-isms

k: hello ashraf,

no movies tonight, ryan wants to hold off until tomorrow, as he’s just started to feel better, he doesn’t want to risk it right away.

so what i really ought to be doing is working on my personal statement since i just realized what the date is and that i’m going to Amherst in a few weeks and haven’t give my prof’s anything to go by for my recommendations. instead, i am going to start my poetics rampage on isms.

this isn’t going to cover all the isms, and i’m not going to look anything up!!! well, i am going to reference a few bits, but more just for examples of poetry. this is going to be as much from memory as possible, so it’s going to be wrought with errors, i’m sure. you can always look this stuff up on your own time anyway, what you really want is to view these isms in katy-vision (imagine 3-d but with glasses tinted green and pink instead of blue and red).

so where to begin… how about the biggest ism of them all?


MODERNISM

it coincides with the american industrial revolution, Marxism, and feminism. within these (there’s a hierarchy developing) there are such factions of thought and interest as economics, medicine, politics, racism, equal rights, social classification (as it begins to blur), exploration of uncharted wilderness (heart of darkness), psychology is still an infant (Freud has only just published in the late 1890’s), evolution!, and with the second world war, existentialism is the most popular religion.

i suppose i should try to come up with some dates… 1890 to, say, 1960 (that, then, includes the new york school, though they are arguable post-modern).

some poets that, for me, embody the motion towards modernism (the pioneers, if you will) are miss Emily Dickenson, Walk Whitman (i was shocked to find out he was gay, even though now i realize how obvious it is in his poetry!), defiantly Thomas Hardy, and Gertrude Stein. I guess we can include Wallace Stevens too, though i’m not sure if he was writing before 1890 or not.

Modernism or Modernity is mostly (in philosophical terms) a reaction to technology (isn’t it all?) of the time; emerging technology. i.e. plastic, denim, cars, trains, elevators, evolution (this isn’t a technology as much as a discovery, but i’m including it, as it caused quiet the shake-up), advanced medical techniques and practice, a reform in prisons (from torture chambers to psych wards), woman with big mouths (i mean, opinions and the courage to voice their thoughts), and wasn’t it in the late 1890’s or the early 1900’s that the double helix was discovered? (i read the book but i can’t remember what the dates were for the life of me, anyway, stuff like that was huge.)

as far as the poetry… what have we got going on? we’ve stepped out of metric feet, strict rhyme schemes and traditional punctuation (Emily’s famous for her dashes) addressed issues like homosexuality (whitman and stein), an indiscrete sense of morbidity and mortality, and have begun to explore the boundaries of poetry. we have begun, as poets, to define ourselves in poetics and by our limitlessness, our revolt against form. modernism is, to me, the age of experimentation. yet, curiously, form remains, throughout, a sort of obsession (we can’t break away from it).

there are hundreds of isms within modernism. the two i know most about are


IMAGISM & OBJECTIVISM

so confusingly similar, yet so different, only, i’m not sure which one came first… i think imagism did.

imagism is a movement with rules defined by (cringe) ezra pound and a pal named flint (don’t remember his first name).

the rules for imagism (yeah, they had rules) are as follows (and these i did look up in one of my texts):

1: direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.
2: to use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation.
3: as regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

the epitome of imagism is pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro” which goes like this…

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

that’s it. two lines. it started as some 20 or 30 lines, and pound took everything out. the basic idea behind imagism is “bracketing out the I”

the poem works like this:

[ezra pound sees] the apparition of these faces in the crowd;
[they remind him of] petals on a wet, black bough.

somehow, this poem, is everything you’ll ever have to wonder about what it’s like to be at a subway station in France. go figure.

my poem called ‘swallow song’ is as close as i’ll ever come to this form, this idea. William Carlos Williams was a bit of an imagist. though i’d class him more in the field of objectivists in consideration of most of his poetry, most which excludes his most famous Red Wheel Barrow. The Red Wheel Barrow is quintessentially imagist:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

(you should memorize this one, it’s a gem).

there’s no i. there’s no me or you or… there’s no one. everything is the wheel barrow and there happen to be a few chickens in the picture.

what i like that these poems do for the reader is create a crystal clear image (that’s the point, isn’t it) without the burden of a story, characters, time, narrators. it is, literally, timeless. however, it becomes so impersonal, and they are so short (how could they not be) that the whole movement really has no motion in it at all.

now for Objectivism, the brain child of one, most magnificent, Louis Zukofsky.

the objectivists are L. Zukofsky, WCW, George Oppen and a few other German/Jewish men i haven’t read anything of. Carl R. and Charles R. (no relation, i just can’t remember their last names).

so much of the energy of the objectivists is drawn from Marxism and the repression of the Jewish race. Zukofsky and Pound argued furiously through letters. pound being the ever-charming anti-Semite that he was, and Zukofsky being the empathetic and sorrowfully misunderstood Jew that he was, obviously did not get along. Zukofsky stood up to defend women against pound, as well as the Jewish race/religion (he was a Russian Jew i believe).

so, objectivism is, basically, a way of looking at a poem as a concrete object (have you read any of karl marx’s essays or economic theories? it’s stupidly complex and i struggle through it, but i have read a bit). here it is in pieces: this is a word, it has been manufactured throughout history, it has been wrapped and shipped and displayed and sold and now lives inside this pocket in this man’s coat. this is the objectivist angle. this is epistemology understood on a functional level. (i am soooo into objectivism, i’m sorry if i lose you along the way, i’ve read An Objective by L. Zukofsky and based the better half of my poemtree intro on his ideas. i apologize if this comes out all… scholarly and confusing, i get excited.)

let me relate this to lenses and prisms for you… Zukofsky used the analogy of an optical lens (which is where my idea for light and poetry came from, directly). “An Objective: (Optics)—The lens bringing the rays from an object to a focus. That which is aimed at.” (i cheated just then, and looked up his exact words.) what i understand this to mean is that the poem is the lens. everything that you the reader understand and associate with “the object” and everything that i the poet understand and associate with “the object”, converge in the poem. when we both put our histories in through the poem the result is a fixed beam. we have now added to one another’s collections of understandings and ideas surrounding “the object”. does that make sense?

i have an idea of what a white chicken looks like, what it eats, where it belongs in the world. you have an idea of all these things too, though they might be very different. now that we have both read the poem by WCW called “the red wheel barrow” we have a new image to associate with “white chickens”. now, after looking through the lens that wcw created we can come to the same conclusion about white chickens.

objectivism, in part, is a way of linking people’s ideas and thus creating a web of understanding. this is the way language develops. one inside-joke after another. for example, on our level. when i say “salamander” i’m sure we both think of something rather unique and different to the rest of the world.

one time on the bus home from school, our freshman year, Danielle and i used to play the word association game, among others. Danielle starts, she says “apple” and i say, without a moments hesitation “cow”. this stopped Danielle in her tracks. “cow?” what does a cow have to do with an apple?

4 years later lauren and i are visiting Danielle at school. i’m on one bed, Danielle across the room on the other and lauren is leaning up against danielle’s bed. she leans over and whispers something to lauren. they both look up at me and daneille says “apple” and i instantly say “cow”. lauren was amazed. Danielle had told her “i can make katy say cow, want to see?” it’s a fun trick. every now and again daneille will send me a text message: “apple” and i’ll reply with, you guessed it “cow”.

for me, that’s part of objectivism, part of epistemology. for me objectivism goes far beyond poetry. all of it though, is to do with words. part of it all, too, which i mentioned at the beginning of my objectivism spiel is the idea that the poem itself is an object. this is the part of objectivism that i struggle with only because for me, the poem is relative to glass—i know it’s there but i can see right through it. maybe i’ll ponder this more, but for now i’ll end objectivism here and let you ask questions.

and onto…


FEMINISM

there isn’t much i have to say about this topic because everyone already understands the ideas and reasoning’s behind feminism. you mentioned that maya was/is in some ways a feminist or at lest a feminist-thinker, right?

there are a few details though, which i can ravish upon you. one is that my beloved Mina Loy wrote the Feminist Manifesto. her take on feminism is one i find particularly appealing. she says, basically (if i remember right) that it is time for women to stop making themselves out to be victims of men and to realize what power and strength women have. she doesn’t compare men and women, instead she separates them. she also focuses on the woman’s ability to change… from daughter to blossoming virgin to mistress to partner to mother to comforter to inspiration. the part that i remember best and the part i like the most is how she defines the revolution. women need to revolt within themselves, to denounce the way they see themselves and to take the steps necessary to become confident and independent of their male counterparts.

