My disciplined classmates. My oversight. My limited perspective.
Tag Archives: poetry
july 16, 2007
Emmy’s birthday uncertainty. Overwhelmed this morning. Poetry oozes pus.
This is more than less.
This is a venti no water Americano.
This is a lemonade.
This is without respect.
This is a poetry of abuse.
The abuse poem. The nirvana poem. The well poem, the ill poem.
This is a leap out of poetry the false well.
This is a heartstring.
This is a spoonrocket (K. Prevallet)
This is a landfish (Sam).
This is incapacity.
This is the rest of the beggars.
This is the consistent.
This is the technical.
This is your sip, these are your glasses,
this is your mirror, this is your window.
This is your sudden face,
this is rabid dog fear in the night,
this is jumping flea ukulele.
This is Mr. Killbug, this is a Burgher. This is a Beggar.
This is air, this is male pattern baldness,
this is a reduction, this is avoiding getting organized.
This is not a gnat, this is not a note.
This is the scent of your sweat and a sharp pain behind the eyes,
this is code, this is a tangerine, this is over but not over,
this is ooh and aah
this is lipsynch, this is lip stuck
this is father daughter day
and after all that okay
SSSS Supreme S S Sad S S Sighing Sa Sa poetry Say Say Say she shell she shells she shells out sail sell soil shale shell shoil
june 30, 2007
Calendar check 6:30.
Time check 1:30.
Skin check: itchy.
Wrist check: stiff.
Mind check: jittery.
Stomach check: jittery.
Throat check: thirsty.
Mouth check: worried about someone else’s leukemia.
Soul check: distant.
Pulse check: alive.
Poetry check: parallel universe.
Sky check: blue delightful.
Bird check: twittering and cheeping.
Smell check: corpse flowers.
Sound check: birds, flies buzzing, metallic clink, a flagpole, distant pounding, distant humming.
Air check: slightly breezy, warm.
Clink, clink clink.
Cars passing. Thump.
Cedrus Libani, Cedar of Lebanon.
Stone cairns.
Cedar needles.
Adirondack chairs.
Conversations hanging in the air.
Buzzing plane. Gardens.
Labor hanging in the air, remnants of sweat.
Dry tongue. Clink, clink.
Air belly, squirrel throat.
Darkness behind the eyes.
Mouth film.
Uneasy belly. Toast and jelly.
Uneasy eyes, ants and flies.
Uneasy legs, beans and eggs.
Uneasy hands, toast and jam.
Ordered poetry for the millennium. I am not a MicMac, not a Passamaquoddy, not a Pequot. Hanging conversations. I have made up my mind. Corpse flower, cedar needles. Aboriginal gardens. Poisons. Fatalities. Eco echoes.
Afternoon check: summer.
I see a flimsy tissue, leaves printed on one side and a small saying on the other. Inserted into envelopes. Like bank deposits, or like cookie envelopes. Anything. Or in a stack of slips, withdrawal or deposit, anything.
Some remarks on poetry. Some purity. Some pain. Some stretching.
Poem: all the old-time ladies’ names gathered in one place old-timey timey.
swimming about without a project
there is nothing I can do
no means no ends no optimistic no despair
and here a series of no’s
that anyone would call bad poetry
and in my hand, the summa critical
of everyone who thinks
or writes or speaks
just wanting nurture
happiness
I am expecting. She is expecting in a voice so juicy with disgust or secrets I hated the way the syllable “pect” came out of the mouth oozing with gossipy fruit juice The word is ruined forever as is duds as is a lot of words like revery. Need the poets to reteach me.
What Fran did not remark upon—the line breaks, the line breaks are wicked and insidious in that “poem” and point to fractures—consciousness not flexible but fractured cracking as I struggle to shift and separate, adapt
I’m ready to go home
Relaxation in the spring sun.
