words working against the poem

In an odd way the words are often working against the poem.

too late for that last line

You expected that that last line would save all it followed?

mission of art

It is the mission of art to remind man that he is human.

—Ben Shahn (quoted in Karsh, 50 Year Retrospective, photographer Yousuf Karsh)

multitudinous yet unified

The poem was multitudinous in aspect, yet unified in its effect.

expert at excerpts

A critic can be judged by the expertness of his/her excerpting.

anchor word

Look for an anchor word in each line of the poem. If a line lacks a word of significant weight, then that line is not advancing the poem.

reanimates remembrance

Imagery reanimates remembrance.

sonic stitching

Meter: the sonic stitching that holds fast the seam of the line.

language in extremis

The poem as language in extremis.

kaleidosonic

The poem was ‘kaleidosonic’.

everything for depth & height

One complaint lodged against Sappho—it is lodged against Emily Dickinson too, and that tells us something about the complaint—is that her range is narrow. Even if the charge could be proved correct, and it cannot, we would want to remember that lyric poetry cares very little for breadth and width, everything for depth and height. Whatever the mysterious criteria for great European lyric may be, compression, intensity of feeling, and complexity and subtlety of reflection are surely high among them.

—W.R. Johnson, The Idea of the Lyric, U. of California Press, 1982 (p. 48)

poetry is hypertext

A great poem is hypertext into the universal & eternal.

Ars Poetica Library (work in progress)

