thoughts on a poem by Traci Brimhall

*
this is a very good poem in terms of its content, but the form, specifically the linebreaks,
detracts from its effectiveness, i think:—


http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15206 

look at the beginning of it:

Via Dolorosa

We have been telling the story wrong all along,
how a king took Philomela's tongue after he had taken
her body, and how the gods turned her into a nightingale

so she could tell the night of her grief. Even now the streets
wait for her lamentation—strays minister to bones abandoned
on a stoop, a man sleeps on the ghosts of yesterday's heat,

pigeons rest on top of the church and will not stir until
they hear music below them. Inside, a woman warms up
the organ and sings Via Dolorosa about a Messiah

who wanted to save everyone from the wages of pleasure.
But how can I keep a man's fingers from my mouth?
How can I resist bare trees dervishing on the sidewalk?
...
why not:

We have been telling the story wrong all along,
how a king took Philomela's tongue after
he had taken her body, and how the gods
turned her into a nightingale so she could tell

the night of her grief.  Even now the streets
wait for her lamentation—strays minister
to bones abandoned on a stoop, a man sleeps
on the ghosts of yesterday's heat, pigeons rest

on top of the church and will not stir until
they hear music below them.  / etc.

/
the poet begins with 12-syllable line, then a 15- , another 15- ,
then a 14- , a 16- , a 14- , a 14- , another 14- , then a 17- , a 14- ,

and then, suddenly, abruptly, back to 12:
 But how can I keep a man's fingers from my mouth? 

—but why?  having established a strong first line, why not stay with it in terms of flow, of feet?

—the soundlinks and pairings are well-done:  the ng-rhymes of telling/wrong/along/king/tongue/nighting,

and the l's: tell/all/along/Phil/mel/gale/tell . . .  and: had/body/gods . .
 .

but if you're doing a brief burst of internal rhymes like had/body/gods, isn't it usually (if not always) better to place them in the same line:

he had taken her body, and how the gods

—but it seems as if the poet's ear hasn't even attended to sounds like those, and can hear instead only the hard t's: tell/story/took/tongue/taken/turned/night/tell/night— 

hitting your reader on the head repeatedly can be effective at times, i guess, but the crudeness of the measure is counterproductive in assisting the subtle plot-thrusts and turns in this poem—

/

(the dash between 'lamentation' and 'strays' should be a colon, by the way)— 

i think the clunkiness of "he had taken" in Brimhall's second line is just terrible—and the following lines also feel forced and awkward in their extrusive lengthiness—

ah, well.  the content, as i say, is very good, awfully good, extremely good,

and perhaps that compensates for the ineptitude of the form—


///

you gotta be kidding

*
"I think Bill Knott is a great poet, one of my favorite American poets of the second half of the 20th century. I also think he’s incredibly important: important in the sense of very influential. I see his influences on heaps of poets. Yet, Bill Knott is also a poet who’s almost never mentioned as an “important poet.” When people mention their “influences,” he’s very seldom on the list, even when he’s an apparent influence. I don’t think that’s an unimportant point to make about Knott: it’s part of his authorship." —Johannes Goranski, Montevidayo blog, May 16, 2011


"[T]he remarkable poet Bill Knott is not the type to win prizes, become the pet of academic critics or cultivate acolytes. But this thorny genius has added to the art of poetry." —Robert Pinsky, Washington Post, 2005


"Bill Knott is our contemporary e.e. cummings . . . . Like cummings, he is brilliant at both micro and macro." —Cindra Halm, Rain Taxi, Fall 2004


"For the past thirty-five years Bill Knott has shown himself to be one of our very best poets and perhaps the most original. . . . I think he is one of the few poets of my generation who will remain with us." —Stephen Dobyns, Harvard Review (Spring 2002)


"Bill Knott is a meld between Gerard Manley Hopkins and MTV, producing poems with the former's violent beauty and the latter's largely ironic postmodern presence." —Mary Jo Bang, Lingua Franca (May 2000)


"Knott was an incredibly important poet to me and still is; I think Bill Knott is a genius and probably the least known great poet in America. It's really kind of pathetic that he's not as well known as he was even thirty years ago because he's even better now." —Thomas Lux, The Cortland Review (August 1999)


"Bill Knott is one of the best poets writing in America. Without question, he is the most original." —Kurt Brown, Harvard Review (Spring 1999)


"Bill Knott is a genius." —Tom Andrews, Ohio Review (1997)


"It is no accident that the major British and American poets of the 19th and 20th century were outsiders. . . . The most original poet of my generation, Bill Knott, is also the greatest outsider."
—Stephen Dobyns, AWP Chronicle (1995)


