Final Post – Poetry in the 21st Century

Take a look at this video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8610524.stm

Karla Kelsey - Knowledge, Forms, The Aviary

This book is filled with beautiful phrases, but I'm not sure what it's point is beyond that. The images that Kelsey uses certainly strike me– "and the birds, here, unnatural, hovering, over this blood-letting", "the gun firing out orange blossom into the flock held captive, sparks or bullets becoming the progeny of birds burst into the shadow of coined knowledge", etc. However, I'm not sure what Kelsey's point is with this book except to have it be beautiful. I'm also not entirely sure it needs such a defined purpose. Flynn and Greenfield were deconstructing their tortured pasts, Bradfield was telling the story of the Artic explorers and sending a message of conservationism, Mullen was playing with words and the struggle of races, Magee was playing with Dickinson, and on and on. I can't quite pick out Kelsey's "goal" with this book. She just seems to pick up Plato/ Aristotle's idea of a mind being like an aviary and fly with it (no pun intended). She uses this idea in conjunction with the camera and the idea of seeing the same things through different lenses to explore how the mind works in various given situations.

The one thing that did bother me a little bit about Kelsey's book was the abundant use of asterisks. While it's not nearly as profuse as Minnis's ellipses, I also did not find them nearly as useful. They seemed to break up what seemed like a natural rhythm flowing through her poems. The asterisks seemed like they were there more because they were a pretty symbol, rather than being there to indicate a "filled silence" like in Minnis's book. I really liked the rhythms that Kelsey creates on her own through repetition and rhyme, and I felt like poems that had asterisks all over the place distracted from that. For example, I liked these asterisk-free poems:

Flood/Fold - Aperture 3

Halting into the mouth I thought

the image of the bird would sing but it wouldn’t

though the mouth says I am content now with domestic things

the sound of the broom on the floor body moving

the way a woman’s body has been seen moving

a simpler song and more sweet some would say when heard or read

as the birds wake and there is no reason for waking oneself

on a day like this beginning in curtain light and oranges.

and

Movements
We are the ones
who are held and hold,
for the travelers all aspire to this passage,
we among them, and only two

passing, a tolling of bells
as if in a medieval city,
crier, town spire—this
burgeoned from the personal day,

signing the contract, contracting
so tightly that I out at the edges—
the breath—the song let loose—

And so unto the electrical bells, sing,
washing over bones to heaven,
heart to earth. Not any other way
to do it, though the hand aches
from holding and
elemental of the heart: hooded.

Fence Magazine - Catherine Wagner

Wagner's poetry caught my eye because I found the most entertaining. Although they seemed overly constructed, they were still clever. I especially liked her poem "Coming and I did not Run Away". I liked how she started with real German words and then progressed rapidly to imitations of them. I also liked the use of self-awareness in the poems. I thought it worked well in "Among the Orders". Wagner comments on how whatever happens in a poem, it happens mainly because the poet wants to find out what would happen if two things are thrown together.

The one thing that bothered me about the poems were that they seemed very... constructed. I wish I had a better word for this, but I can't think of one. What I mean is, I get the sense in some of the lines that things are being thrown in there just because the poet knows they will catch attention, and she is deliberately trying to be "edgy". One example of this is the vulgarity. I don't have a problem with vulgarity in poems, but here it just seems unnecessary. Like the two homeless people could easily have been doing something besides "fucking". I think Wagner even comments on this herself in "Coming and I did not Run Away". After she randomly throws in the uterus, she even says "I saw the 'usual turn of phrase'/ coming and I did not run away/ I lay around". It sounds to me like she was writing a perfectly good poem, then some random line popped into her head and she just put it down, even though it had nothing to do with the poem. It just felt lazy to me.

Michael Magee - My Angie Dickinson (03/08/2010)

Whoa. This book is such a trip. Reading this book makes me feel like I'm in some sort of whirlwind, falling through the rabbit hole. There are all these objects and people that are known in normal life, but the phrases that link them together make no sense. It's like the Mad Hatter. Like the caterpillar smoking up. A little bit psychotic. Not that that's necessarily bad.

The book takes you down a path you think you know- poems built from stanzas, numbered and spaced with dashes like Emily Dickinson's work- but then hits you over the head with the amount of chaos that's happening. You read a poem, thinking you've recognized things (Margaret Thatcher & the Sphinx, for example) and will now be able to deconstruct it, only to realize you really have no clue what it's about. You're left with the feeling that Magee has taken a little bit of Dickinson and made it something wicked.

Take this excerpt from #102, for example:

Her wound apologizes —
In public — Like a Sailor —
Permeating the postwar years
“Like a” throbbing — Hangover —

At first glance, the it looks like a Dickinsonian verse. It's short, has several dashes, and has quick but lasting phrases that make it up. On second glance, the poem makes no sense. How does a wound apologize and what does that have to do with war or hangovers? At third glance, the poem is so naughty! Sailors (notoriously unmannered and brash) permeating something.... a woman's "wound" perhaps? Makes my mind go straight to the gutter.

Another thing that caught my eye was how in some poems, it seems like Magee is writing from a more feminine point of view. He really seems to be stepping into Dickinson's shoes here. For example:

#77
I’ll never sit on pleather again!
Miguel would never — — have dared pretend
It took a Real Cowboy to pull it — —

My innermost feelings — — Can Be — — like Mike — —
But if the Future is Matrix — — like — —
I can’t wait to do some “bullet”!

