I get confused in stanza 2 about a couple of things. The break from line from line 3 to 4, “too bright so see through / but ring the door open,” would be clearer with a comma after “through” to more clearly begin the imperative in the next line. Second, Billie is talking to shopkeepers in the noon brightness about the price of bananas (another odd, nice detail), but we can’t see her through the window behind which she is undeniably sexy.

In stanza, get rid of “quaint scene.”

Give me a bit more time for “The Electric River.”

2003-12-09T07:07:00.000-06:00

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.”

2003-12-08T09:48:00.000-06:00

Sean,

If it's worth anything at all, I got back from England last week, and after all the fucking off that diamond geezer Rob and I did, I've been catching up on grading. I will say that I too like less the language lesson poem. I remember reading "Oedipus, Billie Holiday, Charles Foster Kane and You" and thinking that it was really something. You can ask Rob because I told him so. At any rate, I have some more stuff to do right now, so I'll check back later with some better stuff about that poem and "The Electric River."

2003-12-04T10:18:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-12-04T08:16:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-12-02T05:55:00.000-06:00

"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.

2003-11-30T08:32:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-11-26T04:44:00.000-06:00

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...

2003-11-23T11:20:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-11-23T08:04:00.000-06:00

Sean,
What happened? You were all concerned about Blog attendance, but you yourself have gone bye-bye. Where you be, man?

2003-11-16T13:57:00.000-06:00

Ok guys, the workload has been high, but maybe that's no excuse. At any rate, I haven't opted out. I'm slow, I know. But I'm always with you.

So, Rob, if these comments aren't obsolete to you by now, I hope they help. I'm with Sean to some extent when he wonders about the love interest looking better from afar. That doesn't mean it SHOULD change, though--maybe there's more truth in that (at least in the universe of the poem) than relfexive revision would allow.

It's unfortunate that you're spelling like a Brit now, but I guess "grey" is fine. My poems had people bowing in them for months when I got back from Japan. That change, though, obviously is at the heart of your poem. The Venus reference is legitimate since we are talking about amore; apt, also, that it's a chip of ice since the planet itself is quite hot while the speaker's immediate, physical sense of the lover is dimmed and cooled.

I don't have the same confusion as Sean about the soft grey skies. At dawn, before light really comes, in that in between time, the sky can be gray and uncloudy. I will echo Sean's comment about things not working for him though my comment is different. It's not that things are unclear for me in this poem, not at all. My only comment is that your previous poem is alive in ways that this one isn't, which doesn't mean that this one is a piece of shit, which it isn't. I know these comments sound pitifully short for such an absence, Rob, but a lot of hand-wringing about line breaks and adverbs seems superfluous.

Again, fellas, sorry for the lag time.

Paul

2003-11-14T06:08:00.000-06:00

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

2003-11-14T05:52:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-11-12T11:45:00.000-06:00

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

2003-11-11T14:36:00.000-06:00

Did I screw everything up? Where are my friends?

2003-11-01T14:41:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-11-01T14:34:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-10-30T09:03:00.000-06:00

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.

2003-10-28T14:51:00.000-06:00

Rob,

Thanks for the comments. Of course going to the actual name (the fact is the sweetest dream....) of those thingamabobs had never occured to my mythy mind, but that sounds like a fine way to try to fix the problem.

Re the "peepshow": Of course a peepshow by its nature is side-accessible, so I guess I was going too far, trying to maintain the cabaret imagery started with the iris' striptease by including the bees as voyeurs (though really they're john's when you think about it) who have no interest once the motion of undressing or deflowering is done. Saying "peepshow with side access" probably unnecessarily complicates the issue.

Pimps: Again, if I need to explicate, then there's a problem, so here's my problem. That peonies bloom at all is partially, maybe more than partially, because black ants remove the wax binding the buds. Ergo, the ants prepare those slutty petals for their careers.

Please bear with me. "Behind the door" refers to the successive blooming of gladiolas (ff. "belt of buds"); as one wilts and browns, another right behind it, root-ward, is already blooming, coming from behind the door where it's been whetting/wetting its lips.

I was hoping to carry the "will" from "grow" on down to "cling," but you're right; the elms are unintentionally looking up when I want the husks to.

Again, sorry for all the explication. It helps me think about what to do. And thanks again for the generous comments--they're not merely "small technical ones." Onward.

