Narrative

Maybe I am a stupidhead* but I believe that narrative is vital to poetry. Furthermore, novels can be lushly instructive in the creation thereof. Not just the creation, that sounds crassly utilitarian, but in the understanding and the undertaking of a poetic course.

We regard narrative as a straight line to something. Yeah well, that’s gotta be wrong. We don’t got any straight lines! Narrative is a process of time on subject. Time is a fluttery concept of many speeds and directions. The narrative of straight line to resolution is a phony brick in the essential wall between us and all that is happening. Novels go floppy when they trump logic with crowning determination. You know, the sapient resolutions and propped up completions.

The simple equations of mystery novels, for instance, work well enough: a crime, an investigation, a resolution, and somehow you’re supposed to care about the protagonist. That simplification provides a reward of process, but let’s don’t overarch the actualities with these playthings.

So I have finished The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It runs to 700 nicely paced pages. To maintain a readable pace for such length represents an achievement. The narrative, however, reaches comedic levels of control. Rand stacks the deck against any misprision that real life may attempt.

Howard Roark, the Symbol of Outward, is the hero in a nice old fashion way. He is not tremendously likeable, but he is full-scale against the forces of evil that wish to quash the individual man. He is unbearably insulated against qualms, fears, moral doubt, or anything. Everyone else in the book is a schemer. Roark is Promethean.

The other three main characters contrive in their ways to bash Roark into submission. One of these was a classmate at architectural school, who accepts Roark’s design help but otherwise spends his time pulling the carpet from under Roark’s feet. This guy, Peter Keating, is the Golden Boy of architecture until Roark bests him.

Dominique Francon provides that tasteful note of sadomasochism that we all love. She is of such dazzling beauty, blah blah blah, but heartless, blah blah blah. Roark rapes her in a graphic scene. Yes, she wanted it. This is how they became lovers. She immediately marries Keating—remember: Sade and Masoch together in one icy hot babe—but continues assignations with Roark. The oozing dramatic normalcy of all this is a study in itself.

This brings us to the the third main Roark thwarter, Gail Wynand. He’s a Hearstlike newspaper overlord, a sadistic billionaire who crushes people like flies. He essentially buys Dominique from Keating, and she goes along with it. All this to tweak Roark. Everyone tweaks Roark, as if they could.He is so much beyond such pettiness.

Narrative’s well-etched lines leave more doubts then they can possibly overwhelm. Rand’s directive asserts this dismally wonderful Roark as perfect or prefect Olympian. Look out, y’all.

Keating’s architectural empire collapses, as does Wynand’s newspaper one. Francon’s sadism becomes true love, Olympian brand. And Roark moseys along as the true Gilgamesh equal to the challenge. Yes, we love the resolution in stories.

Poetry, however, lives in the flutter of words. Words are not ideas, they are transitive machines, firm in eager change. The narrative of novels steeps in a liquor of vital assertion, facts as triumph.

Poetry cannot determine the specific spasm of intent. It cannot. Meaning is a hoary rascal, ready to trick us. Poetry gambles (or gambols) on that very prevarication. That is, your clues, dear Poem Writer, are readily shifted to a different arc. No matter what you do. The narrative of poetry relies on an active and inconsequent breath. Novels, in contradistinction, demand consequence.

The Fountainhead shows the effort of trying to impose thoughts on material. Rand uses puppets and gestures to instigate the ruction she insists on. Poetry cannot do that. Poetry cannot push the line so straightly. Poetry is the words of alleviation, after so much determined import. Poetry supports the linear agitation of our lives.

And so much blah blah blah. But really, think of the narrative tools that poetry has given us. Disjunction is not disharmony, it is keenly felt interruption. Late in The Fountainhead, lengthy speeches start appearing. Rand forcefeeds these not so bon mots into the mouths of the characters. Ah Ayn, narrative is not a straight line conviction, it is uneven breath, missteps, and suddenly. Think of the divine words printed on Hannah Weiner’s forehead. Disturbance is norm.

Novels know it is a subject. That gravitational pull determines a logic and path. Poetry is words, first of all. The words spark across gaps. Novels sheer to theorized lines and fill restriction. This is instructive, Poets. Get on with the job.

* Proud Stupidhead of the Precursorian Age.

Phony Artist Types

The Fountainhead includes a character called Lois Cook, described by another character as “the greatest literary genius since Goethe.” Goethe, are you kidding? How in the world did Rand pull Goethe out as the exemplar? Were they suspiring Goethe’s name in the 40s so richly? What ev. Rand treats us to a passage from one of Cook’s books:

“… Toothbrush in the jaw toothbrush brush brush come home home in the jaw Rome dome tooth toothbrush toothpick pickpocket socket rocket…”

I suppose that’s a case of pigeons on the grass alas fever, or Joyce bounding into gibberish. The satire flops there with satisfaction. It is just too smugly tooled.

Admittedly I’m enjoying this piece of crumb cake but I hate that smartass typification. The Fountainhead is a scan of the superficial. Its charm relies on saturated malarkey. The characters are stalwart embryos of real people. It’s not so much that Gail Wynand = William Randolph Hearst, and so forth, but that serious space is stated by each character. It’s a trim Hollywood approach, and it works as fiction. By fiction, I mean that often lugubrious animal that walks across our path with hearty stories of fulsome fabrication. I am both offended and entertained by these appeals to surface tendency.

You know how Keats chafed at the idea of Wordsworth efforting a definitive reaction. Blowhard satire such as the above refutes Rand’s advocacy of the creative original. Rather than hear an expansion away from dictate, Rand modifies the boundaries more tightly. Compartments are easier to comprise.

I take The Fountainhead as a hyped entertainment, but the critical entropy of such satire wears on me. Don’t blame Stein if you can read no more into her works. I’m as stupid as anyone regarding The New, but I know I am not oracular in my ignorance and unreceptivity. Phony artist types aren’t the problem, but phony critic types are.

On the Road with The Fountainhead

I am reading both On the Road, by Jack Kerouac and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Just cuz. I’ve tasted both before.

