Much that charms is small and fleeting
To the greatness of eternity.
The earth is a tiny shadow tottering on the edge of death;
The moon is a throb of splendor in the heart of the night;
And the stars are ephemera in the long gaze of God.
So grieve not
That your poems are the cool, fresh grass of a short summer;
The flowers are few.
—Pascal D’Angelo, last eight lines of “To Some Modern Poets,” Of Clouds and Mists: The Collected Poems (Sublunary Editions, 2024), with an introduction and Notes by Dennis Barone
ursprache
sometimes the words escape me
11.01.2024
10.29.2024
different kinds of poets
There are poets who make poems and poets who receive and record them.
Labels:
composition,
kinds of poets,
make,
makers,
receive,
record
10.27.2024
situational awareness
A poet should have the observational skills of a Jason Bourne.
Labels:
jason bourne,
observation,
seeing,
sensing,
skill
10.24.2024
recalling past voices
A poem…has the power to remind poet and reader alike of things they have read and heard. Also—and this is partly why the subject is so complex—it has the power to remind them of things that they have not read and heard, but that have been read and heard by others whom they have read and heard.
Thus the art, so private in execution, is also communal and filial. It can only exist as a common ground between the poet and other poets and other people, living and dead. Any poem worth the name is the product of a convocation. It exists, literally, by recalling past voices into presence. This has been no more memorably stated than in Spencer’s apostrophe to Chaucer in Book 4 of The Faeire Queene:
through infusion sweet
Of thine own spirit, which doth in me survive,
I follow here the footing of thy feet.
Poetry can be written only because it has been written. As a new poem is made, not only with the art but within it, past voices are convoked—to be changed, little or much, by the addition of another voice.
—Wendell Berry, “The Responsibility of the Poet,” What Are People For: Essays by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1990)
Thus the art, so private in execution, is also communal and filial. It can only exist as a common ground between the poet and other poets and other people, living and dead. Any poem worth the name is the product of a convocation. It exists, literally, by recalling past voices into presence. This has been no more memorably stated than in Spencer’s apostrophe to Chaucer in Book 4 of The Faeire Queene:
through infusion sweet
Of thine own spirit, which doth in me survive,
I follow here the footing of thy feet.
Poetry can be written only because it has been written. As a new poem is made, not only with the art but within it, past voices are convoked—to be changed, little or much, by the addition of another voice.
—Wendell Berry, “The Responsibility of the Poet,” What Are People For: Essays by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1990)
Labels:
chaucer,
communal,
convocation,
filial,
heard,
read,
spencer,
voices,
wendell berry
10.22.2024
10.21.2024
book before horse
Poets more concerned over publications than whether they’re read.
Labels:
audience,
book,
poetry publication
10.20.2024
10.19.2024
more is bore
Some poets write two or more poems of the same type or theme within one poem.
Labels:
more is bore,
one poem,
overwrite,
redundancy
10.17.2024
don't abide
Hard to abide poets who abide only one kind of poetry.
Labels:
abide,
aesthetic diversity,
one kind
10.15.2024
markson notes
Because Theodore Roosevelt’s son was enamored with the poetry of E.A. Robinson, then President Roosevelt arranged for Robinson, who was destitute at the time, a job at the New York Customs House. A sinecure that allowed Robinson the means and the time to compose his verses.
Knowing that T. S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, visitors looking for his childhood home are surprised to find only a parking lot where the row house had been on Locust Street: The Waste Land.
Franz Kafka finished his story “A Hunger Artist” while dying from starvation due to complications caused by laryngeal tuberculosis.
Knowing that T. S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, visitors looking for his childhood home are surprised to find only a parking lot where the row house had been on Locust Street: The Waste Land.
Franz Kafka finished his story “A Hunger Artist” while dying from starvation due to complications caused by laryngeal tuberculosis.
10.14.2024
10.13.2024
signal plus noise
From the standpoint of information theory, poetry may contain a good deal of ‘noise’ but in the case of poetry it’s not extraneous to the signal.
Labels:
extraneous,
information theory,
noise,
signal
10.11.2024
not point at all
The scientist [Robert Hooke] turns next to “a point commonly so called, that is, the mark of a full-stop, or period.” Whether printed or made with a pen, the tiny point, circle or dot of the period turns out to be disfigured, ragged, deformed. Under the lens, this microdot looks as though it’s been made with a burnt stick on an uneven floor.
—Brian Dillon, “What Pitiful Bungling Scribbles and Scrawls,” Affinities: On Art and Fascination (New York Review of Books, 2023)
—Brian Dillon, “What Pitiful Bungling Scribbles and Scrawls,” Affinities: On Art and Fascination (New York Review of Books, 2023)
Labels:
brian dillon,
disfigured,
lens,
magnification,
material,
period,
punctuation,
ragged,
robert hooke
10.09.2024
metaphoric power
The metaphor draws its strength from ever more disparate elements being joined until the difference becomes too great and the power of the metaphor dissipates. Of course the tolerance for disparity depends on the particular reader.