Paul

2003-10-25T08:46:00.000-05:00

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

2003-10-24T04:09:00.000-05:00

Paul, sorry I've been so remiss. I'll get to you poem soon. Perhaps today?

2003-10-15T16:28:00.000-05:00

Guys,

Can I put up a poem? Thanks. The first two lines are old, but the rest is groundbreaking. I know this is a breach of etiquette, but I need to make a note here. "Spiked green cages" refers to the blade-like leaves at the base of most perennials like irises, tulips, and gladiolas. I just can't get the image to be clear and interesting, and I want it there to suggest the violence against the poor, soft petals.

Between

This is the time when irises
undo their crispy dresses
and let them fall,
ripped and shredded,
among their spiked green cages.
This is not a renewal, this removal,
it’s a peepshow with side access: but
when the garments are gone,
the bees are done.

They leave for gladiolas
and their time-released belt of buds
along arched and heavy stems,
each bloom fading and falling
as its replacement wets its lips
behind the door and waits to unfurl.

Ants, the busy pimps, work the wax away
from peony buds still shuddering
on their stems like eyes
shut hard to the world.
Before they shrivel in July
they will hang to the ground
with the weight of their petals.

By then, though, the now hesitant
reels of cicadas will grow to choirs of dust,
the music of dessication,
and their own shed husks cling to elms
looking up, bronze and hollow and sightless.

2003-10-15T16:20:00.000-05:00

Sean,

I’m sorry, sir. I know it’s been more than the day I asked for. What can I say? Not kickin it in Greece means I was buried last week with text heavier than any marble. In any case, let me say a few things, if you haven’t already revised them into obsolescence.

I like the marble as body metaphor, especially as something living yet unformed. It’s kind of like that Zen idea of merely taking away what’s unnecessary, revealing what’s there, except in this case it’s full of all that Western striving and slave-driving we’re so forgetful of most of the time, but not in this case. “Meat-colored,” though it’s right for color, seems off as far as sound, possibly because of the hyphenation. The connotations of “meat” are right since this isn’t beautiful flesh we’re talking about (at least not yet); it’s raw slabs of meat. So maybe it’s just the phrasing of that that throws me (which is a taste issue, ultimately, I guess), something about the ring of it that doesn’t sound quite right.

I’m not sure if the cragged teeth are part of the ribbed halls, because of the imagistic similarity of crags and ribs, or if they’re somewhere else. Just my basic density coming through here.

If, in lines 7 and 8 the stones burn through the light of day, it might be better to say that they burn through it and into, rather than in, the Cycladean starlight, to avoid the unintended paradox of burning light of day existing simultaneously with that starlight.

Some other things: The last few lines are doin it for me, but there might still be some tinkering. You could safely delete “silently,” just to see how the line sounded without that word at the end. Also, the ending, like I said, is going well until “whisper of death, permanence, / and what it means to be pulled.” Grammatical parallelism is missing here, but more important, the drawn-out “what it means to be” diminishes the power and momentum you have going. Just as a banal suggestion, something closer to “whisper of death, permanence, and the unearthed witnessing to this spinning world of sorrow and light.” You can lineate that how you please.

A lot of these comments are syntactical, I realize, but mostly that’s because I like the density of this and would like to see it carry that off all the way through. This poem seems different a little from other poems of yours. Greece is doing something to you. Oh, by the way, to both of you: I’m living in Evansville, Indiana.

2003-10-13T03:53:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-10-11T01:18:00.000-05:00

|More later, Rob. I'm in Crete or Santorini. Talk to you at length soon.

2003-10-06T10:30:00.000-05:00

Echo echo echo....

2003-10-02T10:47:00.000-05:00

Sean,

I haven't forgotten about your poem. Give me another day.

2003-09-28T06:08:00.000-05:00

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

2003-09-26T14:27:00.000-05:00

Rob,

I haven't read the previous comments yet because I felt chastised by Sean's "where's Paul." So here goes.

The refrains box in the sign/signifier problem right good, and the poem works on an ideas level that you're really good at. I always have problems with idea poems--or, more truthfully, I don't really "have" "ideas"--, so I'm always amazed when people write them well. What kind of interests me is the speaker's hitch in stanza 3. He has no names for the typical furniture of love poems--no thrush, nightingale, rose, or visible worm that flies night and day--so he can't write love poems. "Your love is like that late-blooming, yellow flower over there with the slightly spatulate leaves forming a corona around the bud." The visible worm crashes and has no second flight.

