6 posts tagged “poetry”
I began the summer by reading Judith Kitchen's examination of William Stafford's poetic works, Writing the World: Understanding William Stafford. There is simply not enough critical writing on Stafford's voluminous body of work. Here it becomes clear that his crisp, yet complicated, approach to writing grew from a lifetime of peaceful engagement with ambivalence. Ambivalence? Maybe that is the wrong word. It is more like Stafford was resolute in his commitment to not pushing himself or others around. He was a pacifist inside and out, and that included not being pushy about pacifism.
Like so many literary critics, Kitchen has the ability to crack open a poem. Her comments on internal sound relationships between words in "Traveling Through the Dark" is worth the price of the book (by the way it is on remainder at Powell's Books).
In the end, it fits with my summer theme because it is a story about beliefs. Stafford believed that language matters and it is important to teach language to incline toward peace. He brought about peace by reminding all of us of our own humanity, fragility, and open-ended mystery. He was not an Oregon poet, Kansas poet, or U.S. poet. Stafford was a poet-philosopher who helped the world understand what it means to be a human being.
In an apparant contrast to Kitchen's book, I finally read Sam Harris' The End of Faith, one of my new favorite books. Like Letters to a Christian Nation, Harris is rough on liberal theists for their blind tolerance of irrational thinking from their more radical bretheren. To that end, he actually defends more extreme theologies as a more adequate representation of the texts that they celebrate.
Some people my criticize Harris as being anti-spiritiual or angry. These people have not read the entire book. Harris, like Stafford, is a passionate advocate for love, compassion, humility, mystery, and spirituatlity. What he really wants to see is a world in which people use their heads and openly invite civilization forward. Also, he makes a compelling argument supporting the dangers in not helping the world abandon theism. For anybody concerned about the rold of religion in current affairs, this book is a must read.
For me, the most challenging section of the book was Harris' critique of pacifism. I will write about pacifism in a seperate blog post. It is an issue worthy of its very own mini-essay.
Last night I finished Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams. I am reading it as part of a book club at work. Like the Kitchen and Harris books, it dealt with how people fold belief into their experience of suffering. Kingsolver seems to take a more mythopoeic approach to faith than Harris, Stafford, or Kitchen; though, she does seem a bit like Stafford.
A chapter toward the end of the book called "Ground Orientation" dragged as a muddled through the history of one of the main character, but the rest of the book chugged along like a fast train in the barren desert. I liked it, but I did not love it. I'll tell the truth, it made me cry. It had the quality of a really well made Hollywodd film, but it did not bring me toward seeing the world in any kind of new way. It did remind me of the power of love, death, and family. Three things that we cannot forget when we want to find love in a world that offers up question marks and suffering alongside sunrises and open sky.
Like so many literary critics, Kitchen has the ability to crack open a poem. Her comments on internal sound relationships between words in "Traveling Through the Dark" is worth the price of the book (by the way it is on remainder at Powell's Books).
In the end, it fits with my summer theme because it is a story about beliefs. Stafford believed that language matters and it is important to teach language to incline toward peace. He brought about peace by reminding all of us of our own humanity, fragility, and open-ended mystery. He was not an Oregon poet, Kansas poet, or U.S. poet. Stafford was a poet-philosopher who helped the world understand what it means to be a human being.
In an apparant contrast to Kitchen's book, I finally read Sam Harris' The End of Faith, one of my new favorite books. Like Letters to a Christian Nation, Harris is rough on liberal theists for their blind tolerance of irrational thinking from their more radical bretheren. To that end, he actually defends more extreme theologies as a more adequate representation of the texts that they celebrate.
Some people my criticize Harris as being anti-spiritiual or angry. These people have not read the entire book. Harris, like Stafford, is a passionate advocate for love, compassion, humility, mystery, and spirituatlity. What he really wants to see is a world in which people use their heads and openly invite civilization forward. Also, he makes a compelling argument supporting the dangers in not helping the world abandon theism. For anybody concerned about the rold of religion in current affairs, this book is a must read.
For me, the most challenging section of the book was Harris' critique of pacifism. I will write about pacifism in a seperate blog post. It is an issue worthy of its very own mini-essay.