"Bill Knott is the secret hero of a lot of poets. . . . [P]oets who differ radically from Knott look to his work for the shock of recognizing themselves." —David Kirby, American Book Review (1991)


"Bill Knott's poems . . . are the poems Beckett's Gogo would write if he were among us." —Sharon Dunn, Massachusetts Review (1990)


"[Knott's 'Poems 1963-1988' is] a powerful and original book, a record of one of the most disturbing imaginations of our times. Few people can create a world so completely and concisely as Knott does time and time again." —Kevin Hart, Overland (1990)


"Knott is no parlor poet. His work is the most sharply original of any poet in his generation." —Jim Elledge, Booklist (1989)


"Among people who know his work, Bill Knott is regarded as one of the most original voices in American poetry." —Charles Simic, blurb for Poems 1963-1988 (1989)


"Knott sets up principles far outside most of those we know, and he always writes up to and beyond those standards." —Sandra McPherson, blurb for Outremer (1989)


"Bill Knott is an American original. No one else could have imagined what James Wright once referred to as Bill Knott's 'indispensable poems.'" —Stuart Dischell, Harvard Book Review (1989)


"I think Bill Knott is the best poet in America right now." —Thomas Lux, Emerson Review (1983)


"Bill Knott's first book, 'The Naomi Poems,' published in 1968, established him instantaneously as one of the finest poets in America. Subsequent publications deepened and reinforced that reputation." —Andrei Codrescu, The Baltimore Sun (1983)


"[Knott's poems are] shrouded almost always in the glaring and polluted light William Burroughs foresaw with such brilliance in 'Naked Lunch.' In fact, Knott, Poet of Interzone, is the poet Burroughs seemed to call for in his seminal novel. . . . Knott is one of a handful of original poets working today. His genius suits the times better than any poet I've read . . ." —Robert Peters, Los Angeles Times (1983)


"With the death of Berryman, Knott seems to me to be the chief embodiment in language today of Mallarmé's spirit. . . " —John Vernon, Western Humanities Review (1976)


". . . Knott's originality as a poet: he is absurd and classical and surrealist all at once. A marvelously impossible animal." —Paul Zweig, Contemporary Poetry in America (1974)


"At his best, Knott is a kind of surreal classicist. . . . He is already a formidable poet." —Karl Malkoff, Crowell's Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry (1974)


"[Knott's] images are astonishing. Whatever you may think of Knott's poems, they have not been written before by anyone else. . . . Poetry such as this strikes me as extending our awareness." —Louis Simpson, New York Times Book Review (1969)


"Bill Knott is one of the most remarkable poets to appear since James Wright and James Dickey."—Ralph J. Mills, Jr., Poetry (1969)


"I think [Bill Knott] is one of the best poets I know." —James Wright, blurb for The Naomi Poems (1968)


"I think the most significant group of young poets are those published in Choice and The Sixties, and the most impressive of these is certainly William Knott." —Kenneth Rexroth, Harper's Magazine (June 1965)

///

they gotta be kidding

*
over at ABEbooks they want 160 dollars for this one:


http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=4913095823&searchurl=an%3DBill%2BKnott%26bi%3D0%26bx%3Doff%26ds%3D30%26recentlyadded%3Dall%26sortby%3D1%26sts%3Dt%26x%3D89%26y%3D12


—and for this one they want 150:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=825967361&searchurl=an%3DKnott%252C%2BBill%26bi%3D0%26bx%3Doff%26ds%3D30%26recentlyadded%3Dall%26sortby%3D1%26sts%3Dt%26x%3D95%26y%3D16 


— 

injustice

*
Seems like there would be a facebook page or an online petition sign-up drive for

JOHN ASHBERY DESERVES A NOBEL, IN FACT HE SHOULD HAVE ALREADY GOTTEN ONE!

but if there is, I couldn't find it.

Add my name to the list demanding that this injustice be rectified.

///

Edward Hirsch, PoBizPro

*
MacArthur Genius Fellow Edward Hirsch is a PoBizPro

and one of the worst poets alive.

His poetry is total worthless garbage,

which makes it about average for a MacArthur poet,

since most of the poets who have received the MacArthur

are mediocre at best. With a few exceptions.

But each of them of course is a consummate PoBizPro.

///

uh this first poem

the horror

*

I've whined and complained earlier on [a previous] blog about the demeaning coverage my last theoretically-real book received from Poetry (Chicago) Magazine.

Until that hackpiece appeared in early 2005, they had not critiqued any of my books for 33 years, in fact since the May 1972 issue where my book “Nights of Naomi” was savaged as part of an omnibus review by Charles Molesworth.

Anyway, between 1972 and 2005, between the time of these two bookend reviews by Molesworth and Meghan O’Rourke,

I published what, 6 or 7 books, none of which Poetry Magazine deigned to take notice of.

Different editors, yes: Daryl Hine in 1972, and Christian Wiman in 2005: but it’s interesting to note that the magazine’s editorial policy (or perhaps vendetta is the more appropriate word) toward me did not change in that time.

Just as they used the 2005 “review” to spread vicious gossip about me, so they did the same in 1972. The 1972 review set the tone for the 2005 one.

Here’s an excerpt from the Molesworth:

“Rumor has it that Knott’s habit of giving his birth and terminal dates together originated when he realized he could no longer face the horror of a poetry reading he was scheduled to give.”

So, here’s the sequence:

in 1972 Poetry Magazine prints a rumor that says in effect that I’m afraid to give (I can’t face the horror of) poetry readings—

And guess what happens then, after that "review":

My reading invitations dry up.

No one asks me to read. From that point on, for the next 3 decades (actually at this date it's more like 4),

I barely manage to get an average of about one reading a year.

I receive almost no requests to give readings because everybody knows,

everybody has heard that I can’t “face the horror of a poetry reading.”

Hey: it said so right there in Poetry Magazine.

After they printed that nonsense

—oh yes, they labeled it a “rumor,” but everybody knows how such floaters spread and take on the facsimile of fact—,

after Poetry Magazine used the venue of what was ostensibly a book review to, to,

what’s the term I’m looking for . . . well, what would you call it?

One thing's for sure: after that May 1972 issue appeared, my reading career was destroyed.

*
There is an alternative truth to this tale:

perhaps my "reading career" was aborted/ thwarted not by this review in Poetry Magazine,

but by the fact that no one liked my crummy lousy poetry enough to invite me to read:

or by the fact that I was no good at giving poetry readings—

I can remember hearing, as I eavesdropped from bathroom stall or around a corner, audience members agreeing about how boring and bad my reading was:

I can never remember being praised by anybody in those minuscule groups who attended my infrequent readings,

those scowling scattered-seat-fillers who scuttled so quickly once I had grimaced out my final words—

. . . in fact, the more I think about it, I realize that the reason I didn't get invited to give any (or hardly any) readings

was simply that people hated (hate) my poetry, ergo why should they invite me to read . . .

In fact, I probably got as many invitations as any other fourth-rate poet like me.

*
Just one question: Poetry Magazine has in its long history published hundreds maybe thousands of reviews of poetry books:

have they ever, in the text of any of those reviews,

printed rumors and gossip about any (living) poet other than me?

Is there a single instance, can you remember a similar case

where the reviewer paused in the course of his or her consideration of the book under review,

parethetically paused to share some precious oddment of rumor gossip about the poet whose work they were supposedly objectively appraising—

can you recall another such incident in the pages of Poetry Magazine?

I haven’t read all those reviews, so I can’t say for sure, but I think not.

I think I am the only one to have been so honored.


*
I imagine the hierarchs at Poetry Magazine were disappointed that their attempt to assassinate me in 1972 failed,

which is why thirtythree years later they hired the lit-rump Meghan O'Rourke to give it another try—

And this time they succeeded.

Their second murder plot did me in: 

after this latter "review" appeared in 2005,  

I was forced to retire from teaching, 

I lost what little professional standing and esteem I had in the poetry world, 

and since then I have been forced to self-publish my books thanks to the poisoning of my reputation with everyone in the legitimate poetry-publishing field—

No doubt the despots at Poetry Magazine have rejoiced these past 6 years over my decline; 

how they must relish my downfall and the final ruination of my career:

to know that their vendetta against me has triumphed in the end, 

to know that their vicious attacks have finished me off.

///

just a tremendous poet

*
in the TLS (p.16, April 17/09), Hugo Williams relates how Ian Hamilton, in one of his USA pobiz-crawls, encountered, quote:

a certain professor who had gone on about the work of Clayton Eshleman. "Just a tremendous poet", he said. Surprised by this, Ian asked for the title of a good poem by Eshleman. "Oh, I don't know", said the professor. "Taken as a whole, you see. Just a tremendous poet." Ian insisted on knowing the name of a single decent poem so he'd be able to understand what the professor was talking about. "Oh for God's sake", the man said. "What is this anthologist's approach to literature?"

*
see the advocates of poetry—call them "the professors"

versus

the advocates of the poem—call them "the anthologists"

*
as one of the latter, i am as amused and bewildered as Hamilton was

by the poetry-profs . . .

*
for "Eshleman" you could substitute almost any name from the Avantipoo list (spicer kelly howe et al) and the joke would still apply . . .

///