10.08.2024
inflated till it pops
His reviews were inflated blurbs, to the point that reading to the end of one you began to wince, sure it was about to burst in your face.
Labels:
blurb,
inflated,
poetry review,
review,
wince
10.06.2024
violent forgetting
I notice where a page has been torn out of my notebook and this feels like a violent forgetting.
Labels:
forgetting,
notebook,
page,
torn,
violent
10.05.2024
limited love
They claim to love poetry but can’t name more than a handful of poems beyond their own.
10.04.2024
markson notes
Of the many languages that arose among humankind over the centuries, most never developed a written form.
It’s been estimated that Sappho wrote about 10,000 lines of poetry, but only 600 lines or so remain, many just single words on papyri fragments. Whole scrolls of Sappho’s poetry were lost to the fire that destroyed the library at Alexandria in 48 BCE.
“View du Boulevard du Temple” (1838) by Louis Daguerre is thought to be the first photograph wherein a living person is present. A small dark figure on the street in the early morning appears to be getting his boots polished. The person doing the polishing is obscured by the blur of the motions he was making during the long exposure, and by his lower station in life.
It’s been estimated that Sappho wrote about 10,000 lines of poetry, but only 600 lines or so remain, many just single words on papyri fragments. Whole scrolls of Sappho’s poetry were lost to the fire that destroyed the library at Alexandria in 48 BCE.
“View du Boulevard du Temple” (1838) by Louis Daguerre is thought to be the first photograph wherein a living person is present. A small dark figure on the street in the early morning appears to be getting his boots polished. The person doing the polishing is obscured by the blur of the motions he was making during the long exposure, and by his lower station in life.
Labels:
loss,
louis daguerre,
markson notes,
photograph,
sappho,
written language
10.03.2024
10.02.2024
be oblique
The poetic line may run straight across the page and be oblique at the same time.
Labels:
oblique,
poetic line,
straight
9.30.2024
knows more
The poet knows more about the poem than the poem shows.
Labels:
knows,
shows,
understanding
9.29.2024
don't go there
Poet, don’t dare to call the clouds flocculent.
Labels:
adjectives,
charge,
odd words,
vocabulary
9.27.2024
9.26.2024
9.25.2024
small change
He was a poet and so he could always dig into his pockets for a few more words.
Labels:
expression,
pockets,
resources,
vocabulary,
words
9.22.2024
floor to ceiling
The beauty of a good bookshop filled floor to ceiling with loaded shelves, or any well-stocked library for that matter, is that you feel here is a place equal to the mind, housing and holding the known and making available the unknown of this world.
9.20.2024
stutter on
But every poem is no more than a stutter
beneath the endless stutter of the stars.
—Roberto Juarroz, Vertical Poetry: Last Poems (White Pine Press, 2011), translation by Mary Crow
beneath the endless stutter of the stars.
—Roberto Juarroz, Vertical Poetry: Last Poems (White Pine Press, 2011), translation by Mary Crow
Labels:
endless,
poem is,
roberto juarroz,
stars,
stutter
9.19.2024
9.18.2024
bridge too far
He wanted to review poetry books but couldn’t imagine reading a bad one to the last line.
Labels:
last line,
poetry book,
review
9.17.2024
writer reader reviewer
It’s easier to write poetry than to be a reader, and harder yet to be a reviewer.
9.16.2024
first stroke
First line: first brushstroke on a blank canvas.
Labels:
blank canvas,
blank page,
bold,
brushstroke,
first line
9.15.2024
fly in the web
I can draw a web of connections around any poem.
Labels:
affinities,
connections,
influences,
web
9.13.2024
rhythm of my imagination
At that time, I knew only that free verse was ill-suited to my spirit….But I lacked faith in traditional meters….And besides I had parodied them too often to take them seriously now….I knew of course that traditional meters don’t exist in any absolute sense, but are remade according to the interior rhythms of each poet’s imagination. And one day, I found myself muttering a certain jumble of words (which turned into a pair of lines from “South Seas”) in a pronounced cadence that I had used for emphasis ever since I was a child, when I would murmur over and over the phrases that obsessed me most in the novels I was reading. That’s how, without know it, I found my verse, which was of course for “South Seas” and several other poems as well, wholly instinctive….Gradually I discovered the intrinsic laws of this meter…, but I was always careful not to let it tyrannize me and was ready to accept, when it seemed necessary, other stress patterns and line lengths. But I never again strayed far from my scheme, which I consider the rhythm of my imagination.
