Zach Wells has provided a selfless service for the poetic community with his new blog Poets and Microphones (side bar). Selecting only the unselfconscious, pose-pooh-poohing, career-tamping, Freudian-phallus-negating aficionados of the surpassing line dance, his captures observe spiritual seriousness and quietude amongst our fervid monks and monkettes as they're caught, unawares, expatiating on matters important and publicly muted.
Here's hoping there are more such event-abasing poets in our midst, and that they too can be teased into coming out of their protective shells for our benefit.
Friday, October 23, 2009
"Misty Banks At Eighty"
My carunculated chin, slow wag
Of hazy epiphanies, sags, the patch-
Work grid of veins blue onionskin. Caught
In a poking sun through frosted
Window, I stretch the black hairball-spotted robe
Like a shroud over my V-necked hair shirt
To freeze out memories of a Romantic
Bodhidharma in China blocking the man who,
Six weeks in wind and banked snow, pounded
The door of the fierce Indian spike of stone,
And, no answer, no answer, cut off
His own arm and set it by the locked latch.
"Come in", from within. Nine years facing the
Wall, patient as sun on stricken birch leaves
Quivering in concert under the hawk's
Erasing curve.
Of hazy epiphanies, sags, the patch-
Work grid of veins blue onionskin. Caught
In a poking sun through frosted
Window, I stretch the black hairball-spotted robe
Like a shroud over my V-necked hair shirt
To freeze out memories of a Romantic
Bodhidharma in China blocking the man who,
Six weeks in wind and banked snow, pounded
The door of the fierce Indian spike of stone,
And, no answer, no answer, cut off
His own arm and set it by the locked latch.
"Come in", from within. Nine years facing the
Wall, patient as sun on stricken birch leaves
Quivering in concert under the hawk's
Erasing curve.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Jeff Derksen's TRANSNATIONAL MUSCLE CARS
This 2003 volume contains 21 poems over 125 pages, and the last 6 or so are one-pagers. When I first encounter a twenty-page poem, I immediately think "epic", or at least "narrative excursion". But what we have here, as in other language-foolery, is a drawn-out, indulgent, in-house wank that could just as easily have been reduced by 90% without losing any blood from its severed limbs.
"But Could I Make A Living From It" is representative. At 16 pages of found prose, monotonous quotes, cliches altered by consonantal substitution of one word to affect an ironic "gotcha!", "profound" anagrams, and bland maxims of capitalist-consumerist critique, the poem's fractured splinters make the chest-lodged ash-stick of a Louisville slugger a better option.
Parataxis is revered by McCaffery's borrowed authority, and this book is full of it. Hypotactic clauses are, after all, "authoritative" by their subordinate "defensiveness". Egalitarianism, in grammar and cloudy content, is the way. But the way to what? Paratactical syntax quickly becomes numbing when it's the only option. I'm surprised Derksen doesn't see the irony in the frequent emotional and intellectual bankruptcy of "this-this-this" speech and thought. Clauses -- subordinate and strong -- are effective means of showing the power trade-offs and natural gradations inherent in all kinds of ideas and emotions. Or is proportion and level of feeling to be discounted, even mocked, in toto? For all the superior scoffing at language misuse (Roy Miki's Surrender immediately comes to mind), there is a conspicuous absense of any positive countervailing substitute, in language or idea. But I guess that would be hard to relate in a strangled theory-governed (more irony) equanimous sentence deployment.
In another interminable run-on, lines of pop and blues music are set down with, again, one or two words replaced in an attempt at witty denunciation on contemporary greed and (architectural) vulgarity.
More a sermon on the evils of consumerism couched in "subversive" shredding of hand-me-down banalities, Transnational Muscle Cars would have worked better as graffiti sprayed at the bottom of a billboard emblazoned with leisure suits or banking come-ons.
