VRZHU bullets of pure love

Ednafication

A few weeks back we posted the idea of commemorating Spring and the iconic photograph of Edna St. Vincent Millay in a blooming tree.  Seemed like a zany but noble idea to bring poets together to recreate this charming image.

We are happy to report that the two Saturday photo sessions at the magnificent Brookland Dogwood tree was a rousing success.

A great number of poets and writers showed up both days and took their Millayesque portraits.  On the fine suggestion of Kim Roberts folks brought picnic items last Saturday and a great little Spring soiree took place under treeshade. 

Appropriately, Terrance Mulligan and Martha Sanchez-Lowery brought some of Millay's poems to be read aloud.  Terry read Millay's poem about Spring (titled "Spring") which clearly shows the bard of Camden, Maine wasn't that crazy about the season.

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

We also passed Millay's long poem "Renascence" that got her started as a young teenaged writer.  We took turns reading passages aloud under the shade of a nice pine tree adjoining the dogwood. It was an amazing afternoon.

Of course the whole purpose was to take our Ednaesque portraits and we did do that.  To see the portraits and see a list of participating Ednas, please visit the Project Millay page on the main VRZHU Press site at www.vrzhu.com/edna.html

We'd love to receive feedback.  Maybe we can make this an annual event.  Perhaps we can start a tradition for poets to recreate around the country.  Perchance the world.  Any excuse for a picnic, eh?

Leave a comment for the Ednas.

The Millay Project.

Birthday Greetings Part Two

Today, May 9, is the birthday of Charles Simic, Lucian Blaga, Dante Alighieri.

Most everybody knows Dante Alighieri, and lots of people know Charles Simic, but Lucian Blaga is probably less known to Americans. So let’s start with him.

Blaga (May 9, 1895 – May 6, 1961) was a renowned Romanian philosopher and poet. He seems to have had equal influence as both, in that eastern European intellectual way where you could be a philosopher, writer, university professor and a diplomat, as Blaga was. Andrei Codrescu has translated some poems by Blaga in At the Court of Yearning: Poems by Lucian Blaga.

He also seems to have defined the Romanian spirit and it’s poetic horizon—a definition of Romanian national identity—using a really old folk ballad called Mioritza—as a combination of environment and culture in an essay called the Mioritic Space.

In the ballad, there are three shepherds. The first shepherd, a Moldavian, is warned by his lamb (the enchanted ewe Mioritza) that the others are going to kill him because he is wealthy and has more sheep, intending to steal his riches and flocks. The Moldavian accepts this stoically as his fate, and asks the lamb to tell the other two shepherds to bury him in the meadow near his sheep, nature and the stars. He also asks Mioritza to tell the other sheep, the shepherd’s mother, everyone else that he has not been killed but that he married a prince's daughter at heaven's gate.

The space bounded by the sheep’s travels, and thus the boundary of where the story exists, was what Blaga called the Mioritic Space, and co-extensive with the boundary of Romania. The telling of the story creates at the same time the culture and environment of Romania within which the story exists.

It’s probably more complicated that that but you get the idea.

Here’s a poem in English translation:

May Gives Itself With Sweet Abandon
Lucian Blaga

We shall remember once, and too late,
This simple, yet fine, moment,
This very bench where we are seated,
Your burning temple next to mine.
From hazel stamens, cinders fall
White as the poplars they land on.
Beginnings want to be fecund:
May gives itself with sweet abandon.
Hills of gold ash rise around us,
The pollen falls on you and me—
Falls on our shoulders and our lashes,
Into our mouths when speaking,
On eyes, when we are silent with wonder—
And there’s regret—we don’t know
Why it would tear us from each other.
We shall remember once, too late,
This particular moment,
This very bench where we are seated,
Your burning temple resting on mine.
We can see in dreams, through our longing—
Latent in the golden dust—
These forests that could be
But that will never, never, grow.

Next, the Ted Williams of poets: Dante Alighieri (May 9, 1265 – September 14, 1321)

What to say about the Dantemeister? Best poet ever?

