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lines

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I've been bothered by the thought that I wasn't fair to the young poet Traci Brimhall in a post about 6 months ago, in which I attempted to "correct" the line-lengths in a poem by her—


http://knottprosepo.blogspot.com/2011/08/this-is-good-poem-in-terms-of-its.html


—and I've been hoping to revisit the questions I considered then . . .


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A while ago I tweeted that any line longer than the hendecasyllabic is in danger of being contaminated by prose—


I should have said, Any un-metered line longer than the hendecasyllabic is in danger of being contaminated by prose, 


because of course there are many great poems with longer lines which have no taint of prose, but they are usually metered (Yeats' "Innisfree" to name just one example)—


I say contaminated and tainted, but one person's poison is another person's metier.


To wit Montale: "A verse that is "also" prose is the dream of all modern poets from Browning on. . . ."


Thus:


Humdrum testaments were scattered around.  His head
Locked into mine.  We were a seesaw.  Something
Ought to be written about how this affects
You when you write poetry:
The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate
Something between breaths, if only for the sake
Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you
For other centers of communication, so that understanding
May begin, and in doing so be undone.


(the last 10 lines of John Ashbery's "And Ut Pictura Poesis is Her Name")


Compare that (which is certainly an example of Montale's "dream" come true, if anything is) to the first 12 lines of Brimhall's poem "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?
... 



Now the content of Brimhall's poem seems to me, as I praised it in that earlier post, first-rate.  Intelligent, evocative, poignant, vivid— but the line-lengths, I thought and still think, were just too long—


The first dodecasyllabic line is perfectly fine:


We have been telling the story wrong all along


but the second line (to me at least) seems "wrong" in its 15-syllable length:


how a king took Philomena's tongue after he had taken


... Why didn't she stay with the line (or close variants of) she established so strongly with that opening, I wondered—


Especially since she is relying so heavily and prevalently and overtly and I might go so far as to say exclusively on traditionally 'poetic' techniques like rhyme and alliteration and sound-links—


tellING/kING  . . . wrong/along/tongue . . . tell/all/Phil . . . the sound-pattern of N's: been/wrong/along/king/mena/tongue/taken . . . 


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I guess the question I'm raising, and which I have no prescriptive answer for, is whether a line of poetry in English can be lengthened effectively much further beyond the normative blankverse limit 


unless the poet is willing to "also" render her poem as "prose"— to somehow include prose qualities into its measures or proportions,


as Ashbery does with such genius.  It's not that he doesn't utilize standard verse-craft methods, but perhaps better than any other living poet he has successfully personified the modern ideal Montale contemplates:


"A verse that is "also" prose is the dream of all modern poets from Browning on. . . ."


I could go through the Ashbery poem line by line and show (to the extent I'm capable) how he does wield traditional poetic technique in subtle crucial and perhaps underplayed (sub-versive, as it were) ways, but my point is—


well, I'm not sure what my point is.  Something about the line in English verse, and how it can't be lengthened effectively beyond the default margin unless the poet writing it is willing to allow prose elements into it—


So that in the annals of this year be nothing but what is sobering:
A porch built on pilings, far out over the sand.  Then it doesn't
Matter that the deaths come in the wrong order.  All has been so easily
Written about.  And you find the right order after: play, the streets, shopping, time flying.


(last stanza of "The Ivory Tower" from Shadow Train)


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But I don't want to impugn Brimhall for what I see as a problem in her choice of line-length for "Via Dolorosa"— She is obviously very talented, very gifted, and the poem in its entirety is quite admirable—I urge anybody reading this to access it via PoetryDaily and marvel at the ingeniousness of her argument and the skill with which she evolves and enriches her metaphors/imagery—


My questioning of her line-lengths is meant to apply generally, as to whether verse which relies as heavily as this poem of hers does on the intensification effects of rhyme/alliteration/sound-repetition/etcet—

(Look at her lines 3/4: BODy/GOD . . . nightin/gale/tell/nights.  And her second stanza: streets/heat  . . . strays/yesterdays . . . . stoop/sleep . . . the linking pattern of N's: evEN/laMENtatION/MINister/BONes/aBANdONed/ON/MAN . . . etc )

—whether a poem which insists on employing such a preponderance of verbally dense devices can or should—unless it is underpinned by formal meters—lengthen its lines to match those 


of a poet like Ashbery whose 'verse is "also" prose'—


which according to Montale, is "the dream of all modern poets from Browning on. . . ."


Back to my quibbling question:  


Can any un-metered line longer than the hendecasyllabic (or dodecasyllabic perhaps) 

be verse which is verse per se and not "also" prose?  


Or must such longer lines always be 'verse [which] is "also" prose'?


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And, given that unmetered lines of such lengthiness can "also" incorporate standard features like rhyme/alliteration/assonance/etc, another question is: to what degree?—

how many tactile thickening tricks like internal-rhyme etc can those longer lines bear—

How many sound-links can you stick into them—

How craft-crammed can they be?