A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H.Abrams, Literary Reference, Holt Rinehart Winston 1988 * Selected Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire, Guillaume Apollinaire (R. Shattuck, trans.), Poetry Essays, New Directions 1971 * The Poetics, Aristotle, Poetry Essays, Various Editions * Essays Literary & Critical by Matthew Arnold, Matthew Arnold, Poetry Essays, JM Dent & Son 1906 * Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction, Derek Attridge, Formalism, Metrics, Cambridge U. Press 1996 * The Dyer's Hand, W.H. Auden, Poetry Essays, Vintage 1989 * Forewords & Afterwords, W.H. Auden, Poetry Essays, Vintage 1989 * Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Erich Auerbach, Literary Criticism, Doubleday Anchor Books 1957 * The Poetics of Reverie, Gaston Bachelard, Philosophy/Aesthetics, Beacon Press 1971 * The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard (Maria Jolas, trans.), Philosophy/Aesthetics, Beacon Press 1969 * Onward: Contemporary Poetry & Poetics, Peter Baker ed., Poetry Essays, Peter Lang Publishing 1996 * An Owen Barfield Reader, Owen Barfield, Poetry Criticism, Wesleyan U. Press 1999 * The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters, Tony Barnstone & Chou Ping, trans., Poetry Essays, Shambhala 1996 * The Making of the Auden Canon , Jos. Warren Beach, Poetry Criticism, Russell & Russell 1971 * Illuminations, Walter Benjamin, Literary Criticism, Schoken Books 1978 * Reflections, Walter Benjamin (Peter Demetz, ed.), Literary Criticism, Schoken Books 1978 * Content's Dream, Charles Bernstein, Poetry Essays, Sun & Moon 1986 * A Poetics, Charles Bernstein, Poetry Essays, Harvard U. Press 1992 * Anxiety of Influence (2nd edition), Harold Bloom, Literary Criticism, Oxford U. Press 1987 * Leaping Poetry, Robert Bly, Poetry Essay & Anthology * News of the Universe, Robert Bly, Poetry Essays & Anthology, Sierra Club Books 1980 * A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art & Vocation, Louise Bogan (Robt. Phelps & Ruth Limmer, eds.), Poetry Essays, McGraw Hill 1970 * Object Lessons, Eavan Boland, Poetry Essays, Norton 1995 * The Act and the Place of Poetry, Yves Bonnefoy, Poetry Essays, U. of Chicago Press 1989 * Borges Selected Non-Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry & Writing, Penguin 2000 * Borges On Writing, Jorge Luis Borges (di Giovanni, Macshane, Halpern, interviewers), Interviews, Ecco Press 1972 * In the Blue Pharmacy: Essays on Poetry and Other Transformations, Marianne Boruch,Poetry Essays, Trinity U. Press 2005 * Yeats at Work, Curtis Bradford, ed., Poetry Manuscript Analysis, Southern Illinois Univ. Press 1965 * The Well-Wrought Urn, Cleanth Brooks, Poetry Criticism, Harvest Books 1956 * The Main of Light: On the Concept of Poetry, Justus Buchler, Philosophy, Oxford 1974 * The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, Kenneth Burke, Essays: Poetry, Philosophy, Vintage 1941 * A Phlosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke (J. T. Boulton, ed.), Philosophy/Aesthetics, U. of Notre Dame Press 1968 * Selected Essays & Reviews, Hayden Carruth, Poetry Essays, Copper Canyon 1996 * Language and Myth, Ernst Cassirer, Philosophy, Dover 1953 * How Does A Poem Mean, John Ciardi, Poetry Essays, Houghton Mifflin 1959 * Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Literary Essays, Various Editions The Language of Criticism & the Structure of Poetry, R.S. Crane, Literary Criticism, U. of Toronto 1953* Selected Writing of Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, editor, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1966 * Poetry & Literature: An Introduction to Its Criticism and History, Benedetto Croce (Giovanni Gullace, trans.), Literary Criticism, S. Illinois U. Press 1981 * The Problem of Style, J.V. Cunningham, Literary Essays, Fawcett Publications 1966 * Poetry As Persuasion, Carl Dennis, Poetry Essays, U. of Georgia Press 2001Poetry in our Time, Babette Deutsch, Poetry Criticism, Columbia U. Press 1952 * Art as Experience, John Dewey, Philosophy, Perigree Books 1980 * Sorties, James Dickey, Poetry Essays, LSU Press 1971 * Walking Light, Stephen Dunn, Poetry Essays, Boa Editions 2001 * The Use of Poetry & the Use of Criticism, T.S. Eliot, Poetry Criticism, Faber & Faber 1933 * The Modern Tradition, Richard Ellman & Chas. Fieldelson, Jr., eds., Literary, Cultural & Art Essays,Oxford 1965 * Complete Essays & Other Writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poetry Essays & Philosophy, Modern Library 1950 * Seven Types of Ambiguity, William Empson, Poetry Criticism, New Directions 1966 * Expansive Poetry: Essays on