Last night I finished Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams. I am reading it as part of a book club at work. Like the Kitchen and Harris books, it dealt with how people fold belief into their experience of suffering. Kingsolver seems to take a more mythopoeic approach to faith than Harris, Stafford, or Kitchen; though, she does seem a bit like Stafford.
A chapter toward the end of the book called "Ground Orientation" dragged as a muddled through the history of one of the main character, but the rest of the book chugged along like a fast train in the barren desert. I liked it, but I did not love it. I'll tell the truth, it made me cry. It had the quality of a really well made Hollywodd film, but it did not bring me toward seeing the world in any kind of new way. It did remind me of the power of love, death, and family. Three things that we cannot forget when we want to find love in a world that offers up question marks and suffering alongside sunrises and open sky.
Horror vacui, also known as cenophobia, is a fear of empty spaces. Thomas Heise's poetic treatment of Horror Vacui covers grief with an imagination that fills in every empty space without leaving the reader cramped by poetic density. For a young poet, Heise might be studied nicely next to Dickinson just to consider his nearly baffling approach to death. For him, all loss is personal. The seeing subject is the object in a state of decomposition and obliteration.
In the acknowledgments, Heise says, "My father: these poems are you"; consequently, the collection invites a hunch that readers are being dipped into a family funeral. A good portion of the book confirms suspicions and, with a chilling touch of familiar terror, takes us along on a tour of grief in general.
Heise accomplishes something that most poets should start envying today. He writes poems that stand alone and together with equal unity; like a symphony. While listening to the ghost music in Horror Vacui, a common whisper echoes words, phrases, rhymes, themes, and titles between poems. Themes build upon one another until we are actually, finally, buried with Heise and all of the other dead found in the ground.
At one point, Heise even takes on the 9/11 grief. I work in a public building and I have been noticing that our nation's flag is at half mast more often than not. Heise sees this coming. He doesn't flinch. Death stops most kindly for Mr. Heise.
In the acknowledgments, Heise says, "My father: these poems are you"; consequently, the collection invites a hunch that readers are being dipped into a family funeral. A good portion of the book confirms suspicions and, with a chilling touch of familiar terror, takes us along on a tour of grief in general.
Heise accomplishes something that most poets should start envying today. He writes poems that stand alone and together with equal unity; like a symphony. While listening to the ghost music in Horror Vacui, a common whisper echoes words, phrases, rhymes, themes, and titles between poems. Themes build upon one another until we are actually, finally, buried with Heise and all of the other dead found in the ground.
At one point, Heise even takes on the 9/11 grief. I work in a public building and I have been noticing that our nation's flag is at half mast more often than not. Heise sees this coming. He doesn't flinch. Death stops most kindly for Mr. Heise.
Someday, Maybe
by William Stafford, 1973
available at: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=William+Stafford&y=13&tn=Someday%2C+Maybe&x=65
by William Stafford, 1973
available at: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=William+Stafford&y=13&tn=Someday%2C+Maybe&x=65
Someday, Maybe, written shortly after William Stafford's stint as the Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress, should be read straight through as an essay on freedom and friendship. Freedom, for Stafford, seems to be a matter of choice. "If you are oppressed," he argues, "wake up about/four in the morning: most places,/you can usually be free some of the time/ if you wake up before other people." The theme of individual, internal freedom is echoed in "For a Child Gone to Live in a Commune" when Stafford recalls, "I forgot to tell you: this house too/is a wanderer." Indeed, Stafford wanders in the direction of truth-tinged things.
Friendship is a tool invoked by Stafford with the prayer, "Help me do right." For help with the right course, he is a supplicant to the moon, "you old, unsinkable submarine, leaf admirer." In "Old Dog" we find the same kind of familiarity toward "a good last friend" before they "looked a slow bargain." Friendship, for Stafford, seems to be a practice involving slow leans toward rugged honesty, possibly a mutual gravity.
The book's title breathes through "The Eskimo National Anthem" with Stafford nodding toward a "life that never amounts to anything" where "what I intended never gets done" might be resolved in "a kind of comfort" from the song, "someday, maybe." Whatever William Stafford's intentions, something is getting done with his words in the world. They remain a true friend pointing to the moon for many wanders in stable houses.