I guess there’s some dispute about Dante’s exact day of birth, but what the heck. Let’s roll.

As we all know, DA occupies the same place in all of Italian historyslashculture that Blaga has in 20th Century Romania. He’s the man, the playmaker, the big cheese. T. S. Eliot’s favorite book of the Commedia was allegedly the Paradiso, but one can’t help thinking that, in some things, Eliot was kind of a jerk. Still it does have that socko ending:

Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,

By Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

My original favorite-ish translation of the Commedia (XXXIII years ago) was Laurence Binyon’s, which Pound praised, and which Binyon wrote in an English version of terza rima. Nowadays there are lots of new translations of one or the other of books. I really enjoyed Robert Pinksy’s when it came out and still do. He made a point of talking about the difference between English and Italian by saying the Italian phrase in the first line of the Commedia “silva oscura” (five syllables) is “dark woods” (two syllables) in English, though both have two beats.

Bethatasitmay, here’s three short excerpts from my three favorite Cantos:

If, however, to learn the root
Of our love is now your own desire,
I will speak as one who weeps in speaking.

One day for our pleasure we were reading
Of Lancelot and how love captured him.
We were alone and innocent of suspicion.

Several times the words forced our eyes
To meet and stole the color from our faces.
But one single moment conquered us.

As we read how her long-desired smile
Was kissed by that hero and lover,
This man, never to be severed from me,

Trembling, leaned over, kissed me on the mouth—
The author of that book was a Gallehaut—
And that day we read no more.

-Canto V, Inferno

. . . afterward I saw
Two souls frozen in one hole so close
That one’s head served as the other’s hood.

As a hungry man chews on a hard crust of bread,
The one on top sank his teeth into
The other’s nape at the base of the brain.

Tydeus gnawed the head of Menalippus
With no more fury than this sinner showed
In gnawing at the skull of skin and bone.

You who by this sign of bestiality
Show hatred for the one whom you devour,
Tell me why, I said; and for the favor,

If you have any reason for your grievance,
When I know who you are and what his sin,
I will pay you back in the world above

Unless my tongue should dry up in my throat.

Raising his mouth from his savage meal,
The sinner wiped his lips upon the hair
Of the head that he had chewed on from behind.

Then he began, You want me to make new
A desperate grief which even to call back
Crushes my heart before I start to speak.

But should my words become a fruitful seed
Of infamy for this traitor whom I gnaw,
You’ll see me speak and weep at the same time.

-Cantos XXXII & XXXIII, Inferno

A crown of olive over her white veil,
A woman appeared to me; beneath her green
Mantle she wore a robe of flaming red.

My soul, which for so long now
Had not felt as overwhelmed as when I’d stood
Trembling with fear in her presence,

Without seeing with my eyes
But by the veiled power she projected,
I felt the tremendous force of the old love.

The moment that uplifting power struck
My sight, as it had already pierced me through
Before I’d left my boyhood years behind,

I turned round to the left with the blind trust
Of a small child who races toward his mother
When panic hits him or he comes to grief,

To say to Virgil, There is not a drop
Of blood in me that is not trembling:
I recognize the signs of the old fire.

But Virgil — he had left me there bereft
Of himself — Virgil, my sweet father — Virgil
To whom I gave myself for my salvation!

Not even all our ancient mother Eve had lost
Could keep my cheeks, already washed with dew,
From turning dark once more with troubled tears.

Dante, because Virgil leaves you now,
Do not weep yet, do not weep yet, for you
Must weep for yet another pointed sword!

Like an admiral who goes to stern and prow
To see the crews that serve on other ships
And to encourage them to do good work,

So on the left side of the chariot —
When I turned, as I heard my name called,
Which I record here through necessity —

I saw the lady who first appeared to me
Veiled by the angels’ flower-festival
Fix her eyes on me from across the stream.

Although the veil that flowed down from her head
Which was encircled by Athena’s leaves
Did not permit her to be seen distinctly,

Like a queen unyielding in her look,
She went on like one who speaks and keeps
Back the most heated words until the end:

Look at me! I am, I am Beatrice!
How did you ever dare to climb this mountain?
Did you not know that people here are happy?