the New Narrative and New Formalism, Frederick Feirstein, ed., Poetry Essays, Story Line Press 1989 * The Ghost of Meter: Culture & Prosody in American Free Verse, Annie Finch, Formalism/Metrics, U. of Michigan Press 2000 * An Exaltation of Forms, Annie Finch & Katherine Varnes, eds., Formalism/Metrics, U. of Michigan Press 2002 * Romantic Criticism 1800-1850, R.A. Foakes, ed., Poetry Essays. Arnold Publishers 1968 * A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetics Stuart Friebert, David Walker & David Young, eds., Poetry Essays, Oberlin College Press 1997 * Robert Frost on Writing, Robert Frost (Elaine Barry, editor), Poetry Essays, Rutgers 1973 * Selected Prose of Robert Frost, Robert Frost (H. Cox & E.C. Lathem, eds.), Collier Books 1968 * Feeling As A Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry, Alice Fulton, Poetry Essays, Graywolf Press 1999 * Poetic Meter & Poetic Form (revised edition), Paul Fussell, Formalism/Metrics, Random House 1979 * The Poet's Work: 29 Masters of the 20th Century Poetry on the Origin and Practice of Their Art, Reginald Gibbons, ed., Poetry Essays, Houghton Mifflin 1979 * Twentieth-Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry, Dana Gioia, David Mason & Meg Schoerke, eds., Poetics, McGraw Hill 2003 * Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry & American Culture, Dana Gioia, Poetry Essays, Graywolf Press 1992 * Proofs & Theories, Louise Glück,Poetry Essays. Ecco Press 1994 * The Collected Works: Essays on Art & Literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (John Gearey, editor), Essays: Art & Poetry, Princeton U. Press 1986 * The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Robert Graves, Poetry Essay, Farrar Straus Giroux 1966 * Oxford Addresses on Poetry, Robert Graves, Poetry Essays, Doubleday 1962 * The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers, Allen R. Grossman (Mark Halliday, interviewer), Poetics, Johns Hopkins U. Press 1991 * Of Manywhere-at-Once, Bob Grumman, Poetry Essays * New Expansive Poetry, R.S. Gwynn, ed., Poetry Essays, Story Line Press 1995 * Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, 1970-76, Donald Hall, Poetry Essays, U. of Michigan Press 1978 * Poetry & Ambition, Donald Hall, Poetry Essays, U. of Michigan Press 1988 * Twentieth Century Pleasures, Robert Hass, Poetry Essays, Ecco Press 1984 * Robert Hayden: Collected Prose, Robert Hayden (F. Glaysher, ed.; foreword by Wm. Meredith), Literary Essays, U. of Michigan Press 1984 * Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-78, Seamus Heaney, Poetry Essays, Farrar Straus Giroux 1980 * The Redress of Poetry. Seamus Heaney, Poetry Essays, Farrar Straus Giroux 1995 * Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger (trans. by Albert Hofstadter), Philosophy, Harper Colophon Books 1975 * Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, W.N. Herbert & Matthew Hollis, eds., Poetry Essays, Bloodaxe Books 2000 * Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Jane Hirshfield, Poetry Essays, HarperCollins 1997 * Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form, Philip Hobsbaum, Formalism/ Metrics, Routledge 1999 * Essentials Of Literary Criticism, Philip Hobsbaum, Poetry Criticism, 1983 * Tradition and Experiment in English Poetry, Philip Hobsbaum. Poetry Criticism 1979 * Rhyme's Reason, John Hollander, Formalism/Metrics, Yale U. Press 1981 * My Emily Dickinson, Susan Howe, Poetry Criticism, North Atlantic Books 1985 * Donald Justice in Conversation, Philip Hoy, interviewer, Interviews * The Triggering Town, Richard Hugo, Poetry Essays, Norton 1979 * Speculations: Essays on Humanism & Philsophy of Art, T.E. Hulme, Philosophy Essays, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1987 * The Auden Generation, Samuel Hynes, Poetry Criticism, Princeton U. Press 1982 * The Failure of Poetry, The Promise of Language, Laura (Riding) Jackson (John Nolan, ed.), Poetry Essays, U. of Michigan 2007 * The Instant of Knowing, Josephine Jacobsen, Poetry Essay, Library of Congress (pamphlet) * The Reaper Essays, Mark Jarman & Robert McDowell, Poetry Essays, Story Line Press 1996 * Kipling, Auden & Company: Essays & Reviews 1935-1964, Randall Jarrell, Poetry Essays & Reviews, Farrar Straus Giroux 1980 * Poetry and The Age, Randall Jarrell, Poetry Essays & Reviews. Vintage 1959 * The Complete Perfectionist: A Poetics of Work, Juan Ramon Jiménez (Christopher Maurer, trans. & ed.), Poetry Aphorisms, Doubleday 1997 * Donald Justice Reader, Donald Justice, Poetry Essays, University Press of New England 2003 * The Pound Era, Hugh Kenner, Poetry Criticism, U. of California 1971 * The Romantic