Nevertheless, he does say about her lashes that they are "blurred / By wind to grasslands gold and brown," a line which, aside from the inverted syntax, is damn good and which also doesn't name anything, at least not locally. So he might have a song or two in him after all. I don't mean to turn this into something it isn't or that you don't want, so you can tell me to bugger off now. Sean, I don't know about Greek, so.....bugger off.

Anyway, I was also wondering about "tranquil," "lovely," "apt," and "futile." In some cases, such as "futile," the adjectives are superfluous. Elsewhere (and there's some of this in the general diction), there's a preciousness that I think you stay just this side of mostly. Of course you want to risk preciousness and even be guilty of it now and then, but. So, instead of "love-struck," you might want something more like, "very horny, discouraged / by her blank stare, he knows the haste / with which he wanders in her lovely field."

I saw something about parry and thrust, so I'll let this float out there.

Oh, Emerson ain't got nothing on you.

Paul

2003-09-26T09:05:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-24T07:16:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-23T10:49:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-22T11:09:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-22T07:22:00.000-05:00

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)

2003-08-10T19:00:00.000-05:00

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

2003-03-23T22:06:00.000-06:00

Sean,

First off, let me say that the allusion in the epigraph becomes a good metaphor for what you’re trying to do. At first, the second stanza, where you start to work out that metaphor, is a little fuzzy. Ultimately it’s pretty clear what’s up: the sorrow and beauty of poetry is that it’s a cage of sorts but a beautiful (a robin redbreast in a cage and all) one which is sad because the window the speaker looks through only lets him see through it but not pass through it into experience. That’s pretty sorrowfully beautiful. You could fool around with the first line of stanza two—“the sorrow and beauty of poetry is this:--and put it before the “imagining you…” so that that experience is what the speaker can make up about the lost girl. Of course you want to keep all that imagery about dust, smudges, knife of sun, because that window is also important. As I read this again and again, after about a week, I’m a little less convinced that you need to “unfuzz” what comes after that colon, but at first I was worried that there was too much, the rest of the poem really, to attach to that fifth line. Does any of this make sense?

Another suggestion: the dramatic situation seems to be a guy sitting in his office writing a poem. The second stanza, with the “here” in its final line, establishes an initial d.s. at his house. This isn’t a huge problem, but the scene shift later, on a literal level, probably isn’t what you want to do. You could turn all that window smudging and porch sweeping into a continual present (dust collecting on my bedroom window’s pane, smudges of prints of people there before as I wake up mornings) so that what I think is the real d.s. maintains consistency from beginning to end. In other words, this guy, sitting in his office, tells us about waking up and thinking his girl with someone else, but he’s in his office the whole time he’s telling us.

Okay, enough of rhetoric. Allow me to address some localized shizzel dizzel, proper latin like. The first stanza has a lot of adjectives: child-like, cement, jail, open. “Open,” though, seems to be the important one there for important, ironic reasons. In the second stanza, the sun does make it through that window, or at least its light does, so maybe you could say the sun knifes its way in, that is unless you want to suggest just a little bit comes in through a partially opened blind or something, in which case the “trying” might be good enough. That verb is ordinarily weak, but it does have some resonance in a poem about trying to break through with imagination. Third stanza also could use some adjective adjustments. “Darkened” seems different from just “dark” and suggests that there’s more than a mere absence of light in there. Do you want that? If you’re just after description, the sun coming in just a little in the morning would by itself suggest that the room’s dark. “Cold shards of snow”: I would say do away with cold for tautological reasons. I like shards, and this might sound like nitpicking because I know what you mean by that phrase, but snow can’t really be in shards; snow-crusted ice can, or something like that.

“His laughter filling the slick hall with yours” means of course that his laughter fills the hall along with hers, but at first it seems that his laughter is using hers to fill the hall, which sounds really mysterious and usurping on that bastard’s part, but I don’t know if you intend that. You could say something like “his laughter and yours filling the slick hall.”

I don’t have much to say about the final stanza. I think you resolve the expectations pretty damn well. “Lines” is a poignant pun on drawing and poetry, so salut! for that. I also like that the speaker wishes to be with someone new and not the former girl.

Well, Seany, I hope you can do something with all of this. I really like this poem. You’re not insistent about the metaphor, which is probably the best thing about it.

