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.

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

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?

"You can get top-notch, live training from world famous poetry coaches with
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."

Our Blog Philosophy

I am sore disappointed in the quality of my entries for NaPoWriMo this year in contrast to last year.

Tuesday Vrzhumatic - nApOwrImO: Day the First

Soooo.  Vrzhu is once again participating in the National Poetry Write a Poem a Day Month, created and  originated by Maureen Thorson.

To keep it interesting [to me (the rest of you are on your own{though my guess would be an infusion of cash would help you (be interested in Vrzhu's participation)})] my presentation here will follow the following precepts:

1. Each new poem will be accompanied by a poemaday poem from last year.

2. Anyone may vote in the comments section for one or the other poem.

3. The winning poem will also be posted the next day with (a) a new poem and (b) a poem from last year's poemaday month.

4. In the event of a tie (such as no votes for anything) only that day's new poem will be proceed to the next round.

The first two poems are in today's post.*

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But first here's an article by one of our roving VRB reporters.  From the South Jersey Desk a report on the state of ultramodern poetry:

A Vrzhu Research Bureau Report - Techno-Lyrical Backlash

(filed 30 Mar 08)

Mount Holly, New Jersey - Here in Burlington County the techno-lyrical poetry season has just come to a close. Orphic Fusion, that exuberant annual showcase that brings cutting-edge poets to the county seat of Mount Holly to muse on the state of contemporary poetonomy and show off their latest tricks, ended a month ago. Lingua Avantguardia,  its less well-known Medford Lakes counterpart, wrapped up on March 14. The program for each was pretty much what I've come to expect. In Mount Holly, Ian Delancy cooked up a fine sestina using irrational numbers as end words, and scribbled lines in white ink across white paper and called it "In Memory of My Ironic Winter." In Medford Lakes, Martin Robinson talked about something called "synergistic de-elaboration."

And so, I’m asking: Is everybody tired of this stuff by now, or what?

Nearly two years ago, Adrian Ferrino started a revolution with his journal Rien et/o Nada? that thoroughly transformed modern poetry here, not only propelling Burlington county poets to the pinnacle of southern New Jersey literary acclaim (displacing Gloucester county in the process), but spreading a manifesto of high-impact, scientifically informed Sur-Objectivism around the 7 counties of south Jersey. Villanelles "spherified" with hydrocolloids until they looked like the gelatinous eyes of giant squid, haiku frozen with liquid nitrogen until they form ingot-shaped "stanzas," Petrarchan  sonnets on shredded magnetic tape and spun into a beehive “hairdos,” and everything from binary pantoums to sprung rhythm acrostics exploded into free floating phonemes—it's all part of a poetry style that places a premium on material innovation. At its best, this version of "molecular poetonomy" stokes the emotions and shocks the senses.

But, from the beginning, some critics have scorned a mode of writing that relies, in their opinion, too heavily on technology (as if typewriters, computers, and even pens, aren’t machines) and often chooses “foam” over substance. In a recent e-mail, Harold Stefanos, an expert on innovative poetry in the southeastern part of the Garden State, wrote, "I am getting a little weary of Burlington-driven techno-composition. Many of these 'experiments' would be better off if they didn't show up anywhere but at AWP conferences, preferably at about 2 AM. Really, they should have a stall at Pennsauken Mart, if it were still around." His words sum up recent critical attacks: It’s all getting your eye poked out until someone starts having fun. I'd like some real poems now, may I please?

So, is it over? It is true that Adrian and his fellow poets are no longer as avant-garde as they once were. In food, you know your haute cuisine is no longer haute when you see it on the Applebee’s menu. In poetry, there are different indignities, from indifference to (shudder!) acceptance.

The rest of the poetry universe has officially caught up to the Burlington revolutionaries: Ian’s journal has been replaced by a blog, and is no longer the source of the new new new thing. But poetry movements often survive in the valley of their PR long after the American Poetry Review has lost interest. The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E craze passed years ago, but interest in the structures and codes of language, the application of process, and the recognition that language is political have become staples of our poetry praxis; new formalism is tragically  unhip, but I still find quatorzains and end rhymes in poetry journals. And though often used as a derogatory term, the confessional poets of the 50’s and 60’s altered the landscape of American poetry and broadened the horizon for poems to traffick in intimate and unflattering information, poems about illness, sexuality and depression.