-Canto XXX, Purgatorio

'nuff said.

Speaking of Mount Purgatorio, May 9 is also the day (in the year 1336) that Italian poet Francesco Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux. Dante was a big influence on Petrarch, and Petrarch in turn was a big influence on Elizabethans like Willy the Shake. Frank wrote a big long letter about it, which is part Purgatorio, part Confessions. And in the letter he in fact quotes:

Men go to admire the high mountains and the great flood of the seas and the wide-rolling rivers and the ring of Ocean and the movement of the stars; and they forget themselves.

-Augustine of Hippo

You can find the letter online if you’ve a mind to.

Finally, today is also the birthday of current Poet Laureate Charles Simic.

Here’s a couple of poems by Mr. Simic:

Eyes Fastened With Pins
Charles Simic

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.

In the Library
Charles Simic

for Octavio

There's a book called
"A Dictionary of Angels"
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered
The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.
Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.
She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

Vrzhu Birthday Greetings

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and the world laughs at you."

"I don't disagree with people.  I merely point out how wrong they are."

***

Hwaet. It’s been a while since we’ve done birthday greetings here at Vrzhu, but today and tomorrow are jam-packed:

May 8, 1930 Gary Snyder
May 8, 1592 Francis Quarles
May 9, 1938 Charles Simic
May 9, 1895 Lucian Blaga
May 9, 1265 Dante Alighieri

So here’s our first installment: Gary Snyder

As For Poets
Gary Snyder

As for poets
The Earth Poets
Who write small poems,
Need help from no man.

The Air Poets
Play out the swiftest gales
And sometimes loll in the eddies.
Poem after poem,
Curling back on the same thrust.

At fifty below
Fuel oil won't flow
And propane stays in the tank.
Fire Poets
Burn absolute zero
Fossil love pumped back up.

The first
Water Poet
Stayed down six years.
He was covered with seaweed.
The life in his poem
Left millions of tiny
Different tracks
Criss-crossing through the mud.

With the Sun and Moon
In his belly,
The Space Poet
Sleeps.
No end to the sky--
But his poems,
Like wild geese,
Fly off the edge.

A Mind Poet
Stays in the house.
The house is empty
And it has no walls.
The poem
Is seen from all sides,
Everywhere,
At once.

Why I Take Good Care Of My Macintosh Computer
Gary Snyder

Because it broods under it's hood like a perched falcon
Because it jumps like a skittish horse
    and sometimes throws me
Because it is pokey when cold
Because plastic is a sad, strong material
    that is charming to rodents
Because it is flighty
Because my mind flies into it through my fingers
Because it leaps forward and backward
    is an endless sniffer and searcher,
Because its keys click like hail on a rock
& it winks when it goes out,
& puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of
    gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods
    strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;
And I lose them and find them,
Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly layed out
and then highlighted, & vanished in a flash at
    "delete" so it teaches
    of impermanence and pain;
& because my computer and me are both brief
    in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,
Because I have let it move in with me
    right inside the tent
And it goes with me out every morning
We fill up our baskets, get back home,
Feel rich, relax, I throw it a scrap and it hums.

Riprap
Gary Snyder

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
              placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
              in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
              riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
              straying planets,
These poems, people,
              lost ponies with
Dragging saddles --
              and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
              four-dimensional
Game of Go.
              ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
              a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
              with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
              all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

I saw Gary Snyder at the Folger Library in 1995, and he was impressive.  I used two of my five words of Japanese, and he replied with about 20, which, or course, I didn’t know. We also talked about how we  liked the little moleskine notebooks. I wish we'd talked about fuseki, which is the pure poetry part of Go, but I was too shy.  In Go, the board is set so that the grain of the wood runs from one player to the other, rather than like a fence, dividing them.  This is to show that the two players are united in a common effort: the making of the game. The grain of a poem, too, should join the writer and the reader, from one to the other, in a united effort, the making of the poem.