unfortunately, i don’t remember the date she wrote this. anyway, i know she took her own advise, the little minx. in every one of her biography blurbs i’ve read in anthologies it says something about all the poets and painters she had affairs with during her hay day.

there is another kind of feminism brewing throughout modernism though. it is along the same vain, i suppose, but it’s more focused on poetry. that is, experimentation.

men experimented, sure. but there’s one woman who i hail as the pioneer of experimental poetry and that is Gertrude Stein. she was really the first to address the importance of process in writing poetry; whereas the emphasis had always been on product. i’ll be honest here, i care more about the product than the process, but i find the process of writing exhilarating and intriguing—after all i do my fair share of experimenting with poetry.

also, i admire Stein’s bold approach to poetry. she is steadfast in her ways and she does not yield for anyone, especially the reader. reading her essay on composition as explanation was more difficult than reading marx’s essays!! but i gained so much from my struggles to understand her and interpret her. it is possibly one of the most rewarding essays if you can dissect it and understand it well enough. i’m sure stein’s responsible for a few of my gray hairs.

it’s difficult for me to explain the link between feminism and experimentation, but just think of it as a breaking off of the main stream of poetry (which was primarily composed by and of men). also, stein has a gentle touch. a grandmother’s touch. if you ever get a chance, read some of tender buttons and be sure you read it out loud. my favorite piece in that collection is called “a red hat” which i think embodies the whole of her efforts (but explaining to you what her efforts in tender buttons was, is an entirely separate email).

there are other isms, but these are the three (imagism, objectivism and feminism) within modernism that interest and influence me the most.

i hope i haven’t bored you to death by all of this!! i hope that you enjoyed it in fact and that you learned something, anything.


a: This e-mail has been sitting flagged in my "Follow-up" folder the until work week now; it's about time I attempt to tackle it, especially that there is still quite a bit to follow up on. It is the end of the day, the end of the week. The office grows quiet here, and I haven't written in ages. So, I'll just jump right into it, sideways if I must.

I am glad you took the time to write this in your own terms, and from memory. That is what I was hoping for. See, it wasn't just laziness on my part, but I did want to see these terms from your perspective, as it is essential to be on the same grounds. For example, I am not sure we understand the same thing by "epistemology". My understanding of the term is based on my philosophy courses meaning "the study of knowledge", or how we come to know the things we know--the senses, the mind, empirical data vs. belief, etc. And I had the feeling that you intend a different nuance of it. That being said, however, I think I won't go as much into my understanding of the same terms (which, if anything, would be more architecturally biased) but rather my reaction to them (as indulgent as it may be; but what are blog if not ultimate self-indulgence?).

I really liked your understanding of modernism; as I believe I already mentioned to you, it reminds me of one of my favorite professors understanding of it: distant enough to be encompassing, and yet down-to-earth enough to be relevant. As you can imagine, Modernism in architecture has different, though interestingly different nuances. I would say industrialization affected architecture more directly than art, literature and poetry: it changed the means of production and construction, it changed the actual building materials, necessitating the "invention" of a whole new architectural language. The rest of the arts I believe were affected more by the social, cultural, economic and perhaps, yes, epistemological effects of industrialization. The interesting thing, though, is that I think in both form was a primary obsession. In architecture, for more obvious reasons, old forms were called into question because of the new construction methods & materials. In poetry, I think it was more of the cultural aspect of modernization, and by that I mean the questioning of old beliefs & values. Another uncanny parallel is the reductionism that was the perhaps the trademark of modern architecture and I see the essence of imagism: the shedding of the "unnecessary", the questioning of established notions to the degree that their reconstruction from scratch, more lean and minimal, is sometimes required. And I think in both cases it was necessary to hit the irreducible for us to realize the necessity of the superficial in our existence.

Sex without Touching

k: “sex without touching” is a lyric from a bjork song, but i can’t remember which one and haven’t the energy or ambition to look it up. (okay i’m playing all my bjork songs that i have on my pc, i’m sure it’s in one of these, so i’ll tell you which song it is when i hear it. do you like bjork? it’s ryan’s fault i like her at all, he had the hots for her because he saw this video where she cooked a fried egg… or something, he’s strange ^_^ but i love him.)

ah, this email isn’t about bjork or ryan or anything to do with eggs or iceland or anything like that. it’s about sex and poetry. and somehow that has to do with your wanting me to explain better my preference for modernists as opposed to beatniks.

i have this sort of grand illusion in my mind, that somehow these schools were clearly marked. like history. this happened on this date and the world changed. i imagine that the moment the titanic sank, women stopped wearing corsets and bonnets. that the moment the first page or paper was pressed against blocks covered in ink that the world started reading and publishing and learning. that the moment the steam engine was fired up, cows started getting scared and farmers started to complain (though that one might actually be true). anyway, i know that the effects of one moment take time to cause revolution. it takes a lot of motion to create a movement. and it takes retrospect to see when and where things happened.

anyway, holding onto my silly belief, modernists came and went (mostly to europe) and then beatniks came and lingered and then there were the boys of the new york school (we all love them, and they all loved each other!!). i want to meet john ashbery so i can ask him if he ever kissed frank, and ask him, if he says yes, if he was any good.

this time line a’la katy is obviously bare-bone, oh and actually, all of these movements and groups overlapped, so it shouldn’t even really be called a time-line, it’s more like a big heap. as much as you might think, i’m no expert on poetry! i read all the texts, lavish in all the isms and movements, look them up, read about them, learn who was a part of them, learn about those poets lives… i am always searching, looking, questioning. i only learned recently, truthfully, that zukowski is the fore-father of objectivism. all this time i thought pound was the granddaddy. (pound really gets my back up, you know this already). needless to say, i was very pleased to learn this. william carlos williams and pound really pushed the movement, but it was my louise who had been developing the ism and gave it it’s name.

i still haven’t gotten to the issue though… why do i prefer modernists over beatniks? it’s part in the poetry itself, and part in the characters behind the poetry—the poets. i don’t like kerouac’s poetry, and i couldn’t finish on the road for the life of me, it was rather dreadful i’m afraid. (generally poets shouldn’t write novels, unless they happen to be leonard cohen—i feel like i might be going on about him too much at the moment… i should buy one of his collections…). james dean’s character in rebel without a cause is how i image beatniks. provocative, dirty, cig hanging from their lips, nice hair, care free hitch hiking, writing poetry on scraps of paper, living off ma and pa’s income. and oh! how i loved the idea when i was 16. but i don’t enjoy, now, the drug content. it’s really the only thing i really don’t like about brian’s work actually, is all the smoking and drinking. it’s unattractive, off-putting even. i don’t mind, in the real world, someone having a drink and a smoke. one of my best friends at school—jonah—is a very jazz-club sort of guy, smokes lots, drinks lots, but he never glorified it in any way. he’s a genuine genius, actually, so it was great to get him drunk and get him talking stupid about shoes and the alphabet. but to glorify and dramatize smoking and drinking, so very not sexy.

now you want to talk what is sexy? mina loy is sexy. george oppen, though i’ve only read the first say 5 poems in the book of his i bought, is sexy (http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/authors/oppen/images/oppen-sel-poems.jpg even though his nose is a bit too big, when he was young, he was defiantly hot. he got old and grew a mustache though, so don’t go looking for any picture other than this one, you’ll be disappointed). and they write sexy poems, like that one by mina loy i put in that post about her and frank. frank’s poems are defiantly sexy, no question. as far as modernists though, and the appeal i have for them… i feel like, when i read the letters and poems and essays (they wrote so much!!) i get a real sense of community. i have no idea how many of them mina actually did sleep with, but i know she was very active in the modernist community. in “to want to art” she is “Expression”.

so i guess it’s the community i love so much, and the lack of all the drug stuff. they don’t glorify the bad habits, they merely allude to them in passing. they’re sly and subtle. their poetry is difficult, complex and dense and so rewarding when you finally get it. i love how deep you can dig into a zukowski poem. i have such a difficult time reading his poetry and really enjoying it. though i’ve studied him and written papers on him and use him as a crutch for my prism metaphor, he is such a challenge, and i love it. one of his poems A-9 actually has an equation hidden in it for a cone of light. i have it all written down… something about the ration between r’s and n’s that appear in the poem… unbelievable and so… modern. that whole era fascinates me, actually. the industrialization of america, the late 1800’s into the 19… say 40’s or 50’s… the height of the world’s fair, trains, canals, the great depression, subways and elevators and sky scrapers and all this… robots. it’s all about technology. and the poet’s role in that era was to remind us what butterflies look like, what water tastes like, what a rain smells like. there’s this war being fought on the literary field between nature—the old wise and beautiful—and technology—the strange mangled birth of something astonishing and glorious, the triumph of man.