"But Could I Make A Living From It" is representative. At 16 pages of found prose, monotonous quotes, cliches altered by consonantal substitution of one word to affect an ironic "gotcha!", "profound" anagrams, and bland maxims of capitalist-consumerist critique, the poem's fractured splinters make the chest-lodged ash-stick of a Louisville slugger a better option.
Parataxis is revered by McCaffery's borrowed authority, and this book is full of it. Hypotactic clauses are, after all, "authoritative" by their subordinate "defensiveness". Egalitarianism, in grammar and cloudy content, is the way. But the way to what? Paratactical syntax quickly becomes numbing when it's the only option. I'm surprised Derksen doesn't see the irony in the frequent emotional and intellectual bankruptcy of "this-this-this" speech and thought. Clauses -- subordinate and strong -- are effective means of showing the power trade-offs and natural gradations inherent in all kinds of ideas and emotions. Or is proportion and level of feeling to be discounted, even mocked, in toto? For all the superior scoffing at language misuse (Roy Miki's Surrender immediately comes to mind), there is a conspicuous absense of any positive countervailing substitute, in language or idea. But I guess that would be hard to relate in a strangled theory-governed (more irony) equanimous sentence deployment.
In another interminable run-on, lines of pop and blues music are set down with, again, one or two words replaced in an attempt at witty denunciation on contemporary greed and (architectural) vulgarity.
More a sermon on the evils of consumerism couched in "subversive" shredding of hand-me-down banalities, Transnational Muscle Cars would have worked better as graffiti sprayed at the bottom of a billboard emblazoned with leisure suits or banking come-ons.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
BC Arts Funding Cuts
90% of the budget chopped. From BC Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman:
"When you think about a child arriving in school with an empty stomach that isn't going to get the education they require, you have to decide, 'Is that a priority, or some other thing?' You make the decision on behalf of the child."
Those artistic cons! Dickens'd be putting the boots to those mustache-twirling creeps!
Or .... wait. Maybe a drop from the ocean of billion-plus gallons in the form of Olympic overrun could be used. Er .... too late to call that one off. Chicago's lucky, at least. And BCTV for a three-week fake orgasm.
"When you think about a child arriving in school with an empty stomach that isn't going to get the education they require, you have to decide, 'Is that a priority, or some other thing?' You make the decision on behalf of the child."
Those artistic cons! Dickens'd be putting the boots to those mustache-twirling creeps!
Or .... wait. Maybe a drop from the ocean of billion-plus gallons in the form of Olympic overrun could be used. Er .... too late to call that one off. Chicago's lucky, at least. And BCTV for a three-week fake orgasm.
Monday, October 12, 2009
From the "Language Log" Site
"Here's why I bothered to write anything at all about a pathetic little 500-word radio sermon: I am so sick of seeing stupid writing advice handed out by pusillanimous pseudo-experts on language — dim-witted vicars like Angela Tilby, pontificating authoritarians like E. B. White in the chapter he added to The Elements of Style, and all the English teachers who have (while hypocritically making free to constantly using adjectives in their own writing) poisoned the reputation of adjectives down the centuries (see the first chapter of Ben Yagoda's delightful little book on the parts of speech, When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It).
These people are wasting educational time and effort, and helping to drive students into a state that I have written about before, characterized by "vague unease instead of a sense of mastery," and feeling "less sure of themselves, yet no better informed," so that their writing ability is "probably being harmed rather than enhanced" — in short, a state of nervous cluelessness about language.
Repeating the falsehood that adjectives are bad in general makes people less able to see what is wrong when they really are over-used."
Amen! I love riproarin', seductive adjectives. Hemingway is the bees' knees, but I'm a sucker for rhetoric, too, rhetoric that nae has to be smothered in direct Presbyterian relating. (Would that last sentence have been better enacted by tacking an "ism" onto the middle word, and expunging "direct" and "relating", or, similarly, by choosing a more "accurate" stand-alone noun?) Literal-minded, fussy, unfunny, colourless, scrimping, legalistic, noun-as-holy-intonation marms. Or, if you're allergic to adjectives -- marms.