All these  movements eventually show some signs of stagnation—clichéd tropes,  academic analysis, overexposure, and critics standing by to gleefully rejoice in the demise in whatever movement is in their sights.

But the poems themselves never really go away. The techniques are still there, in every de-stabilized persona that daubs a fragmented lyric, in every line made colorful by hard surrealism. We may laugh at the excesses of poetry manifestos, but we read them all the time.

The same is true of Burlingtonistas. It’s not the emblematic forms they use (or, as they say, “foams”) but their vigorous, often insouciant, search for the new. In an art where individual products take a hundred years or more to prove their staying power, every movement of the last 50 years is still very young indeed.

In the meantime, Ian is has been working on using nanosyllables to achieve more precise line measurement and, in collaboration with his father’s waste disposal business, Adrian is developing a poetry medium made from compressed inorganics. Adrian says: "Hey, there are guys who say, 'it’s over, let's put it behind us,' but that's just marketing BS. I can tell you from my own experience that there is more research going on, more energy, than ever before. At least on the weekends."

And there it is.  Poetry keeps changing even as it remains the same.  Some techniques will perhaps, mercifully, not withstand the test of time. And Ian has the third degree burns to prove it.  But others, whether it’s the ghazal or the new sentence, will seep into the poetry vernacular, enhancing the range of possibilities poets have at their disposal. It’s all part of the crazy candy-colored carousel that is Poetry.

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NaPoWriMo Poemaday number one

[gone]

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Don't forget to vote for the poemaday of your choice!

Opening Day The Merkle Bonehead Play And NAPOWRIMO countdown

Mitts And Gloves

Bill Knott

For Tom Lux

The catcher holds a kangaroo fetus in his,
the firstbaseman's grips a portable hairblower,

but everyone else just stares into theirs
punching a fist into it, stumped

trying to come up with a proper occupant--
The pitcher for example thinks a good stout padlock would go

right in there, but the leftfielder,
perhaps influenced by his environment,

opts for a beercan. The shortstop
informative about the ratio of power to size,

says "Transistor. You know, radio." The
secondbaseman however he just stands and

grins and flapkacks his from hand to hand and back again,
secondbase dopey as always. Alas

cries the thirdbaseman, this void
of vacancy, pure-space beyond our defiant emptiness,--

abyss, haunted by the kiss of balls
we have not missed! Oh absence

delice…The rightfielder looks dis-
gusted at this, he just snorts, hawks, spits

into his and croaks Hey look: heck,
my chaw of tobac fits it perfeck.

The team goes mum, cowhided by
the rectitude of his position, the logic.

Only the centerfielder, who was going back
while this discussion was going on,

putting jets on his cleats to catch the proverbial
long one,

does he perhaps have a suggestion…?
As for the ball, off in mid air it dreamily

scratches its stiches and wonders
what it will look like tomorrow when it wakes up

and the doctor removes its bandages—

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from Four Poems for the St. Louis Sporting News
Jack Spicer

3

Pitchers are obviously not human. They have the ghosts of dead people in them. You wait there while they glower, put their hand to their mouths, fidget like puppets, while you're waiting to catch the ball.
You give them signs. They usually ignore them. A fast outside curve. High, naturally. And scientifically impossible. Where the batter either strikes out or he doesn't. You either catch it or you don't. You had called for an inside fast ball.
The runners on base either advance or they don't.
In any case
The ghosts of the dead people find it mighty amusing. The pitcher, in his sudden humaness looks toward the dugout in either agony or triumph. You, in either case, have a pair of hot hands.
Emotion
Being communicated
Stops
Even when the game isn't over.

4

God is a big white baseball that has nothing to do but go in a curve or a straight line. I studied geometry in highschool and know that this is true.
Given these facts the pitcher, the batter, and the catcher all look pretty silly. No Hail Marys
are going to get you out of a position with the bases loaded and no outs, or when you're 0 and 2, or when the ball bounces out to the screen wildly. Off seasons
I often thought of praying to him but could not stand the thought of that big, white, round, omnipotent bastard.
Yet he's there. As the game follows rules he makes them.
I know
I was not the only one who felt these things.

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From a letter by John Rawls to Owen Fiss on why baseball is the best sport.

Harvard University
Department of Philosophy
Emerson Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Saturday, April 18

First: the rules of the game are in equilibrium: that is, from the start, the diamond was made just the right size, the pitcher’s mound just the right distance from home plate, etc., and this makes possible the marvelous plays, such as the double play. The physical layout of the game is perfectly adjusted to the human skills it is meant to display and to call into graceful exercise. Whereas, basketball, e.g., is constantly (or was then) adjusting its rules to get them in balance.