At this point, it is hard to see the news in OTR. It is there, but the legends, the promotions, the bullshit, and the votive actualities of the real world participants of the events described all overwhelm the tender novel. Still, it reads with freshness, even as it sags into the romantic hokum that felled the Beats. Yes, I am saying the Beats were felled. Self-inflicted felling, let us say, but felling nonetheless.

The adventures are both exultant and silly. I see the effect of such rangers as Thomas Wolfe and John Dos Passos in Kerouac’s gritty spree. I also see Kerouac transcending that oblivion of novelistic finality. A singular chemical reaction occurs amidst the stories and characters that he recounts and invents.

One can bring up Proust, of course. Kerouac lived it loud whereas Proust mediated events across half his life. Truman Capote—remember him?—wrote his own Proustian exercise, Answered Prayers. Highly capable horseshit. It is instructive to consider these three novelistical assertions.

Proust’s work is not just contemplation but a vivification of his discernment. The exercise of embedding moments into his understanding provided his life. His writing dazzled into the opportunity of reflection.

Capote, alas, charged gossip with importance. He must’ve thought that the glow he perceived around Babe Pauley and Lee Radziwill was common knowledge. Madame Vendurin interests us not because she was a superb upper class twit, but because Proust efforted to look real hard. Capote merely flicked a gesture at these mavens, as if that were enough. I highly recommend Answered Prayers for its fervent art for not art’s sake stance. Really.

Kerouac received Cassady, and to a lesser extent all the others of his crowd. He is participant but what jolts us is how Cassady and the others pull him along. I must say that not one name in Kerouac’s work sounds plausible. The cipher is obviously forced.

The Fountainhead fits in with all this, perhaps surprisingly. Heroic Howard Roark is an overdrawn masterpiece. His egoism reigns mightily. At the beginning of the novel, he has just been kicked out of college. In his architectural studies, he refuses to give in to any impulse that is not of a dedicated purity. Tasked to produce drawings for classical or gothic structures, he unswervingly creates more unguent modernism. Rand stokes that grandeur finely. The book’s quite inviting, with Roark up against ambitious duplicity at every turn, while he in pureness only wants to make mere mile high buildings dedicated to his perfect vision. And he will succeed! The sad train wreck of Kerouac, spent, seems unnecessarily true to life compared to Roark.

More Beats to the Beats

Stephen Vincent comments on my Kerouac post below. I bring it forward here because it is apposite:

At this point in history - apart from shear pleasure of much good "Beat" writing, whatever that might connote (& there is a lot of it), it's also interesting to contemplate its primarily masculine orbit and the corollary view of women with particular myths, and methods of enforcing those myths; it's mostly disturbing. That is the jarring outbreak of feminism in the late 60's was provoked by the oppressive power of those myths. In the current ongoing celebration of Beat writers & writing, I don't know that this issue gets much consideration. It was bad stuff and not good for the health of either men or women. I am still shucking it - velcro (those mythse) to the psyche as it was/is.

The maleness of the Beat Movement must be admitted. Much of the writing strikes me as simply puerile, I mean the attitude pressing the writing. The wanderlust is a fantasy mythos that directs stupidly towards stopgap goals. Kerouac wafted innovatively into Buddhism but Catholicism proved a heavy lode (awesome pun, eh?). I think I was always aware of the hip embargo that the Beats instigated. The acculturated gulag of style in the guise of freedom shows itself lacking. The Beats are worth studying,and then you move on.

Kerouac and the Beats

I saw a bio of Kerouac at the library while looking for other things, and brought it home. By Paul Maher, Jr., who’s from Lowell, it made me think how little I have read by or learned about the Beats. Passing odd.

I never read Kerouac in high school. It seems like aspirant high school writers will naturally tilt towards Kerouac. There is an appeal there that perhaps mimics that of Catcher in the Rye. I grew out of my interest in Salinger in about a year, but I believe Kerouac remains a serious component to modernist thinking. I do not mean that Kerouac is an essential influence for anyone—I guess I do not recognize that necessity—but he certainly offers something potent to consider.

I do not know how I escaped high school without reading On the Road, but I did. My reading of the Beats proves remarkably thin. Here’s the inventory:

• Kerouac: On the Road (partial), Visions of Cody (partial), Mexico City Blues (complete), various short things, I presume
• Ginsberg, I have read much of his Complete Poems, his Indian Journals, and this and that
• Burroughs, Naked Lunch (partial), Soft Machine (partial)
• Cassady, The First Third (complete)
• Holmes, nuthin’
• Corso, smattering of poems

I have actually done better by the 2nd level of Beats like Welch, Whalen, Snyder, Lamantia. Two points interest me here: that I didn’t finish the novels and that I am generally poorly read in these writers.

Regarding not finishing, my experience has been that the reading just fades. I get the energy but lose interest. As to why I never read much of the Beats, something telling could lie underneath.

The Beats supply a good exemplar of the writing process, of how to just get the words out. A young writer gets the message: trust your writing inclination. The results will be miserable until you develop your aesthetics, but the Beat sense of release offers a positive program.

It is a funny group of artists, held together by the same fragile logical component as any art movement.The Beats had their own patented jive that made them both ridiculous and wonderful to the public. They were rock stars, tho without quite the outlay of lucre. Their unique path became trammeled rather quickly by poseurs and flop sweat. Really,  the dynamics were just plain weird.

Neal Cassady was no writer in any formally striving way, tho his letters and their impetus are central components to the Beat mythos. Cassady himself, in all his sociopathic marvelousness, conditioned much that went on among the Beats. And then he moved on to Kesey’s trip, furthur on. And then, like Kerouac, he died the death.

Tho my reading on Kerouac largely faded in progress, I still consider his oeuvre an essential modern object. If I haven’t read him well, it is a receptivity problem on my part. I never fully disliked reading what I’ve read by him (and I like Mexico City Blues), it just never rang my bell.

The Beat myth is pretty ragin’, it must be admitted. I’d heard the name Lucien Carr associated with the Beats. Maher’s book recounts the alarming death of David Kammerer at the hands of Carr, a story I somehow completely missed. Maher describes it oddly. Kammerer, who was Carr’s teacher, made advances on Carr one night, so Carr stabbed him 12 times with a pocket knife them weighted the body and tossed it in the river.