These people are wasting educational time and effort, and helping to drive students into a state that I have written about before, characterized by "vague unease instead of a sense of mastery," and feeling "less sure of themselves, yet no better informed," so that their writing ability is "probably being harmed rather than enhanced" — in short, a state of nervous cluelessness about language.
Repeating the falsehood that adjectives are bad in general makes people less able to see what is wrong when they really are over-used."
Amen! I love riproarin', seductive adjectives. Hemingway is the bees' knees, but I'm a sucker for rhetoric, too, rhetoric that nae has to be smothered in direct Presbyterian relating. (Would that last sentence have been better enacted by tacking an "ism" onto the middle word, and expunging "direct" and "relating", or, similarly, by choosing a more "accurate" stand-alone noun?) Literal-minded, fussy, unfunny, colourless, scrimping, legalistic, noun-as-holy-intonation marms. Or, if you're allergic to adjectives -- marms.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Lionel Kearns' A FEW WORDS WILL DO
Part of the Simon Fraser coterie, Lionel Kearns has been overlooked by his more aggressively promotional language-obsessed poet-friends and colleagues. Clicking his bio, I see that, before this 2007 selected, A Few Words Will Do, Kearns' last book of poetry was fashioned in 1982. Some poets have cored a hectare of dogwoods in their published endeavours in that time, not to mention (love that contradictory phrase-cliche) tried the patience of even their most sympathetic followers. So I was initially kindly disposed towards Kearns in my first encounter with his work.
Interspersed throughout the volume are quite a few concrete creations. I admit to an extreme bias against concrete poetry of any variety; I find it a one-off amusement, lacking in scope, depth, and (though at times witty) humour. The concrete display in A Few Words Will Do does nothing to alter my experience. (I tried re-reading them after a week, to no greater benefit.)
The book is loosely arranged in three sections: nature poems, with ruminations on time; people poems; poems which give language different characters as a way out of its self-consciousness.
The first section is the weakest. Though the initial poems rework some often-used imagery to decent effect, the abstractions are left hanging like dance partners halfway through a series of prom songs. "We carry time/in our heads,", "aware at last that we grow old", "swirling into centres of imploding nebulae", "Time is not some/thing to possess": all these are taken from what (perhaps?) is Kearns' early days (his poetic career has spanned half a century), and the tendency toward profundity is hopelessly out of kilter with original statement and the aesthetic means to contain it.
Things pick up when Kearns concentrates on people living through miserable circumstances. Sentiment is checked, and the stories, though frequently deadened by prosiness, at least effect, through curious narrative, a meditative possibility, a quiet questioning, through their unfortunate protagonists.
The last, long section infuses some quirkiness and semblance of life into the by-now exceedingly boring dead-end of language hand-wringing. "This poem", as most of them proceed, is alternately a "space-based laser", a "ruined structure", or a "professional". Others are singular emotions or attitudes: depression, blind, a consumer product. The reader is challenged, but the poem itself isn't let off the hook, either: "[it can] censor/an offending passage at a distance/of a thousand miles".
Unremarkable in syntax, sonic possibility, or (for a long career perspective) depth of thought, Kearns' A Few Words Will Do nevertheless discovers an emotional observation of mutability, and engages the reader with the latter's own reflected time-travels and -travails.
Interspersed throughout the volume are quite a few concrete creations. I admit to an extreme bias against concrete poetry of any variety; I find it a one-off amusement, lacking in scope, depth, and (though at times witty) humour. The concrete display in A Few Words Will Do does nothing to alter my experience. (I tried re-reading them after a week, to no greater benefit.)
The book is loosely arranged in three sections: nature poems, with ruminations on time; people poems; poems which give language different characters as a way out of its self-consciousness.
The first section is the weakest. Though the initial poems rework some often-used imagery to decent effect, the abstractions are left hanging like dance partners halfway through a series of prom songs. "We carry time/in our heads,", "aware at last that we grow old", "swirling into centres of imploding nebulae", "Time is not some/thing to possess": all these are taken from what (perhaps?) is Kearns' early days (his poetic career has spanned half a century), and the tendency toward profundity is hopelessly out of kilter with original statement and the aesthetic means to contain it.
