World Class Poetry Blog

I just returned from one of my favorite poetry readings. York, Pa. They call it Poetry Brew.

Poetry Brew is hosted by Rich Hemmings, by far one of the best promoters of poetry and poets that I’ve ever seen. He’s like the Ed Sullivan of poetry. Real classy guy.

Tonight’s venue was billed as a themed event, “Increase The Peace: A Stand Against Teenage Gang Violence”. Rich had asked me to be one of several featured readers, but I couldn’t commit, unfortunately, and was not a featured reader. But the slate of those who were was a fabulous band of poetic talent from the South Central area of Pennsylvania and Baltimore, Md. Among the talent included:

• Rebecca Gonzalez (I wrote about her last night)
• Karen Atlas
• Snow
• Le Hinton
• Bedlam
• Carol Clark Williams
• Native Son (1/2 of Native Son and the Drifish)
• Rich Burrill
• Debberae Streett
• the Drifish (the other half of Native Son and the Drifish)
• and Rich Hemmings

While I was not among those featured, I did get to read during the open mic portion of the event. I read my poem “20 Acres”. My grandson, spending the weekend with us, was in attendance and after the reading (because the poem is about him), came up to me and gave me a big hug (while I was on stage, of course, and preparing to read a second poem). He’s 5 now; was 3 at the time of the poem being written and I had been home from Iraq for about two months. That was amazing; the little guy never ceases to amaze me.

But the evening was topped off with an unexpected treat when Native Son and the Drifish took the stage as a duo. I’d seen them before and they are awesome. They are true performance poets, not the type of performance poet you’ll see at the slam event. They’re better. They perform with perfect harmony and clarity and it’s absolutely indescribable. They’ll be back in York on June 28 to promote a new album and I can hardly wait to see them again. That is an event worth putting on the calendar.

Here’s an interesting project, and a revolutionary way to market poetry. What do you think?

Here’s a bird poetry contest.

Speaking of birds, meet Amy Clampitt.

Poet Laureate Charles Simic’s swan song.

Gary Snyder wins $100,000 poetry prize.

More on birds:

How about loons?

This week I’ve published a review of Variations on a Natural Theme: A Loon Year by Hugh Hennedy. Here’s a poem from the selection (you can read another one in the review):

On the Surface Loon
In no apparent hurry
To dive out of it
He rides and bobs in sun

Standing now he bathes
Wings spread wide for balance
His white breast in air

Yehudah ha-Levi was a Spanish Jewish poet that lived in the 9th and 10th centuries. He was born in Spain in 1080 while Spain was still under Islamic rule. He wrote in Arabic and Hebrew. He was versatile and wrote about more than simply religious themes. He also wrote many love poems, poems of journey, sorrow, and humanity. He even touched on some humorous subjects in his poetry. The following poem is titled “Hymn For Atonement Day”:

Lord, Your humble servants hear,
Suppliant now before You,
Our Father, from Your children’s plea
Turn not, we implore You!

Lord, Your people, sore oppressed,
From the depths implore You;
Our Father, let us not, this day,
Cry in vain before You.

Lord, blot out our evil pride,
All our sins before You;
Our Father, for Your Mercy’s sake,
Pardon, we implore You.

Lord, no sacrifice we bring,
Prayers and tears implore You;
Our Father, take the gift we lay,
Contrite hearts before You.

Lord, Your sheep have wandered far,
Gather them before You;
Our Father, let Your shepherd love
Guide us, we implore You.

Lord, Your pardon grant to all
That in truth, implore You;
Our Father, let our evening prayer
Now find grace before You.

Lord, Your humble servants hear,
Suppliant now before You;
Our Father, from Your children’s plea
Turn not, we implore You!

Algernon Charles Swinburne hails from the Victorian era. Unlike other religious poets of that era, however, he was not pro-Christian. “Hymn to Proserpine” is a narrative that includes a fictional character representing the virtues of paganism. I think you’ll like it:

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that
    weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;
But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.
Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,
A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?
I am sick of singing: the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain
To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.
For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,
We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.
O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day
From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.
New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,
Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean ? but these thou shalt not take,
The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;
Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;
And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things ?
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years ?
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy
    breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
Sleep, shall we sleep after all ? for the world is not sweet in the end;
For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the
    tides.
O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods !
O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods !
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:
Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,
And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears;
With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:
With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;
And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:
And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;
And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the
    sea:
And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air:
And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made
    bare.
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with
    rods?
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods?
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;
Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of
    things,
Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for
    kings.
Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our
    forefathers trod,
Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.
Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;
Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she
    is crowned.
Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall.
Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night
    where thou art,
Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the
    heart,
Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is
    white,
And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the
    night,
And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar
Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone.
Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;
For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.l
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

I have been meaning to purchase a copy of Mark Jarman’s new book of prose poems titled Epistles. It was my desire to bloviate, I think, but I put it off. I was hoping to share one of the poems on this blog this month in honor of religious poetry, but I have still not purchased the book. So I instead sought poems of his already published that might appear online. Lo and behold, I was successful. Found them (where else?) at the Poetry Foundation.