the song is “enjoy”

there’s a whole new arrangement of poetry today. and there are one thousand and twenty eight ways to talk about it. i won’t here, it’s defiantly too big to deal with in one email, which is why people like ron silliman take it one day at a time, one poem at a time.

more to do with sex… this new poem… the only good part in it is the part about sex… do i embrace this ability to exploit… love? is it really an exploitation, or should i view it more as a celebration? i really enjoy writing those poems, and enjoy reading sexy poems, and since we talked a bit in reaction to ron’s statement about gay men and women writing all the sexy stuff recently, i’ve been thinking about it more and recognizing it more. i don’t know that ron’s really right though… i think plenty of men are writing about sex. but they’re doing it like rohrer, disguising it in the third person or they’re just not that popular, or they’re writing song lyrics instead. they’re out there, just not in the form that ron looks for, i suppose.

anyway, at the moment i find it unnervingly easy to write a good sex poem. i thought, actually, about writing a poem called “a good sex poem”. i think not though, not tonight anyway. the thing is, i have no reason or understanding of why this might suddenly be true. perhaps i’ve been suppressing it? and not really knowing? i wish there was at least one more great robot poem in me. or something… you know… i’m still trying to write the green river into a poem that’s worth something. i just can’t “green river girl” and one about feeling feelings for a robot… those aren’t good enough for the green river. ah, but alas, i am lost in a world of poetry sex… sex without touching. and ryan being ill is really starting to put a strain on … eeergh. enough said.

by the way, the poem that i mentioned earlier is on my blog, complete with disclaimer in the comments. bjork says “enjoy” and if you haven’t seen dancer in the dark then i recommend you get a box of tissues and watch it.

a: Good morning, dear (it was when I started this e-mail!). You know you set yourself up now for explaining "objectivism" in poetry (is it different from whats-her-name Ayn Rand's Objectivism?). I know I could look these up, but the explanation probably wouldn't be half as fun. This is beginning to feel like "Sophie's World" for poetry instead of philosophy (which I frankly think is a great idea; besides, I see poetry as a more concise and eloquent form of philosophy). Have you read that book? I read it when I was a teenager, and except for a dry spell in the middle, I thought it was excellent--the ending just blew my mind off! (Ok, my shirt is officially now the talk of the office: it is shades of pink in an office that is all shades of grey. I thought I'd hear about it...)

...

In my adolescence and early twenties I enjoyed being so open about sexuality that it might have been jarring; but I enjoyed the shock effect of it. I enjoyed shocking people with that especially because I had such a cute and innocent persona (and I was such a nerd/golden boy in school). But all that changed with Wojtek; he didn't like it. It got me into trouble. And also I realize that I am not that comfortable anymore reading my more explicit poems in public. Besides, this is an instance where I can't think of poetry except as autobiographical (whether reflective of real life or fantasy life, I see both as faces of one persona).

But I think your e-mail brought up a couple of other points for me (that I am sure I forgot one of since I started this sentence and then left it off to go an plot a full set of drawings...). One is the issue of simplicity and complexity (something that I meant to write you about earlier in regards to that Shakespeare sonnet that Silliman posted). In your e-mail you mentioned the complexity of the modernist poems as an asset. And while I do appreciate a layered poem and admit to the joy of a poem "emerging" on one, and revealing itself increasingly with multiple readings, I have also come to appreciate the understated virtue of simplicity in poetry. And even when I appreciate complexity in poetry, it is usually a complexity of meaning, and not structure. And that is perhaps why I react so negatively to Shakespeare. I do realize that part of Shakespeare "difficulty" is the change in language (and mind you I see "difficulty" not as a good thing but as a bad one), but I also find his structures unnecessarily complex. He tends to embody similar simple themes (mostly the anxiety about time and mortality, which admittedly is perhaps the biggest theme in any human endeavor) and present them as complex ideas just because the language is complex. And I realize that at his time his ideas weren't cliched, but they certainly have become so since--a testament to their "greatness" perhaps, but for me that is also a testament to the idea that it's time to move on. I would like to think of myself as a champion of the contemporary, in the sense that I do not subscribe to that nostalgic school of thought that just because they're dead they are great. So, when that complexity gets to the level of encoding, such as in that Zukofsky example, they immediately lose their appeal to me. They become gimmicky, the words no longer mean something but instead becomes assemblages of letters. I can enjoy a good puzzle or mystery (such as the DaVinci Code), but it wouldn't touch me.

The other topic your e-mail brought up for me is the subject of poetry (not as the person, but as the topic): rain? eggplants? trains? time? mortality? love? sex? robots? foxes? trees? I guess that is realted to that idea of sitting down to write about something, which sometimes I wish I could do. I was rereading some of my poetry yesterday to pick what I'm reading tomorrow, and it hit me, for example, how depressed and depressive some of my earlier poetry is. I realize now that I started writing poetry as my way of grieving my grandmother, who raised me, especially that I was away from home and my family and therefore could not engage in the common grieving rituals that they had. Still, the shift in topic from then till now amazed me. I feel now that I am reading the old stuff mostly to air it, so I can put it to sleep. I'd like to get it out of the way, in other words, so I can move on to the newer stuff. Still, sometimes I wish I had the discipline of writing about something (when I started arch.memory it was memory, fresh from my thesis). Now, I don't know... The smallness of life, perhaps?

Which made me wonder, if you were to start or be part of a movement, what would it be? Mine I think would be a riff off existentialism (probably with a different name, since the word now is so passe). By the way, I did very much appreciate your bringing down these movements to their essential human elements and reactions (that was the strength, I thought, of one of my favorite architecture history professors). But also I appreciate your awareness of the artificiality of these isms.

[I Walk Through the Rain]

k: dear,
it doesn’t sound like you’re having the best of days. i’m glad, at least, that writing to me is a sort of relief from whatever’s getting to you. i’m quite flattered actually.

i hope your sister is well. i’m sure she is.

we’re talking about personal in poetry, about autobiography. for me, i think poetry ought to have an entirely separate section; away from fiction and non fiction, away from memoirs and comic books and all that. in my book store i’d put poetry in with the road maps and cook books. and as far away from arts and crafts as possible. though i might make an exception for origami. oh and drama (as in written plays), would get compiled in with all the imported dvds and classical music. i’d have a very special book store, don’t you think?

the prism ^_^ i love that you brought that up, that it’s something of a reference point. i labored over that concept, and it makes me feel so good, almost accomplished, to read it brought up! thank you so much.

i have a poem for you, one that frank wrote. one that you gave me as a christmas present that i’m not going to give back now. hold your prism up to it J this is our autobiography in someone else’s poem…

[I Walk Through the Rain]

I walk through the rain
and it’s really piling up tonight.
My head like a bullet
pierces the downpour.

She in a dark window
irons some man’s shirt
with ponderous columns
atop which the sleepy eggplants
shine in the moon of her peering
out at the mysterious night,

and that’s me.
Why must my eyes, pleading,
response the sky’s convulsion,
humble me before a domestic shrine,
obscure, lonely, slow,
as if I needed this stranger?

[New York, February 1952]

i read into everything frank writes. down to the eggplants. for me, he exists in his poems. he is his poems. i love him because i love his poems. to me, they are real. and i like to make myself the she/her in all of them. in this one, the i is more ashraf. because poetry is that flexible.

i’ll write more to you about this later perhaps. for now i want to leave you with the poem.


a: Oh, Katy, this is wonderful! Thank you for sending it to me. This will be our poem now, okay? I just love it!

tragic

a: Here's my share of grumbling. I have been reading Rohrer, and I think he is growing on me. He still annoys me at bits, but I can tell that he's a good writer, and why you like him... I'll keep on reading.

k: i'm glad he's growing on you. thank you so much for trying and for understanding, you're such a good friend. such a good poetshipanion.


Here's that crappy poem I told you about. I still am unsure about two words in it (the ones parenthesesses); I think they're too... Bla. Open. Out there. There is no restraint about them. I want something that is more askew. That hints at what they say but doesn't spill it. You know I usually don't do the consulting thing with poetry, but I could use some feedback here:

Tragic

No compromise.

When the final curtain falls,
I will come down in flames.
No half exits,
No hesitant escapes.