Second: the game does not give unusua1 preference or advantage to special physical types, e.g., to tall men as in basketball. All sorts of abilities can find a place somewhere, the tall and the short etc. can enjoy the game together in different positions.

Third: the game uses all parts of the body: the arms to throw, the legs to run, and to swing the bat, etc.; per contra soccer where you can’t touch the ball. It calls upon speed, accuracy of throw, gifts of sight for batting, shrewdness for pitchers and catchers, etc. And there are all kinds of strategies.

Fourth: all plays of the game are open to view: the spectators and the players can see what is going on. Per contra football where it is hard to know what is happening in the battlefront along the line. Even the umpires can’t see it all, so there is lots of cheating etc. And in basketball, it is hard to know when to call a foul. There are close calls in baseball too, but the umps do very well on the whole, and these close calls arise from the marvelous timing built into the game and not from trying to police cheaters etc.

Fifth: baseball is the only game where scoring is not done with the ball, and this has the remarkable effect of concentrating the excitement of plays at different points of the field at the same time. Will the runner cross the plate before the fielder gets to the ball and throws it to home plate, and so on.

Finally, there is the factor of time, the use of which is a central part of any game. Baseball shares with tennis the idea that time never runs out, as it does in basketball and football and soccer. This means that there is always time for the losing side to make a comeback. The last of the ninth inning becomes one of the most potentially exciting parts of the game. And while the same sometimes happens in tennis also, it seems to happen less often. Cricket, much like baseball (and indeed I must correct my remark above that baseball is the only game where scoring is not done with the ball), does not have a time limit.

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On Poetry:

First umpire: “Some are balls and some are strikes, and I call them as they are.”
Second umpire: “Some are balls and some are strikes, and I call them as I see 'em.”
Third umpire: “Some are balls and some are strikes, but they ain’t nothin' ‘til I call 'em.”

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Bill Klem on Poetry:

"Fix your eye on the ball from the moment the pitcher holds it in his glove. Follow it as he throws to the plate and stay with it until the play is completed. Action takes place only where the ball goes."

"There are one-hundred fifty-four games in a season and you can find one-hundred fifty-four reasons why your team should have won every one of them."

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I've finally gotten off the fence and decided to napowrimo again this year. Some participants last year actually did it again during the summer, which proves it is the online version of an intense writer's retreat inside your head.

If anything, I have even less time this year, but . . .

Details to follow in the next post.

VRZHU (pronounced ver-zhoo) BULLETS OF LOVE BLOG - THE BLOG THAT WHEEDLES ITS WAY INTO YOUR HEART. This Week: The Line -- Threat or Menace?

THE SOLUTION: A MYSTERY SOLVED

I was whingeing a couple of weeks ago about prose poems: how can I evaluate them? What are the criteria? Is it prose? Is it poetry? Is it fish? Is it not-fish? A man knows not where to have her. Ookie moigay, woe is, etc.

Thankfully for all, the scholarly and ubertalented Elisa Gabbert came to my rescue. Evaluate the prose poem using criteria suitable for it, from your prose or poetry toolbelt. That is, you can go after the prose poem using everything BUT the line.

Thank you and a tall frosty one for Ms. Gabbert.  March comes in like a poem and goes out like a prose.

BUT NOW

So what about the line anyway?  Wasn't it Boom-Boom Grenier who said "I Hate Lines."  Well, "Speech." Close enough. 

Turns out I picked up a copy of A Field Guide to Contemporary [c'right 1980] Poetry and Poetics, edited by Stuart Friebert and David Young for 3 bucks at Books for America. And the second section in it is The Poetic Line: A Symposium (aside: I oppose the use of the word symposium unless the dual purpose of the event is to make speeches and get blue blind paralytic drunk) with salvos by Sandra McPherson,  James Wright,  Louis Simpson,  John Haines, Donald Hall, Shirley Kaufman, William Matthews,  Charles Simic (aside: It does not of course live up to its brag of being a "Field Guide," unless you consider it along the lines A Boy's And GIrl's Golden Book of Tame Passerines in Your Backyard, but, as that, pretty ok).

SUDDENLY

It is nice to see that all of the above poets heap scorn on the old scam of "write out this free verse poem in a paragraph and -- see! -- you can't tell where the line breaks were, so it's not REALLY a poem. Is it now, class?"

Simpson's reply to this is the most cogent and direct:

The poet is charged with failing to do something that he (sic) 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, nor 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 th 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.

I think we can shake the dust off our sandals with that.

AND THEN

Sandra McPherson says:

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.

End quote.

I guess I would say that the line, regardless of how you measure it, is a matter of pulse, not naked necessity.

MEANWHILE

James Wright rants a little incoherently, but if you squint your eyes, some things wouldn't sound completely out of place arguing for some our innovative poetries (though I think he would not be happy to hear me say so):

We have, in a lonely time, a limp surrender of intelligence to the rhetoricians of the government.

There is no poetry without its own criticism.

I have nothing against the minor elegance, because I have nothing against the failure  to think.

There is no poetry without criticism. The language dies without intelligence . . .

LET US SAIL TIL WE COME TO THE EDGE

And I always like the way William Matthews says things.  I have the essay where he says there are only four subjects of poetry (1. I went out into the woods today, and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious. 2. We're not getting any younger. 3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey. 4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent, and on what we know not.) around here somewhere.

And this is where I tie it all back to the whole prose poem enchilada. Matthews:

John Haines . . . asks, "Is this why the prose poem is so much in evidence these days? There you don't have to justify your lines, just make the paragraph and let it go."

Haines uses "justify" not in its typesetter's meaning, but in its religious meaning; writers of prose poems are like the lilies of the field.

I imagine one is drawn to write prose poems not by sloth, more purely practiced in a hammock, but by an urge to participate in a different kind of psychic energy than verse usually embodies.

Here are excerpts from etymologies of "prose" and "poetry" in Webster's Third International Dictionary. Prose is "fr. L prosa, fem. of prosus, straightfoward, direct." Verse is "fr. L versus row, line, verse; akin to L vertere to turn."

End quote.

All I can add is: America! Your utter and complete indifference only makes us stronger!

And my thanks to Kate Beaton, amazing smart funny comic artist up there in Canada, for the comic.

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Pshares blog was interested in Seth Abramson’s take on an article in the online journal Jacket about the New Sincerity.

But what is the old sincerity?

Ah, Best Beloved, by happenstance this tumbled onto our screen, Herbert Read in the Hudson Review on the Cult of Sincerity.

Read says:

What then is sincere?—perhaps only an unwitting naivety: the naivety of a child before it has eaten of the fruits of the tree of knowledge and still lives in an unreflecting state of innocence. Some rare geniuses may be able to recall a momentary awareness or retain a memory-trace of that state and then endeavour to establish its existence in their own hearts and minds—Traherne and Blake are examples from English literature, but even their innocence is suspect. The very consciousness of innocence is at the same time a consciousness of experience. We may make the distinction and cultivate innocence; but such a conscious decision is sophisticated and therefore no longer sincere.

And he goes on to pin the whole sincerity thing on Rousseau, who still sets the agenda today. And which means that sincerity in art (including poetry) has a historical connection to confession, e.g. Rousseau’s Confessions.

But of course sincerity has a more fundamental, cortical connection to childhood. Children up to a certain age are sincere. Read says:

Included in this childhood experience are not only sensations in the normal sense—sights and sounds, tastes and smells, graspings and gropings—but the first hearing of words, the first association of a particular word with a particular thing, the word itself as a thing. Poetry is nothing but the recovery of that magical experience. We may use words to describe events, to express thoughts, to establish reality, but their peculiar poetry is derived from the associations they have with our childhood experiences, when we first discover that things have names, and that these names fit them with poetic justness.

I think it’s clear this means that all poetic sincerity is disingenuous, since it requires conniving to produce its effects.

Read’s little essay is ultimately concerned with sincerity in our lives, its moral value, since the above dispenses with sincerity as an aesthetic category. Arguing about whether a poem is “sincere” is arguing about the appearance of things and not the things themselves.

So while the Jacket essay is interesting, and Abramson’s take on it isn’t exactly wrong, there’s another, prior analytic that needs to take place.

Pshares is right to associate the New Sincerity with the New Childishness, see above. And the New Sincerity is always already the Old Sincerity, and attempts to congeal it or set its parameters cannot ever be definitive and convincing, since aesthetic sincerity (which is all about style at bottom) is a non-starter.