Things pick up when Kearns concentrates on people living through miserable circumstances. Sentiment is checked, and the stories, though frequently deadened by prosiness, at least effect, through curious narrative, a meditative possibility, a quiet questioning, through their unfortunate protagonists.
The last, long section infuses some quirkiness and semblance of life into the by-now exceedingly boring dead-end of language hand-wringing. "This poem", as most of them proceed, is alternately a "space-based laser", a "ruined structure", or a "professional". Others are singular emotions or attitudes: depression, blind, a consumer product. The reader is challenged, but the poem itself isn't let off the hook, either: "[it can] censor/an offending passage at a distance/of a thousand miles".
Unremarkable in syntax, sonic possibility, or (for a long career perspective) depth of thought, Kearns' A Few Words Will Do nevertheless discovers an emotional observation of mutability, and engages the reader with the latter's own reflected time-travels and -travails.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Kildare Dobbs' THE ELEVENTH HOUR
I remember Dobbs as an editor and poetry reviewer for the Toronto Star and Saturday Night, and hadn't bumped against his name for a long time, so it was intriguing to recently find his first poetry collection, The Eleventh Hour, published in 1997.
Contemporary English speaking poetry is lacking in unironic sexuality. Oh, sex is often mated, as it were, with animal symbolism, archaeological ruminations, historical substitution, gender politics, postmodern code, but frank discussion, dripping with sweat? The ground is dry.
Enter Dobbs' obsessions in The Eleventh Hour. I appreciate the subject matter, and the elder writer occasionally has something to say about the horizontal act. But for one who, decades ago, criticized Irving Layton for being "puritan" in his depiction of sex, and who criticized D H Lawrence for being "priggish" about fucking, Dobbs' sober assessments are curiously and consistently removed from direct engagement. I don't mean that the narcissistic authorial "I" needs to be enshrined, nor do I think that anecdotal diary entries, boasting or self-lacerating, need be the way forward. But Dobbs' procedure is cold contact, like kissing through mesh wire, with the acts he writes about. (It's here that I realize many deconstructionists -- if any are reading -- would wonder what the problem may be. But I won't grace their emotionless smirking with defensive reasoning or offensive stance. Many times, arguing for a position only makes it appear that the other side at least has merit.) Scouring mythology (Northrop Frye is given two separate nods) overloads the concentration on sexual transgression; recounting sexual brutishness throughout history is elevated into an attitude of Olympian maturity. One looks, with barren hope, for a striking image, a personal sigh, an agonized dispatch, a fond reminiscence. Where emotional content is promising, delivery is not only flaccid, but noncommital.
Speaking of noncommital, the final line of "Massacre of the innocents" is: "What other remedy is there but laughter". But this laughter, from what precedes it, is a deflection, a hollow laughter, a way of turning down the volume before forgetting the event altogether. The event? The mass slaughter of babies before their mothers. Did I miss a subtle irony? I suppose that excuse can be used in almost any poem presuming to hide layered ambiguities where none exist. But what equally sinks this poem is that it isn't a poem at all, in any sense. It is reportage, fantastical or not. Here is the opening stanza:
"Killing a whole crowd of babies at once
was even more harshly repugnant to an age
accustomed to killing them one at a time
than to our own which hardly even ventures
on single murders but glumly carries out
mass slaughter with the sanction of principle
or declared wishes of the majority."
Those are the deadest lines of poetry I've read in quite some time. The subject may as well have been effective needlepoint techniques. And if you strung that sentence out to a prose tidbit, the rhythm more easily resembles a sportswriter scribbling to meet a midnight deadline. No, that's not fair to the sportswriter. He or she is under time constraints, and so errors of narrative, even grammar, are more naturally forgiven. But Dobbs has had many of these poems, reworked or not, gathering dust in a top shelf before submission.