When the call comes around,
I'll stay rooted in my place.
No hasty excuses,
No clinging to the earth.

I will take it as I find it,
I will gulp it as it is.
No syrup for me, thanks;
No god with a sweet face.

Tomorrow when I falter,
I will shatter with (despair).
I will tell you where I have been,
I will leave without a face.

Tomorrow in the (gallows),
When the sirens lose their voice,
When they tell you it will linger,
I will enough.

Someday there will be none,
When tomorrow doesn't come.

k: how about a return to the stage, the final curtain falls, instead of gallows. Tomorrow in the orchestra pit, Tomorrow below the audience, Tomorrow in the grand hall, grand theatre, Tomorrow in the spot light, Tomorrow in the black. in the black?

as for despair, the only other word i can come up with is fatigue. another solution to getting around this word is to look at the with as the trouble spot instead of the despair, or perhaps both? I will shatter in, i will shatter this, i will shatter this illusion. (i keep going back to the final curtain line; to write "i will shatter this illusion" is to perpetuate the presence of the stage, no?)

just ideas, of course. but ones to get you thinking. i hope.

dear portishead

1. i don’t like blue mouth wash, but i used it anyway, because it’s all that we have at the moment.
2. i’ve given up cereal. it used to be my favorite thing to eat, but now it just makes my stomach hurt.
3. i think that dick van dyke was hot when he was in his early 30’s.
4. my first memory is of being afraid of a rainbow; i didn’t know what it was so i cried and hid under the kitchen table. i think i was 3.
5. i like it when ryan reads books to me because he does the voices.
6. i like to keep as many as 3 different types of conditioner in my shower at all times.
7. i displace my feelings onto my goldfish--"wibble likes it when you ...."
8. meaghan (my sister) and i were very serious about our barbies.
9. i am really starting to enjoy horror films; i never thought i would.
10. i have 3 brown sweaters, and i want 3 more.
11. the teddy bear i slept with from the age of 2 to marriage is an official tupperware bear and his name is tedso.
12. i wish i knew how to read korean
13. i don’t have any superstitions surrounding numbers.
14. “only you” by portishead would play if you turned my car on right now (a song i have been listening to waaaaay too much recently).
15. i wish we had trash pick up service instead of having to go to the dump.
16. i haven’t spoken to my grandparents on my mother’s side since october 2004. i just want them to apologize, so i can love them again.
17. i HATE when people throw cigarette butts out their car windows onto the street. (and i don’t have very much)
18. my cell phone is named “watashi mo” which means “me too” in japanese.
19. i don’t like the smell of coffee, never mind the taste.
20. i still have the bouquet of roses from my wedding dried and hanging in our bedroom closet.

hi,

i did a different list for my friends a few months ago. it’s a fun little exercise, and you learn a lot of interesting things about people. so i did an updated one (the cereal thing is an update, and the last one was made before i got my new phone). when you get the chance, maybe this weekend, you can do a list of 20 for me. “20 random things i didn’t know about ashraf” J

it’s really fun to write, at least for me, i hope you think so too.

and i’ll stop emailing you for today. my iichiban tomodachi Danielle is over and we’re going to watch a film once she’s done battling ryan on the xbox. which means i’ll next be checking my mail from work tomorrow. whatever that means to you, i don’t know. i hope you’ve had a nice day though. and i hope you enjoy my list. you don’t have to respond to anything in it unless you really want to (i wouldn’t mind, of course). it’s just for you to get to know me better. and useful, because now you’ll never offer me coffee.

best always.

a: Uh-oh! Houston, we've got a problem! I don't know how we can be friends if you can't stand the smell of coffee. See, I'm an Arab, and for us coffee is an art, if not a religion. (I guess, for me it ranks just after poetry and Dalida... See what happens when one rejects organized religions? He ends with several more arbitrary ones!) One of my favorite passages in "Memory for Forgetfulness" by Mahmoud Darwish is a passage where he is describing his attempt to make it to the kitchen to brew the perfect pot of coffee while trying to avoid sniper fire... Coffee as a last wish!

But I guess I can forgive you that since you've been listening to Portishead. I guess, besides Dalida, Starsailor (first album), Lhasa (first album), and Pink Floyd (and maybe a couple others), Portishead are amongst a few of my 5-star acts. LOVE them! I saw Beth Gibbons in concert here in Philly, and she autographed my CDs and a postcard. She is awesome! (And a wonderful live act; mesmerizing!) Have you heard here solo album, "Out of Season"? That website has the best screensaver:
http://www.bethgibbons.com/outofseason/

(And I loved #7!) So, thank you so much for sharing!

Here is a questionnaire that we played as a game at Christmas Eve at Wojtek's parents. It's an American Express ad, but we were bored and out of games, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I'll try to remember my answers...

My name:
Ashraf Osman

My childhood ambition:
To design perfume bottles, car lines, and theme basements

My fondest memory:
Rejoining my parents in Abu-Dhabi on my birthday where they surprised me with a brand new keyboard / Walking in Florence on a sunny day with a gelato cone in hand

My soundtrack:
Dalida (surprise, surprise!)

My retreat:
Poetry

My wildest dream:
To be wildly famous (secretly, to be brilliant)

My proudest moment:
Defending my thesis

My biggest challenge:
Adjusting to my life here in the US

My alarm clock:
The iHome (which I love!)

My perfect day:
Waking up unhurried, slowly sipping the perfect coffee, reading, feeling productive, and going out with friends at night

My first job:
As a medical representative for Parke-Davis (now part of Pfizer)

My indulgence:
KFC and porn

My last purchase:
Shea butter-verbena cuticle creme

My favorite movie:
A tie between "The English Patient" and "Since Otar Left"

My inspiration:
Memory

My life:
Still waits to be written.

My card:
A GreenCard!

k:dear portishead,
thank you for salvaging my credibility with ashraf; things were starting to look a bit shaky!
sincerely,
katy

hello,

i didn't say i couldn't stand the smell of coffee, just that i don't like it i have to make fresh coffee all morning at work and it is actually my least favorite part of the job. i'm pulling for a new sort of system where i only have to fill a filter with grounds and the gigantic thurmous brews and serves, i don't have to smell the finished product. (i'm awful, aren't i? though, i'm sure you make much better smelling coffee than the stuff the hotel brews.)

oh and then babies. there's a pic of you and mika on the floor facing each other that made me giggle because i noticed in that picture that you two were wearing pretty much the same thing! kawaiine!!
generally though, babies freak me out. i'm okay with little people that can speak. if i can communicate with it, then fine, otherwise ... no thank you. at least at the moment, i am completely not ready for babies! and i don't hear ryan pyning either, so that's good. my mom on the other hand is unrelenting in her vocalization of her desire to have grandbabies. i've got 4 years before ryan turns 30, maybe in 4 years i'll be ready!

i first heard "only you" on a chris cunningham dvd (he's a music video director who does mostly disturbing nine inch nails type videos). after i heard the song and beth's voice i picked up their album that featured that track. most of the reason why i enjoy portishead is because of beth's voice. i'm so particular about female vocals but sometimes you hear someone and it's bliss and you never can let go. there aren't many female vocalists that i enjoy (i hope dalida is one of them, but i won't go looking for her, i want you to be able to introduce us); bjork, [the ladies of] cibo matto, shirely bassey, kristy macoll, karen from the yeah yeah yeah's and beth from poetishead are the only female vocalists i can think of that i really enjoy listening to. there are one off's though, like debbie harry from blondie, she's an amazing vocalist, and i do enjoy her every now and again, fiona apple has some beautiful moments, and i used to like gwen stephanie before she went pop diva harijuku crazy.

i think i will check out beth's solo act. she's the reason i like portishead anyway. does she write her own stuff, do you know? (am being lazy by asking and not reaching out the internet to find out myself.)

My last purchase:
Shea butter-verbena cuticle creme

i thought you said other than the fact that you're both guys, you shop at banana-republic and you like ikea, that there wasn't much gay about you? i don't even know what butter-verbena is! though i bet you have lovely fingernails!

ah, i should read more lorca. talk about poetry displacing religion, lorca's deep song is apparently a bible. more later.

best.

a: You are so cute with that "dear portishead,"! And don't worry about the coffee; I guess we don't have to agree on everything (though it might be difficult to cleanse my place off the smell of coffee, or wane myself from it when you're here...). And I don't think it'll smell any better to you (as much as I'd like to pride myself on my fancy coffees!).