2003-02-27T08:33:00.000-06:00

Okay, I've been slapping my back with spruce branches for my recalcitrance. Josh, I hate you, but congratulations. I like to think that simply by knowing bright, talented people I will either osmotically improve my own stuff or be moved by possible isolation into the doesn't-have-a-book-yet-but-still-publishes-one-now-and-then-in-The-Onion-Fucker to get it going on.

In any case, I'm getting at yours soon, Sean. Josh, onward and upward.

Paul

2003-02-25T11:26:00.000-06:00

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?

2003-02-24T12:00:00.001-06:00

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.

2003-01-13T12:36:00.000-06:00

Dearest All:

Thank you for the lovely notices concerning my poem.

Rob, some of my students have found this workshop, and read it from time to time, and are now no doubt glad to have your comprehensive onanism corroborated by something other than my introductory lecture on the subject, entitled "Rob Griffith: You've got to Train to Play."

Re: the warm glowing, and glowing warm of the workshop: I must bow out of circulation for a while. A nasty thing to do, considering I went last. But I mean to say I shall be bowing out as far as contributing goes. I am in the midst, always, of preparations for my future address, wheresoever that may be. Application, application. So I will check in from time to time, throw my two cents in, but until such a time as I come back out of retirement officially, if you don't hear a word from me, then proceed with the critiques.

Let's see. I think Sean is up next. And then Sean goes. And then Sean.

2003-01-11T20:17:00.000-06:00

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

2002-12-05T10:44:00.000-06:00

Uh, dudes, lets get smart here. Important people look at this page daily to check on our progress. Someone say something nice to Josh and let's read MORE OF MY STUFF.

2002-12-01T23:17:00.000-06:00

Guys, I've been driving all day, so I'm whacked out, but think about this: we each pick ten poems or twelve, and we put a little chapbook together and either print it ourselves or put it online for a suggested donation to our publishing company Joshuabones or something, and . . . Anyway, just a crazy thought right now, but think about it. Sure it'd be self-publishing but what would we have to lose, and I'd love a copy myself--we could even have a chapter of commentary. Let me know what you all think. Great to have seen you all, except alas, for josh--we were 75% complete. Talk to you soon.

2002-11-22T17:34:00.000-06:00

First of all, what a nice little idea--this spell angle is pretty sweet. You could do a whole section of a book with these. All right. Why have "Sub-urbs" like that? I can't figure it out, and the only whadyacall for it that I found was "universal request broker" which is all right I guess, but I doubt that's what you had in mind. Fine title otherwise. Hey, by the way, look at me--it's 6:19 on a Friday and I'm drinking a 16oz of Bud and eating a package of NipChee crackers. And talking about poetry. Whoo Hoo.

All right, now here it gets a bit strange. What if, just follow me here, what if you cut the word "takes" in line two? Is that too much verb play for you? Lines three to five don't do it for me. I might have an unusual bias against that style: A and B are ADJECTIVE thing, but I think you should too. I mean even my manly hair is thinner than a book. But I liked that "book based on the movie line" so work with that for me. Then it gets good again--I like the idea of the light, but isn't the light activated by the detector? Right now it sort of feels like the detector is giving off light, and that's just crazy talk, right? "light / after the motion detector" is more like it, but then, that's not sweet talk, so fix it up. That's a great sick light that you talk about though. Ah, "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed" but you could make it work better, I think.

Then you . . . you bastard. What nice enviable stuff--all those sweet, sweet "isses," I like that a lot, don't be embarrassed by that. Then all is cool pretty much till the end, though I'd cut the last line--you can't do that after "the earth speaks with its mouth full." Can you end it there? I'm not sure, but I like it so much it actually makes me not like the "heart is an open mechanism" as much. But I like this idea so much, and though this poem isn't about me, it could be, and that's what poetry is all about. Talk to you all later.

2002-11-20T17:03:00.000-06:00

Boys, the poems I need most help with right now are a bit woolly, some wide sestinas and a three part wedding poem, and they won't fit so well into the program here--the weird line breaks will throw everything off. So I won't put one of those in here. In addition, my poem about what Sean said on the way to the movie ("the magnolia of meaning is the chicken of our days and ways") is languishing due to lack of subtlety, and so I submit to you boys the following poem: it is what it is, and you should dispatch with it haste poste haste, and soon thereafter, or even immediately, Sean, you go ahead and put your shirts on this here line.