Anyway, he was completely charming. During his reading he recounted talking to some high-ranking economist who said that oil will never reach $100 a barrel. To which Gary Snyder replied, I don’t know. It just hit $50 a barrel, didn’t it?

Here’s a news item:

May 8, 2008. NEW YORK - Gasoline and crude oil jumped to new records Thursday, with gas rising 3 cents to an average national price of nearly $3.65 a gallon and oil crossing $124 a barrel for the first time.

Happy birthday, Gary.

Daybook Entry for May 8, 2008

All around us the bodies rose out of the stone, crowded into groups, intertwined, or shattered into fragments, hinting at their shapes with a torso, a propped-up arm, a burst hip, a scabbed shard, always in warlike gestures, dodging, rebounding, attacking, shielding themselves, stretched high or crooked, some of them snuffed out, but with a freestanding, forward-pressing foot, a twisted back, the contour of a calf harnessed into a single common motion. A gigantic wrestling, emerging from the gray wall, recalling a perfection, sinking back into formlessness. A hand, stretching from the rough ground, ready to clutch, attached to the shoulder across empty surface, a barked face, with yawning cracks, a wide-open mouth, blankly gaping eyes, the face surrounded by the flowing locks of the beard, the tempestuous folds of a garment, everything close to its weathered end and close to its origin. ...

-Peter Weiss, The Aesthetics of Resistance, describing the gigantomachy frieze of the Pergamon Altar

Art is never a weapon in the sense of concrete political action. It only conveys activity, it communicates qualities which we have to detect in ourselves. We are the ones who, upon closing in on a work of art, liberate the powers confined within. Without our ability to ingest, our own ability to think, the work remains powerless. However, with our attentiveness we transpose the latent vision into real, perceptible deeds.

-Peter Weiss, Notebooks

A-hem

Maybe it's the season, but I find myself becoming allergic to the trope "this poem is just prose broken up into lines." It seems to crop up on an irregular basis all over the place. Behind it I often catch the faint whiff of satisfaction at having exposed an imposter, the Emperor's new clothes.  And it crops up in discussions of what is "legitimately" poetry and what is not as a kind of Quod Erat Demonstratum -- the opponent is supposed to deflate in shame. Smug, smug smug.

It does, of course, mean absolutely nothing. It's sophistry and nonsense. It's like emptying all the gas and oil from a car, and, when it won't start, saying "Ah-ha, I told you this isn't really a car." Or taking the wings off a plane, crashing it, and saying "You see? Man was not meant to fly."

But the most cogent dismantling of this hobgoblin is something I have already posted here a while ago. I urge you to print it out and have it put on an index card to hand out when the pernicious "It's not poetry, it's cut-up prose" poltergeist shows up:

The poet is charged with failing to do something that he never intended. What the poet intended was for the reader to see with his eyes, hear with his ears, the divisions of the lines where they were placed, not for the reader to guess, from the order of the words alone, i.e., a prose paragraph, where the lines of verse should end. For writing to be read as lines of verse, all that is necessary is for the poet to indicate that they should be read so. If you aren't willing to submit to the poet's judgment, you needn't look or listen. There is no need to explain your unwillingness by trying to show a relationship between divisions of writing into verse-lines and the kind of language the poet is using.

–Louis Simpson, The Poetic Line: A Symposium in A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

And from the same book, this:

The line is a unit of rhythm. The poet is moved by impulses of rhythm which he expresses in lines of verse. Impulse determines where each line breaks, and the impulse of the poem as a whole determines the look of the poem on the page or its sound in the air.

–Sandra McPherson, The Poetic Line: A Symposium in A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

Of course, there are kazillion ways for a poem to fail, but, really, there are much more important things to talk about, even in the world of poetry.

vrzhu tuesday

JUST

In case you missed it, May is National Slushpile Awareness Month.  This is in addition to the month of May also being Victims of National Poetry Month Month.  Here at the Vrzhu Research Bureau we realize the serious dangers inherent in being exposed to National Poetry Month, and want to contribute to the alleviation of the pain and suffering caused by NPM in any small way we can.