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What unmetered line-length can sustain verse which aspires to be verbally dense intense intricate—

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memorabilge

>

jeepers, 250 bucks for a 8.5x11 poetry-reading flyer? —
 
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=7827527992&searchurl=an%3DBill%2BKnott%26bi%3D0%26bx%3Doff%26ds%3D30%26recentlyadded%3Dall%26sortby%3D1%26sts%3Dt%26x%3D54%26y%3D14

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I guess it costs so much because it's Berrigan memorabilia—

if the stigma of my name wasn't bringing down the price of this treasure, 

it'd probably go for 5 or 6 hundred or who knows how much 

this kind of Berrigan bilge is selling for these days—


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Can't remember if this was the occasion when Big Ted ("Call me 'Big Ted'," he used to urge me every time we met)

gave me an inscribed copy of the first edition of his "Sonnets" book, 

which (a couple years later when I bothered to glance through it)

I threw in the trash—

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But TWOHUNDREDANDFIFTY DOLLARS!?

Really? for a reading poster?  Some of my larger paintings are priced lower than that:

http://billknottartforsale.blogspot.com/2012/06/shysphinx-landscapes.html 

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—of course any tattered poster or scrap of paper with Berrigan's name printed on it is worth more than an original artwork by me,

isn't it, 

even if the latter does include in its purchase price a free bonus package with at least ten copies of my poetrybooks—


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loser

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So in the past couple weeks I've paid the fees and sent my book ms. "Selected Syllabic Verse" out to these four book contests:

1913
Barrrow Street
Cider Press Review
Four Way Books

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It's almost certainly a waste of time and money—

I won't "win" any of these contests, and even if such a miracle occurred, I probably wouldn't be able to—to what?—conform to their system of operation—

I would love to have a publisher whose model/procedure/process

isn't the same one used by publishers in the past, before the Internet, before POD, ebooks, etc.—

I'd love to have a publisher whose policies aren't archaic, but I doubt I ever shall—  

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I found these listed at the Poets and Writers website with a June 31 deadline.  I may check back in July to see if there are other possible places where I can send the book.

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So if I know it's a waste of time and money, why do it?  Well, I think it does serve a purpose in that it focuses me, concentrates my attention on the books (I'm preparing others to submit to upcoming contests) and makes me bring their contents up to date, collating and formatting them for— for what?

I've stopped publishing my books at Lulu.com, and I've stopped giving away free copies of my books—other poets don't give their work away free, so why should I— Giving my books away free in the past has brought me nothing but contempt and disdain from the poetry world, nothing but ridicule—

In any case, preparing these books for submission to these contests may help me understand what I have tried to achieve in a half century of effort in writing them, 

and if nothing else it may give me a fatuous false foolish reason to live a little longer, or try to live a futile longer here in my eighth decade of existence.

No, I won't win any of these contests. 

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Maybe this is just a momentary whim, and next week I'll forswear submitting to these book contests, but really, what other option do I have?— It's not like any publisher is at my door asking to put out my books.  Which by their very existence (or non-existence, since they're only manuscripts, not books—a book doesn't exist until it's published, does it?—) demonstrate their unworthiness.  And of course none of these contests are going to see me as anything but a loser—

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as

repost from 01/01/07

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Once they get to a certain age, poets should be put to sleep; I don't mean all poets, not real poets, successful poets: but poets like me, second-raters, third-raters, whether run of the mill SOQhack like me or superannuated avant, we should get it in the neck. Our poems are already dead; we might as well follow.

Because what's the point. We're not going to write anything important now: I'm not going to, that's for sure. I'm through, I know it. Why hang on and keep going through the motions, which is all I'm doing now as anyone can see who reads the work I've posted here on this blog  . . . 

But there should be an easy out for old poets who've failed. A graceful goodbye, a painless dispensation. We should be helped to put ourselves away quietly. A "terminal dosage" should appear on our doorsill from some anonymous generous patron of the arts, to honor not our accomplishment but our sustained devotion to the bright cause.  

We don't deserve a prize for our lifelong failed poetic attempts, but surely by those laborious efforts we have at least earned a charitable bottle of sleepingpills! The American Academy of Arts and Letters could spare an OD, don't you think?

Is it too much to ask the Poetry Society of America and the Academy of American Poets to help euthanize the exits of old failed poets like me? Can't they set up a discretionary fund, an in-house Hemlock Society, to assist and sponsor such acts of mercy? If they had hearts they would.

Seriously, with all the millions the Poetry Foundation has, Christian Wiman can't take a little of that money and establish an Euthanasia outreach program for extinctist poets like me?

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Expunge us from the scene. Wipe us off the screen. We're (I'm) just taking up space and attention that would otherwise and should indeed be going to younger poets.

I'm just taking up space a younger poet should be filling. My job, my publisher(s), my readership (all 12 of them) should be going to that younger viable poet.

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Can no one hear us old failed poets begging for surcease? "Put me out of my misery" we whimper. Have pity on us. Is there no kind Benefactor who will aid our quietus, who will press into our hand the nepenthean vial?

