What if I had a brother?
More than one?
Just one—pay attention!
Younger, older?
Just a brother.
Patriotic, a war…
Blood needn’t spill or be shared.
Distant cousin?
Nor branch of some tree.
Then, an example. […]
Category: Poetry
Reshaping Time and Narrative: On Reading Kenneth Rexroth
It should be no surprise to learn that artists will frequently reach for the same subjects of inspiration, be it painting, film, or writing whenever feeling compelled. Often, the ideas will arrive in cycles—not all at once, but in pieces. However, when it comes to poetry, I have shared that in my early years I struggled with narrative, i.e., what the hell am I trying to say? Certain phrases would arrive easily, but arranging them into something of meaning proved difficult. As result, I knew which poets better suited me when attempting to strengthen this weakness, or rather, which ones should I study more? From whom will I benefit?
The point is not so much to fixate on one’s weakness, but to recognize it and then learn how to improve. Somewhat akin to an athlete, train enough that weak muscle and soon that muscle can become a strength. One poet that has traversed with me throughout the years is Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982). Not only for his appreciation of nature and how it relates to existence, but with his free verse style, he was able to be unbound by limits. What I mean is that his poems often seem like poetic prose, but when broken carefully, the narrative builds to a moment most memorable. Take, for example, his poem, “On What Planet”: […]
Poetry on Film: Don Moss’s “Catoptrics”
[Don Moss’s “Catoptrics” is featured prominently in our upcoming film on Don Moss and his poetry.]
CATOPTRICS
When she wrote the play I knew
Things would change
By the power of
The fictive word
A tale of what was
Mostly not to happen […]
Poetry On Film: Don Moss’s “Space Break”
She was serious about this, breaking loose,
Spending twenty bucks (five more than we’d been hooked),
Scoring three joints’ worth of dried cannabis blossom
That crumbled grittily as she rolled.
That’s a lot for someone living on
Her savings and her under-achieving husband’s
Pay, until her thesis is written,
Defended and set on a shelf to collect dust…
She hoped this substance would, she hoped,
Crack routines grown staid as bureaucracy. […]
BIG RED: A Triptych (Poetry on Malcolm X)
“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
– Frederick Douglass
“You are a glass that I have paid to shatter
and I swallow the pieces down with my spit.”
– Buying The Whore, Anne Sexton
THE ARGUMENT: In 1945 a two-bit hustler named Malcolm Little ruled the Harlem night. Born on May 19th, 1925 to the Reverend Earl Little and his wife, Louise, Malcolm had a childhood fraught with temptation and danger. Taking a cue from the Romans, he became their greatest advocate.
“Hey baby, the word is this:
You can do it or you can not do it;
that’s the choice- it’s like some cat
who comes dicin’ for some reefer without any stash.
I say ‘It’s copacetic, my brother.’
BUT he knows he’ll hafta pay….
someday. […]
Gulfs in Nature: Analyzing Robinson Jeffers’ “Roan Stallion”
It has been almost exactly 10 years since I first encountered Robinson Jeffers. Returning over and over to the riches contained in his Selected Poems, I find a different facet to focus on each time. Sometimes seeking ideas for my own verse—a rhythm to imitate, a novel way to frame a scene. Most often, the straightforward pleasure of luxuriating in great writing.
My most recent return has been focused on (finally) working my way through his longer narrative verse. For anyone who’d care to join me—“Roan Stallion” makes probably the best starting point for this venture (it can be read here in its entirety). It is one of the shortest of his dramas (coming out at 19 pages), a tight, cohesive piece of poetry. While, like its companion poem, Tamar, it set the tone for Jeffers’ explorations of transgressive sexuality and violence in his works, in this regard, it’s really more tame than most of his tales. In short, Jeffers could be fairly accused of excesses in some of his narratives. But “Roan Stallion”—for a poem that scandalised some contemporary reviewers with its intimations of bestiality—actually avoids seeming gratuitous.
“Roan Stallion” is Jeffers’ take on the trope found in many mythic traditions, of congress between a god and a mortal woman—but cast in the context of his Inhumanist philosophy. The Biblical account of Mary’s divine conception is played against in the poem. But the tale of Leda and the Swan makes for an interesting comparison too. Yeats’ version of the legend (published just a couple of years before this) shares more than a superficial thematic similarity; its differences are also worth considering. I’ll return to this. But first, the plot: […]
Grace of Greatness: on Jessica Schneider’s “WordShapes” (Selected Poems)
Lately, I have been reading Wordshapes: Selected Poems of Jessica Schneider, and noticed how easy it is to appreciate her poetry even on a surface level for its manifest quality. Arresting phrases, crafty narratives, and images startling into their own momentum are lit the moment the mind breaches them. It is akin to watching electricity disperse its patterns – not that such a simple metaphor can ensconce the subtlety and variety displayed across these poems, but for now such springs to mind. Great poetry has a way of taking hold of the senses, as one is grateful and humbled, and the blood flows well. It is interesting how these bodily responses are first to register what the mind later filters – and in some cases, the very thing registered isn’t there to begin with. This has happened to me several times, especially when the writing is rich, and in what seems like an instance of imbuement your own creativity slips in.
Strange how these various reactions work, but for now let us get to the poems: […]
Bright Future: On Taylor Byas’s “I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times”
Reading is a relationship outside of time and distance; however, the reader who encounters something personally known experiences a perceptual intimacy sometimes significant to the course of lives. That known element can be an aspect of identity, or of memory that gains potency in being shared. When an expressive work reveals these moments, there is the temporal consideration: how will time temper resonance?
The reader approaches a work with the entirety of their experience, the force of their life at the ready to engage the perceptions offered by the work. In the case of poetry, the history of the form itself offers potentialities of abundance, of profound reward for the reading experience. We read in search of that satisfaction. […]