Spell For Finding Lost Sunglasses in the Sub-urbs

When the rain (like a boy-band)
takes turns on the marigolds,

and your husband’s hair
and promises are thinner

than the book based on the movie,
then, by the unwholesome light

of the motion detector,
and with the kissable lipstick

of a missing cheerleader,
you must draw a pentagram

on the hood of your Lexus.
Drive around the block three times, in reverse.

The heart is an open mechanism
and the earth speaks with its mouth full.

Please have your credit card ready.

2002-11-19T14:22:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I always think it's a good idea to go the way of Yeats and prosify your poem ideas before doing them as a poem. Unfortunately I don't do it that much. You're "no way," Sean, about the possibility of a Phd pretty much sums up my thoughts about it. I suppose it could give you more time to write, but I can't imagine writing papers and such again. By the way, what's the deal with your job? Will you have it next year, or is it a one year thing? I'm not sure about here just yet; I like it, but they can't really say for sure yet whether there will be anything available next year.

I'm going to look at your email again about maybe coming through. It'd be great to hook up.

Any clever things Sean said should be in a poem. We'll call them "Seanisms."

2002-11-18T19:39:00.000-06:00

Paul, I don't think there'd be anything wrong with taking some time and spelling all your good ideas out, then putting them in there--the old over-write, then cut trick. I understood all that in there about the speech etc., just spend some time gettin' all political on our asses--most people, well, me at least, are too afraid to do that.

I'm applying to whatever as an exercise of sorts. I'm collecting letterhead basically. No Phd, no way. I do believe Josh is up with a clever little narrative about a funny thing I said once on the way to a movie. Josh, work your magic on that moment. If he balks, I've been writing a lot of stuff real fast. And whatever happened to Rob? That bastard.

2002-11-18T13:33:00.000-06:00

Sean and Josh,

Thanks for the comments. Damn you all and your insistence on clarity and logic. Pages are always thinner than glass. Indeed. I suppose I meant thinner in a sense that they can sometimes reveal more than a window, but again the phenomenological world slams up against my metaphorical one like a goddamned waxwing slain. Or would it be the other way around? See? In any case, I'm glad that both of you had trouble putting the dramatic situation together, glad in the way that at least there's agreement on what's wrong instead of one large WHAT THE FUCK? The wordplay, well, yes, it's fun and all, but as you say, I wonder how much it's doing besides calling attention to itself.

Re the "screens" issue: For a poem indebted to being inside, I don't know why I was tempted to bring in the idea of people watching television while the poem focuses on people discussing Swift, but somewhere I had the notion that one more speech by GWB wasn't going to be missed too much by other people otherwise engaged in "real" listening: literature, especially lit. that satirizes war apologia. It's just not worked out enough in a logistical or tangible kind of way. The whole thing strikes me as too anonymous, too unfaced. I guess I was thinking about the insularity of the classroom, missing out on "real world" events and such, but then that didn't seem so bad since lately one justification speech was as good as another, and what with Tivo and all you can watch one whenever you want.

Oh, Josh, I am thinking about jobs next year, but not a PHD. The gig here in Evansville is pretty good so far, and if nothing else turns up, I'll probably just stick around here or Illinois to see what happens. I might do some "writing."

Again, thanks guys. Who's next?

2002-11-08T13:11:00.000-06:00

PB: I am applying for teaching jobs. I am applying for PHD programs. I just re-took the GRE. I am so insane I can't stand it. And so you must be doing the same type of thing? Where are you applying?

As you can tell from his first sentence in your critique, for Sean Chapman, it's all about size of the poem. This poem of yours seems to Sean to be of respectable length. Some people, instead of worrying about the vertical stretch (like Sean), seem to privilege the horizontal stretch, and would like to see more length in the individual line, and won't come near you unless you've got chops like Whitman. Myself, I like the length of individual words, and so in this poem I find myself most immediately interested in "literature," "reflected," and "accumulated." Good range, "accumulated," from start to finish nearly the half length of the pinky finger, but, as critics, we must put aside our idiosyncrasies, and engage the poem on its own level playground.

Therefore, and seriously, I say unto thee: good elegaic tone here, and the poem's scope, introduced in the title, is clearly established (it does what it sets out to do). My only problem with it is a problem of specificity in a couple of key motions. Second line, "they," depends too much on the title for clarity, and though another line giving a key aggregate description of the "they" (so that they are cemented in our minds) might spoil the poem's length, I think a quick anchor description of the students might work nicely here, though I do understand that their anonymity is their most distinguishing factor (but it could be a more cemented anonymity).