As for babies, for some reason, I did not realize till now how young you are! (You're younger than my sister!) I think it's because you are so mature, sensitive and talented. I was talking to a friend of mine about you over the weekend, saying how I hope you don't become as jaded as I am when you are my age, and she said: if she isn't jaded at 22, she'll never be. I'd like to think that's true. As for me, it's not that I mind children as much as I mind the responsibility. I guess I have such a staunch existentialist bent that I would refuse to impose this life on anyone (hence, I refuse to procreate) and I will not want to make any decisions for anyone, or take responsibility for them (which is why I don't think I'm well-suited for my job, as it is about making decisions for others). I was hoping that this will not be an issue for Wojtek and me anytime soon. But he seems to be getting more and more serious about it (if only to fill that growing existential void). And I refuse to use children as plugs! I wrote another bombastic poem to that effect; I'll try to post it soon, but I am having some computer trouble at home. Our anti-virus expired, and I uninstalled it to install a new one that we get free with Verizon. But it wouldn't work (again), and that got me so frustrated. I was waiting for an excuse to ditch Verizon (I hate big corporations: they charge so much and have such crappy customer service!). So I think I'll finally do it. So, I might not be able to write from home for a while (I don't like to venture on the web without anti-virus).

I do hope you like Dalida's voice. I would have burnt you a CD, but our burner at home is busted (and at work they're iffy about stuff like that). So, I'll figure something. And yes, Shea butter-verbena cuticle crème is pretty gay, however I have the worst cuticles ever! (That is why I buy all these creams.) I basically butcher my cuticles. When I was a teenager I used to pick at my acne, and I have a forehead and neck blotched with the fading scars of my nasty habits (I have to get one operated on because I messed it up so bad the skin got keratinized, whatever that meant). Now I don't pick at my face as much, but I bite my cuticles all the time. It's quite obsessive, and quite out of control. But I can think of worse self-mutilation. (That and my teeth-grinding at night... All that tension!)

As for Lorca, I have to say, you have such a knack at selecting good passages of poetry! Those are two great passages (I especially love the first). As for the sketches, I think they'll have to wait until I fix the computer situation at home.

Mr. Rohrer I will hold off from commenting on until I have read a bit more. I can certainly appreciate him more, though I am afraid I will not be as smitten with him as you are. His writing still strikes me as mostly too dense, ingrown and restrained. I will elaborate later, if you don't mind. Now your poem, on the other hand, is what I call delicate, simple and humane (in the best senses of all words, and it was so lovely to see your handwriting!). It takes a tender (almost mundane) everyday moment, one that is there, that would in most cases just pass, but is also the kind of stuff that Life (with a capital L) is made of, and captures it so skillfully that it seems effortless. (And I love "haunches"; it is such a good rough counterpoint to "graces" and the rest of the poem; it fishes it out of being too delicate. Punctuation, on the other hand, is nothing I give much importance to...) But then again, who am I to judge? I just got another batch of poems reject from another publication that nobody's heard of except its editors. And I am bitter, and I am baffled, and I am giving up. Goes back to how arbitrary poetry is... I guess giving up is not so bad after all. No expectations, no disappointments.

Delicate Situation

(In response to comment on something katy):

k: ... i seriously doubt i'm getting better. i'm merely writing and rewriting the same sex scene from different angles it feels like. i guess that "i am a cat" "i am like a cat" stuff i wrote in response to william hathaway was pretty good, and different (as different as a poem about cats can get, i actually have a book of all cat poems, and most of them are horribly trite, should make me cringe really, but i love to read and reread them, i can't understand why).

i wish i was writing more poems about the fox and the green river and the sad robot boy and ... i have yet to write my spirit animal into a poem properly (i believe, but have not completely confirmed, that i am a crane, though i have no idea what kind, a greyish white one, a tall one, i guess... at least that's what i want to be; i know ryan is a fox, there's no question about this, far too many times he's reached out to me through his animal).

i guess sex isn't so bad though, i mean... everyone likes it right? not like i've asked a whole lot of people, but i'm guessing most people like sex (or whatever anyone wants to call it) and if i do it well enough (um, not sex, but the writing about sex) then it is unique and it is different. i sort of feel like this poem about a girl getting a bloody nose is just a ....

..........................................................................

(In response to post on Silliman's Blog):

i've been checking silliman's blog every day now, not always reading the entire post, but at least checking things out. i want to keep my claws in this online-poetics universe i'm slowly unwraveling.

anyway, i think this entry of silliman's is in the same vein as some of our discussion the other night; the heart and sex of poetry. i think erotic or sensual poetry is a good way to describe what i'm going through with my poems at the moment, so my interest in this topic shouldn't surprise you.

my first reaction was to the statement about erotic poetry of late being composed mostly by women and gay men. in terms of what we were talking about last night, about the academia possibly being the bearing force on poets to restrain from sex and emotion in poetry, perhaps there are more straight men influenced by the academic sphere? i don't know about this though. perhaps they are two separate issues.

one being the academic acceptance of a poet; writing for your committee, writing for an awards bored (foetry stuffs). the other issue being one of offence.

what i mean by offence is that perhaps straight men fear that if they write too graphically or with too much of any specific emotion that they will be attacked by feminists with rakes and shovels. i don't know though, i'm not that kind of feminist. maybe when straight men write it, it's porn? maybe girls are too easily offended by sexual content. maybe girls still have issues with being seen in a sexual way. i know it makes me uncomfortable when a strange guy hits on me, but at the same time as being freaky and often times gross, it's also a bit flattering. for a poet to do it in a poem, surely that's entirely different from a gas station attendant.

as much as an issue women have with being the prey of men, i think that this issue is one that shows itself more in the academic sphere than in every day life (are academic women more prudent?). there are how many songs about sex written and performed by straight men? and it doesn't seem to bother anyone to the extent that there is any backlash, men still write and perform songs about women and sex; people keep playing them and buying tickets to see them performed live and so on.

i guess there are some male poets like matthew rohrer who have been successful with some sexual content, but even rohrer shies away from the moment by hiding behind the third person in his poetry. he doesn't address sex or love, it's just there.

there's the sex part, but what about the heart? the heart, especially in the way in which i think you mean it, is a far more complex and delicate issue to tackle.

for me, the heart in poetry is honestly. i don't mean honesty as being true to one specific life, but more... in between the caresses, the heart beats, the erotic, there are these glimmers of mortality (a bloody nose, picking toe nails, etc) that emphasize the love behind the lust. that is what i mean when i say honesty. it is our mortality that makes our love so fragile and so beautiful.

i think, perhaps, too many poets miss calculate the balance between the heart and the sex, the meat and the honesty. the sample poems in silliman's blog entry miss it i think. it's meat, great. what's sexy about a butcher's shop? that's all mortality and no love.

marie howe, on the other hand, is a perfect example of a poet who knows how to lay the balance on the page. she's the sort of poet who promises you dinner then stabs you in the stomach... here's an example from "the beast" of what i mean...

Later that night, I make love for hours.
I forget my name, where my arms
are, what

my tongue is doing. I think I must have cried out
unimaginable things and I think of my sister

in the room next door,
lying on her back, blinking in the dark.

ah, doesn't she just drain you? what a goddess. one moment you're having the best sex of your life, the next you're dirty with guilt and disgusted with yourself.

so why can't a man do this? why can't a straight man write down the sex and counter balance it with mortality and be successful? have straight men tried? or is there no appeal for straight men to feel any emotion in bed? i can't imagine that every straight male poet has no emotions tied to sex. if anything they must all do.

maybe the whole matter (including this new one of straight men feeling emotions towards sex) is to do with the fact that sex for straight men has never been taboo, it's always been accepted and praised; whereas for women, virginity has held such a heavy weight over the heads of so many that the act of physical love is such a revelation that it can't not be an emotional experience. for gay men, well, the world is still struggling to accept the gay population (of men and women); what other fuel for emotion is there than revolution?

well? your turn dear.


a: It's so funny, I was just reading the same post the other day (for similar reasons, I presume). It seems our conversation is (has been) developing two intertwining lines: the personal and poetry (which I admit are difficult to distinguish at times). So, for your question "don’t you and the beast cuddle? i don’t mean to get too personal or anything, but well, don’t you?" I'd say, we're talking poetry here (and erotic poetry, to be specific), so I don't think it can get much more personal than that. And don't worry about asking me anything "too personal": 1) I'm an exhibistionist who plasters his life on the web for no one to read, 2) I always have the option of not answering, without any indignation. So, yes, of course we cuddle; our relationship isn't all hot smokin' sex all the times, unfortunately. We're not overly affectionate (much to my chagrin), especially in public (and I am not very tolerant of public display of affection, generally). However, Wojtek has this "tick" where, after he's been away for a while, he's almost reflexive. It always reminds me of that mathematical paradox (that I can never remember the name of) where if you divide a distance in half, and then divide the half, and go on and on, you will reach a point where the distance is negligibly small, but never zero. And I think Rilke said how the distance between two people is similar to that (thank god?). In any case, the point is, it seems to take him a couple of days to "warm up to me again". See, our "love" tends to be more of the sitcom marriage type (think "Roseanne", or even better the British sitcoms "Keeping Up Appearances" and "My Family"). Except sometimes it's not so funny. But I always remind myself of a great line from another Dalida song, "Ta Femme" (You Wife/Woman): "This communion of the everyday, it is a form of love." (God bless the Great One!) In any case, back to poetry...