There I found four sonnets from his collection Unholy Sonnets.

Perfect, I thought. I’ll use one of those.

I’ve never bought a Mark Jarman book so I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never read any of his sonnets. It was a new experience for me. Quite frankly, I’m not impressed and I’ll tell you why.

A sonnet should rhyme. Enjambment is fine; each line need not end with a complete thought. I’m OK with near-rhyme even and rhyme that doesn’t look like rhyme or that forces the reader to move over the words from one line to the next so quickly that the rhyme isn’t noticeable until you stop to examine the poem word for word. All of that is fine. It’s what poetry is made of. But a sonnet, after all, is a sonnet. It is defined by two things: rhyme and meter. Leave one out and you no longer have a sonnet. Well, wouldn’t you know it: This New Formalist, a school of poetics that believes the old forms are still valid, writes a doggone sonnet that doesn’t rhyme. I don’t like it.

No. 1 wasn’t the first one I read. It wasn’t the last either. I read all four sonnets, and I’ll likely never read another poem from Mark Jarman. I won’t be buying Epistles. But it isn’t because of that one poem I didn’t like. I’m not fond of any of his sonnets.

“Unholy Sonnet No. 4″ rhymes. And I almost like it. My favorite lines are the first two - especially the first one - of the second stanza:

Not Dante’s rings, not the Zen zero’s mouth,
Out of which comes and into which light goes,

The allusion to Dante and alliteration with Zen zero’s mouth was impressive, but not elegiac, as one would expect of a religious poem. No. 4 isn’t his best of the four that I did read.

I found “Unholy Sonnet No. 13″ rather intriguing, but I’m ambivalent. I was put off at first by the repetition of the word drunk. Simply put, I found it unnecessary. Then he referenced Americans. I nearly puked. It seems out of place.

Nevertheless, No. 13 nearly succeeds. I do not like the repetition. I do like the near rhyme of some of the end words: bread, breed; stars, stirs. I do not like another/forever. I like the time and wine, and even the off-rhyme of moon. But the repetition of end words in place of rhyme is unnerving to me. It seems like a cop out.

Then there’s the juxtaposition of the divine with the mundane. I actually appreciate Mark Jarman’s attempt to employ this device. It’s one that I’m rather fond of in my own poetry and hope that I succeed at to some degree. The use of the word “Umbrian” in the first line sets me up for an expectation of something extraordinary, but I am let down by “two young Americans”. Why so parochial? It took me out of the poem despite some beautiful imagery in the pink cloud and marble smile. As I said, it almost succeeds.

I think the best of the four poems that I read was No. 1. It’s the one that I think is best crafted and it’s surprising because I wasn’t sure that I liked it when I first read it. I’m still not sure, but I do appreciate the craftiness of the poem. It was the first one I read. Reprinted below, analysis follows:

Dear God, Our Heavenly Father, Gracious Lord,
Mother Love and Maker, Light Divine,
Atomic Fingertip, Cosmic Design,
First Letter of the Alphabet, Last Word,
Mutual Satisfaction, Cash Award,
Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line,
Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine,
Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward.

I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,
Black Hole, White Hole, Presidential Jet.
But what’s the anything I must leave out? You
Solve nothing but the problems that I set.

I like this poem best of all because it carries a simple idea from beginning to end. It starts out and finishes with that idea and is easy to follow. No. 1 reads like a prayer. It should. For that is essentially what it is. You know right away that the speaker is talking to God. He uses words that one would expect a person praying to God to use: “Dear God”, “Heavenly Father”, “Gracious Lord”. That’s a wonderful first line. It sets me up for the rest of the poem perfectly.

“Unholy Sonnet No. 1″ reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins in so many ways. The meter is a little bit uncommon. Unlike many sonnets, the iambic pentameter isn’t a sing-song twittering of musical simplicity. Each expression of divinity is capitalized - very reverent. Each is set apart as a clause, broken up by commas. Appropriate. And as you get further into the poem, the speaker begins to use names for God that are very uncommon and almost irreverent except that you know they are expressions of contemporary sanctity.

