VRZHU bullets of pure love

Trobar Clus, Trobar the Eighth Man

Over at Hyacinth Girls, the two eponymous heroines have been engaged in a project of posting poems based on various Oulipian procedures. 

This is admirable in several ways:

1. Procedures whether traditional (sonnet, ghazal, sestina) or Oulipian are only alive if we keep them alive. It’s the difference between knowing that Paleolithic men and women knew how to make varied and effective cutting tools out of flint, and actually using those same techniques yourself.  The former is an interesting historical fact. The latter is a living embodiment of archaic technology, and hence, knowledge, skill and body.

2. By engaging these procedures, you learn about the inherent energy in them, about writing itself and about your own poetic footprint. You might think that the more automatic the procedure, the less there is to learn, but not so.  Take one of the more well known oulipian processes, N+7.  A description of this might be the simple mechanical substitution of each noun in an existing poem with the noun found 7 places away from the original in the dictionary.  No wriggle room? But what dictionary do you use? Also, there are decisions such as: if the poem is metrical do you use the seventh metrically equivalent noun (Sonnet 73: "That tin of yeast thou mayest in me behold')? Do you count multiple entries of nouns in the dictionary? This might not amount to very much personal discretion, yet there it is.

3. Further, even the most unchancy procedure will tell you something about the language you are writing in, and about your source text (if any). What might interesting here is what and how much of what the original poem is made of remains.  This depends on what you do to it.

4. It imparts the lessons of patience and perseverance.

5. The results may goad or spark you into a procedureless poem of your own.

6. And, of course the results can be fabulous.

I had a conversation more than few years ago with a friend about how certain segments of the neo-formalists and l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e-influenced proceduralists had, at least, overlapping concerns with the formal aspects of poetry.

Also, I'd like to see more examples of combinatory procedures using both traditional and oulipian. Example: Nestina, a sestina where the 6 end words are advanced N+7 for each stanza, with the last 3 line stanza returning to the original 6.

And yesterday of course was the day that celebrates one the great trobar clus works of the last century--Ulysses.

Total clarity is probably not a laudable quality in poetry – Frank M. Chambers

To explore further, see:

Peire d’Alvernhe
Giraut de Bornelh
Raimbaut d'Aurenga
Marcabru

Sonnet 73*

The lukewarm taboo insults me when
hostage joints, or prayers, or sights, deprive
bellies that gorge against their quilts. The palm
of the hand is vicious where cheating baskets
distress the heat of certain animals in copulation.
You bray the return of pawnshops after your thrust
lengthens its cry of pain, which milky soap digs up,
and smoke's snail delays by a span of nine inches.
You bray the wheezing of truth this wound’s parcel
laps up, as steaming eclipses it, just as laws
related to the keeping of dogs are customary.
You contemptible person, staining ledges huge
with overbearing behavior, that ledge of a cliff
that you set in mortar like the setting of a jewel. 

*homophonic translation into Irish and then dictionary translation back into English (thanks to Nigel Hinshelwood).

Skúlason was at Bobby Fischer’s bedside when he muttered his final words and passed away: “Nothing eases suffering like human touch.”

Father's Day

A poem by that wild man of Irish poetry, Paul Durcan. This one is almost as good as the one about being in Brazil and having a talk with an Irish transvestite about Mary Robinson, former president of the Irish  Republic:

10:30 Mass, June 16, 1985
Paul Durcan

When the priest made his entrance on the altar at the stroke of 10:30
He looked like a film star at an international airport
After having flown in from the other side of the world
As if the other side of the world was the other side of the street;
Only, instead of an overnight bag slung over his shoulder,
He was carrying the chalice in its triangular green veil --
The way a dapper comedian cloaks a dove in a silk handkerchief.
Having kissed the altar, he strode over to the microphone:
I'd like to say how glad I am to be here with you this morning.
Oddly, you could see quite well that he was genuinely glad --
As if, in fact, he had been actually looking forward to this Sunday service,
Much the way I had been looking forward to it myself;
As if, in fact, this was the big moment of his day -- of his week,
Not merely another ritual to be sanctimoniously performed.
He was a small, stocky, handsome man in his forties
With a big mop of curly grey hair
And black, horn-rimmed, tinted spectacles.
I am sure that more than half the women in the church
Fell in love with him on the spot --
Not to mention the men.
Myself, I felt like a cuddle.
The reading from the prophet Ezekiel (17:22-24)
Was a piece of codswallop about cedar trees in Israel
(it's a long way from a tin of steak-and-kidney pie
for Sunday lunch in a Dublin bedsit
to cedar trees in Israel),
but the epistle was worse –

St. Paul on his high horse and, as nearly always,
Putting his hoof in it - prating about "the law court of Christ."
With the Gospel, however, things began to look up --
The parable of the mustard seed as being the kingdom of heaven;
Now then the Homily, at best probably inoffensively boring.
It's Father's Day -- this small, solid, serious, sexy priest began--
And I want to tell you about my own father
Because none of you knew him.
If there was one thing he liked, it was a pint of Guinness;
If there was one thing he liked more than a pint of Guinness
It was two pints of Guinness.
But then when he was fifty-five he gave up the drink.
I never knew why, but I had my suspicions.
Long after he had died, my mother told me why:
He was so proud of me when I entered the seminary
That he gave up drinking as his way of thanking God.
But he himself never said a word about it to me --
He kept his secret to the end. He died from cancer
A few weeks before I was ordained a priest.
I'd like to go to Confession -- he said to me:
OK -- I'll go and get a priest -- I said to him:
No -- don't do that -- I'd prefer to talk to you:
Dying, he confessed to me the story of his life.
How many of you here at Mass today are fathers?
I want all of you who are fathers to stand up.