Friendship is a tool invoked by Stafford with the prayer, "Help me do right." For help with the right course, he is a supplicant to the moon, "you old, unsinkable submarine, leaf admirer." In "Old Dog" we find the same kind of familiarity toward "a good last friend" before they "looked a slow bargain." Friendship, for Stafford, seems to be a practice involving slow leans toward rugged honesty, possibly a mutual gravity.
The book's title breathes through "The Eskimo National Anthem" with Stafford nodding toward a "life that never amounts to anything" where "what I intended never gets done" might be resolved in "a kind of comfort" from the song, "someday, maybe." Whatever William Stafford's intentions, something is getting done with his words in the world. They remain a true friend pointing to the moon for many wanders in stable houses.
Read Hoops straight through. It will get late. You will need sleep and you will not put it down. It's addictive like Lahiri, seriously. Major Jackson has given poetry readers the gift of invention within form with his second book of poems, Hoops. In his "Letter to Brooks" he uses rime royal - with a nod toward Auden's epistolary poem to Byron - and a palpable love for his mentor to take on pop culture, poetic elitism, adolescent anti-elitism dragged into adulthood, our political landscape, and "All the turf battles. All the war games."
There is a line in one of Jackson's poems about wealth and being shown things that recalls a Hemingway quip:
"There are two things you can do to help an artist: give him money
and show him stuff." Jackson shows us stuff and he has earned every dollar that the publishing world might want to hand a new poet.
I cannot recommend Major Jackson's Hoops highly enough. It carries the reader like a novel, keeping our American language alive and true. Hoops is a slam dunk.
Magic City, by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, opens with a confessional look back. Three words - I am five - lets the reader know that they are living in Komunyakaa's mirror and they need to be ready for the deep southern woods, a hint of Vietnam, and only a passing nod toward the present. The magic here speaks of a world where "men were like cats" and kids at play "held back curses, / Torturing each other with an adagio/ Of silence."
Perhaps I am wrong. The present shines through these poems in Komunyakaa's ability to find language-jewels in the cruelty racism and family destruction, right next to the ordinary terrors of childhood. Yes! These poems dance.
The only time that I have seen Yusef Komunyakaa read, he was performing with bassist, Glen Moore. The language here has the right kind of jazz for such a performance, but it remains free of the associative pretension of beat, jazz, or language poetry. Magic City demands intellectual and emotional courage from the reader. Komunyakaa is serious about his craft and he knows how to practice his scales while creating fresh art.
Are you ready for the magic?
Perhaps I am wrong. The present shines through these poems in Komunyakaa's ability to find language-jewels in the cruelty racism and family destruction, right next to the ordinary terrors of childhood. Yes! These poems dance.
The only time that I have seen Yusef Komunyakaa read, he was performing with bassist, Glen Moore. The language here has the right kind of jazz for such a performance, but it remains free of the associative pretension of beat, jazz, or language poetry. Magic City demands intellectual and emotional courage from the reader. Komunyakaa is serious about his craft and he knows how to practice his scales while creating fresh art.
Are you ready for the magic?
Cormac McCarthy's Miltonian humdinger, No Country for Old Men. is a novel tuned to the key of poetry. McCarthy spares us no violent detail, but each incident brings closes in on an America that nightmares down every private rage. In this book, Anton Chigur is McCarthy's villain-prophet -- an Iago with a sawed-off shotgun.
As the book's hypnosis lulls the reader from one blood bath to another, we come to learn that the border we walk is not as simple as immigrant-citizen, criminal-cop, innocent-perpetrator, young-old. Instead, McCarthy gives us a world that devastates. His endless death moments respark the realization that impermanence lingers in every shadow.
In one section, Chigur offers life or death based upon the results of a coin toss. We learn, in these frightening moments, that he is the most honest character because he is true to the human condition. Things change in a fashion unknown. And, McCarthy might be reminding us, the unknown is the death-fear's cruelest parent.
As the book's hypnosis lulls the reader from one blood bath to another, we come to learn that the border we walk is not as simple as immigrant-citizen, criminal-cop, innocent-perpetrator, young-old. Instead, McCarthy gives us a world that devastates. His endless death moments respark the realization that impermanence lingers in every shadow.
In one section, Chigur offers life or death based upon the results of a coin toss. We learn, in these frightening moments, that he is the most honest character because he is true to the human condition. Things change in a fashion unknown. And, McCarthy might be reminding us, the unknown is the death-fear's cruelest parent.