Only when I read Wikipedia’s account did it make more sense. Kammerer had a long history of stalking Carr. Carr left different schools 4 or 5 times to get away from Kammerer, who nonetheless showed up at the each next school. I get the 12 knife blows, knowing that. Carr went to both Burroughs and Kerouac after the killing, and Kerouac particularly abetted Carr’s attempt to cover the crime.

Fascinating.

The Big Three—Burroughs, Kerouac, and Ginsberg—are interesting writers. Burroughs is distractingly weird but the vigour is obvious. Kaddesh, Howl and a few other poems are enough to put Ginsberg in the pantheon, but jeez, his lows were worse than Whitman. I have his early Collected Poems, and the amount of doggerel to be found there, especially later on, is discouraging. Kerouac seems to have a clearer sense of oeuvre, a dynamism of his personal aesthetic sense. Granted I have already made clear on what evidence I make these value judgments, but I think with the Beats, with so much mythos to swat aside, I’m on terra fairly firma.

I mean, how many young cats decided to hitchhike across America, or at least say they did, on the impulse and input of Jack Kerouac? That is of course so much outside the writing, and yet it aint. Young writers need the picture of energy, of the active writer who gets across. cummings is not an influence for me, in the sense of someone I loved reading. But his example of freedom was a strong gesture towards what I could accomplish. The Beats as a group, and Kerouac particularly, show how you can howl.

The Fountainhead

Beth’s mother and aunt were watching the movie version of Ayn Rand’s book when we arrived earlier this week. We were greeting, and the movie was well along, so I did not get the full experience. What I saw, tho, was compelling.

I’m not saying it’s a good movie, nor am I promoting Rand. The movie was made to pack a wallop. There is a wallop there, tho not what perhaps was intended.

I read the book for some reason while in high school. I am sure that I missed all the visionary philosophic conditions that Rand must have loaded the book with, I just read for plot. The movie clearly wanted that philosophy front and centre.

The movie stars Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey. I do not remember the plot well. Something to do with superstar architect and Promethean ego Howard Roark designing a wonder house then burning it down because his vision was sullied by crass exploitive capitalistic mundane. Something like that.

I used the word compelling earlier. I mostly meant the visual look. I was reminded of Citizen Kane in how images were patiently framed. I should mench that I consider CK largely a pile of hokum, but it certainly was zestily done. Fountainhead had such shots as looking over a man’s shoulder as he opens the door to the expanse of a courtroom. Such tableau do not seem to be so dominant in movies now. It may be that in colour movies, such effects have less impact. Maybe my perception is wrong.

Whatever, the sense of space and direction attracted my eye and drew me in. Into what? Speeches, of course. How else to get your point across?

All the characters stood for something. They represented unions, and big business, and lax mores, and visionary creative spirit, and whatever Rand needed to expound upon. I do not recall being wearied by this stuff in the book, but maybe I discreetly skipped the talky parts. I would do that, you know.

The movie culminated in Cooper’s big courtroom scene, where he explains in philosophic terms his innocence, right makes might. This was essential malarkey, and a real challenge for Cooper to motor thru. He stood before the jurors and spoke with folksy determination, pounding his thesis of the nobility of the creative man. Cooper was right for the part. A ham like Welles would have turned Roark into a curtain-chewing Iago. Still, Cooper’s semi-stutter allowed too much of the nutty logic to show. He was close to blithering, altho we all knew it was for the best. He spoke for the common genius.

I might not have bothered to report on this movie except for the last scene. By then, everything has proven fine. Not only was Roark found innocent but his newspaper magnate nemesis hires Roark to build the tallest building in the city/world, and do so carte blanche, the only way someone like Roark can proceed. Total victory! And furthermore, the magnate kills himself! What could be better???

Okay so love interest Patricia Neal arrives at the site of this still uncompleted building and is told Roark is at the top. She hops into the little cage elevator and zips skyward. The piddling city can be seen below. Neal giddily turns around and steps back to look up, which caused both Beth and me to acrophobically jump. Standing at the pinnacle is the figure of Roark.

That’s how the movie ends, with Gary Cooper standing godlike on top of this skyscraping grandiose victory for the spirit of creative genius and vision of self-fulfillment. He has a weird grimace of determination. It is not the sort I might have, since my mere dreams and vision lack the scope of his magnificence, but instead shows Roark in full possession of the world and all its chattel. I said godlike, but you can also see Gort, the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still, which Neal also starred in. Klaatu barada niktu, Gort. Now, I hanker to read the damn book again.

Kent Johnson Redux

The following tastefully italicized passage is Kent Johnson’s comment to my post below. I bring it to the fore for the sake of fairness, and to provide content for his web searches. As part of the fairness doctrine, here is Kent’s further on. While there, check out the cool picture of John Clare (scroll down), who was a sad wonder, and bookmark Latta’s excellent blog.

Allen,
Found this. I did reply to Towle, which wasn't too hard to do, really. It was posted at Latta's blog a couple days after his letter. You should link, in fairness, to that too!
Anyway, in my introduction to the book (A Question Mark above the Sun) I develop a number of the reasons for the hypothesis of Koch's authorship. Hope you'll get a copy. A couple or three prominent O'Hara scholars have stated their support of the hypothesis's value (which doesn't mean they claim certainty about the poem's authorship--I don't either--just that there are highly unusual circumstances which justify the posing of some questions).
I honestly don't recall the specific exchange you mention above about a "satire," but I do know I had a fairly large number of new epigrams I'd planned to add to a second edition of my book Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets. I decided to not do it. And I am pretty sure there is one for you there, more admiring, really, than satirical! In any case, it's not accurate to suggest I was trying to "scam" you, whatever it was we were talking about.
Kent

It is not (I say in reply) that the issue isn’t of interest, but scholars who are also gadflies are difficult to take seriously. And scholars who are at the center of hoax accusations are hard to trust. I’m not saying that I do not take Kent seriously or that I do not trust him, but I think reasons to doubt him exist. A cloud of ulteriour seems to hang over the man. Regarding his inflamed epigrams, and the friendless email suggesting that I buy his book for reasons of vanity: I stand by my assessment that that was a scam.