ALSO

The Virginia Quarterly Review blog seems to be participating in National Slushpile Awareness Month (NSAM) with these entries, and we applaud their efforts.

And stop by "101 reasons to stop writing," the source of the de-inspirational poster at the beginning of this post and an excellent site which specializes in curing writers of their addiction.  The site is dedicated particularly to fiction writers. We're wondering if there's a similar site for those who refuse to use an entire sheet of paper to it's fullest potential. Let us know.

ON THE OTHER HAND

There's a very nice interview with Reb Livingston here that addresses eloquently the DIY poetry movement:

I no longer feel beholden to other publishers’ whims and circumstances. I know how to put together a book. There’s no reason I should spend hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars in contests and reading fees for something I can do myself.

NOW

Regarding Victims of National Poetry Month Month, first of all, don't panic. Regular readers of poetry, poets themselves, and other poetry aficionados are for the most part immune to the deleterious effects of Poetry Exposure.  If you fall into that category, you have no doubt built up a resistance to the sometimes alarming mental and physical injuries of reading or hearing poetry.  If you have increased your normal intake of poetry during National Poetry Month, you may experience some slight aftereffects, such as tingling in the extremities, changes in your visual field (unusual acuity or blurring), and mild depression or melancholia.  These will pass as the poetry is flushed from your system and memory.

For poetry civilians, those with little or no experience of poetry, who compromise the great majority of the populace, even a passing exposure to poetry can be dangerous. And the risk of a greater intake during National Poetry Month is very high indeed. 

Fortunately, even severe exposure to poetry is rarely fatal, and clinical studies have shown that poetry-related afflictions are not permanent. Full recovery, though slow, can be expected.

TO HELP

poetry civilians self-diagnose whether they have been exposed to poetry, or are suffering the effects of Poetry Exposure, the Vrzhu Research Bureau is here providing the following brief, and non-technical, guide to the symptoms of PE, as a PSA.

Types of Poetry Exposure

Poetry Exposure is categorized into first-, second-, or third-degree exposures, depending on the extent, duration, and depth of the incident.

First-degree exposure

First-degree exposure, also called second-hand poetry exposure, is the mildest of the three, and is limited to either the top layer of, or just below, conscious recognition. First degree exposure results from accidental, brief encounters with poetry, such as:

• Poems posted in public transportation areas or on public transportation conveyances, such as subways or buses
• Poems inscribed, or otherwise visible, in public settings, or on common objects such as benches, walls, etc.
• Casual or unconscious viewing while sitting or standing in proximity to someone reading a poetry book, or journal
• Other brief visual or aural exposures to poetry

Symptoms: temporary boredom, listlessness.

Second-degree exposure

Second-degree exposure is more serious and involves the conscious or active absorption of at least one whole poem. This exposure is often the result of:

• A poem sent by e-mail, text-messaged, or directly read to the victim
• A whole poem in an otherwise innocuous magazine, newspaper or other print medium
• A poem heard on the radio or the television, or as part of an otherwise entertaining movie.

Symptoms: irritability, annoyance, disgust

Third-degree exposure

Third-degree exposure is the most serious type and involves prolonged exposure to more than poem and retention of the event in the consciousness or memory for an extended period. Such exposure happens:

• At poetry readings, attended voluntarily or involuntarily; or accidentally, as when a poetry reading starts in an otherwise healthy bookstore.
• When given a poetry book as a “gift”
• In classroom lectures, seminars and discussions involving English, world literature, humanities and other related subjects.

Symptoms: shock, tremors, catatonia

saturday vrzhutube

Clare and the reasons:

4D man is indestructible. What is up with this guy's eyes?

Last NaPoWriMo, analysis, and news from the Vrzhu Research Bureau

{Gone in 60 seconds]

AND: congratulations to all NaPoWriMo particpants, special thanks to Maureen Thorson for inventing this particular instrument of torture, and very special thanks to Zelda at Hyacinth Girls (isn't hyacinth a weird- looking word?) for her kind words and to Matt for his and for being the voting member of the abortive Which Poem Sucks Less? game.