So, I started reading the same post the other day, and it was a nice surprise that you sent it, so I finished it. It's funny how, as much as Silliman tries to deny it, he is the GrandDaddy of online poetry these days... Good for him! He certainly is industrious enough and knowledgeable enough to earn it. In any case, what I think about this issue of erotic poetry and women and gay men on the one hand, and straight men on the other is not that "there are more straight men influenced by the academic sphere" as much as I think that there are simply more straight men in the academic sphere. (Or am I mistaken and being paranoid here?) And that is an interesting point that you made, that "maybe when straight men write it, it's porn?" I really do wonder how much straight men, especially those in academia (the supposedly more sensitive ones), have been effectively castrated by feminism. I do agree, though, that there certainly is something about the challenge to one's sexuality (in this instance, or anything for that matter) that brings it to the fore, that makes it more precious, that makes one more aware of it. And I do think that that makes us more articulate about it, because we don't take it for granted as much, because each time it is a conscious deliberate act. (In any case, I realize, reading Silliman, how much I have to learn still, though I have a feeling I will die without learning or reading everything I'd like too... Oh, well, the pity!)

But I think you hit it head on when you were describing Marie Howe's poetry as "these glimmers of mortality... that emphasize the love behind the lust. that is what i mean when i say honesty. it is our mortality that makes our love so fragile and so beautiful." That is so well-said (and so existential, by the way: as Heidegger and Sarte and Camus said, it is that mortality that brings that urgency to our life that makes it that precious!). But it is the kind of statement that I might have been reluctant to articulate for fear if "ruining the magic". But now I realize, that even if you "reveal the formula", there's something about the magic of it that is essential (kind of like the KFC secret recipe!) And Marie is a master of this form, this delicate balance. Again, as you so gorgeously put it, "she's the sort of poet who promises you dinner then stabs you in the stomach...". Touche!

And I do realize, that while this is perhaps my favorite form of poetry these days (and I think of it as the more mature form of poetry), I can certainly think of other forms that operate of very different premises that I find compelling in their own ways. Two kinds I can think of right now I'll call the Situational and the Delicate. The Situational I think of mostly as the stuff I love in French chansons. It is not narrative per se (as "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" or "The Prisoner of Chillon" are), certainly not as epic and rambling, but more snippets of life, their art lying in the light they shed of one aspect of it in a few strokes. I think here mostly of Charles Aznavour and Dalida (though I am sure others such as Jacques Brel might be better know for that). Aznavour, for example, has "La Mamma" (later sung by Dalida) that describes the dying of the matron of a family, with all the children flocking in, including the blacksheep of the family, and surrounding the bed. Or "Comme ils dissent" (perhaps better known in its English version, "What Makes a Man a Man"): of the transvestite helping his mother with the chores and then going to strip for a living. Or "Happy Annivesary", about a couple trying to celebrate their anniversary, and the celebration going wrong, as they all do. Dalida has the epic "Gigi l'amoroso" (Gigi the Lover), about his Italian Don Juan character whom all the women of the village fall for, and how he was seduced by this rich American woman and emigrated with her, about the town after he left, and he heartbreak and return... (And I say epic mostly because the song had a very campy sequel, "Gigi in Paradisco", that follows Gigi in his afterlife, where he turns paradise into a disco! LOL!). She, however, I think, was best when she turned the camera on herself, and in that way she was perhaps more daring and lacerating that any singer I know of. She tended to sing a lot about her situation as a childless famous woman, trying anf failing continuously in love (three of her lovers committed suicide, she trying to follow them every time, until it finally worked the third time). She tended to expose her most intimate in song, and therefore life in its most poignant and sincere. For example, after the suicide of her first lover, Luigi Tenco, following the failure of his song "Ciao Bambino" at some contest, she sang it, to great resonance and success. "Mourir sur scene" (Dying on Stage) couldn't have been more poiganatly prescient of her suicide, a song to Death, teeling him when and how to come. She sang the above mentioned "Ta Femme" from the point of view of a woman having an affair with a married man; "Lucas" about a star taking her former lover's child, who adores her, out on a romp around town and then dropping him back off; "Depuis qu'il vient chez nous" about a love triangle where her lover seems to direct his affection towards the other man; and "Bravo" about her desperation for more applause. And on and on... Even when she sang other's songs, such as "Ciao Bambino" above, or my favorite Ferre's "Avec le temps", or Serge Lama's poignant "Je suis malade" ("I am sick", which in one of her performaces of, after her secnd suicide attempt, I believe, she broke down on stage, and is by far the most moving live performace I can think of), she sang them with such personal poignancy that... well, you know the point.

Of the second form, the Delicate, I can only think of Lorca's poetry at this point, just because this form is so easy to go Hallmark and bla. It is a very delicate balance to write delicate things and not come across as hoaky. (By the way, have you seen Lorca's sketches? They are the most gorgeous and delicate little things... Sublime!)

And I decided I want to buy a Rohrer book. I want to give the guy another chance, since you love him so, and I trust in your judgement. And maybe if I saw his work on paper, I would be more recptive.

Ok, I gotta go now. Wojtek wants to do an "in-service" (a military/marketing term) about our relationship/life! (I guess it's something like resolutions and stuff...). Should be fun!


k: hi hi hi! (am in a particularly great mood at the moment)

i have a copy of lorca’s poema del cante jundo (poems of the deep song) with the original texts and English translations paralleling them. also, there is an intro from the translator (i like introductions), so i’m going to spend some time with it tomorrow. i’ve not spent much time in this collection, i remember one about a lamp post… anyway, your email reminded me that this collection has been neglected. i’ll deliver a proper response after i’ve read some lorca (can’t seem to find his sketches online, aside from the one) and read through your dalida history lesson with more care.

you really want to give rohrer a proper chance? that means so much to me, ashraf! i’m a little fearful that you mightn’t like him, but that you want to give him a chance is just lovely! could i buy you one of his collections? please.

i’m glad you don’t take any offence to all my prodding and poking. if ever i cross any lines you’ll tell me, won’t you? i don’t ever want to offend you or push you. thank you over and over and over for being so generous and obliging when it comes to my silly curiosities. the poet in me is always asking questions, considering options, filling in gaps (the human imagination at work) and wondering. thank you for putting pieces together for me.
i just hope you can tolerate ryan and i; we’ll have been married 2 years in april, but we still act like we’re on our honeymoon!

so tomorrow… more off me, as always. i’ll hopefully have time to read most of this lorca collection at work.


a: Hey dear,

Glad you are in a good mood!... I hope I didn't bore you to death with my Dalida stuff. I know I can be a bit over zealous about her; please let me know when I go overboard.

I am so glad you're going to read Lorca; I think you'll like him. He is such a great persona! And maybe I'll scan some of the cards with his sketches I got from Granada from work and send them to you.

Guess what, I just bought A Green Light by Rohrer. I'll let you know how it goes... You know, I just realized that Amazon had previously recommended that book to me (I remember the cover distinctly; I am big about covers, and that's a good one). And you know what too? Both him and Marie Howe won the National Poetry Series! Hmmm... Maybe we'll be next!


k: hello ashraf,

your copy of a green light has purple writing on the cover then? mine is pink. i want a purple one too. a green light is his 3rd collection and admittedly, the one i’ve spent the least amount of time appreciating. i just read the first three poems again… sigh. he’s good.

enough of my swooning, and onto lorca. i have read the entire collection before, but it was some time ago (i believe i first picked this book up while i was still in high school). i hadn’t read the introduction before, which is stellar. i had no idea lorca was so deeply rooted in his culture and in this deep song religious practice. his poems, as song lyrics, are compared to flamenco (flamenco being the mere shadow of the deep song). i had no idea, too, that he was such an icon. every one knows who lorca is, he’s one of those names. i wonder if he is so revered among Spaniards as he is among poets.

today at work i managed to read through a little less than half of the collection, but i found a few poems which i think detail what you mean by delicate…

AY!

The cry leaves a shadow
of the cypress upon the wind.

(Leave me here in this field,
weeping.)

Everything in the world is broken.
Nothing but silence remains.

(Leave me here in this field,
weeping.)

The moonless horizon
is chewed up by bonfires.

(I’ve told you already to leave me
here in this field,
weeping.)

and

SURPRISE

Dead he was left in the street,
with a dagger in his chest.
Nobody knew who he was.
How the lamppost was shaking!
Mother.
How that little lamppost shook
in the street!
In the dead of night. Nobody
was able to glance wide-eyed
out into the harsh night air.
And he was left dead in the street,
and with a dagger in his chest,
and nobody knew who he was.

some of the poems are lazily translated, unfortunately, so i can’t say that all of his poems demonstrate the art of delicacy. these two do though. i remembered this one about the lamp post from when i’d read the collection before. i’m not sure if i’m meant to take the lamppost’s shaking literally, if the shaking is a sort of personification, or if the shaking lamppost is representative of something else altogether. i haven’t a clue. you? my instinct is to personify the lamppost, because that’s what i would do in a poem.

AY! is a particularly good example of what you described here:

…I can only think of Lorca's poetry at this point, just because this form is so easy to go Hallmark and bla. It is a very delicate balance to write delicate things and not come across as hoaky.

i can imagine how this would have appeared on a card, a “been thinking about you” or “sorry i missed your birthday” or something like that. i thought today about possibly tying my hand and breaking the balance to see just how far i have to AY! in order to make it truly hallmark-able. i might have a go at it tomorrow (stupid hotel, getting busy on the weekend!). oh and i can’t wait to see those sketches (i can wait, but i’m really looking forward to seeing them.)

as for your dalida, you didn’t go too far at all, it was all very interesting and exciting. the poor poor woman though!! heavens, three husbands(or just partners?) had killed themselves and she tried to follow every one? how sad she must have been. i can’t imagine it. it’ll be great to hear her, but like i said, i want you to be able to introduce us.

as for the color thing.. i figured it out!! there’s a “compose” field and an “edit html” field. i’d been composing my posts in the html one, trying to be all clever and type in the codes and things, when there’s a part of blogger that does it for you J i can be quite silly at times. so just never mind me!

and now for something completely different: the pencil test.

i haven’t given it an official name, but “the pencil test” sounds pretty good. since you said that you compose your poems on paper with pencil, i decided to have a proper go at the same. (i usually compose on pc (the hotel science series was composed entirely on the seat of my pants in the blogger composition field), but i am comfortable enough with paper, and though i usually use pen, i enjoy the texture of a pencil.) i started on the 18th and have so far only come up with one poem that i am pleased with (there’s a lot of scribbling, swirling and complaining going on), though i am going to continue this for another week or so, who knows, i might get back into the habit. the attached doc is a photo i took of the poem called “goodnight” and i’ll type it up for you here so you don’t have to strain your vision with my poor tech skillz.

goodnight

the weight of his body
rests on my breasts and belly
through the blue duvet.
i keep my eyes locked open
to see if he opens his.
once i know, i shut mine too.

he rolls off, over, all the way
and flicks the switch
that sets his alarm.
i turn onto my side, reach,
and do the same; double checking
the set time and calculating
how many hours of sleep
that is and that isn’t.

i settle into my pillow,
my legs curled almost up to my chest
waiting for him to realign them.
his warmth enveloping me,
pulling me deeper into his lap
and i fall asleep with his steady breath
gracing my haunches.

that’s the way i wrote it first time around, no edits (other than what’s on the page itself (the tense in the first strophe and the change in line breaks in the third one). might edit it here and there, not sure about “haunches” and some of the punctuation. so that’s my experiment at the moment. i might break out the type writer again just to have a go at it. what are type writers like in the winter? i think i’ve only ever used him in the hot summer months (he particularly fond of decks). poetry is fun J

thank you for the inspiration, for writing in pencil again.

i hope you’ve had a good day and a good weekend and are well and joyful. have you read any rohrer yet? i’m anxious to know what you think!

Working Method

k: i have a question. how long does it take you to compose a poem? do you just sit down and the words fall out of your fingers onto the keys? do you compose on computer? have you ever written your poems in a book or just on loose paper or even a type writer?

for me, well, i have used a type writer but i get far too distracted by the texture of the paper and ink to really give a damn about the words. i have this one awesomely wonderfuly epic new world prose poem that i wrote an extra long green sheet of paper on a type writer; everything else i've ever done on the type writer is rubish.

these days, since about around the time i got married, i've been composing primarily on computer. those hathaway poems about being cat... that was me waiting for our ride to pick us up and drop us at the bus station on our way to england. i had my ex-library book copy of whatever that collection is called and i was reading and i had my pen in my mouth, my coat on, ready to shoot out the door, but wanting to lie there half in the hallway, stretching to try to soak up every ray of sunlight that shown through the window of our living room in that moment. it was radiant, warm and ... oh how i wanted to be a cat right then. to stretch four limbs to their limits and purr. those poems, i composed on paper, in my note book (i still keep a notebook and try to hand write all my poems into it even when i compose on the computer).

since i was 14 i've written in composition note books (you know, those cheap ones with the black and white blotchy printed covers). it feels so good to catch them in the corner of my eye when i go by them all neatly tucked into a shelf, to see a tangible history of my poetry, the good and the awful. i wish i wrote more in them these days. at their epoch it took merely 5 months to fill one. now it takes more like a year.
ryan used to read through them. now he reads my blog, so there isn't as much need.

for me, for composition, i'm afraid that there's far more thought in the process of creation than is left to the reader's eye. you imagine a poem like that bloody nose one would flow out as if it were there along and i merely uncovered it? i wish such were true. but really, most of my trade is covering up the evidence of any seams.

at times, poems come to me. morning child came to me, at least at the begining. that felt so good to write.

this poem... i know i had the idea in my .... wait. do you want to hear this? should i really tell you how a poem like that is born? or do you want me to leave it?

i want to tell you, because i feel like i have to justify all the praise you've been lavishing on me recently. it's unusual for the poet in me to be given so much attention and affection. she's not used to it.

but i don't want to tell you unless you want to hear it. why ruin it for you?

do your poems come to you? they must. they do, don't they? i wish they'd come to you more often :) though you can't always force a poem, i know this all too well (yet i persist in my efforts to do so).

a: as much as I don't want to spoil the magic, yes, of course I do want to know. I have to say though that I was surprised to read that you're more of a typer, that you tend to write more on the computer. I guess it's because I knew how attentive you are to paper... But it was so cute to read about those notebooks (maybe it's because it fit my construct of you more). I tend to write on my plainest journal book, by pencil (never pen; I just love the softness of pencil, it's smudginess, its non-finality). I have all these fancy sketch books, but I almost always I write on one plain brown one that has "Journal" embossed on it. Well, in reality I guess I start writing in my head: usually either at the end of a day, when I am tired and more vulnerable and receptive, or while out with Wojtek, either in the silence, or he'd be yapping about work, and I'd drift off. Or driving to work in the morning (like "Seasons"). It usually just starts as a sentence or two. And then sometimes a couple more. And sometimes even more. And I start repeating them to myself in my head so I won't forget them. Sometimes I'd type them on my cell phone so I won't lose them (like the beginning of "Generations", that was behind the art museum, the one with the Rocky steps, while walking with Wojtek by the river). And then when I start writing them down, I'm more deliberate about the rest. Sometimes the first few lines change slightly. But I don't go back and forth that much. I do reread and change a words or two here and there. But no major reconstruction typically. Except perhaps a while later, as in several months (as in "Life on a Beautiful Day"): I'd be rereading some old stuff and cringing, and then I chop off... I don't know, maybe I just never learned the discipline. But that's also the way I work in architecture. I believe in a few iterations, but not too many. I do believe in being faithful to the beginning. If it veers too much, it becomes something else.

k: i loved reading how you come up with a poem. i loved reading about how you start writing in your head, especailly. i've done a lot of workshoping (at university and online) so i've been exposed to a lot of unpolished work, some of which reveals the process of that poet. reading what you wrote about how you come up with a poem was so different though. i don't know that i've ever had the opportunity to learn that about another poet. bizzarly i could have easily mistook the desciption of your process for someone's description of my process; although, i've never typed lines of poetry into my cell phone. i tend, instead, to scribble words on recipts or business cards or anything else that a pen will score.