Deftly Rendered Critique of Boston Poet Tea Party by Jack Kimball

Jack Kimball in cunning concision provides a useful encapsulation of the Boston Poet Tea Party here, the very same occasion to which I applied a lot too many words. BPTP was a social event first, which is good, but the yards of excitement were not holding poetry so much. I compare with the eager reportage by Geof and Nancy Huth on the Avant Writing Symposium at Ohio State. Others are reporting on AWS, but Geof and Nancy were also at the BPTP. They have been effusive at Avant and less so at BPTP. Hm. BPTP was fun but it lacked avant. Avant-wise, I think we should be kickin’it old skool. Poetry does not want to be just a social club. That cage is just a little too small.

Dude Check It Out (John Latta’s Blog)

John Latta’s blog is about the richest extant.In this post, he simply offers space to Tony Towle, to refute the ever shaky assertions of Kent Johnson. Hey, I remember Kent sending me a note saying he had satirized me in a book of his, and that I should buy the book. Well, at least he’s down with the concept of Internet marketing, id est: scamming (I do not think he even performed said satire, just looking for donors to his believability cult). Beyond that, Towle’s reminiscence as well as dispute is in-depth and resonant of that past age of giants and heroes. Thanks to JL.

The Chained Hay(na)ku Project

I adverted this book earlier here, now I shall review it, in my muddling way. The Chained Hay(na)ku Project was curated, so it says on the cover, by Ivy Alvarez, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Ernesto Priego, and Eileen Tabios. Meritage Press and xPress(ed) somehow jointly published it. As always, my reviews are invitations. I aim to direct you to the mine, and hope you dig (!) as fruitfully as I have.

I admit that I appear in this book, in three ways: as part of a collaboration, in a contributor’s note, and with ruminations upon the process of writing collaboration, which each contributor was asked to make. I like this tactic. I always loved the front and back matter that Black Sparrow often supplied to/for its publications. The books of Eileen Tabios always have similar material. I sense a burrowing integrity in works with such excess of riches.

I’m not sure what attracts me to this extra material. I like hearing whence a poem came, what was expected of it, how it seemed to work in the author’s eyes. I grew up reading the backs of baseball cards, not completing any useful finding from the statistics but just enjoying the complexity of their gathering. Somehow, it feels the same way with biographical notes and notes on process plus, oh yeah, the poems themselves.

Since I am seemingly self-ultimate concerning my writing, I have little memory of my part in the collaboration that I did with Anny Ballardini and Jeff Harrison. A general invitation went out for collaborative contributions. I think Anny must have encouraged our getting together. Jeff and I have a track record of collaborative endlessness so I guess we did pretty good to end the thing at 10 pages. I cannot tell now who added what, tho I do recall our getting confused as to who was supposed to add what when.

I guess I should say at this time, well enough about me, but I would like to note that the format of one word line, then two word line, then three word line produces a nice metre to work with. The counting is simpler than what, say, Ron Silliman has employed, fibonaci and such, yet keeps one minded of a certain pulse. Meditators know to follow the breath. This counting, in my experience, provides a breath to follow. A poetic breath.

I was witness to the creation of another hay(na)ku collaboration in this collection. Nineteen members of the Wryting-L list (but not Anny, Jeff or me, who were doing our own thing) posted their ongoing collaboration to the list. Whereas Anny, Jeff and I passed the baton between us, taking turns, I think contributions to this large collab occurred more randomly. Riffing on the work of others happens frequently on Wryting; the hay(na)ku collaboration arrived in that way. One feels the improvisatory energy in its development. The untitled work begins:

Tom Lewis wrote:

whisky in glass:

nightcap or

testimonial

and ends:

Tom Savage wrote:

Once a hello

Leaves your lips

It is no longer yours

In between is a field of testing and consideration. Please imagine that lines are not spaced so far apart in the book, only on this misusing blog.

Several works incorporating visuals appear in this gathering. One should realize and recognize that this book was developed largely online, via email and listerv, where collaboration exists as an essential dynamic. The hay(na)ku format invites concatenation, or it does now. I think originally more people used hay(na)ku to produce 3-line poems, like haiku. An inherent invitation to add one to another seemed obvious, and has been exploited.

What this means is that verses have a discrete power. The six words team up to maintain a local gravity while spinning around the idea of The Poem. I know, for myself, that the segregation of the regulated 6 words of each verse creates a separation from the larger work, even while supporting that larger work. A centripetal force occurs in tandem with the gravitational pull. I hope that’s not too much science for humanities types.

The thunderstuck core of this book would be the poem “Four Skin Confessions”, and the divagations on same, by the curators of this project. The divagations are in fact conversations on the process. One feels genuine weight in the matter. The poem is thoughtfully executed.

This book is a charming adventure because the format forces restriction, and yet the restriction hardly restricts. We all were on our best behaviour, counting words in lines, yet always intimating a region outside that restriction, where the poem lives. Trust me, this book offers lots more than I have indicated. I recommend this book as a learning tool.

I say that for several reasons. First, the poems read well as poems. That’s a nice little bonus when reading poetry, taking it as a given that a lot of poetry sucks. The self-interrogation of the authors here is surely instructive in not just a Paris Review Interview way. One feels the ruction of collaboration as one reads the poems themselves and their process notes, jounce for jounce.

Our revolutionary educational friend Paulo Freire advocated dialectic over the pressed meat into sausage casing model of education (i. e. lecture lecture lecture into sponge brain ninnies, Sponge Brain Square Bob). These collaborations ruffle appropriate feathers in the demonstrative debate for the poem’s fair creation. This book is a beautiful thing,

The Chained Hay(na)ku Project

Here is the announcement from Eileen Tabios for The Chained Hay(na)ku Project. It is an anthology of collaborative works, including one between Anny Ballardini, Jeff Harrison, and myself, and another that grew publicly on the WRYTING-L listserv. The anthology includes loads of other collaborations. Great stuff and a good deal! Eileen’s projects should be supported because she is so supportive.

Press Release from Meritage Press and xPress(ed) .

THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU PROJECT
Curated by Ivy Alvarez, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Ernesto Priego & Eileen Tabios

BOOK Link: http://www.meritagepress.com/chained.htm
ISBN-13: 978-951-9198-78-1
Price: $16.95
Release Date: 2010
Distributors: Meritage Press, Amazon and Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/chained-hay%28na%29ku/12049346)

Meritage Press (San Francisco & St. Helena, CA) and xPress(ed) (Puhos, Finland) are pleased to announce the release of THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU PROJECT, the third anthology based on the hay(na)ku poetic form and the first to focus on collaborations.  About a hundred poets and artists from around the world participate in this groundbreaking anthology, with each poem involving the participation or three or more poets/artists.

The hay(na)ku is a poetic form introduced in 2003.  Its swift popularity would not have been possible without internet-based communication.  With the internet's capacity for engendering collaborations, it was inevitable that a collaborative hay(na)ku project such as THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU would arise, and fitting that it began with a public invitation from a blog (on June 24, 2007, an invitation was posted on http://chainedhaynaku.wordpress.com/ for poets to participate in hay(na)ku collaborations).  Poets, artists, and even members of a company's editorial department responded, and this anthology is one result, along with friendships and much fun!

To celebrate the release of THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU, Meritage Press is pleased to announce a SPECIAL RELEASE OFFER: the book will be offered at $10 per book (you can order as many as you wish) through September 30, 2010.  Free domestic shipping is also available within the U.S.  To order, make a check out to "Meritage Press" and send to

E. Tabios

Meritage Press

256 No. Fork Crystal Springs Rd.

St. Helena, CA 94574

More information about the hay(na)ku poetic form, including the participants in THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU, are available at The Hay(na)ku Poetry Blog (http://haynakupoetry.blogspot.com).  More information about the two earlier hay(na)ku anthologies are available as follows:

The Hay(na)ku Anthology, Vol. 2: http://www.meritagepress.com/haynaku2.htm

The First Hay(na)ku Anthology (now sold out but with stray copies available in the internet, e.g. Amazon): http://www.meritagepress.com/chained.htm

***

FYI, an early reaction to THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU is available at http://jeanvengua.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/chained-haynaku-kapwa/

For more information or questions (including international shipments), please feel free to contactMeritagePress@aol.com

Poetry, Bramhall, & The Boston Poet Tea Party

My English teacher in 10th grade made poetry possible for me. He did so by asking the class the simple question, What is poetry? The class replied with the expected answer, that poetry—groan—was rhymed and metered muck that we did not want to read. His next question was on the order of Who said? Dialectic, that friend of educator Paulo Freire, ensued. I think I started reading poetry on my own then, and within a year I was writing what I called poetry.

Great story, Allen. The point here, however, is that poetry is strange and unfamiliar still. And as much as many of us like to see the experiments and challenge, we also wryly linger with the known and quantified.

Reading last week at the Boston Poet Tea Party gave me a curious viewpoint on the affair, and on the poetry scene. By poetry scene I mean current happenings in a somewhat socialized rendering. I was not on the menu, and that made me disembodied, so to speak. I was this extra guy.

I hadn’t practiced what I read. I think I vocalized the syllables well enough but I felt the clock awfully. That produced nerves, because I did not want to be the dick who went on too long. Long dicks, who needs them? So I probably smeared my performance a little in that way. I do not mind that, neither in myself or in others. That’s part of the living production. The perfect reading is always in your head.

Days Poem, either volume, is unwieldy, and the lectern was untrustworthy, so my attention could not easily shift to the audience too much. I felt like people were unprepared for what I offered. I mentioned Olsonian quantity because I had 1000 pages in my hands. I mentioned my appreciation of sentences because I had, oh, 10,000 sentences in my hand. I felt like I had to jar that recognition into the audience. I do not know that I had to, but I surely felt so.

Lots and lots of sentences that I heard that day were strategically dim. I suspect that many writers don’t exactly understand the challenge of the sentence. I do not mean sentences in the bland Poetry Magazine employ, dull prose rigged as poetry. Those loose cabooses in Poetry, full of commas and pressured similes, are just officially recognized distractions. What I speak of is how ordinary and trim the machine being used so often is. Such sentences work for minor purges but seem shiftless in the quantity of surprise that they supply.

What I love about Olson is what made the people needing safety nets bonkers. His twists, his stutter, his didn’t know it was a subject. I think the audience awaited the dead part of narrative to appear in my reading, and I wasn’t bringing the bacon. I was letting narrative stumble as it does in life.

To my mind, the metrics of modernism and post-modernism have been tamped down. The most rhythmic readers were largely theatrical, which maybe sounds bad but I do not mean it so. The rhythm was based on meaning rather than syllable. The sentence, then, glides along a fairly rolling, easy landscape. I think my writing has found another course, and it is rocky. Am I making sense?

Probably not. I am being general in my points, because I am simply sharing impressions. Why am I telling you, Posited Reader, this? To stay with the poetry I think I have found. I hope others write about this event. I have yet to read anything substantive.

Two / Quick / Things

One) Ron Silliman celebrates his birthday today. OR if he does not, I do. His work has been with for me yikes many years. My copy of Tom Beckett’s mag The Difficulties, Silliman issue, an early nudge in the right direction, is mightily scribbled upon and highlighted. I learned from Ron Silliman. In the blog space he provides many opportunities of expansion, plus a stable critical anchoring that you can argue with but always respect. He does yeoman work. I tip my tributarian cap.

Two) Entirely unexpected, I received a poem from Geof Huth in the mail. We didn’t exchange addresses so he efforted the search, right down to 9 digit zip. I guess the Internet knows where to find me. This is a wonderful gesture of community, especially for one like me who feels detached from the social happening of poetry. I publicly tip my tributarian hat to Geof, as well.

Note to Lonelyhearts Of Silliman’s Comment Box

If you need a place to stay for a while after Ron gave you the boot, feel free to park here at Tributary, the sensitive blog. Leave when you are ready, when he’s ready, when the world can again encompass your special love.

A Boston Poet Tea Party

I attended, well, 2/3 of Day 2 of The Boston Poet Tea Party, a local poetry marathon. Busy yestreen (Friday, that is) with early birthday celebration, and I just cannot manage tomorrow (meaning today: started last night, finished this morning). Feel like it was a game effort, ne’ertheless. Poetry is tiring!

Beth had to work, so I trained in, making my lonely way. She dropped me at a train station near work, so I took a different route to the city. I listened to a recording of Charles Olson’s Berkeley reading. What an event that Berkeley reading was! Not to compare an entirely different format, era, and so forth. While waiting for the subway at South Station, I watched a busker play electric slide guitar. I love slide guitar, and he was good.

The subway went one stop then we were instructed to go upstairs and take a shuttle because of construction. We were all efficiently shepherded to the shuttle buses. The bus looped up over Beacon Hill and past the State House, a pleasant fillip to our journey. The weather was très agréable.

I reached Cambridge early, so I betook me to Grolier Book Shop. It was closed. I hope it has recovered from the slide it endured under previous ownership. I noticed a flyer in the window adverting The Boston Poet Tea Party reading. Friday night’s reading was in a gallery in Harvard Square. A different venue held the next 2 days. Oh. I had missed that bit about the 2nd venue.

Target street name was familiar but I couldn’t triangulate confidently so I gave my Blackberry a chance to help. It was ready to do so, but Google proved a little iffy about getting me there. It immediately wanted me to take a street that wasn’t there. I was oriented well enough to know that my direction was thataway. The first street Google named proved fanciful. I persevered until I found the trail.

The venue itself did not look like one. Nothing to mark it as a place that 88 poets would converge on. It was still early so I wandered around then stopped at a little Thai restaurant. A nerdy looking young fellow sat at a table immersed in a book. He greeted me and hustled into the kitchen to fetch his dad.

I chose simple, some Thai samosa. Very pleasant. Properly nourished I went in quest of poetry.

By this time, signs were out in front of the venue, which was a house. The front entrance was a yoga concern, the side a gallery. Still early so I wrote a poem on my Blackberry while standing on the sidewalk. As I performed this rare feat, Jim Behrle and someone else came along. Jim greeted me and asked if I wanted to read, because some poets cancelled out. I said okay.

I had brought Walden Book in case I had occasion to give them away, and I brought Days Poem to read on the train. I was prepared.

I wandered over after I finished the poem I was writing. I didn’t recognize anyone till I saw Geof and Nancy Huth. Apparently they were giving Chelsea’s nuptials a pass to attend. I dunno, missing the stewed kumquats with Russian flambé sauce would be a tough go. I already saw that Geof had posted to Facebook while on the road, so I knew that they would be here for the duration. I spoke with them till we all went in.

The room was large living room size, a long rectangle. The displayed artwork was tasteful. It was predominantly green, which I like.

I scribbled notes and poems and took a few pictures. I could see that Geof took extensive notes. I look forward to his report, which I know will be detailed. He and Nancy also took lots of pictures and video, using various cameras and phones. A picture I neglected to take was both of them holding up their phones to record the image of the 1st reader.

I would like to give a detailed, objective report but a scattered subjective one is what you will get. I am okay with that and I hope Gentle Reader is as well.

So anyway.

The lineup here represents best guess. Drop outs and rearrangements changed things muchly.

Ellen Kennedy read a poem about manatees that I liked, and a story about Norm MacDonald. MacDonald has a career for reasons that I cannot grasp. It is not that he isn’t sort of funny sometimes, but that he doesn’t seem to reveal any sort of focus of determined talent. He’s not a James Belushi, who has a famous brother and an appropriate mug, and nothing else. He is just this guy. Kennedy is right to write about him.

Readings for me center not on the texts so much. I do not absorb auditorially as well as I do in reading. I gather a sense of the writer as they read. Kennedy was low key and under-expressive in her presentation. That’s her way.

The most practiced and performative was Dana Ward. What he read was to me unflinchingly a story. It held a glancing hilarity that he aced with his reading. The Left and Right Coasts collectively wonder what he is doing in Cincinnati.

Chris Rizzo read a text that had experimental gumption. Or do I mean philosophical? It did not lean on First Person Singular. I have trouble with that thing.

I heard too much from First Person. When I wonder why I am being told this first personal observation, that is too much First Person. We cannot be rid of the thing but when us readers and listeners become aware of the manifesting influence, the poetry loses its sizzle. This is not a rule, it is a guidance.

I also heard too many slack similes. If I were to think of the evil of School of Quietude, it would be the effort to make dull similes. Key words here are effort and dull. If similes cannot surprise and delight, then transformative language aint happening. It is that simple. People, we are not here to please the Masters & Mistresses who enforced brass dullness on us in academic settings. We are here to surprise the language we live in.

Filip Marinovich read with flexible power, he was ready. He melded a goofy reliance on Greek gods with firm political resolve. He was funny and resolute. I’m not sure why but this is not entirely my cup of tea. I guess formal writing intent does not grasp me so much. I think my own writing shows that.

Of which speaking. I read from Days Poem. I almost read the scribblings that I was in the process of scribbling, but DP has never been read publicly so I gave it its chance. I just read randomly. I made sure I did not search for good stuff, just read what hit my eye. I think I gave variety to my tone, but I was surprised to find myself feeling nervous as I read. I felt the 8 minute clock, which I wanted to respect (and I think most readers did). The last bit I read concerned Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, a lengthy divagation that I cut short for fear of going too long. I read a line that I thought was good, and told the audience so.

Brenda Iijima read with professional craft. Her work is meaty and it came across well. Mark Lamoureaux’s was solid as well. I appreciate the experimental aspect to his work. He tends to develop experiments within which he writes. That is what Virginia Woolf did.

I’m not keen to give a gold star, but if I were I think I would award it to Joel Sloman. I thought of Charles Reznikoff in the nuanced meteors he set forth. Reznikoff has a quick delivery while Joel is hesitant and thoughtful, but both offer darting entr’actes between daily dullnesses.

The inbred nature of the poetry scene is expected and unfortunate. Poetry is so marginal that it must survive by inbreeding. As an exurban satellite, I am poorly connected to What’s Happening. The Huths, not being from these parts but willing to participate fully, gave some freshness to the proceedings, just by being there. There were times when the haw haw of friends made the reading foreign to me. And Brenda Iijima seemed (perhaps I am wrong) to come and go with her team. James Cook, Amanda Cook, and Mike County all read well, amidst the carefree of their young children.

I hesitate to mark the one downer, but oh well, let it go: Kythe Heller lost me. Introduced, she stood away from the podium. She seemed to offer herself to trance. I thought of what is her name from Dead Can Dance, a kind of hyper-self-involved intensity. Okay, Kythe had a good voice but she was overly dramatic. After that she read from manuscript. The writing seemed awful, a Beatniky Jim Morrison minus 3. Frankly, I can accept that. The tranced out staring seems right out. I mean, writing can be from a trance of sorts, I get that. But reading from a trance? That strikes me as giving up intellect for the sake of drama. I guess I react to a feeling of phoniness here, highly encompassed but still. Tell Edgar Cayce to wake up and smell the commonplace, says I. Still, there’s room, there is room for everyone.

During one of the breaks I drank a Red Bull. It was my first. It provided no energy. Your mileage may vary.

This is an age without editors, isn’t it? You either publish yourself, or your friend does it for you. I like that, largely, but maybe we aren’t editing ourselves so super well. I thought there were numerous cases of poems that ran on. Endlessness is not a structure. Nor should it be, of course, but maybe a little firmness of resolve in terms of structure could be facilitated. Talking to myself as much as anyone.

Lynn Behrendt and another woman whose name I unfortunately cannot recover, provided snarky, acerbic humour in their work. Humour is good.

Derek Fenner was perhaps the most intent in this way. He read a sequel to his Katie Couric love poems: letters to Sarah Palin. Guess what, years ago I wrote poems to Maria Shriver (forgive the learning curve website). Fenner was hilarious.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Chad Parenteau. His work is not so much in the realm of my taste, yet it is fair and honest stuff. He read in a straightforward and friendly way, practiced without being slick. There is nothing wrong with that.

So that’s the report, incomplete but I hope a reasonable glimpse. I wish others there would comment on what they saw. The scene needs that input. Oh, I just now realized that I forgot to mench Nathaniel Siegel. His work was wrenchingly powerful and politicized.

I toddled off at the dinner break. Toddling at the same time, and in the same direction, was Mark Lamoureaux, so we toddled times 2. Good to talk about poetry and this locality and Proust.

I sounded sour about the prospects of The Boston poet Tea Party a few days back, but it proved a good thing. It as good to see poetry read, and I am grateful to have read myself. If only there were an effective Red Bull for this poetic region, but it seems like the armoured offices of Harvard and MIT rule the expanse that poetry should own. Alas and alack.

News Flash: Comments Out at Silliman Blog

I stopped looking long ago: I knew the dickheads lay in wait, like ant lions. And we weren’t even getting the juicy stuff because Ron was scuttling what he found most offensive.

My guiding stance is that comment boxes should be open and unedited, but the dickheads have gamed it too well. You have to put a fence up,just to keep the bots from taking over with their automated commercial pressure. And the nuclear spats I have seen even here are just depressing enough for me to consider them the call of Fire! in a crowded theatre.

Beyond that is the big what’s the point anyway. Ron Silliman has a brand name reputation. This reputation attracts the various actors and dancers to his stage. Their own venues lack interest.

Okay, I got them psychologically sussed, but the larger point remains that the mechanics of the comments box sucks for colloquy, sucks for dialectic, and sure as hell sucks for essays. They work for informal blips of thought and nothing more. Well no, they work for bullying. Let them write big brave letters directly to Ron: kindly sir, would you please sir publish my comment on your blog sir. If these associated dickheads can’t edit themselves then someone must do it for them. So I have commented on commenting, my work is done.

Inception

Might be the 4th movie we saw this year. Judging by the trailers, I for one will not be seeing anything soon. Basically nothing exploded, it looks like it is all temperate melodrama. A new Ben Affleck movie (oxymoron alert) looked like solid old hat. Set in Bawston, and I am sure the plot has been done 3 times before, at least. Maybe some further hunting of Good Will will resuscitate his career. Everything else looked like drippy shit.

I should mench that Steve Carrell now looks like someone to avoid. Dorks making faces is not a enough for a comedic turn

Inception, then. Leonardo diCaprio does nothing for me. He’s probably pretty good as an actor, and he doesn’t irritate me like Tom Cruise, but I do not feel compelled. It is not worth arguing about.

DiCaprio wakes with his face in sand, is found by some guard sort of person, then brought before this very old guy. Wretched make up if you ask me. I invite you to ask me. Well, stuff happens.

I will say it right out that I found this movie muddled. Beth did not, but she tracks better than I do. The score loomed large. Not in a musical way, such as James Horner or John Williams do. Instead, it was hugely atmospheric. The music tended to rumble over the dialogue.

I am not sure I can relay the movie’s concept properly. Leo found a way (a scientific one: he has yet to reach the remake of Freddy Krueger stage of his career) to influence people by entering their dreams. This means that he and his partners traipse about in these wild action scenes within dreams. The thrust is high stakes business espionage. The effect is like James Bond but without the hokum.

This movie owes a tuppence to The Matrix, having a similar heightened visual style, and the whole dream thing chimes closely. That aspect was originally lifted from an early Arthur C Clarke story, I have discovered. When I say The Matrix, I mean only the 1st movie. The 2nd was a lame piece of sequelitus, up there with Pirates of the Caribbean. The idea of watching the 3rd, which supposedly is okay, was beyond me. Inception is more philosophical than Matrix, and more humanly relevant. Dark Knight was so good because there were human moments in there with all the comic book malarkey.

The movie gets confusing with dreams within dreams, but is certainly worthy of a 2nd viewing. I feel like I should know a couple of the actors but the names ring no bells. Maybe the young actress in the pointless Microsoft commercial is a somebody beyond that but that’s the only glimmer in her cv that I know. The always satisfying Michael Caine was on the screen the bare minimum.

After a rather prolonged talky part, an extended storyline builds to the culmination. This part hearkens to Mission Impossible in the rococo filigree of plot turns and action necessity. Obviously I mean the tv show since the movies star Tom Cruise. Several levels of action took place simultaneously. The culminating action takes place within the time a van crashes slo-mo over a bridge and drops patiently to a river. This was a strange and effective way to tie things together.

Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight director, wrote, directed and produced. According to Wikipedia, he turns 40 today.He can wish me hb on Sunday.

Ten Years After

Not the band, just a mark on the calendar. Beth and I attended the Boston Poetry Marathon in the summer of 2000. It was an important event for me, and a new one is this weekend. Tempus fugit.

Beth and I were not married yet as of that poetry gathering. It was an exciting meet and greet for me, who had only just got connected to the wider world of poetry via the Internet. Beth and I met thru the backchannel of  the Poetics listserv. We decided to go to this grand event.

Another person who I met thru backchannel was Stephen Ellis. He asked if we could put him up the Saturday night of the readings.

Memory is fuzzy. We attended Friday night, paying $40 a head. Wow, paid attendance! The locus was the Art Institute of Boston, near Fenway. I cannot recall that night, but I know that it occurred.

Saturday we were to meet Peter Ganick at an Indian restaurant in Central Square, Cambridge. Beth met him online. I had for years bought books from Potes & Poets Press but never met Peter. Peter brought Sheila Murphy, whose work I knew from its online appearances. We went to the reading together. Peter skipped out early, I think, but Sheila remained. She read at one point, and was one of the better readers. My favourite reader was Michael Gizzi. His delivery was dry, measured, and skilled.

Before that, not to mess chronology too much, someone entered and I knew it was Stephen, tho I had no clue what he might look like. I recall sitting next to Sheila thru much of the reading. We both busily scribbled. I filled 25 notebook pages writing and doodling. I don’t know if I ever looked at what I wrote and I presume it is now in the Ohio State Rare Books archive, which houses my papers.

Jack Kimball, perhaps freshly back from Japan, was pointed out to me. We would meet the next year. Sheila started to introduce me to Nada Gordon but someone interrupted with a greeting to Nada and that literary moment flew away.

This meeting with Nada was reminiscent of my meeting with Robert Creeley at Franconia, old story that must be told again. Robert Grenier tried to introduce me to Creeley three times at a post reading party for RC. Each time, something distracted the probably drunk or stoned Creeley. Fear not, however. At one point, I was by the record player and Creeley sat down nearby. He started clapping to the music, so I joined him. Not just clapping but stomping to make the needle skip. So I have that memory of staring eyes to eye while we syncopated. No words were exchanged.

Anyhoo, lots of poets and poetry. Creeley himself read Saturday, star attraction. I’ve seen him twice, many years apart. Not a great reader, tho of course an important and engaging intelligence.

Patrick Herron flew up from North Carolina for the reading, someone else I had met online. I think Stephen, Beth, Patrick and I had breakfast together Sunday. Sheila, Stephen, Beth and I had dinner the night before. It was an exhilarating time for me, being amidst this scene.

The upcoming one this weekend seems just perfunctory. A handful of people interest me, a huge number are unknown to me, and what the heck, I should be reading.

Of the organizers, I have met them all. Jim Behrle, before going all New York, arranged a reading of me and Henry Gould, two unamalgamated locals. I think Jim ran out of readers. Michael Carr and John Mulrooney both run local series. I never made effort to get in their readings. I am not so sure if I need to attend this marathon (the 8 minute per rush format does not attract me), but here is the batting lineup.

Antic View

Just a reminder that Antic View, the mental and poetic tussle between Jeff Harrison and myself, has been updated, #148. Visitez maintenant.

Erin Goes to Orientation

Having finished with Middlesex Community College, Erin transfers to University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He had an orientation last week, consisting of 2 days and a stay over. We had some heavy weather the night before.

Er, um. The trip to Lowell (next town over) included meeting a major detour in an unfamiliar part of town. The traffic cop helpfully assured us that we would get there in time. He described a pleasantly circuitous route around the obstruction so that we could get back on the road we needed to take. We had to take ‘that first left’ onto a road he wasn’t quite sure was called Parker. Somehow, we felt antsy.

We found the university in time, plus a blue-shirted student who was directing traffic. Beth at the wheel told him we were here for orientation. The student said, “You’re here for orientation???" No, the fellow in the back seat. We were directed across the way to a parking lot. Another blue-shirted student with a light sabre danced and gesticulated to direct us into the parking lot. Beth told her to drink plenty of water. I was lucky enough to capture a picture of a chain link fence.

No, you do not see many chain link fences in the environs of Lowell, Ma. UML has a student union. Here they talk about scabs, blackleg miners, Doug Flutie (football scab), union dues, and the like.

Surprisingly pretty campus. Erin waited in line for registration then we went to the dorm room where he would be sleeping that night.

James = Erin (middle name), Gruenzer = Gruenzner. Spelling counts. The room was actually a suite with a common room, 2 compact bedrooms for 2, and 1 1/2 bath. I feel compelled to add crown molding, hardwood floors, and granite counter tops, but that is just HGTV on the brain. For sleeping purposes there were child-sized bunkbeds. Yikes! Erin barely fit and barely slept, more anon. By good fortune, I captured a picture of the springs of the top bunk (I think).

Then we wandered the campus. Lowell, shabby as it is, has a wonderful landscape of rolling hills and the mighty Merrimac flowing thru. The campus is green and restful. Here’s a picture of me with a magical orb that I found.

Here’s where I put it, so that it would not fall into evil hands.

We left Erin to his devices. Erin has had next to zero public schooling. The rigours of MCC were at times an adventure, and UML will be a further one. He had a lot of fun during orientation. Thor made the event extra special by slamming his hammer (Mjöllnir, as you will recall) to a fare-thee-well, resulting in a severe sockdolager of a thumper. Erin and others celebrated the Thunder God’s tantrum by dancing in puddles and such like. Erin called Beth, who was working, and me, who by the second (third?) call was trying to sleep, to exhale his excitement.

Erin returned to his dorm room sometime late. The person slated for the upper bunk never appeared, but that did not help Erin. He slept an hour or two at most. We collected him in the afternoon.