• Atomic Fingertip
• First Letter Of The Alphabet (Alpha - I like this one)
• Cash Award
• Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line
• Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine
• Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward

Like traditional sonnets, the first stanza sets up the situation that the second stanza answers. It is sometimes defined as problem/solution, or question/answer. In this case, I think the proper characterization should be dilemma/cure.

The problem can be stated thus: What do we call God? Answer: Anything; it doesn’t really matter. What really matters is that He is there and we can call on Him. Cool.

The second stanza moves. I love how it starts:

I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,

The word “epithet” is perfect, and unexpected, because until now all we have heard from the speaker is words used to describe God in rather uncanny ways. They are really offensive. If I were God, I’d be offended. “Mutual Satisfaction”? I think not. But the names are not totally offensive. They just are not wholly reverent, and that’s the problem. It’s what makes the poem so believable.

The rhyme scheme of No. 1 stays true to the form. Thanks Mark! But there is something about that fourth line in the second stanza that bugs me. Why “Presidential Jet”? Of all the names for God, that is perhaps the most obtrusive. Still, he follows that rather awkward line up with “But what’s the anything I must leave out?” and I know it’s the perfect follow up line. It’s a good question, for one thing, but it also points to the dilemma: Who is God? Why is He there? And that last line is the zinger, the whopper, the big squeeze. No matter what you call Him, he’s the Divine Problem Solver, The Eternal Cure For All Things, The Answer To The Questions I Didn’t Know I Should Have Asked.

I love the feminine rhyme in that second stanza - about/you, doubt/you, out? You. It shows Mark Jarman’s playfulness and attentiveness to language. But it also makes me wonder why we don’t see more of that. If he can do that in one poem, why can’t he do that in the others? I’m not prepared to say versatility for that would imply skill, and I don’t see that. What I see is sloppiness, a criticism he has lobbied against others. It’s odd, but that’s probably what he seeks most to avoid for I know that his poetic philosophy is defined by attentiveness to language, to words, and to craft. To some degree, he has it. So why aren’t I impressed?

Thomas Campion was a Renaissance poet, a Cambridge law student, composer, and an M.D. The following kyrielle is one of the many poems he left us. Its title is “A Lenten Hymn”:

With broken heart and contrite sigh,
A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry:
Thy pard’ning grace is rich and free:
O God, be merciful to me.

I smite upon my troubled breast,
With deep and conscious guilt oppress,
Christ and His cross my only plea:
O God, be merciful to me.

Far off I stand with tearful eyes,
Nor dare uplift them to the skies;
But Thou dost all my anguish see:
O God, be merciful to me.

Nor alms, nor deeds that I have done,
Can for a single sin atone;
To Calvary alone I flee:
O God, be merciful to me.

And when, redeemed from sin and hell,
With all the ransomed throng I dwell,
My raptured song shall ever be,
God has been merciful to me.

Learn more about the French form kyrielle at World Class Poetry.

This video represents what I mean when I say that poetry videos should be interpretive. I envision a day when poets will produce videos as entertainment, much like today’s Hollywood. In discussions of poetics you will often hear how poetry is either visual or audible. Most poets today believe that poems should be read aloud. It’s an often repeated talking point and has led to the increased popularity of the slam, Spoken Word poetry, and poetry readings all across America. Every year in April, a local independent bookstore in Hanover, Pa. sponsors a poetry contest where a part of the judging criteria involves the actual verbal presentation of the poem before an audience. It is clear that oral presentation is a necessary component to contemporary poetics.

But one can’t deny that there is a visual element as well. There has been for as long as poets put their poems into print. Originally, of course, poetry was a storytelling art. Then it discovered print and that changed the face of poetry from an art that was audience driven, like theater, to one that was writer driven. When poets could write their poems and sell them as books, because people read, they could write in whatever styles and forms they chose and consumers of poetry had to buy what was being offered or not read poetry. Over time, as new technologies emerged (radio, TV, VCRs, DVDs), people stopped reading and started tuning in to the new media. Well, now the new media is the old media and a newer media has emerged.

When TV and radio were new they were limited in their reach. The broadcast could only go so far as they were based on waves and frequencies. The audience was not captive and it had a limit. The new media - Internet-driven technologies - does not have the same limitations as the old media. It’s much more inexpensive on the production end (which means poets have more access and control over the production model) and the audience is unlimited. Feasibly, a video, an e-book, or a podcast that is created today and uploaded to a website can still be accessible in the same unchanged format 200 years from now with no loss of quality. And it costs the producer, the poet, nothing more than the time it takes to create the product.