—Cesare Pavese, from Pavese’s essay “The Poet’s Craft,” quoted by Geoffrey Brock in the introduction to his translations of Cesare Pavese in Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 (Copper Canyon, 2002)
—Cesare Pavese, from Pavese’s essay “The Poet’s Craft,” quoted by Geoffrey Brock in the introduction to his translations of Cesare Pavese in Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 (Copper Canyon, 2002)
9.11.2024
not me
If a poem writes itself, do I have a plausible alibi?
Labels:
alibi,
inside joke,
plausible,
writes itself
9.10.2024
9.08.2024
demotic speech
If poetry had not turned to demotic speech after Modernism, after Beat, after New American Poetry, etc., it would have become like a collection of antique music boxes that are only wound from time to time to keep the springs in good working order.
Labels:
beat,
change,
demotic speech,
modernism,
music boxes,
springs,
times
9.07.2024
talk it up
Blurbs and other forms of rodomontade...
"No industry [film industry] did more to destroy the meaning of words. The follies are too familiar to need laboring here—how the story of a couple of cowboys quarreling over a girl became an epic, the tale of a small-time 'hoofer' a deathless saga. Colossal, terrific, stupendous—these words became the small change of film advertising. A reservation was put on a whole series of other adjectives like throbbing, rending, tingling, pulsating, pounding, sizzling, scorching, stark, elemental, volcanic, and searing. No story was ever taken from life—it was ripped or torn from the mighty canvas of humanity."
—E.S. Turner, The Shocking History of Advertising! (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1953)
"No industry [film industry] did more to destroy the meaning of words. The follies are too familiar to need laboring here—how the story of a couple of cowboys quarreling over a girl became an epic, the tale of a small-time 'hoofer' a deathless saga. Colossal, terrific, stupendous—these words became the small change of film advertising. A reservation was put on a whole series of other adjectives like throbbing, rending, tingling, pulsating, pounding, sizzling, scorching, stark, elemental, volcanic, and searing. No story was ever taken from life—it was ripped or torn from the mighty canvas of humanity."
—E.S. Turner, The Shocking History of Advertising! (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1953)
Labels:
adjectives,
advertising,
blurbs,
book marketing,
hyperbole,
small change
9.06.2024
bad poet good person
When you are the organizer of a reading series, inevitably someone who is a terrible poet but a very nice person will ask to be a featured reader (often touting a self-published book)—and there is no good way of saying no.
Labels:
bad poet,
no,
organizer,
poetry reading,
saying no
9.04.2024
runover words
He had a funny habit of placing a line break so that the words starting the next line would be shown to be superfluous.
Labels:
cut,
extra words,
line break,
poetic line,
superfluous
9.03.2024
loose thread
Like a loose thread in a beautiful garment, an odd unwound line can alter and awaken one’s reading of the poem.
Labels:
awaken,
fabric,
garment,
line,
loose thread,
poetic line,
reading poetry
9.02.2024
repeated beat-down
Any poem that uses the same repeated word or phrase past a page’s length is trying to shut down the reader’s mind.
8.30.2024
fierce company
Poetry decides power, not politics
or wealth, not torment. Fierce company,
those ragged lines, spells of a magician
that become; over time, more curse than elixir.
—Dennis Barone, "Side-Straddle Hop," After Math (Cyber Wit, 2023)
or wealth, not torment. Fierce company,
those ragged lines, spells of a magician
that become; over time, more curse than elixir.
—Dennis Barone, "Side-Straddle Hop," After Math (Cyber Wit, 2023)
8.28.2024
radio left on
Most poems will be like a radio left on in a vacant room, a device talking into space.
Labels:
poem is,
publishing poetry,
radio,
room
8.27.2024
consumerist cantos
It was a dollar-store Cantos, its references and allusions coming cheap and easy.
Labels:
allusions,
cantos,
cheap,
dollar-store,
easy,
references
8.26.2024
word bather
A poet who bathed in words, and words were nothing to him and everything all at once.
[Thinking of poet Peter Ganick.]
[Thinking of poet Peter Ganick.]
Labels:
bath,
everything,
language poetry,
memorial,
nothing,
peter ganick,
words
8.25.2024
8.23.2024
not words alone
Poetry
Forgive me for helping you understand
that you're not made of words alone.
—Rogue Dalton, "Poetic Art" (1974)
Forgive me for helping you understand
that you're not made of words alone.
—Rogue Dalton, "Poetic Art" (1974)
Labels:
alone,
made,
political poetry,
rogue dalton,
words
8.22.2024
no ball of light
A poet who wrote attractive lines and phrases that never would cohere into the force of a poem.
Labels:
attractive,
cohere,
force,
lines,
phrases
8.20.2024
says too much
Writing that suffers from the utter inability to understate.
Labels:
understate,
verbose
8.19.2024
missing person
There was plenty of personality in the poems, but little that was truly personal.
Labels:
biography,
personal,
personality
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