your construct of me is interesting. general perception as generated through this sort of email converstaion is interesting to me. having talked to ryan for 2 years before we actually met in person, i had this image of him in my mind that was built on a few pictures, even fewer phone calls, and lots and lots of typed emails and chat conversations. i was gobbsmacked to see him walk through the airport gate and realize that i was spot on in my perception of him. i was so lucky too. at the point we met i was so in love with my idea of who this ryan was that if he wasn't that ryan, i don't know what would have come of it all. lucky me though, he was everything and more (and still is).

i do write on paper. like i said, i like to hand write my poems even after they've been composed on a screen. i think i write more on computer now though because of the blog and because... nothing here is perminant. i can write and rewrite and erase and type over. i suppose you could do the same with pencil. the thing about typing and my poetry is that i don't get distracted by the shape of a letter, by the texture of the ink or the paper. when i write i tend to lose focus. i'll start looking more at the way the ring on my finger rubs up against the pen or get obsessed over why i do a straight tail on a y and a swirly one on a g. also, when i'm at work, i can stand here at the computer typing away and everyone thinks i'm working. i'll have to bring my latest book with me in march (it'll have a bit more ink on its pages by then i hope) for you to have a look through.

arch's list

a: Katy, here are my four poems (actually two songs and two poems--sorry I couldn't cut them down to three). All are translated from a foreign language. The two songs from French, translated by me, so please forgive the crappy translation. Still, I do not hesitate to put them way up there. (I guess that goes to prove my concern for content over ... ?) They are both sung by my goddess, Dalida (though "Avec le temps" is originally by the great Leo Ferre). Neither is written by her; but I do believe in the power of choice. In any case, they are existentialism in a song. "Avec le temps" sums up the essential dilemma of life: time. And "Pour ne pas vivre seul" will be my wedding vow (talk about one depressing wedding!).

The two poems are by the great Pablo Neruda. "Everybody" I found, hand written on grid paper, above the desk of a great friend of mine from grad school (whom I have very sadly lost touch with--my desk at the time boasted a handwritten copy of "Avec le temps". She also introduced me to one of my top 3 poets, Mark Strand.) And "There's No Forgetting" is the poem on which I based a work of the same title (and essentially my thesis).

As for the top 3 poets (I skipped Neruda as he got 2 poems):
1. Mahmoud Darwish (the title of my thesis, "Memory for Forgetfulness" is that of a book by him.)
2. The Giantess, the Fierce: Sylvia Plath
3. As spoiled above, the Sublime Mark Strand

And I do have to mention 2 runner-ups: Naomi Shihab Nye and the ferocious Marie Howe

Ok, now I can see your list!

a.


k: on to your favorite poets...

We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.

And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.

Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart or saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain.

"Coming to This" by Mark Strand

i found a website that hosts about 15 of his poems (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/poets/72/ ) so i read the first 5 or 6. he's great. thank you for introducing us :)

oh and mahmoud darwish appears in the same online database!
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/7719/

it's easy to see, too, where you get your poeitc influence, whether you recognize it or not. this, "passport" is a lovely lovely poem and it reminds me so much of you.

ah, and there there is a tragic beauty, mrs plath. have you read "the bell jar"? she is far too insignificant in the lives of adolecnts. her work and the work of j.d. salinger should be taugh hand in hand with extreme focus in every highschool. fortunatly i found them both on my own accord and adore both "the bell jar" and "the catcher in the rye".

i flipped through "ariel", sylvia's most renowned collection, while selecting the remaining 2 of my favorite poems. in the end i decided to embrace the white-male culture of literature in this country and its history instead (though robert frost and robinson jeffers are among the finest and most sensitve upper-class white males).

as for your 4 poems, i will read them from home. i want to give them the utmost attentiveness which i cannot promise you here at work. though i am especially impressed with your worldliness, ashraf. you've translated those two songs from french? that's fantastic. of course i'll excuse any blunders.

i opened up "avec le temps" just to see your translation, and i wouldn't worry if i were you. first of all the only thing i know how to say in french is "parcore" and the typical hello goodbye thank you my name is sort of dialogue. in middle school i supposedly studied some french. though, the only thing i remember was watching Provance the mini series. at least i learned that alls i need to find truffles is a pig on a leash.

i thought about giving you a list of my 3 favorite collections, but i wanted to restrict myself to the requested amount. i'll give it to you right now though:

Jacklight by Louise Erdrich
Satellite by Matthew Rohrer
and
Wessex Poems by Thomas Hardy

i don't own a copy of wessex poems because i am in love with the copy at the Umass Amherst Library and will have no other. i am still planning my amazing hiest of this particular text. never have i ever loved a book for being a book so much; the pages are thick and glossy, the words are printed in such a way that leeks power; you can tell by the print that a person must have pressed his fists into every letter to create it. sigh. i miss it, my wessex poems. i must have renewed it 5 or 6 times before finally bringing it back (i had to give it back to graduate, can you believe that!?)

i'm looking forward to really reading those four poems. thank you for sharing :) and i look forward to what you might think of my lists.

...

these four poems, your four favorite... i can see why you would have had trouble deciding between them. they are all perfect examples of what i find so endearing and precious in your poetry.

love
despair
caution
repetition
closed concepts within moments of the poem
more love
more despair
nature
humanity
humanity responding to nature
and quiet

out of the four i find "There's No Forgetting" the most compelling. though... again, like your art, i find it difficult to pin point the exact reason why. it's a visceral response, it's something deeper than sound and rhythm, something rooted deep within what it means to be human and what it means to know love.

you proved your religion to me, your poetry to me.

i loved reading these poems.


a: Katy, thank you, thank you, thank you (me and my triplets!). That is probably one of the most generous things anyone has done for me. Very interesting list. Some things took me by surprise: for example, I didn't think of myself as so much love and despair (more despair, perhaps); but I guess I am a die hard romantic at heart. caution, repetition, and closed concepts within moments of the poem are very true, though I probably didn't recognize them as such (caution, yes; repitition, uh-huh; closed concepts, now that you mention it...). And humanity, I'd like to think yes. But nature and quiet? Very interesting. What do you mean by nature? It's funny, I never thought of myself as that. And quiet? I thought I was loud. Very interesting...

And that is one of the most beautiful lines: "you proved your religion to me"...

k:

I will hold you until you miss
Yourself like I do you
And then rest your case in mine
And your head in my lap
That I can braid your thoughts again.

this section of Alkaline embodies what i mean when i list quiet as an element that reoccurs in your poetry. i wish i could read it out loud to you so you could understand how i interpret the line breaks, but i'll do my best here to point the moments of quiet out here for you.

i will hold you until you miss [this is a complete and beautiful line, until i read ....]
yourself like i do you [this addition not only changes everything that's going on in the first line here, it also creates an awesome tension between the two lines, and almost, then, the two characters, the me and the you. reading the second line is like .... the but statement. "i love you, but i'm still leaving"

you do it again...

and your head in my lap [this could end here, this is where the mind of the reader breaks, and there is silence, in the voice, in the breath, in the mind]
that i can braid your thoughts again [until suddenly the reader is reminded who's in charge, you are, ashraf, the poet. you make your stance well in your work. you give yourself this awesome power, this controller characteristic that is purely male, yet deliberate, does that make sense?]

as for nature... more so, humanity responding to nature... also from alkaline is this section:

I will hold the moon
Fixed in the sky
For you to see my shadow.

it's obvious right? a human has this magic, this strength to hold the moon above his head to make his shadow that much more imposing, impressive.

i'm thinking i should have added "control" to the list, though control isn't something i feel when i read your poetry. it's something more subtle, perhaps control isn't even the right word.

a: your e-mail, well, it made me squirm. And no, absolutely not in any negative way (so this wasn't payback!). But rather because I don't think I have had such acute and perceptive attention lavished on my writing since... well, no, not even since Ahmad used to leave his commentary. And perhaps the most uncanny bit about it was that I was starting to believe that these stops and pauses... that they go mostly unnoticed. And to have someone describe them like they actually communicated... Well, that's just overwhelming!

k: i'm glad that what i pointed out in Alkaline shows you that those moments in your poetry don't go unnoticed (at least not by me). if ever you want me to show you that someone gets it, i'll be glad to, but i won't do that sort of commentary unless i feel it will encourage or help you.