Image, Frank Kermode, Literary Criticism, Vintage 1964 * The Poetry of Criticism: Horace Epistles II and Ars Poetica, Rpss S. Kirkpatrick, Poetry Criticism, U. of Alberta Press 1990 * Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950, Melissa Kwasny, ed., Poetry Essays, Wesleyan U. Press 2004 * Feeling and Form, Susanne K.Langer, Philosophy/Aesthetics , Chas. Scribners 1953 * Paul Valéry: An Anthology, James Lawler, editor, Art & Literary Essays, Routledge 1977 * Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, L.T. Lemon & M.J. Reis, trans., Literary Criticism, U. of Nebraska Press 1965 * Light Up the Cave, Denise Levertov, Poetry New Directions New & Selected Essays, Denise Levertov, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1992 * Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats & Modernism, James Logenbach, Poetry Criticism, Oxford 1998 * On the Sublime, Loginius, Aesthetics, Various Editions * In Search of Duende, Federico Garcia Lorca (N. T. DiGiovanni & C. Maurer, trans.), Essays, New Directions 1999 * Poetry & Experience, Archibald MacLeish, Poetry Essays, Houghton Mifflin 1960 * Creative Intuition in Art & Poetry, Jacques Maritain, Poetry & Art Essays, Pantheon 1953 * Versification: A Short Introduction, James McAuley, Formalism/Metrics. Michigan State U. Press 1966 * Worlds into Words: Understanding Modern Poems, Diane Middlebrook, Poetry Criticism, Norton 1980 * The Witness of Poetry, Czeslaw Milosz, Poetry Essays, Harvard U. Press 1983 * Selected Essays of Eugenio Montale, Eugenio Montale (Jonathan Galassi, trans.), Poetry Essays, Ecco 1982 * Predilections: literary essays, Marianne Moore, Poetry Essays, Viking Press 1955 * The Bedford Glossary of Critical & Literary Terms, Ross Murfin & Supryia M. Ray, Literary Reference, Bedford 1997 * Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy/Aesthetics, Modern Library 2000 * Rules for the Dance: Handbook for Writing & Reading Metrical Verse, Mary Oliver, Formalism/Metrics, Mariner Books 1998 * A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver, Poetry Reference, Harvest Books 1994 * The Other Voice, Octavio Paz, Poetry Essays, Harvest Books 1992 * The Bow & the Lyre, Octavio Paz, U. of Texas Press 1973 * Poetics of Inderterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage, Majorie Perloff, Poetry Criticism, Princeton U. Press 1981 * The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide, Robert Pinsky, Formalism/Metrics, Farrar Straus Giroux 1998 * Poetry And The World, Robert Pinsky, Poetry Criticism, Ecco Press 1988 * Selected Prose: 1909-1965, Ezra Pound, Literary Essays, New Directions * ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1934 * Guide to Kulchur, Ezra Pound, Poetry Essays, New Directions Literary Essays Ezra Pound, Poetry Essays, New Directions * The Imagist Poem, William Pratt, ed., Poetry Criticism, Dutton * The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetics (3rd Edition), Alex Preminger, ed., Poetry Reference, Princeton U. Press 1993 * Like a Writer, Francine Prose, Writing Essays * Disjunctive Poetics: From Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky to Susan Howe, Peter Quatermain, Poetry Criticism, Cambridge 1992 * Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau, Writing Essay in Versions of Single Story, New Directions 1981 * Assays, Kenneth Rexroth, Poetry & Literary Essays, New Directions 1961 * American Poetry in the Twentieth Century, Kenneth Rexroth, Poetry Essays, Continuum Book 1973 * Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1986, Adrienne Rich, Poetry Essays, Norton 1986 * On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978, Adrienne Rich, Poetry Essays, Norton 1979 * What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, Adrienne Rich, Poetry Essays, Norton 1993 * Practical Criticism, I. A. Richards, Literary Criticism, Harvest Books 1956 * Letters on Cezanne, Rainer Maria Rilke (ed. Clara Rilke; trans. by Joel Agee), Art Essays, Fromme International 1985 * Where Silence Reigns: Selected Prose, Rainer Maria Rilke (G. Craig Houston, trans.), Poetry Essays, New Directions 1978 * Letters to a Young Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (M. D. Herter, trans.), Poetry Essays, Norton 1934 * Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke 1943-1963, Theodore Roethke (David Wagoner, ed.), Poet's Journal, Doubleday 1972 * On the Poet and His Craft: Selected Prose, Theodore Roethke (Ralph J. Mills, ed.), Poetry Essays, U. of Washington Press 1965 * The Dream of the Marsh Wren, Patiann Rogers, Poetry Essays, Milkweed Editions 1999 * The Modern Poetic Sequence, M.L.Rosenthal & Sally M. Gall, U. of Oxford Press 1983 * The Life of Poetry, Muriel Rukeyser, Poetry Essays, Paris Press 1996The World of Poetry: Poets & Critics on the Art & Function of Poetry, Clive Sansom, ed., Poetry Quotes, Phoenix House 1959 * Naïve & Sentimental Poetry - On the Sublime, Friedrich von Schiller, Philosophy, Poetry, Aesthetics, Frederick Ungar Publishing 1966 * Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Friedrich Schlegel (trans. by Behler & Struc), Poetics, Penn. St. Univ. Press 1968 * John Dryden on Dramatic Poetry and other critical essays, George Watson, ed., Poetry Essays, J.M. Dent & Sons 1962 * Lives of the Poets, Michael Schmidt, Poetry Bios and Commentary, Vintage 2000 * Schopenhauer: Essays & Aphorisms, Arthur Schopenhauer (RJ Hollingdale, trans.), Philosophy Penguin 1970 * A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945-1951, George Seferis, Poet's Journal, Belknap (Harvard U. Press) 1974 * Prose Keys to Modern Poetry, Karl Shapiro, ed., Poetry Essays, U. of Nebraska Press 1962 * A Defence of Poetry, Sir Philip Sidney, Poetry Essay, Various Editions Leopardi and the Theory of Poetry, G. Singh, Literary Criticism. U. of Kentucky Press 1964 * A Poet's Notebook, Edith Sitwell, Poetry Quotes, Macmillan & Co. 1944 * De/Compositions, W.S. Snodgrass, Poetry Praxis, Graywolf Press 2001 * The Making of a Poem, Stephen Spender, Poetry Essays, Norton 1962 * House That Jack Built: Cthe Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, Jack Spicer (ed. Peter Gizzi), Poetry Essays, Wesleyan U. Press 1998 * Where The Angels Come Toward Us, David St. John, Poetry Essays, White Pine Press 1995 * Appreciation: Painting, Poetry and Prose, Leo Stein, Art Essays, Random House 1947 * Writing the Australian Crawl, William Stafford, Poetry Essays, U. of Michigan Press 1978 * Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter, Timonthy Steele, Poetry Essays, U. of Arkansas Press 1990 * How Writing is Written: Volume II of the Previously Uncollected Writings, Gertrude Stein (Robert Bartlett Haas, ed.), Essays, Black Sparrow Press 1974 * The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality & the Imagination, Wallace Stevens, Poetry Essays, Vintage 1951 * Sur Plusiers Beaux Sujects: Wallace Stevens' Commonplace Books, Wallace Stevens (Milton Bates, ed.), Poet's Commonplace Book, Stanford U. Press 1989 * Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, Susan Stewart, Poetry Essays, University of Chicago Press 2002 * Theories & Documents of Contemporary Art: A Source Book of Artist's Writings, Kristine Stiles & Peter Selz, eds., Art Essays U. of California 1996 * The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry, and Calligraphy, Michael Sullivan, Poetry & Art, George Braziller 1999 * The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (3rd Edition), Lewis Turco, Formalism/Metrics, U. of New England Press 2000 * 45 Contemporary Poems: The Creative Process, Albeta Turner, Poetry Praxis, Longman 1985 * Lives of the Poets: The Story of One Thousand Years of English & American Poetry, Louis Untermeyer, Short Biographical Essays, Replica Books 1999 * Introduction to Poetry: Commentaries on Thirty Poems, Mark Van Doren, Poetry Essays, Hill & Wang 1968 * Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari (E. L. Seeley, trans.), Artist Biographies, Noonday 1957 * Soul Says, Helen Vendler, Literary Criticism, Harvard U. Press 1995 * Words Chosen Out of Desire, Helen Vendler, Literary Criticism, U. of Tenn. Press 1984 * Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics in the 1990s, Mark Wallace, Poetry Essays, U. of Alabama Press 2001 * Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Eliot Weinberger & Octavio Paz, editors, Poetry Essay, Moyer Bell 1987 * Concepts of Criticism, René Wellek, Literary Criticism, Yale U. Press 1963 * The Embodiment of Knowledge, William Carlos William, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1974 * Selected Essays of William Carlos. Williams William Carlos, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1969 * In Defense of Reason, Yvor Winters, Poetry Essays, U. of Denver Press 1937 * The Japanese Haiku, Kenneth Yasuda, Poetry Criticism, Chas. E. Tuttle 1957 * Essays & Introductions, W. B. Yeats, Literary Essays,Collier Books 1961 * A Defence of Ardor, Adam Zagajewski (Clare Cavanaugh, trans.), Poetry and Art Essays, Farrar Straus Giroux 2004 * Multum in Parvo: an essay in poetic imagination, Carl Zigrosser, Poetry Essays, George Braziller 1965 * Lyrical Philosophy, Jan Zwicky, Poetry, Philosophy, U. of Toronto Press 1992 * Wisdom & Metaphor, Jan Zwicky, Poetry, Philosophy, Gaspereau Press 2003

I want to be left alone

Like Garbo, it's only the famous poet who wants to be left alone, who thinks poetry should be hiding itself in some secret bower where only the initiated need know where to find it.

definition refuted

Let your next poem openly refute your last definition of poetry.

good story

A good story can't be told badly.

uncomfortably suited

A poem is uncomfortably suited within any circumference of understanding.

voice and style

'Voice', as an attribute, is often ridiculed because it is mistaken for a poetic technique. But voice is nothing more than style inflected by one's favored themes and subject matter. And not unlike the word 'style', voice is used too often and used in place of the hard work of describing the characteristics of the writing under consideration.

don't turn your back on them

As poets we love words and won’t turn our backs on them. As poets we trust words but we don’t turn our backs on them.

pure or purple

Pure poetry so often flirts with the purple.

see into and overhear

The poet sees and sees into, hears and overhears.

remembrance

If you analyze well your most poetic impressions and imaginings—the ones that most exalt you and pull you outside of yourself and of the real world—you would find that they and the pleasure they cause (at least after childhood) consist totally or chiefly in remembrance.

—Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone dei pensieri

word-breeder

Poet, be a word-breeder!

bookmark lost

A pity, but I couldn’t bear to go back into those pages even to save my favorite bookmark.

many rooms

The poem has many rooms, corridors, and closets.

a new york school poet

A New York School poet seems convinced his random musings and casual observations are more interesting than your (the reader's) stray thoughts, sightings and overhearings.

locked within the dictionary

I saw the poem locked within the dictionary, and I cut away until it was set free. (after Michelangelo)

always astonished

I was a poet animated by philosophy, not a philosopher with poetic faculties. I loved to admire the beauty of things, to trace the imperceptible through the minute the poetic soul of the universe.

—Fernando Pessoa, Always Astonished (City Lights Books, 1988), translated by Edwin Honig

my best professors

My best professors were proprietors of used bookshops.

'surrhetorical' poetry

The poetry of Gertrude Stein could be called ‘surrhetorical’.

yard-sale poetry

Yard-sale poetry: The page casually arrayed with things from someone’s life.

one reader

A book with one reader: the person who proofread it.

what is the good of critiquing a forest

I have a friend who has an early Leaves of Grass edition and
inscribed on the flyleaf, in Whitman's hand, is this quote:

"We critique a palace or a cathedral, but what is the good of critiquing a
forest?"

lexical magic

The poem as lexical magic.

knot of language

And a tidy well-tied knot of language it was.

form's nadir

Form’s nadir: A trivial form like the acrostic.

that damn line again

[F]requently in the course of delivering himself of a poem, a poet will find himself in possession of a lyric bauble—a line as smooth as velvet to the ear, as pretty as a feather to the eye, yet a line definitely out of plumb with the frame of the poem. What to do with a trinket like this is always troubling to a poet, who is naturally grateful to his Muse for small favors. Usually he just drops the shining object into the body of the poem somewhere and hopes it won’t look too giddy.

—E. B. White, “Unzip the Veil,” ONE MAN’S MEAT, p146

title exceeding

The poem exhausted itself trying to keep up with the promise of its title.

they aren't avant-garde

Those who have to claim to be avant-garde, aren't.

critical path through the poem

No unnecessary or inert nodes of words: Solve for and find the critical path through the poem.

substitution of terms

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

—Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929)

The safest general characterization of the European poetical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Homer.

a poem that travels light

I dream of a poem so brief and memorable, so engaging and spirited, that it will forever elude print—it will travel light from mouth to mind, mind to mouth, without ever being pinned to a page as text.

gathering storm of whispers

All the whispers gathered round and rose into crescendo.

a tidepool

A poem should be like a tidepool: A small window of water filled with wondrous things, a flux of colors and textures, giving one a glimpse into the immensity of the sea.

living in poetry

That’s what I shall call living in poetry: prolonging the real not by the fantastic, the marvelous, images of paradise, but by trying to live what is concrete in its true dimension, living one’s daily life in what one might call, perhaps, the epic of the real.

To define the verb to live would be a whole philosophy. And nothing at all.

We can amuse ourselves defining poetry, but we do not define sensations.

—Guillevic
Living in Poetry: Interviews with Guillevic,translated from the French by Maureen Smith(The Dedalus Press, 1999) p. 11

without forensic criticism

It doesn’t take forensic criticism to tell if the poem was written in blood.

overburdening fruit

Like the limbs of an orchard tree, you could see the strain in the lines and almost hear them creak with the overburdening fruit of so many adjectives.

act of disbelief

In contemporary society to write a poem is an act of disbelief.

poetry in its street clothes

Prose poem: The language of poetry in its street clothes.

effigy and shadow

Every real effigy has a shadow which is its double; and art must falter and fail from the moment the sculptor believes he has liberated the kind of shadow whose very existence will destroy his repose.

—Antonin Artaud, preface to The Theatre and its Double, translated by Mary Caroline Richards

slip it under the tongue

Short poem: So easy to slip under the tongue, to smuggle into silence.

perpetual emotion machine

To think of the poem as a perpetual emotion machine.

the tongue refuses to lie still

Reading the poem silently my tongue refused to lie still in my mouth.

to lose your notebook

To lose your notebook feels as though a vital organ has been taken from your body.

sound of a blindman's cane striking

Just back from Germany, I thought I'd post something by a German poet...

I write poems to orient myself in reality. I view them as trigonometric points or buoys that mark a course in an unknown area. Only through writing do things take on reality for me. Reality is my goal, not my presupposition. First, I must establish it.
[...]
Let us use the word “definition” for these trigonometric signs. Such definitions are not only useful for the writer but it is absolutely necessary that he set them up. In each good line of poetry I hear the cane of the blindman striking: I am on secure ground now.

—Gunter Eich, "Some Remarks on 'Literature and Reality',”
Valuable Nail: Selected Poems of Gunter Eich,
Oberlin College Press, 1981, translated by Stuart Freibert

a poem equal to architecture

A poem should have a social function equal that of architecture. The poem as a beautiful form of habitable human space.

poem from there to the end

No matter at what point one entered the poem, it was a poem from there to the end.

an infinitely small vocabulary

A perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.

—Jack Spicer, "Lorca Letters"

poet laureate of anywhere & everywhere

The Poet Laureate of the Corner Store; The Poet Laureate of Greenland; The Poet Laureate of Half-Past Ten O’Clock; The Poet Laureate of I-10; The Poet Laureate of the Burning Trash Barrel; The Poet Laureate of Wal-Mart; The Poet Laureate of Leap Year; The Poet Laureate of Las Vegas; The Poet Laureate of Pinehurst Golf Course; The Poet Laureate of Fairhaven Cemetery; The Poet Laureate of LAX; The Poet Laureate of the Moon. It’s such an honor to be named Poet Laureate…

more mass

Some poems seem to accrete mass with each rereading.

cheese graters

The fashion for fragments: Another poet who has taken a cheese grater to his brain. Can you not synthesize, configure, integrate or make whole?

leaves a scar

A great line of poetry leaves a scar in time.

enemy of decoration

Seferis quotes Cavafy’s critics…
“Cavafy's method is always to use the most frugal and anti-poetic phrase for the expression of his poetic ideas.” He is “the implacable enemy of any kind of decoration.”

Then Seferis says…
There is no doubt of the fact that “Cavafy stands at the boundary where poetry strips herself in order” (as I have said elsewhere) “to become prose.” No one has ever gone farther in this direction. He is the most anti-poetic (or a-poetic) poet I know…

—George Seferis, “Cavafy and Eliot—A Comparison,” On the Greek Style, translated by Rex Warner (Little Brown, 1966)

word weeds

Word weeds: some beautiful in their scattered, untamed glory; others thick and choking out the poetry’s fullest flowering.

box or old barn

Even a poem that closes, as Yeats said, like a box clicking shut, is open in many ways…reading it is like being inside an old barn with many missing boards and shingles, the light streaming in from many directions.

free-roam romance

The poem was all horses running on a beach, manes catching sunlight against surf…all that free-roam romance.

poets mistaken about love

Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience; which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.

—Hannah Arendt, "Action," ch. 33 (footnote), The Human Condition (1958)

uneasily reconciled polarities

A superior metaphor is made of uneasily reconciled polarities.

strop them upon your tongue

Like an itinerant knife sharpener, the poet should try to find words in need of a good honing. And, if need be, he should strop them on his tongue a few times until they have a bright new edge.

no match for verisimilitude

The imagination is no match for verisimilitude.

narrative at risk

The poet will always put the narrative at risk in favor of arresting images and felicitous sounds.

silent poetry

Painting is often called "silent poetry," Wushengshi, and thought of as a way of releasing feelings that need not, or sometimes could not, be put into words. Huang Tingjian,a great eleventh-century calligrapher, wrote of painter Li Gonglin:

Duke Li has verses which he doesn't want to throw out,
So with light ink he "writes" them down as silent poetry.

From the The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry & Calligraphy by Michael Sullivan (George Braziller, revised edition '99)

all poems are political

In contemporary society, to write a poem is a political act.

makes a physical impression

Though entirely made of words, the poem somehow makes a physical impression on one’s life.

web of belief

The poem as a 'web of belief’. (after Quine)