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(The CIA issues suicide pills to its agents. . . the CIA used to fund under-the-table most USA artistic institutions. . . why can't someone from the myriad Academies of American Coldwar Culture call up their former or current conduits in the CIA and say, Hey we got all these old failed poets cluttering up the mis en scene, can't you lend us some "escape-capsules" to help us delete this mess. . . The Academy of American Poets could benefit AmerPo most by scoring cyanide cocktails for terminal poets like me. . . .)

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The CEO of Home Depot just retired with a 210 million dollar payout. I wasn't the CEO of PoBiz Inc, I was only a minor clog in the company: I don't expect 210 million, but can't they at least give me a crummy bottle of barbituates, some goodbye-Bill pills to ease my demise?! 

If everybody reading this would scrounge their medicine cabinet and vouchsafe me a tab or two. Or if only some wealthy patron of the arts would find it in their hearts to mercifully anonymously endow me with the Terminal Sedation that would balm and dose me to a close.

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All I'm asking is that the Academy of American Poets requisition a supply of suicide capsules from its bosses at the C.I.A., and issue one to me. And to other elderly poets who likewise seek a quick demise. The AAP should be ashamed and blamed that it does not offer this most humanitarian of services to the poetry community.


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(In asserting my civil right to end my life when and as how I choose, I may be transgressing the social norms, which of course poets have never done!

It seems to me that poets especially should appreciate and support this right. I'm not excluding other vocations, sculptors for example could receive such benefits from the Sculptors League, and etcet for every field of endeavor, but I demand that the Poetic Institutions should aid poets particularly in this matter. 

I demand their patronage at this acme of climacteric: they owe me (and needless to say, all other poets like me, we who have overpaid our lives into that metaphorical fund devotionally and are now due our parting pension) that much, they owe me this assisted demise.

This bequeath of death.

I can of course do it via the usual violent methods, but I feel that as a poet I deserve a painless deliverance granted by the Academy of American Poets or the Poetry Society of America or the Poetry Foundation or the Ingram Merrill Foundation or the heiratic Bollingen or similar munificent endowers of poetic endeavor—

Or is it hopeless to expect succor from such evil and corrupt bodies? Must poets form their own self-help groups, auto-euthanistic societies. If those malevolent cabals listed above will not help poets in this quest, must I turn to poets themselves and beg for their individual or collective mercies . . .

I can attend poetry readings with a sign around my neck asking for contributions of the right prescription strength . . . I can write pleas to famous poets begging them to scrape their medicine cabinets for a bolus of panacea, a perk of peace ...

Yes it would be useless of me to protest picket the offices of the Academy of American Poets et al, though I will continue to proclaim that they are in arrears to me, that they are obligated to accord me this compensatory quittance in return for my lifetime of service.)

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through the motions

postscript to this post: http://knottprosepo.blogspot.com/2012/05/way-it-goes.html 
:
I notice that Four Way Books has this submission window coming up at the end of this month—
maybe I should send the "Selected" to them as well as Field, though of course they won't take it either, will they, ha ha—

The June Reading Period

Submissions accepted June 1 - 30

Poetry and short fiction

For a book-length collection of poetry written in English, regardless of publication history. We will also read short story collections, and consider novellas of between 80 - 200 pages (or thereabouts).

Publication and a reading in NYC.
$28.00 reading fee.
Submit online or by mail between June 1 - June 30. Guidelines will be posted at the end of May.



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For over a decade now I have given my books away free, 

either printing them myself at home and mailing them out to libraries and poetry "centers" and MFA programs and bookstores,

and or posting them onto Lulu.com as free downloadable ebooks,

and what have I gotten for my efforts?  You know: Nothing but contempt and disdain.  

I am a laughingstock to everybody in the world of poetry, an object of ridicule, a pariah

sneered at and spat on by all.  

I know that in the little time I have left to live I will never be able to attain any dignity or sense of self-worth, 


and that I will die in this ignominy and shame.

And sending my worthless "books" out to these contests and publishers is an utterly stupid and hopeless effort, as futile and foolish as my failed attempts in the field of poetry have always been . . .


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way it goes

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I paid the fee and submitted my "Selected Poems 1960-2012" to the book contest at Oberlin,
and just got this email back:


Dear Bill Knott,

Thank you for entering SELECTED POEMS 1960-2012 in the 2012 FIELD Poetry Prize contest. All entries will be read carefully by the editors of Oberlin College Press. The contest winner will be announced later this summer on our website.

Your subscription to FIELD will begin with the fall issue.

Best wishes,

The Editors 

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Well, they won't take it, of course.   The fee pays for a year's subscription to FIELD magazine, so I guess it's not a complete loss of money.

But they won't choose me for the prize.  I never won any book contest I entered, and this won't be any different.

Everybody and their shit knows I've been blacklisted by the glucklords and seidelcrats and hasshitlers at AmeriPoBiz Inc, I'm persona non grata: no legitimate publisher like Oberlin will touch a pariah like me.

Way it goes.


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postscript, 05/23/12: 
today I asked Oberlin to withdraw and delete my "Selected" manuscript from the contest, and they very kindly complied with my request.  I should never have submitted anything in the first place, because there could never be any chance of my success in such a venture.


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