Leaves in chartreuse fluff state—sigh—poetry is so predictable and oppressive oppressive rules—sigh—
tools, tools, more tools and cobblestones and asphalt patch and soil
pea sprouts
asparagus shoots
let me show you
may 3, 2007
Adorable. He’s adorable, the way he curls his toes in, snuggles. The poetic journal, contentment of those “I’s” that misarticulation. I posted indirection on my website. Someone said “I don’t know what this poem means to me.” Wouldn’t that be me?
Fucking iambics. Jesus Fuck—this comes to mind at work. And if I came down with Tourette’s, it would come out of my mouth. A human being cornered by complexity. And with my mind-doors blowing open, flapping in the wind… and with my sense doors numb, encased in these materials …
sudden urge to pay a visit to the Beinecke,
where the walls are alabaster
march 30, 2007
Reflecting on the ephemeral life. OR
Reflect on the ephemeral life. But
we all resist giving instructions.
Parsed words. A need to flee. A need to be in the clouds for awhile. Poetry driven from internal states. Not always wise to trust the mind, the impulses. Not always wine. Not always time. Never overdue. Never blank. And do you want my autograph?
2nd Prose Poem conference
Something I’m not writing anymore
the disintegration of
the diary
on purpose
the relaxed alignment
of destructive tendencies
and all those names
those names for things
far-reaching Adams
wrestle in the garden
double Adams
double Garden
and there is no Eve
on daylight savings time
something made of ill repute
that catches up with you
ROWE! Excitement breaking through.
Sample. Oh yes. Sample started it all.
Poetry magazine destroys, disturbs. Don’t do it.
After all is no way to begin a sentence.
Ekphrasis—shocking tub of lies and self congratulate
march 11, 2007
Genres of note. Choking out syllables of gemshit. Murderous eyes on the sly. Poetry magazine induces epilepsy. I am relaxing into awful afterday of Security BRD—how unpleasant is your name Alleluia who is Shakespeare after all and what did he enable
Hark hearken harken herald
The back door of relief
the deck of equanimity
the roof of aloof
the sink of basin
the rug of rolling over
the kitchen of wishes
do not underestimate the pluses of poverty—I am seeking poverty, so wretched without you and what can I do about it—
yoginis in spiffy outfits
yoginis in stretch suits
yoginis dancing in rags
pale as rags pale as dust
Gayatri
This is not worthwhile, is it?
Meanwhile, it’s always someone’s birthday, I would like to race away so far and demand a year in cloister only one outfit, one bowl, one word—sometimes the complexity of extroversion slays me—this is a tired story, isn’t it? Am I busy self-making? Did I have a moment when the rug was pulled out from under someone who I thought was so familiar? Ski jacket, ski jacket, ski jacket, sunglasses—how it is in here. I am not in Sunnyside. And Poetry is Impossible to Learn. (So I Say so I say so say so say) Oh say so, so you say.
I am interested in—
- online poetries
- blog as poem
- applied poetry, particularly in the office
- poet as one confronted with the unknowable, unspeakable meanings
- primitive rhythms
- experiments with art
- how to make digital art look non-digital
- splotches of watercolor (ink on top)
- daily practice
- gardening/writing intersection
- spirituality/writing intersection
The poetry analysis, the poet as an analyst
Well, dammit, I signed up for this, I want to say I rubbed elbows with the New York School, yes I did, and yes it was rewarding, yes I elevated my discourse and my craft.
Beating my head against the wall
And Sam at home alone on Tuesday nights
And disrupting placid waters of routine
my Al-Anon, my district meetings, and
the Yoga Book Club.
Poetry is the biggest irritant in my life right now.
I never gather Duncan. I try to read the poems assigned, I never get them. I buy some of his books, don’t think I’ll crack them. I pay $300 for this class, I’m not sure why. I pay it in installments once a month, and I get shy about my childish checks with purple swirlies on them and a Comic front. I think I should have soberer checks like a real poet.
Trying to contribute. I translate a poem of mine into Olde English. Enjoy this exercise. I’m asked to read it aloud, a fairly strugglish effort. Seems okay. Better in Olde English than it was in New. Lisa picks out phrases in our poems. Well, should I toss the rest away, enshrine that phrase? Who knows.