Not one male in transept or aisle or nave stood up --
It was as if all the fathers in the church had been caught out
In the profanity of their sanctity,
In the bodily nakedness of their fatherhood,
In the carnal deed of their fathering;
Then, in ones and twos and threes, fifty or sixty of us clambered to our feet
And blushed to the roots of our being.
Now -- declared the priest -- let the rest of us
Praise these men our fathers.
He began to clap hands.
Gradually the congregation began to clap hands,
Until the church was ablaze with clapping hands --
Wives vying with daughters, sons with sons,
Clapping clapping clapping clapping clapping,
While I stood there in a trance, tears streaming down my cheeks: Jesus!
I want to tell you about my own father
Because none of you knew him!

May 11, 330 CE: Byzantium becomes capital of Roman Empire

Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

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!

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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.

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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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guaranteed results using a flexible and genuine style of undetectable muse-induction."

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.

napowrimojo April 25 - daybookentry

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day book entry - shewing that our poetic troubles with the first person and the self go back to the Romantic era, where most all the roots of our contemporary poetry and poetic are.

It has ever been my opinion, that an excessive solicitude to avoid the use of our first personal pronoun more often has its source in conscious selfishness than in true self-oblivion. ... Yet I can with strictest truth assure my Readers that with a pleasure combined with a sense of weariness I see the nigh approach of that point of my labours, in which I can convey my opinions and the workings of my heart without reminding the Reader obtrusively of myself. ...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from Volume I, Essay iv

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

The true eye of the earth is water. It is the gaze of the earth, its instrument for looking at time. In our eyes, it is water that dreams.

Paul Claudel, The BlackBird in the Rising Sun (1927)

April 24nd NaPoWriMo

The New Yorker catches up on National Poetry Month with lil reviewitos of August Kleinzahler and C. D. Wright and James Wright and Kevin Prufer.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reviews August Kleinzahler.

napowrimopoem

[g'bye]

Npwrmaoio For April 23

I bring you:    

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4222008 NaPoWrimoog, and some stuff

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***
These fine people are also writing a poem a day for the month of April as NaPoWriMoistas.  So stop wasting your time here, and check them out:

Will Brown Online
A Page of Woe Absolved
Perfect Lines
The Booth of Our Conniving
Bloof Blog
jump(s) the track(s)
Slim Windows
Book of Kells
Glamor Levels Hi
Homeschooled by a Cackling Jackal
fringe matters.
Laurel Snyder
Ivy is Here
water veiled
Womb Poetry
Bernadette Geyer
Readwritepoem
Carter's Little Pill
Watermark
Bee's Hovel
The Polka Dot Witch
Chicks Dig Poetry
The Package Insert of Sorrows
Carrie Etter
Dreamspot Dot Dot
Big Window
a wrung sponge
Blogging Poet
Heaven
Shann Palmer says
Stick Poet Super Hero
VersAtile
Freak Machine Press
Mark Lamoureux
No Starting Point
Dragonfly on a Dog Chain
This is Not Made Up
Hyacinth Girls
For the Time Being
32 Poems
words intended as poetry
Forest River Journal
Lectitans
Carmen Gimenez Smith
Eric's Writing Corner
Possum
Beloved Dreamer
djkreutzer
August Avenue
freefalling me
GottaBook
A Window Within Myself
wjsullivan.net

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Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the new transalation (RIchard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky of Tolstoy's War And Peace, in an effort to get you to go and buy this book and read it (the French is translated in footnotes in the book).

The princess [Helene] rested the elbow of her bare, rounded arm on a little table and did not find it necessary to say anything. She waited, smiling. Throughout the story she sat erect, glancing occasionally now at her rounded, beautiful arm lying lightly on the table, not at the still more beautiful bosom on which straightened a diamond necklace; she also straightened the folds of her gown several times, and, when the story produced an impression, turned to look at Anna Pavlovna and at once assumed the same expression as on the maid of honor’s face, and then settled back into a radiant smile. After Helene, the little princess also came over from the tea table.

“Attendez-moi, je vais prendre mon ouvrage,” she said. “Voyons, a quoi pensez-vous?” she turned to Prince Ippolit. “Apportez-moi mon reticule.”

The princess, smiling and talking with everyone, suddenly effected the transposition, and, taking a seat, cheerily settled herself.

“Now I feel good,” she said several times, and, asking them to begin, started to work.

Prince Ippolit fetched her reticule, came after her, and, moving his chair towards her, sat down close by.

Le charmant Hippolyte was striking in his extraordinary resemblance to his beautiful sister, and still more in being strikingly unattractive, despite that resemblance. The features of his face were the same as his sister’s, but in her everything was lit up by her joyous, self-contented, young, unchanging smile and the extraordinary classical beauty of her body. In her brother, on the contrary, the same face was clouded by idiocy and invariably expressed a self-assured peevishness, and his body was skinny and weak. His eyes, nose and mouth all seemed to shrink into an indefinite and dull grimace, and his arms and legs always assumed an unnatural position.

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Tuesday Vrzhu - NaPoWriMoiety - Avrile 21

    

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