All the precincts have not yet reported in, but exit polls indicate I'm worse at writing poetry this year than last. Go Obama!

***    ***

The current issue of Poetry has a review by Carmine Starnino of two books by Adam Kirsch. At first I thought I would highlight all the suspect rhetorical moves in the piece, but that seemed both unfair and also like too much work.  It would be wrong to hold prose to the rigor we require of poetry, where everything must be justified.

But I do want to point out a statement that seems to me just plain wrong, and also make a connection between two statements, a connection that perhaps Mr. Starnino did not intend.

Since I will be viewing Adam Kirsch through the lens that Mr. Starnino holds up, I will qualify my statements at the end.

Mr. Starnino writes about Kirsch’s criticism:

“Having wasted no time finding his stride, Kirsch remains focused. He continues to place his poet-critic multitasking at the service of a profoundly unfashionable “premodernist” vision that emphasizes form, discipline, and tradition.”

Later, he writes about Adam Kirsch’s (AK’s) own poetry:

“But as with his first book, continued attempts at a more colloquial phrasing can’t escape an ever-so-slight drift toward antiquarianism”

First, let me point out that Carmine Starnino (CS) here equates modernism with an emphasis on formlessness, permissiveness, and—well, what’s the opposite of tradition?—innovation.  Though perhaps for that last term “disrespect for tradition” might be nearer his intent. Does this strike y’all as  true, or a reasonable statement?

But the real point I want to make is the connection between AK’s critical writing in the service of “a profoundly unfashionable “premodernist” vision” and his poetic “ever-so-slight drift toward antiquarianism.” I appreciate here that CS lashes AK with the wet noodle of “ever-so-slight-drift,” but take away the mitigating qualifiers and you can see AK’s writing, both poetry and criticism, whole. 

He longs to restore the real or imagined conditions of the poetic Ancien Régime. He wants the king back on the throne, the hegemony back in control.  In short, his goal of reform masks a desire for a kind of poetic recidivism, a return to a prelapsarian literary period.

By my lights, this differs from taking a conservative position regarding poetry. The word “conservative” has taken on a lot of negative (to me, anyway) connotations because of its misuse, in general, as a euphemism for reactionary.  Maybe conservationist would be an uglier but less fraught word.  As a writer, Tommaso Landolfi was conservative, though most people reading “Gogol’s Wife” would have a hard time seeing that.  Off the top of my head, I would add Orson Welles and John Clare to that list.

Also, well, maybe I’m torquing that word too much.  But there’s a difference between the desire to preserve something valuable from loss or harm, and the charge towards the status quo ante (“forward into the past”). For one, the former is at least possible.

And this position takes as a premise the same belief as its opponents, though turned on its head. The avants (for lack of better term) believe that poetry progresses, moves forward as Spirit does in Hegel, or economic conditions in Marx. The longing to return to a pre-modern poetry culture also believes there is an arrow, a direction.  But rather than moving upward, poetry has decayed over time, or in modern times. 

Does poetry change? Yes, though something is still centered there, I believe. But this change is neither progress nor decay. It’s speciation.

Not that I’m not sympathetic.  I was reading some collected and various posts around the “School of Quietude” vs. “Post-avant” buttons earlier this week.  It’s probably an indication of something wrong with me that I’m reading old blog entries, but there it is.  I kept thinking: “Boys and girls, the fire’s been out for some time. Why are you fighting over the ashes? No matter how you or others value them, cold cinders will not keep you warm."

And, being old, I feel that things were better formerly than now, though I acknowledge this is not objectively true (vaccines!). I guess, being old, I find a fitting response to this to be not trying to wrench the present back to the past but to grieve and to mourn, like Priam.

So CS’s AK is in a pretty untenable position, no matter how stylish his prose, or how devout his zeal. In earlier times the resurrection of older modes could be a (partially) successful way of moving forward (Coleridge), or a charming cul de sac (Chatterton). But never an end in itself.

