Like floorboards aglow
Neither dream
Nor memory of tomorrow
Or red, or white
The fuse of all light
That is recounted […]
Tag: american poetry
Another Box Of Pictures: Don Moss’s “The Sort”
THE SORT
Another box of pictures one’s to sort,
Decades lost in the attic … a light cough
Of separation, instinctual pause
Of action, by those who say little
Of themselves, captors unmarked, unnamed
By the sweet curving hand of late Aunt June,
Who at a glance of rippled-edged rectangles
Would have penned a phonebook of relations. […]
ANALYSIS: Misreading Wallace Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”
It is all in the voice—or maybe in its emphasis. Every great poem has its own POV, though the wrong voice will diminish it. After all, good sound is measured by its meaning, and sometimes, a woman’s voice feels best for reciting “masculine” poetry. In Dana Gioia’s grim reading of Wallace Stevens’s “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” there is nothing left to probe. He is severe where the language is playful, entombing his analysis with guesswork every time he misses a tone. Another reading, from the archconservative Hillsdale College, is uncomfortable to watch, with a trite, melancholy piano that further damages interpretation. By contrast, the poem’s best recital is from a high school student almost twenty years ago. She is energetic, picks up on double (and overt!) meanings, and communicates this knowledge on stage. Her performance works because it does not engage the academic debate—it only speaks the words as written, which appear bigger, broader, and more festive than in the mouths of academics: […]
BEFORE HOPPER: Don Moss’s “We See That The Artist…”
Chill night duty: rehouse the coffee plant
And the palm grown from that Florida nub,
Now tall enough to search for its own kind,
Its own shade of green, resourceful, not smug,
Thursday: met Susan at the art college.
While she and M talk, you search the passing
Forms for a school-time self—weren’t you once
One of them, as poorly dressed, classes,
Dissection classes every quarter (or
Was it semesters chopping up those years?),
Aged lectors radiating formaldehyde,
Well past their prime yet clear. coherent. […]
POEM: Don Moss’s “Filling the Family”
Was that time for the remaining seven
To congregate: Columbus Day. One was
Not to mention Spain, gold, native abuse,
The Mariner’s deep red hands or his not
Reaching India, rationing sherry
For dead reckoning to a western beech.
Regaining course, the Santa Mari
Of this day was the same as ’24,
That ’70s coy pinup (sliced scalene
By three scissoring streets) in full display,
Its barbered lawn, its brawny steel front door,
Lightly opened by Ani’s quick, watchful
Hand and hug and greeting and fair warning
Of the sunken living room floor—very
So, so 70s—and not yet filled in,
Built over, tightly caulked and made a pool;
But, one forgets, there’s one of those in back,
Gallbladder sized or some other organ. […]
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. […]
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: […]