It doesn't seem especially manly to be worried about where one is going to sit or talk about one's "innermost feelings". Another example of this is #29:

I dressed, ran toward some nearby woods
with booklet and nice
something — “About” — the mourning dove’s —
low note’s Excuse —

Running into the woods with a booklet (perhaps a novel or a diary) and commenting on the birds seems like something a girl would do, like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm or Anne of Green Gables. It is also reminiscent of Dickinson, in the way that she commented on nature and and wrote about things she noticed in her garden.

All in all, I'm not sure if this collection is an ode to Dickinson or just an opportunity to poke fun at her style. I think it might be a combination of both.

In the spirit of "Sleeping with the Dictionary"...

Alphabet Poem:

Ay, boy, calm down. Easy.

Free girls have it. Just, kind lovers

meaning no other passion. Quest rests south.

Tucked under various wardrobes – Xanadu!

Yours,

Zaaraa

Harryette Mullen - Sleeping with the Dictionary (03/01/2010)

The poems in "Sleeping With The Dictionary" came off as very witty and funny. It definitely seemed like Mullen enjoyed writing the poems, whether they be her long prose exposés or her nonsensical babbles. I enjoyed them too, as a reader, because they were a great break from the other books we read which were all very obviously trying to pass on serious messages.

One of the reasons I liked this book was because I enjoyed her exploration of language. One example of this is "Coo/Slur".

da red

yell ow

bro won t

an orange you

bay jaun

pure people

blew hue

a gree gree in

viol let

purepeople

be lack

why it

pee ink

It's such a simple thing. All she is doing is playing with the sounds in the names of colors. It's clever because she makes the reader want to read the poem again and again and recite it aloud.

Another poem that plays with language is "Mantra for a Classless Society, on Mr. Roget's Neighborhood". Mullen mixes "synonym-izing" and "alliter-izing" to create this poem. She manages to imbue meaning into it at the same time. It is this careful crafting that I admire and appreciate in Mullen's work. It reminds me of how every line 1984 is so particularly prepared to give the reader the over all sense of the situation just through the sound and hidden meanings in the words.

Finally, in talking about how Mullen plays with language, we of course have to mention her book's title and overall theme. I how she tried to explore every letter of the alphabet through her poems. I only wonder why she had more of some letters than others. I also wonder if she wrote all these poems with the intention of writing an alphabet book or if she had a bunch of these poems already and then just decided to fill in the gaps in the alphabet by writing more.

Other poems that I enjoyed are what I consider to be Mullen's little "jokes" in her book. One such poem is "O, 'Tis William". It reminds me of the classic "Who's on First?" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfmvkO5x6Ng), and I'm sure that she must have heard that and been inspired by it.

Another such poem is "Kamasutra Sutra". "Sutra" means rules, and Kama Sutra is the book containing the rules of love. Thus, I found it interesting that meaning of the poem's title is rules of the rule-book of love. Besides this, the poem itself is clever and funny.

Lastly, I liked how there are little bombs of unknown or unfamiliar words dropped all over the place in this book. They are not usually enough to seriously impede comprehension of the poem, but they are enough of a block to make a reader want to pick up a dictionary. It's almost as if Mullen is trying to get her readers to take the same journey she seems to have taken and really explore language for all its sounds and meanings and synonyms and whatever else is hidden inside it.

Chelsey Minnis - Zirconia (02/22/2010)

So many dots! The numerous ellipses-infused poems in Zirconia read like scenes flashing up on the screen during a big, dramatic movie. It's like stop-motion poetry. I read Minnis's poems and can imagine a heavy heartbeat (th-thump, th-thump) sound with each new phrase that pops up out of all the dots. And whenever there's lots and lots of dots between words (pg. 29, during the poem "Supervermillion"), I can imagine the heartbeat still sounding, even in the silence.

The dots really intrigue me. On one hand, they seem like such a waste of space. On the other, plenty of poets use blank space, so maybe Minnis isn't stretching it too far. I wondered why Minnis chooses to use all the dots instead of just blank space like most poets would. I think that she is acknowledging the sort of 'heartbeat' I can feel in the poetry. The poem is still very much alive in those spaces. The silence is not really silent.

One of the poems that really had this effect on me was "Pitcher". The images are so clear, I can almost feel the water splashing over me, soaking my shirt, the pitcher clanging on the ground as it bounces away.

I believe that all the dots give us time to process what Minnis is writing. And the dots as opposed to the spaces feels like she is telling us, 'no, this is not a moment just to breathe, this is a moment to really consider the image I am painting for you'. For example, in "Tiger", pg. 45: After "beautiful, unbroken vase" she gives us time to really see that vase, feel the clay curves ourselves, before moving on to the next thing. A few lines down, after another longer string of dots, she says "expansiveness", like a comment on what just happened in the poem. On the other hand, she uses less dots between words on the previous page when she says, "how I want to replicate...... them or re-create their arcs........ or put them in a spotlight...... against a black backdrop" because they are images that really fit together and need to be considered more closely as parts of one idea.

Another tool that stood out to me in Minnis's work was the use of color, particularly red. It reminded me of Greenfield's tree-tool. The set of poems in Zirconia made me think of modern paintings such as this one: http://bw-inc.deviantart.com/art/BLACK-WHITE-RED-12895843

The picture is mainly black and white, but there is some red, and the red that is there really pops out at you. Minnis has repeated references to blood and redness in general. One of the poems in the book is even called "Maroon" and another is "Cherry". I would like to explore this motif further. Red is known to be the first color the eye picks up on in a scene and is a color associated with drama and shocking things in general. I wonder if this is why Minnis uses the color so much or if it is because of some childhood trauma associated with blood that she has had to deal with.