QUALIFICATION: I’ve read, unsystematically, at least some of AK’s essays, at least the ones I can download or get for a small outlay of funds.  I enjoy AK’s essays. I rarely agree with them. But there have been some that I have agreed with more than others.

Part Two. 

Mr. Starnino quotes one of Adam Kirsch’s poems (which he calls "sonnet-like sixteen-liners," which is like saying a fish-like dog. Maybe it makes sense. Maybe.) and then says this about the last line of the poem: “’Things were not wrong inside, but all around’ is as memorable as language gets.”

I’m sorry but this is untrue.  Or, if true, I'm joining Kojeve in reveling in the future of language devolving into the animality of birdsong and cricket chirps ("animals of the species Homo sapiens would react by conditioned reflexes to vocal signals or sign "language," and thus their so called discourses would be like what is supposed to be the language of bees").

Here are the first five memorable lines of poetry that jump into my head:

“Nature’s first green is gold”
“She sang beyond the genius of the sea”
"When I have fears that I may cease to be”
“When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose”
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad”

Now these may have jumped into my head not because they are as memorable as language gets. That presumes too much about my abilities and way too much about the functioning of memory. But having remembered them in my debilitated mental state, I assert they qualify as memorable. Shall we compare these to the AK line?

[pause]

Having done so, I’m afraid Mr. Starnino’s assertion dies a quick death.  What led him to say it I can’t guess, perhaps his overall enthusiasm for AK in general, or being carried away by his own rhetoric.  But it can’t be the result of any functioning critical faculty.  In the line "Things were not wrong inside, but all around" the words are vague, the rhythm bland, the sentiment unremarkable.  This isn’t as memorable as language gets.  It doesn’t even make the minors.

Side note: I notice that all but one of the lines I remember is the first line of the poem.  Do y’all out there find that to be true?  Actually, you probably have whole swathes of The Prelude ready to hand, or could jump up and recite the whole of Lycidas in the vocal manner of W.C. Fields.  So never mind.

Finally, I am grateful to the Starnino article for the indirect Valery quote: "I can’t help but feel that the best explanation for his choices in Invasions is provided by Paul Valéry, who said that the chief pleasure of rhyme is the rage it inspires in its opponents." Although when I googled for it all that came up was this slightly different version: "Paul Valery said that one of the most mysterious things about rhyme 'is the rage it inspires in those who fail to see its function.'" I got to read me some more Valery -- I have a bunch of him in those old Bollingen books versions.

And, post-finally, the same issue of Poetry has a couple of cool poems by Cathy Park Hong, upon who I am seriously crushing in a poetry related kind of way.

*    **    ****    ********    ****************

Meanwhile at the Vrzhu Research Bureau, people write to us and say:

Dear Vrzhu Research Bureau,

Is there a surfeit of poetry?

Sincerely,
Concerned and Unpublished

To which we (the VRB) reply:

Dear C & U,

As long as you haven't been published, there's no surfeit of poetry!

And the Vrzhu Research Bureau wants to help!

We're currently floating a bold new concept in poetry improvement to see who salutes it.  So for readers of our Bullets of Love blog, here's an exclusive sneak peek at one of our future infotainment releases:

What If You Could Write Any Poem You Wanted Using Your Natural Personality Without Sacrificing Your Lifestyle?

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I'm about to tell you why theInspiration is simply the BEST program on the market today to get the results you want from your poetic and limited social life. But first, let me tell you how our world-class poetry coaches can improve your professional poetry life.

theInspiration will teach you:

How to find, attract, and write poems in any real world situation. Write poems in the daytime in an upscale shopping district. Write poems at night in hot spot bars and nightclubs. Write poems while surrounded by a group of guys. Experience complete choice of exactly what poem you would like to bring to life.

How to create a lifestyle filled with gorgeous, beautiful poems.

"That's beautiful! Did you write it yourself?"

Once you can write a poem on the initial approach, you’ll develop powerful prestige that puts you in total control, maintaining not only envy and admiration, but also the appearance of excitement and mastery necessary for  long-term poetry-related jobs.

