george washington he big he trade my mother for a pig

*
I don't hate music,

but it infuriates me that societies of all sorts

underfund poetry so drastically, especially when

compared to the financial support they lavish on music—

and it seems to me there is a reason this disproportionate

ratio occurs:

of course the power elites of those societies control all budgetary
decisions regarding arts funding,

and when they starve poetry while stuffing music with that munificent
paltry pittance of the national pork they grudgingly allot the various arts,

they know what they're doing. The biggies/oligarchs of every
country know

that music can always be manipulated to prop up their evil
purposes,

that symphonic snobsters and egomane popstars can always
be used to quell the mob and lull the populace via beautifully staged

reenactments of the status quo:—

they know music's part of their team. They count on music to
help enforce their tyranny. That's why

our last President, George W. Bush's feelings were so hurt by Kanye West's
harsh words:

he was being betrayed by a member of his staff.

If Prez GWB had learned of the dischordant notes being produced
during his reign by Joshua Clover (not to mention you),

would he have been similarly distressed?

Poetry doesn't get any funding (in comparison to music, poetry's
purse is empty)

for the simple logic that poetry opposes the oppressive policies of the rulers

who dole out

that gelt, that graft.

***

and it burns burns burns that ring o' fire

*
all you intells who wanna characterize billionaire Bob Dylan and his fellow wealthy plutocrat tunesmiths

as poets,

go ahead, I don't care, I have no interest in establishing hierarchies boundaries of who's
a poet and who's a what,—

but if the billionaire Zimmerman is a poet,

then where's James Tate's Grammy—

where's the Rolling Stone cover stories on Gluck/Olds/et al—

where's John Ashbery's Kennedy Center Presidential Honors Medal?

?

With music and poetry, it's a one way street.

And guess who's always getting run over on it.

**

more on new thingism (cont. from previous post)

*
I don't have the exact quote, but somewhere Alfred Hitchcock said something to the effect that

critics who complained about the trivial or tawdry low-brow content of his films were like a museum-goer wondering whether Cezanne's apples were sweet or sour.

They miss the point, he insisted. It's not content that's important, it's style.

Any old apple or wheelbarrow or pistol poking out of a pocket will do for a subject.

Content is irrelevant, or should be, according to this theory:

the viewer or reader must focus first and foremost on the artist's stylistic choices and methods.

Indeed, the audience is commanded to believe that

WHAT the artist says or shows is secondary to HOW he or she does it.

As John Ciardi summarises the theory in his 1958 book 'How Does a Poem Mean,'

"Anything significantly looked at is significant."

In fact, in this dispensation, in this scale of esthetics, the more insignificant the ostensible subject is, the better.

Objectivist poetry (and much of Imagist) is based on this tenet.

Reznikoff: 'About an excavation a flock of bright red lanterns has settled.' (This example comes from the canonical Norton Modern Anthol.)

What makes this a poem? (And not merely a poem: no, it's now a Work of Literature, due to its enshrinement in the Norton)—

Maybe the linebreaks, for a start. I've deliberately left them out, in honor of all the 'prose poems' being written currently—

And then of course the metaphor: the lanterns are no longer lanterns per se, they're seen as a "flock" of "settl[ing]" birds.

Does this metaphorical overlay make it poetry? (I assume the comparison is deliberately clicheish—I mean, birds?)

The subject/object being depicted is ordinary, everyday, banal, something you've seen many times, especially in urban areas:

a hole, a trench has been dug, an "excavation", presumably for the usual purposes: to lay or repair waterpipes, electrical grids, etc. Installing cables. And then when the workers quit for the day, they leave lanterns, flashing lights, signs and sawhorses around the open pit, as warnings to protect pedestrians/motorists from straying into it—

About an excavation
a flock of bright red lanterns
has settled.

"Anything significantly looked at is significant," lectures John Ciardi, who insists that "How" a poem means is more important that "What" it means—

but is it? I wonder. I think this may be an idea (an ideal, really) whose time has passed.

This belief—that the content of a poem is irrelevant,

that poets are free to seize upon any trivial object, any thingy-thing-thing in the environment around them,

and then, through the power of their craft and the manipulations of their genius,

can transform that common thing, that wheelbarrow or street-flasher or this:

"Between walls (the back wings of the hospital) where nothing will grow lie cinders in which shine the broken pieces of a green bottle."

What makes this poetry? I've left out the linebreaks.

If you saw this described in a scene in a novel—
you know, something like: "During lunchbreak Dr. Wayben stepped out for a cigarette in the area back of the surgical and ER wings and noticed down among the cinder gravel back there where grass never grew, some pieces of a broken green bottle; he wondered for a moment if it was a medicine or a wine bottle: either one, its shards gleamed up eagerly and desperately as his dying patient Julia Roach's eyes, smashed apart down there in the bleak shadows cast by the clinic blocks that towered behind him as he stood puffing. . . ." etc. etc.—

If you read it in a novel—and such intentionalized observations and characterizational metaphors abound in most fiction—it would just be another paragraph in the narrative . . .

But isolate that sight, that glimpse of glass in the dark gravel, chop that observation up into abrupt lines and stanzas, and presto it's poetry?

In this "Objectivist" mode the worse your subject matter is, the more trivial tawdry and ordinary it is, the better it is—

*
It's the arrogance of this theory which I find most offensive.

The Objectivist poet is in effect saying to their audience:

"Yes yes, I know you want poems about Important Significant Events Subjects,

but if I were to give in and give you such poems, you would focus your interest more upon those ISES

and less upon me!—

Distracted by that salient content, you might ignore and or insuffiently appreciate me, my artistry—

Look: here, I take this old wheelbarrow, this common roadside lantern, these unnoticed pieces of broken glass in the gravel,

or any trivial everyday phenomenon, any household object,

and lo, behold, even these mere nothing-things, these disposable sights and signs,

even the humblest is elevated by my craft my skill my genius

into the realm of art!

I take this mud and godlike transform it into gold.

And moreover, worse fate of all, if I gave you the poems you want, you might worship them instead of me."

—The Objectivist/NewThingypoo poet takes their credo from number one on the big 10 list: thou shalt have no other gods before me.


///

nonseq

*
There should be an app that lets you take a "prose poem" and instantly lineate it,

break it up into lines,

(syllabic or generic blank verse lines, for example),

so that it could then be read to ascertain whether there is indeed any poetry in it—

otherwise, how can you tell?

*

grr

*
EPITAPH FOR A DOG

Thieves I attacked; for lovers I kept still;
And so performed my lord's, and lady's, will.

—Martin Opitz (1597-1639)

translation by Raymond Oliver, in his book "To Be Plain: Translations from Greek, Latin, French, and German", 1981—

*
my flings at it:

GOOD DOG BAD DOG

I keep the thieves at bay
With growls and grunts and grrs—
But I look the other way
For gigolos and lovers:
Thus doubly I obey
Both my Lord's and Lady's orders.

...

huh:

I barked off thieves afraid
of my lunges jumps and gyres,
while lovers came or stayed—
see how straitly I obeyed
both my Lord's and Lady's desires.

('gyres' doesn't work . . . maybe 'flyers' (as leaps), or fleeing thieves—

My barks kept thieves afraid
and turned them into flyers

and sent them helter-skyers

and fled/sped them fast-off flyers

and set their heels to fires

outliers / liars / briars

(my barks were sharp as briars)

My snarls kept thieves afraid,
my barks bit them like briars

/

My barks kept thieves afraid
and set their heels to fires, / heels at fires

/
My barks made burglars turn afraid
and spanked their cars to backfires,
while panting lovers parked and played—
a special traffic-ward-dog, I obeyed
both my Master and Mistress's desires.

/
My barks made burglars terrified
and spanked their cars to backfires,
while lovers parked and slinked inside—
doubly-good guarddog, I satisfied
both my Master and Mistress's desires.

/
Thieves and burglars ran terrified,
my yips and yaps were vicious—
but lovers I let slip inside:
thus janus-face I satisfied
my Master's and Mistress's wishes.