But Read does end with a poem by George Herbert, that contains in it much of the elements of sincerity: confession, passionate conviction, and a kind of innocence of intent.

Here is thy new sincerity, may you be well-pleased with him:

Speak to us, oh beautiful one, tell us how you make that glorious sound, that even now an anticipation of it has reduced me to a snarling, raging, panting, jungle beast!

Birdie:

You gotta be sincere!
You gotta be sincere!
You gotta feel it here,
'Cause if you feel it here,
Well, then you're gonna be honestly sincere!

If what you feel is true,
You really feel it you
Make them feel it too,
Write this down now

You gotta be sincere,
Honestly sincere!
Man, you've got to be sincere!
If you're really sincere,
If you're really sincere,
If you feel it in here
Then it's gotta be right!
Oh, baby! Oh, honey!
Hug me! Suffer!

In ev'rything I do,
My sincerity shows thro'
I looked you in the eye,
Don't even have to try,
It's automatic!
I'm sincere!
When I sing about a tree,
I really feel that tree!
When I sing about a girl,
I really feel that girl,
I mean I really feel sincere!

If you're really sincere!
If you're really sincere!
If you feel it in here,
Then it's gotta be right!
Oh, baby! Oh, honey!
Hug me! Suffer!
You gotta be sincere!
Oh oh, you gotta feel it here!
Oh, my baby, oh, my baby, oh yeah!
Oh, my baby, oh yeah!

Well, you gotta be sincere!
Well, you gotta be sincere!
Well, you gotta be sincere!
Well, you gotta be sincere!
Well, you gotta be sincere!
Well, you gotta be sincere!

Oh, my baby, oh yeah!
Oh, my baby, oh yeah!
Well, you gotta be sincere!
Well, you gotta be sincere!
Oh, my baby, oh yeah!
Oh, my baby, oh yeah!
Oh, my baby, oh yeah!
Oh, my baby, oh yeah!
Yeah, YEAH!

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Perhaps this is pathological, but I am tired. Of submitting poems to journals. Of submitting books to contests. I admire other's work ethic, their industry in what is after all a generosity in sharing.  I do not have it.

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Excerpts from Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People – the Dynamics of Torture by John Conroy, published in the year 2000.

In democracies of long standing in which torture has taken place, however, denial takes hold and official acknowledgement is extremely slow in coming , if it appears at all, the response of those societies is fairly predictable and can be charted in thematic, if not chronological, stages.

The first stage of response was absolute and complete denial, accompanied by attacks on those who exposed the treatment.

The second stage was to minimize the abuse. The [British] government referred to it not as torture but as interrogation in depth.

The third stage is to disparage the victims . . . Reginald Maulding proclaimed, “It was necessary to take measures to fight terrorists, the murderous enemy. We must recognize them for what they are. They are criminals who wish o impose their own will by violence and terror.

A fourth stage is to justify the treatment on the grounds that it was effective or appropriate under the circumstances . . . the methods employed had produced “invaluable” information about a brutal, callous, and barbaric enemy.

A fifth component of a torturing society’s defense is to charge that those who take up the cause of those tortured are aiding the enemies of the state.

A sixth defense is that the torture is no longer occurring, and anyone who raises the issue is therefore “raking up the past.”

A seventh component of a torturing bureaucracy is to put the blame on a few bad apples.

An eighth stage in a society’s rationalization of its policy for torture is the common torturer’s defense . . . that someone else does or has done much worse things.

The final rationalization of a torturing nation is that victims will get over it.

. . . there are many who believe that information received from someone tortured is tainted at best, and often sheer fabrication . . . Don Dzugulones, who served as an interrogator with the Americal Division of the United States Army in Viet Nam and who witnessed and participated in torture . . . told me that he could not recall a single incident in which torture was used to a positive end . . . Dzugulones believes that torture did generate reports, and reports pleased the chain of command. "They can say, look what we've got. We developed information about a Viet Cong political school and we are going to go in there and bomb the piss out of it. SO you go in there and you bomb the piss out of if and you don't know if anybody is there or not. You don't know if the information is accurate, but there was information and there was an action based on it, so everybody is happy. You had a reason to go drop all these bombs instead of just dropping them on empty jungle. you had a target. That is what they looked for -- body counts and hard targets. Show them a Viet Cong stronghold -- God damn, that was great, because here we have all this military might and we are spinning our tires, we are pissing in the wind. Give us a hard target. Give us  something to go after. It doesn't matter how you get it, just gie us information and we will go after it full bore."