All pages, it seems to me, are thinner than glass's membrane, but I'm not sure: do you mean "membrane of glass" or are you suggesting that there is an exterior level of glass, known as the membrane? In the latter case, I think you're line's okay. In the former, the comparison doesn't seem to work.

The doubled preposition in "between in here" throws me a second, particularly since it's really a triple preposition, "between in here and between out there."

I don't mind the groan/grown clause/cause play so much for itself, but I do think that such a move, in an otherwise quiet poem about an overall quietness, does call a lot of attention to itself (so much so that I think maybe the theme lies somewhere in the highlighting that's been done, and also the fact that that kind of word play only exists in three latter lines, etc).

Lastly, "screens." This is the first intimation of any kind of setting in the classroom, and it takes me a second to realize they're looking into computer screens? But they're also reading out of textbooks. So I'm having trouble, imagining the faceless "they" and the setting they're set in. And also the teacher's face is included, in the "our," as being reflected, as if they're all sitting before screens of some kind. So I don't know, and some of this perhaps lost on me due to my lack of recent Swift.

2002-11-07T11:15:00.000-06:00

Paul, I like the size of this poem. Perfect heft. I also like the long title with it, but would rework it for clarity:
"The adjunct lecturer lectures his Continuing Education students on Gulliver's Voyage . . . while the Pres . . ." Not a big difference really. I like the two lines: "Outside (always outside) it is dark now," and "It is fall/(always fall in the halls of literature)" both clear and true. Maybe cut the "now" on line one? I understand the idea of the students being unable to see out because it's dark, but I'm not sure about reflected in the pages and that whole first statement. I mean, it's dark outside, the window reflects them but with all the commas, I get lost a bit. It seems like you're talking towards an understanding of your own words. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure you couldn't say this clearer. That way, some of the good stuff: "where they can't see for the laughing faces" won't be buried.

Outside (always outside) it is dark.
Laughing faces reflect in the windows
In here they laugh (while??? I can't get that thin pages thing to fit, or I'm unclear on it.)
outside, they can't see for all the laughing
faces. It is fall (always fall in the halls
of literature), yet the leaves haven't left

After that, and I know I'm changing this poem too much already, I think the "grown/groan and clause/causes" is too strong. I like the idea in here, as I see it, that we have come so little a distance since Swift told us all this, but I can't see your ideas clearly yet. Could you maybe talk a little about what you want to do here? I don't know that I'm being that much of a help, but it seems to lose solidity near the bottom and then "our faces" could be the watchers of tv or the readers, but I think there needs to be more to explain that. Maybe you could respond to these ramblings, and I'd have a better plan of attack(poor choice of words, I know) and get back with more random talk.

2002-10-31T16:42:00.000-06:00

Don't worry about it. Are you applying for teaching jobs? If so, are you fucking insane? Are you applying for PhD programs? If so, are you fucking insane?

2002-10-31T10:30:00.000-06:00

Paul, I'm sorry to keep you waiting. I'll try to put up some comments today. Applying for schools and what not.

2002-10-21T13:23:00.000-05:00

Obviously I don't have a real life to write about, so here's some pornographic proxy. Glad you found some good in what I said about your poem. I wrote this before I saw yours, I think, and it was odd: I was actually preparing for a night class surprisingly similar to the one in the title, and I realized that none of us would be watching Bush--on CNN or MSNBC, that is, damn the networks--that night remind us of the pressing need to level the Middle East. It didn't seem unfortunate that we would be missing it, though, except it might have been funnier than Gulliver explaining to talking horses why people go to war. Speaking of horses, seen any go crazy on ferries lately?

The adjunct lecturer lectures and discusses “Gulliver’s Voyage to the Land of the Houyhnmns” with his Continuing Education students while the President teaches the country about the need to go to war

Outside (always outside) it is dark now,
and they are reflected in the windows
and in pages thinner than glass’s membrane
between in here, where they laugh,
and out there, where they can’t see
for the laughing faces. It is fall
(always fall in the halls of literature),
and yet the leaves haven’t left,
barely brown, rarely red even. Odd
that it should be so cold right now,
still green out there and so grown
up in here while the causes groan
under the weight of each clause’s
accumulated ink, and reason
would tell them that the reasons are
always shifting, now green, now red,
sometimes falling and read to us
while our faces are reflected in screens.