7.31.2007

scrimshaw

How important was that image?: As though a kind of scrimshaw etched on human bone.

7.30.2007

flarf = word barf

Flarf is word barf. A glorified writing exercise, as if the world needed another
reason or method to perpetrate bad poems. (It’s no coincidence that ‘flarfing’ arose at the same time the ‘paradelle', Billy Collins’ pet form, had its day.) Has anything of lasting interest ever been created by an artist absent a compelling subject or profound emotion? Silence should be a satisfying alternative to the poet who hasn’t any reason to write.

7.29.2007

clarity, clarity

Clarity, clarity, surely clarity is the most beautiful
        thing in the world,
A limited, limiting clarity

I have not and never did have any motive of poetry
But to achieve clarity

—George Oppen, from “Route”

7.27.2007

first love in translation

We fall hard for the first translations of a poet's work that we encounter; and most of the other/later translations we come across strike us as pale or somehow inferior.

7.26.2007

simple lay

They may call it a simple lay, and yet the words won’t lie still.

7.25.2007

arbitrary & capricious linebreak

A casual survey of contemporary poetry would lead one to believe that the decision of how/where to break the poetic line is either arbitrary or idiosyncratic. There is much workshop talk but little real theory or even practical guidelines to rely on when considering the linebreak. One could say that the linebreak is arbitrary and capricious as they put it in the law.

7.24.2007

hate the approximate

He was a poet and hated the approximate.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

7.23.2007

wide and close up

A poet’s vision is always wide-angle yet with a high degree of acuity.

7.19.2007

dictionary thumper

Poet, be a dictionary-thumping fundamentalist!

7.18.2007

an anthology's function

An anthology is for finding a few representative poems by minor poets. Large collected and selected poems are the go-to source for the bigger names. Do you read Ginsberg or Creeley in an anthology? Perhaps just a quick check of the contents page to see which poems were chosen. But generally we skip the big names in favor of sampling those poets whose work is less familiar or less widely available.

7.16.2007

a blurb is about

A blurb is about the blurb-writer and not about the book.

7.15.2007

nobly disheveled

Any bright young man can be taught to be artful. It is impossible to teach taste, but you can teach most anybody caution. It is always the lesser artists who are artful, they must learn their trade by rote. They must be careful never to make false steps, never to speak out of a carefully synthesized character. The greatest poetry is nobly disheveled. At least it never shows the scars of taking care.

—Kenneth Rexroth, introduction to D.H. Lawrence: Selected Poems

7.13.2007

roaring loom of time

I would steal Spinoza’s image of the “roaring loom of time’ and state that this is what a great poem eventually becomes.

7.11.2007

barbarian poets

Going back to the Greek meaning of the word ‘barbarian’ (those who speak a language other than Greek), we can see that all poets are ‘barbarians’ because they speak a different language from the main tribe or polis. The difference can range from a matter of dialect or inflection to a speech that is radically different in terms of word sounds, meanings, syntax, and diction.

7.10.2007

simultaneous tapestry

In a poem the lines strain to weave themselves into a simultaneous tapestry of experience.

7.08.2007

unselfish act

Translation is the most unselfish act in literature, and must be so.

7.06.2007

singularity

Whether you listen to a piece of music, or a poem, or look at a picture on a jug, or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.

—Basil Bunting, The Codex

7.05.2007

command economy

Poetry publishing is a decentralized command economy. Demand is not considered in production.

7.04.2007

bandoleer

He wore a bandoleer filled with pencils and pens. Always ready for a good write.

7.03.2007

prose mind

It’s not possible to read poetry with a prose mind.

7.02.2007

pressured speech

The poem as pressured speech.