Become more successful in both personal and professional poetry relationships.

theInspiration live training programs not only teach you how to write poems on demand, but also how to attract grants, fellowships and awards. You will learn how to get more out of life in general and turn your dreams into published books.

Learn from the poetry professionals - men who dedicate their dream lives to helping you build yours. They teach men to write poems real time in live scenarios. They bring YOU the client directly into real poetic interactions and break them down to fundamental concepts that can be learned and internalized.

theInspiration is the only choice when you want real poetic results. We have turned out more legitimate poets over the past few years than anyone else. As you'll soon find out, our clients are extremely satisfied with the progress they make and the positive changes they have made in their writing lives.

"Absolutely amazing program. I expected to just get better at approaching but since the program, I've written three crowns of sonnets in the last month. You guys blew away my expectations." -Jeffrey M., MFA graduate

theInspiration is about realizing YOUR potential with a mix of technical and social growth.

"Man! That was funnier than Tony Hoagland!"

But the poetry game goes much deeper than that. Anyone can look up terza rima on the internet, but nothing will prompt an immediate crash and burn faster than being the fifth guy to say “If the dull substance of my flesh were thought…”

I want to teach you the specific behavior patterns that will encourage poetry. I want to empower you and enhance your natural poetic personality with the correct attitudes that will result in poems. I want to demonstrate proper execution of techniques so that they integrate into YOUR writing style such that poetic themes  are drawn directly into your world.  theInspiration is a world class poetry workshop and represents the source of cutting edge knowledge based on real world experience. We have published hundreds of articles related to flarf, neoformalism and subduction.

Let's Talk About Real World Success

• We've had a client who, before meeting us was just an average MFA student struggling to write poems on campus. A few months later he is now writing regular aubades to his girlfriend!
• A recent client of ours wrote three dramatic monologues within two weeks of taking our workshop. All he needed were a few easy techniques and now he writes a poem every time he sits down at the computer!
• We turn out the highest percentage of clients who get tangible results in the real world. Period.

Now It's Your Turn. A Beautiful Poem is Out There Waiting For You

"A sonnet? How about a crown of canzoni?"

Let me talk about how I can help YOU start to write poems the same way as in our reviews and field reports.

First, realize that most of these success stories represent exceptional results, and although I can teach you all of the proprietary theInspiration concepts and demonstrate proper execution in real life, it is still up to you the client to pay attention and review what you have learned.

If you're up for the challenge, ready to finally make some amazing changes in your poetry writing, and start to write poems with great success, then you've come to the right place.

At the moment, we’re designing a Poetic Evaluation—a sophisticated program designed (along with the help of an amazing programmer I know) to assess your current skill level, general behavior patterns and capacity for success.

So, stay tuned, and if you have any questions, send them to us, the Poetry Experts.

"Oh, I'm just a kid with a pen . . . writing his heart out."

Tuesday Vrzhuousity - NaPoWriMo

Friends

The Vrzhu wheels are in need of some front end alignment at the moment.  Our regular Tuesday update is sadly behind, still but a tattered kerchief of dust kicked up by the approaching Vrzhu Express rider just at the horizon. 

What is in his saddlebags? Perhaps the Governor’s pardon for a vagrant zen master wandering the high chapparel and arrested on trumped up charges for a hangin’ offense.

Or that sulfa drug for the littlest McCoy out on the ranch a-sweatin’ and a-burnin’ up with the  horny toad fever.

Or that letter to Joey Sue from Colonel Jimmy Hortense – he’s a-comin’ home from the war. Joey looks out the rain-streaked window of his little prairie yurt, a single tear of joy trickles down his cheek.  Little does he know that Jimmy H. will be coming home. . . .half a man!

Anyway, I’ll get this post up on the lift and give it a good safety check and she’ll be good as new by tomorrow, or Thursday.

NaPoWriMo - a partial entry

These Shoes Suck. These Shoes Rule.

We took the tour of the Kevlar aftermath,
where the rubber meets the schizophrenia,
Citizen, you’ll pay the price for our fear.

saturday vrzhu tube - = + } > & ##

From auteur Delmer Daves, the surrealist classic: