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Vrzhu Research Bureau News - New Keats Poem Discovered

Hello, and welcome to Vrzhu Bullets of Love blog, the only blog with the Fine Beekeeping seal of approval.

For a while now, poets have been writing into the Vrzhu Research Bureau (a wholly owned subsidiary of Vrzhu Press) and asking: “Dear Vrzhu Research Bureau, how can I take advantage of today’s exciting new “web log” technology to increase my market share in the highly competitive world of being noticed by the rest of the poetry world?”

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A recent search through the vast holdings of the Vrzhu Research Bureau archives uncovered the draft of a  previously unknown poem by John Keats.  It appears that Keats started on this poem just before his Annus Mirabilis of 1819.  He abandoned the effort late in 1818, as is made clear by a hastily scribbled annotation at the bottom: "Note to self: Never drink Laphroaig Scotch again! Bloody newfangled hippocrene nearly did me in! Look at this shite!"

It's evident that Keats cannabilized the best of this draft for his "Ode to Pysche," but why he did not continue with the poem below, or why he made the change is open to speculation, absent any other documentary evidence.

Ode to the Accordion (draft)
John Keats

O Accordion!  Hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
     By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
     Even into thine own squeeze-boxèd ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
     The strapped accordion with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
     And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couchèd side by side
     In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
     Of leaves and tremblèd blossoms, where there ran
          A brooklet, scarce espied:

'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
     Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
He lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
     Arms embraced an accordion new;
     His lips mov'd not, but had not bid adieu,
As if disjoinèd by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still to play a Polka number
     At tender eye-dawn of Tyrolean love.
          The winged boy I knew;
     But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
          His Accordion true!

O German born and loveliest vision far
     Of Terpishore’s faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Banjo or torso’d Guitar,
     Or Bagpipes, amorous wheeze-drones of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
     Nor altar heap'd with flowers;
Nor dirndl’d-choir to make delicious moan
     Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no Pilsner sweet
     From foaming beer stein teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
     Of pale-mouth'd Polka dreaming.

O brightest!  though too late for antique vows,
     Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
     Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir'd
     From gay pieties, thy lucent bellows,
     Fluttering among the Czech-Slovak fellows,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
     So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
          Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy keyboard sweet
     From swingèd tempos teeming;
Thy reeds, thy grill, thy bass buttons, thy heat
     Of pale-mouth'd Polka dreaming.

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.”

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!

Tuesday Wrap - Split this Rock, etc.

I missed the Split This Rock Poetry Festival these past four days due to international intrigue.  Or something.

But STR got a lot of well-deserved coverage in lots of places. You can get the skinny here if you also missed it.  Word had been spreading for quite a while.

I'll be checking out the Split This Rock blog, which has some videos of readings and stuff up, and promises to put up more as they get them, which means I won't feel entirely left out, at least after the fact.

Vrzhu publisher Dan Vera showed up here in poetry and elsewhere in person. I'm hoping he'll report here on the festival as an observer, attendee, and participant.

Karren Alenier, aka The Dresser, has some reporting out on her blog here and here and here and here.

Having missed it I can still enjoy the Split This Rock issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly -- including this brilliant poem by Naomi Ayala, one my big poetry crushes -- and this issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal.

I look forward to hearing about Vrzhu author Kim Roberts' Harlem Renaissance in DC tour.

From the blog posts about the event -- of which I expect to see more and more of as folks report back on the festival -- it was by all accounts an exhilarating success.

I remain in awe of festival organizers and masterminds Melissa Tuckey and the inimitable Sarah Browning as well as the rest of the Split This Rock posse.

UPDATE (Dan here): I was able to get some nice video of Mark Doty and Galway Kinnell's reading.  I've posted it on YouTube and below.

The festival was a great success and the hope is to hold these every two years.

I got some video of Mark Doty's gorgeous reading on Saturday night.  Doty read a number of poems including Walt Whitman's "Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic A Voice."  But I was really stunned by his reading of an earlier poem of his titled "Charlie Howard's Descent" written after the killing of a gay boy in Maine.  The video is below.  Below are links from other videos I posted to Youtube.

Mark Doty reading Whitman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7HgO3d3AmA

Galway Kinnell stunning reading Paul Celan's "Fugue of Death"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDpaNLaBt0I

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?

Kim Roberts on the Blogosphere

A number of great blogs have recently run features on our very own Kim Roberts.

C.M. Mayo has a nice post about Kim, where she calls the author of The Kimnama, "DC's Poetry Goddess.  Check it out at Madam Mayo. 

Over at Shiva's Arms, Cheryl Snell asked Kim to guest blog about her use of travel journals in constructing first drafts of The Kimnama.  Check it out at Shiva's Arms.

Sarah Browning reviews The Kimnama on her site.  The Poets Against War board member writes:

"Emotional issues live at the heart of the work -- faith, compassion, our human differences and similarities -- always treated with nuance and understatement. And yet the poet is unafraid to let love stand as the final and central touchstone..."

Read the full review on Sarah Browning's Blog.

Lastly, Didi Menendez, editor of Mi Poesias has started a fascinating new blog highlighting women publishers.  Her interview with Kim can be found at Women On The Web.

“The desire to write poetry is a weird and unnatural thing.”

Vrzhu author---and one of its guardian angels---, Kim Roberts, is interviewed  by Kathi Wolfe in Scene 4 online.  It’s a wonderful article and a wonderful interview. Continuing congrats to the fabulous Ms. Roberts.

Ms. Roberts also has a website up here.  Worth checking out, mes amis.

Popular blogs (sic)

The Poetry Foundation site has a [nice] article where poets pick out some of their favorite online sites, though misnomered as a blog-o-rama since many of the sites are online journals, collections, et cetera.

But, here's the kicker, if you read the article using an algorithm of John Cage's mesostic methods, it spells out the entire URL and title for our very own Vrzhu Bullets of Pure Love! Don't forget to do the simple letter substitution code before you begin.

That should keep you away from those infernal, soul-destroying sudokus for a day.

Rose Metal's Brevity and Echo

Folks: Head over to Rose Metal Press's blog and order a copy of Brevity and Echo.

This collection of short short fiction by alumni of Emerson College is their inaugural publication and, let me tell you, they are off to a good start.

Rose Metal is a publisher of hybrid genre works: short short fiction, novels-in-inverse, book length linked poems, and other interstitial writing. Check them out.