I learn some techniques, puzzle over leading vowels. I want craft but I don’t want it. I am interested in the other students. I’m interested in shaping the interactions. The environment is so subdued, inhibiting. I ask a lot of questions. One dominates. She seems suitably irritable for a teacher of poetry. Poetry teachers swimming daily in bad words. THere are no highlights. I observe the women’s clothes. I’m familiar with an odd fact or two, like Ian Hamilton Finlay’s death this year or fallout on the Hanford Reservation.
Somewhere I don’t bloom. People very sparing with email, commentary, keeping their vast opinions to themselves. Closetsfull of opinions, jamming in on the shelves.
One of my thematic exercises highlights the word Intimacy.
I go to Bernadette Mayer’s reading at St. Mark’s. Appreciate it. I read Winter’s Day from cover to cover on my 2nd try.
I drop Ashbery’s name a couple of times, get a small sound of acknowledgement from Lisa, but no more.
Incomprehensible.
I’m attracted to the impenetrable secret
I’m not a poet
and I hate poetry
I don’t write poetry
I write along its edge
like crocheted fringe
Ashbery drives the emotion into metaphoric schemes.
I don’t really want to understand it.
I don’t want the poet’s sympathy.
If I could find my way to a simpler conception. If I could find my way to the egg on the pedestal, if I could find my way to the walking rock. No table salt. No laughing pepper. No funny farm. No moldy vegetables. Rot in a garden. Where do we see that rot, the heavy mosses, the packed earth of the path? The beaten borders, crumbling boundaries? The edge trees fallen into the river, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, in a death flirtation with the current. Where do we see that? Where do we see the planes? How far away are they? The red light blinks far away at night and there you are, another person. We forget that all of these poets are also persons, one after the other, exhibiting bodily functions. Yes you are a wizard of language. Yes you may set a bonfire. Yes you can turn and turn and turn. No you are not a clergy person. No none of this should be bandied about. No you are not for sale. No you have no memory of the mountain of marzipan you saw in Italy.
Part of me is just super fucking suspicious about this goddawful meaningless poetry. I can’t write anything like that! I think about the hermits pushing against the bounds of possible experience.
I think of the poets pushing, pushing out of bounds the wheelbarrows full of language. Clods, clots, clothoppers. Hamemers.
Investing. She is investing time. She struggles to define the terms and conditions. The terms of daylight and nightlight. The conditions of breakfast, tea, noise, and satisfaction. She is not sufficiently passionate. Her passion is weak (again). I can learn from the past. I can make a move out of passion. I can dedicate.
I will dedicate my room to the poetries, my living museum of cloth and pixels. The pixels are little squares in the fabric. Her technique is appalling. Going back through the catch—fishes, shells, seaweed, and garbage. Fishes fish, dishes or dish. Hollywood Hollywood Hollywood (dactylic) Perilous Perilous (dactylic) In my room (anapestic). I could go through some poems, mark them. I could observe them in their carriages.
What is a good student?
Do I want to be a poetry student?
I had to miss the poetry class on Halloween. This was disturbing. I should have tried to go. I could have made it. No use trying to reinvent the past. I had to miss out. I hate to miss out. I am easily disappointed.
Sad girls are responsible. They take on the tedious tasks no one else wants to do.
If I’m very busy writing, I won’t have time for tedious tasks.
But something’s wrong with my invention. My imagination is broken. I don’t get out much.
I invented a common noun—no, it’s a collective noun—for poets: a “discovery” of poets. I’m waiting for an opportunity to use it.
There’s a stack of paper next to me and a stack of poems in front of me. “Backwoods Broadsides.” I enjoy seeing them there, in a little box decorated with pears. There’s a pile of pink ribbons with white dots on this desk. I picked them up from a rainy Nantucket sidewalk outside the Unitarian church. After a wedding. I guess they’d been used to tie wedding favors together.