The time has come for poetry videos to capture the imaginations of an audience. People who previously would not sit down to read a book of poetry can now enjoy a poem through its visual presentation on a computer screen, or through satellite or S-Video feed, on their TV screen. But who wants to look at somebody just standing at a microphone reading from a book? That’s boring.

Instead, poets must get creative in the presentation. I see the production of poetry videos taking place in stages and could very well involve more than one individual in the process - just like making a movie. I see it going this way:

1. The poet writes a poem
2. The poem is published in print along with an audio recording
3. A script writer takes the poem and adapts it for a video presentation
4. Scenes are produced and shot in no specific order (just as a movie is made)
5. Incorporation of animation, sound effects, and other visual and auditory elements are added as the editing process gets underway
6. The finished product is unveiled and marketed to its audience

By utilizing such a process to produce a creative, engaging, and entertaining video-as-poem, poets can reach new audiences, expand the appreciation of an old literary medium, and take narrative storytelling to a new level. Both lyrical and narrative poetry can be interpreted through visual images in a video presentation. Even obscure works such as Dada or Language Poetry can be visualized and put to video. Form, structure, presentation, style, and voice can all be enhanced and brought to a harmonizing head in the media of online video. There is no limit to how creative those in the video making process can be as long as they have the knowledge and tools available to them to create the presentation.

This video titled “Salvation” is just a start. There are actually better examples of interpretive poetry videos online, but this is one that I found with a religious theme. You can find plenty more poetry videos at YouTube. Just watch.

Heresy, too, is religion. It may not come as blatantly as Eve’s argument against perfection, but it can still kick you between the legs - even in contemporary traditional poetry (is that an oxymoron?).

“Hindsight” by Bill Coyle is a great example of a traditional form - the sonnet - that is written with a twist. That is, the form has been changed. Of course, how many times in history has the sonnet been changed? From the Petrarchan Sonnet to the Shakespearean Sonnet and Spenserian Sonnet to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Curtal, this may very well be the most popular form in history. Now, we have the Hilbertian Sonnet and Bill Coyle’s “Hindsight” is a fabulous one at that.

“Hindsight” was recently published in The New Criterion, so its ink is still wet. So wet, in fact, that I’m not even going to reprint it. You can read it in its first publication. Enjoy!

William Blake was a Romantic poet, a mystic with a creative imagination. His poem “Jerusalem” presents his New Testament world view in vivid detail:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

Sometimes, a religious poem isn’t a religious poem at all. It can strike a particular anti-religious feel, or take a stand against a particular religious dogma. Such is the case with today’s religious poem.

Diane Lockward takes a hard stand against the traditional Biblical understanding of the Genesis account of Eve’s deception and Adam’s sin. The great forbidden fruit that led to the Fall of Man is the issue. And she is quite hard in making her point, which is the mark of the effectiveness of the poem.

In her poem “Eve Argues Against Perfection,” Diane Lockward makes us confront our own beliefs about this ancient legendary tale, and the epigraph is quite fitting as well:

                              And the woman said, The serpent
                              beguiled me, and I did eat.
                                                –Genesis 3:13


Beguiled, my ass. I said no such thing.
You say I lost the gift of Paradise.
I couldn’t lose what I never had.

You say the serpent tempted me to eat.
You omit that he entered the Garden
on two legs and walked like a man.

And here’s what your story always ignores:
I had pure gold, rare perfume, precious stones,
but Adam hadn’t touched me all those years.

Perfection in the Garden didn’t mean that way.
Not having it and not wanting it
was God’s idea of perfection, not mine.

So when that serpent strolled up to the tree,
all upright and fine, he threw off the balance,
and I began to pray, Oh let him be mine.

When he held out the apple, so round and lush,
when he stroked it to a keen red glow,
I didn’t fall to temptation - I rose to it.

Beautiful!

I like the way Diane Lockward executes her blasphemous extended finger to God. The poem starts off strong, “Beguiled, my ass.” Perfect start for an anti-religious testament to womanish idolatry. Then the poet immediately jumps into her denial of having said that. What more could we expect?

The final line sums up the rest of the poem succinctly and in perfect brevity. Temptation wasn’t a fall at all. It was a rise to the occasion. In other words, someone had to do it; why not me?

Diane Lockward’s poem, “Eve Argues Against Perfection,” is available in her book titled Eve’s Red Dress. And, by the way, it’s a fabulous read through and through!