I was surprised, therefore, to encounter the concluding sixteen poem section VI. The mood, though marred by pedantic asides entrenched throughout the work, finally has some sass and variation, easily trumping the consistently somber, elegiac droning which precedes it. And the humour here, unlike the occasional attempts in sections one through five, doesn't induce wincing and groaning.
I just noticed that Dobbs' latest book, a memoir, has been lauded by various reviewers as "peripatetic" and "worldly". I don't know. I haven't read it. But whatever the travels of the writer, the base camp and final destination is still the human heart. It's too bad that Dobbs is unwilling or unable to show much of that volatile territory for the reader in The Eleventh Hour.
Contemporary English speaking poetry is lacking in unironic sexuality. Oh, sex is often mated, as it were, with animal symbolism, archaeological ruminations, historical substitution, gender politics, postmodern code, but frank discussion, dripping with sweat? The ground is dry.
Enter Dobbs' obsessions in The Eleventh Hour. I appreciate the subject matter, and the elder writer occasionally has something to say about the horizontal act. But for one who, decades ago, criticized Irving Layton for being "puritan" in his depiction of sex, and who criticized D H Lawrence for being "priggish" about fucking, Dobbs' sober assessments are curiously and consistently removed from direct engagement. I don't mean that the narcissistic authorial "I" needs to be enshrined, nor do I think that anecdotal diary entries, boasting or self-lacerating, need be the way forward. But Dobbs' procedure is cold contact, like kissing through mesh wire, with the acts he writes about. (It's here that I realize many deconstructionists -- if any are reading -- would wonder what the problem may be. But I won't grace their emotionless smirking with defensive reasoning or offensive stance. Many times, arguing for a position only makes it appear that the other side at least has merit.) Scouring mythology (Northrop Frye is given two separate nods) overloads the concentration on sexual transgression; recounting sexual brutishness throughout history is elevated into an attitude of Olympian maturity. One looks, with barren hope, for a striking image, a personal sigh, an agonized dispatch, a fond reminiscence. Where emotional content is promising, delivery is not only flaccid, but noncommital.
Speaking of noncommital, the final line of "Massacre of the innocents" is: "What other remedy is there but laughter". But this laughter, from what precedes it, is a deflection, a hollow laughter, a way of turning down the volume before forgetting the event altogether. The event? The mass slaughter of babies before their mothers. Did I miss a subtle irony? I suppose that excuse can be used in almost any poem presuming to hide layered ambiguities where none exist. But what equally sinks this poem is that it isn't a poem at all, in any sense. It is reportage, fantastical or not. Here is the opening stanza:
"Killing a whole crowd of babies at once
was even more harshly repugnant to an age
accustomed to killing them one at a time
than to our own which hardly even ventures
on single murders but glumly carries out
mass slaughter with the sanction of principle
or declared wishes of the majority."
Those are the deadest lines of poetry I've read in quite some time. The subject may as well have been effective needlepoint techniques. And if you strung that sentence out to a prose tidbit, the rhythm more easily resembles a sportswriter scribbling to meet a midnight deadline. No, that's not fair to the sportswriter. He or she is under time constraints, and so errors of narrative, even grammar, are more naturally forgiven. But Dobbs has had many of these poems, reworked or not, gathering dust in a top shelf before submission.
I was surprised, therefore, to encounter the concluding sixteen poem section VI. The mood, though marred by pedantic asides entrenched throughout the work, finally has some sass and variation, easily trumping the consistently somber, elegiac droning which precedes it. And the humour here, unlike the occasional attempts in sections one through five, doesn't induce wincing and groaning.
I just noticed that Dobbs' latest book, a memoir, has been lauded by various reviewers as "peripatetic" and "worldly". I don't know. I haven't read it. But whatever the travels of the writer, the base camp and final destination is still the human heart. It's too bad that Dobbs is unwilling or unable to show much of that volatile territory for the reader in The Eleventh Hour.
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