///

narratific

*
I've complained here about the ineptitude of some contemporary narrative verse by USAPO—

see my posts on poems by Wojahn and Plumly, for example—

or my recent response to a "prose poem" by Robert Halfhass—

but there are good/great narrative poems being written by today's poets—

Stephen Dobyns (to name one) has written dozens of them. Dobyns must be the most underrated poet around—

his poetry should have received major prizes long ago. But of course Dobyns

is envied by other poets because of his distinguished record as a novelist—

and so those other poets who "judge" the National Book Award and the Pulitzer etc.,

well, fuck, they're not going to give a poetry honor to any poet who's slash a successful novelist,

are they—

when's the last time that happened? was it Robert Penn Warren,—has it happened since then,

has any poet/novelist gotten one of the plum po-prizes, since him?

(I can't recall any; maybe I should go and factcheck the lists of winners since Warren, before I make this accusation)—

Anyway, it seems as if the main requirement for a poetry judge is an alliterative one: jealousy.

(See this previous year's shunning of Seidel's Collected by the panels who picked; hell, they're not going to give it to a millionaire, are they;

except Richard Howard, he's a wealthy gentleman, and they gave his poetry a Pulitzer,

but then Howard for most of his life was the chief dispenser of po-pork in the land:

wasn't he the capo tuttifuck, the kingpink who doled out the the graft,

the nero-nabob who awarded the sweetheart contracts,

the biggycrat who ladled out the cash for all the usual boondoggeral projects,

from his chieftain's-chair up there at PoBiz Inc.)—

Hey, Laura Kasischke,— you're a wonderful poet, your poems are great stuff, but you're writing all those novels in addition to your verse,

and look at the track-record: Dobyns, and Marge Piercy, two names that come to mind of poet-novelists,

neither of whose poetry has gotten the credit and accolade due it.

*
But I've strayed from my original intent with this post, which was to point to a good narrative poem, this one:

http://www.versedaily.org/2010/recess.shtml

—Whose virtues are obvious, I should think.

Compare it with a narrative poem I think is bad, or incompetent:

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14848

—The good one is superior to the bad one not just in its technical skill and style,

but in its clarity: you can tell what's going on in the poem, what's happening:—

and that seems to me the absolute essential basic ingredient of any narrative poem.

Because if I can't ascertain the

who/what/where/when

from a narrative poem I'm trying to read,

well, I get frustrated.

I see what the one I can't appeciate is trying to do, or think I see: to replicate the emotional confusion of the narrator/protagonist

via the misleads and meanders and maunderings of the writing—

the poet is leaving it up to me the reader to supply the missing factual context/frame, the empirical details

for the poem—

which doesn't want to show: it wants to, what, evoke? Sorry, but after repeated readings I can barely adumbrate what this poet/poem are saying or doing—literally.

They leave me wanting. The failure may be mine, of course, not theirs.

*
I don't write much narrative poetry, never have. I lack the necessary skills for a sustained depiction of events and characters,

for presenting a scene and the acts that occur therein—

my few attempts have never been satisfactory.

But I do enjoy reading narrative poems when they're done well.

I have (I hope) no prejudice against them simply because I can't write them,

but it's true I seem to have less patience when reading them than I do with lyric verse.

***

*
Poets should be issued pistols and authorized to execute on sight those malignants

known as "buskers"—

street musicians with their caterwaul guitars and awful lyrics (all plagiarized from poets, of course)—

obscene disturbers of the peace.

*
In a just world, all songwriters, writers of song lyrics —let me change that term to tunesmiths, since they don't really write anything, do they, no, they steal and corrupt the words of poets—

In a just world posses of poets would treat criminals like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan et al

the way rustlers were met in the old west: string them up from the nearest tree.

*
Benjamin Peret, or so I've read, would insult and hurl curses at priests when he passed them on the street—

not only should poets (and atheists in general) publicly vituperate the clergy,

we should extend that courtesy to any busker polluting the air of our towns—

we can't shoot them, unfortunately, but we can scream the truth at them as we walk by,

we can shout out the verdict of their iniquity: Thief! Vandal! etc.

*
As I've pointed out in many earlier posts on this blog,

poetry is (or should be) in a state of warfare with the other arts, all of whom oppress and exploit us—

but sadly all too many poets are quislings, class traitors disloyal to their comrades, constantly consorting with and supporting

our enemies. Which, I've noted several times, is not surprising given the lowly status of poets—

there are always slaves who will accomplice themselves to aid the master's oppression of their own suffering cohort—

*