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Coming up soon at the VBofL blog:

• The Vrzhu Research Bureau addresses the skyrocketing price of crude poetry, and searches for safe, renewable sources of poetry for the sake of all our children
• Unmanned poetic vehicles  and applied robopoetic science - More from the Vrzhu Research Bureau
• Some words from us on two poetry books by Tom DIsch - our Twofer Review feature
• A  plan for the upcoming National Poetry Month Write a Poem A Day Events
• Doubts about my matzoh ball making ability
• All posts will be in green for St. Patrick's Day
• Poetry and Opening Day - Baseball poems the Poetry Foundation website overlooked last year and I'm not surprised
• Poetry Marketplace - Don't squeeze the sonnets or you'll get a bad one in the bottom of your shopping bag

Saturday morning vids!

Get your bowl of Count Chocula and settle down in front of your screen, in your jammies.  It's Laurie Anderson.

Obama's real Poetry

I was recently wondering who the likely candidates would choose to read poetry at their inaugurals.  No one seemed to know much more than that the Clintons were going with Maya Angelou (of "a rock, a river, a tree") again.

Well, it turns out Obama is himself an amateur poet -- and I don't mean just his poetic oratory either.

Here's one from the Senator's student days when he was 19.  Titled "Pop", it's about his grandfather:

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes,
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me.

Ben MacIntyre of the London Times Online writes:

Obama's poetry, as evidenced by two poems he wrote for a college magazine at the age of 19, is actually surprisingly good. Indeed, he may be the best amateur poet to run for president since Abraham Lincoln, which is saying quite a lot.

Now reading this makes me wonder anew of who he'd choose to read at his inaugural? 
Any ideas of who his poetry might be reminiscent of who Obama would commission a poem from?
I also wonder if he still writes and/or reads poetry?  Could be promising.

ti esti poetry?

Forgive the Aristotelian question "What is?" but ever-blogging Ron Silliman has a post up wherein he answers some questions posed by the Poetry Foundation and the Aspen Institute. It's from a questionnaire the PF sent to Mr. Silliman (if you received one, consider yourself officially recognized) intended to inform discussion and debate at an upcoming conference.

Mr. Silliman writes in answer to the question "What are the most pressing needs of poetry and the poetry community?":

There are presently at least 10,000 publishing English-language poets. There may in fact be twice that number . . . In the 1950s, there were at most a few hundred poets publishing in English. . . . Considering what percentage of the populace actually reads for pleasure, and of that the tiny fraction that reads poetry, we find ourselves in the century of niche markets. And poetry is not one niche market, but many.

Two observations before retiring to contemplate this a bit more:

The question the Poetry Foundation is asking is an economic one.  What are the most pressing needs of poetry and the poetry community that can be met through economic means?

On the one hand, this shows an admirable activism on the Poetry Foundation's part to discharge their responsibility for the approximately $100 million gift they received a few years ago. If they know the pressing needs they can apply their resources where it will do the most good.

On the other hand, once the horizon has been established as economic, all other concerns and questions fall below that horizon -- out of sight and out of mind.  Economic questions imply business-related solutions (i.e., 'responsible' solutions) which in turn imply an assumption about the nature of poetry.  I'm not sure what that implied nature is, whether it's "poetry operates like a market" or "the quality and reach of poetry can be increased by economic means" but some kind of limiting assumption is inevitable.  For instance, Dylan Thomas' answer to that question might be "the most pressing need of poetry right now is another fecking drink and a dirty, boozy girl to share it with." Of course he wouldn't say "fecking" which is an Irish locution.

Second observation: If Mr. Silliman is right in his answer, or even close to right, then this is not just a qualitative change in poetry from the 1950's, but also a change in the nature of what poetry is.  Like all  changes, this must be in part due to a technological change.  Mr. Silliman points out some changes in publishing technology and educational technology that might be among the causes.

I don't mean to say that poetry now has a completely different nature than it did 50 years ago.  If that were true we would no longer recognize poetry from previous times as poetry.  I mean that poetry has changed genetically. It is still the same genus, but some sort of speciation has taken place. And, like all speciation, these changes are not better or worse (it's not "progress," folks), but the result of environmental (technological) changes.

So the question is what in poetry's eidos, its manifest nature, has changed and what hasn't. What is poetry?