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“The moment of change is the only poem.” Adrienne Rich
Saturday, February 4, 2012
“Do you want to be the mystic or the scholar?” – Shams-e-Tabriz to Rumi.
According to many sources, Rumi is the best selling poet in America. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,356133,00.html
Cold cliff
weathered tree,
this knobby pated monk. . .
things there’s nothing better than a poem.
Laughs at himself for striving so
to write in the dust of the world,
and scolds old Ts’ang Ko
for inventing writing,
and leading so many astray.
- Ching An, 1851-1912
I’ve started reading the entire Emily Dickinson collection of poetry. A few poems each morning and a few each night make a poetic meditation practice of sorts. A few poems a day allow me the time to analyze each poem and dig into her unusual syntax.
Observations so far: She writes so much about nature, reading her poems in nature is nearly overwhelming. She uses a lot of exclamation points. She uses Yoda-syntax, i.e., “afraid you are, young Jedi.” It’s really hard to get “The Yellow Rose of Texas” rhythms out of your head when you read her. Thanks, Billy Collins and NPR.
Kim Rosen’s book, Saved by a Poem is a marvelous way to explore poetry — and explore it deeply. I didn’t have to memorize any poetry growing up. I’m a little envious of those who did, for they have it with them now. The problem is that most of them had to memorize poems that had no meaning for them: “Charge of the Light Brigade” or such. Of course that left a bad taste in their mouth.
Kim recommends you find a poem that really means something to you, one that touches you, one that you’ll be able to call on later. She provides many examples in her book, along with a CD of spoken poems. Some of the poems are spoken by the poets themselves and some are spoken by her friends.
I decided to start out with a short poem mostly because I had little faith in my memorization ability. I chose Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Egg Boiler.”
THE EGG BOILER
Being you, you cut your poetry from wood.
The boiling of an egg is heavy art.
You come upon it as an artist should,
With rich-eyed passion, and with straining heart.
We fools, we cut our poems out of air.
Night color, wind soprano, and such stuff.
And sometimes weightlessness is much to bear.
You mock it, though, you name it Not Enough.
The egg, spooned gently to the avid pan,
And left the strict three minute, or the four,
Is your Enough and art for any man.
We fools give courteous ear—-then cut some more,
Shaping a gorgeous Nothingness from cloud.
You watch us, eat your egg, and laugh aloud.
I’ve been working on it for a couple weeks now, off and on. I still don’t have it down completely, but what I’m enjoing most about the exercise is the depth of learning that’s come from repeating each line. The Deep Dive sessions Kim holds (described on her website) sound terribly intriguing.
Get the book or visit Kim’s website to learn more.
At the beginning of Robert Bly’s book, “Morning Glory,” he had a version of Basho’s short poem, Morning Glory. Interesting how the different translators view it:
The Morning Glory also
The morning glory also
turns out
not be my friend
translated by Robert Hass
The Morning Glory
Ah! the morning-glory!
‘Tis not my friend, either.
translator unknown
The Morning Glory
Another thing
that will never
be my friend.
translated by Robert Bly
I’m watching out my office window where my neighbor is doing some very early spring cleanup: picking up branches, raking winter leaves… he’s dressed in his hunting gear, though. I don’t know if it’s any particular season, though; maybe he just wanted to be camouflaged in his front yard. I’ve been lazy at writing lately, but I’ve been energetic at remodeling. The ugly wallpaper in the basement is gone and I’ve scraped half of the backing paper away. A little more money saved and I’ll have new hardwood floors.
I’ve been working on a poem about Medusa but mostly struggling. I read a book of Robert Bly’s prose poems, “Morning Glory,” which made me think of re-working the poem into a prose format. I’ve never written in that style before, but maybe it’ll break the log-jam I’ve been in with it. I just hate it when I can’t get to the feeling I want with a poem. I just keep dancing near it…
I guess if it was easy everyone would do it.
There’s a wonderful, poetic paragraph (admid all the other wonderfully written paragraphs) in Ms. DiCamillo’s book, The Magician’s Elephant, “But that is impossible,” said Peter. “Magic is always impossible,” said the magician. “It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it is magic.”
She has written a lovely book, one that you could pull down from the shelf at any time over the years and read any paragraph of it and be inspired. It’s a story like a string of perfect pearls: each character is right and sweet and hopeful. Each is a dreamer and a believer.
Read and enjoy. And thank you, Ms. DiCamillo.
I’ve written in a previous blog how much I enjoy the HBO show, Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices. I highly recommend it — geez, there’s so much tripe on television, it’s great to see a show that offers so much. It extolls poetry as a way of bringing focus to young writers’ lives, it brings performance poetry to new heights, and it shows how hard it is to write a really good poem. What are you doing still reading this? Go watch an episode! Brave New Voices.
I’ve been listening to the mentors on the show and taking their advice for myself. They don’t hold anything back when they talk to these kids, but it’s great advice to all poets: open up and write your emotions, be clever, write outrageous metaphors, and be true to yourself.
If you enjoy modern, spoken poetry (like HBO’s Def Poetry Jam), you’ll enjoy Russell Simmon’s new show, Brave New Voices.
The show is part documentary, part performance, all engaging. The show’s page has links to the selected poets’ full performances, since they’re edited for the documentary. Some of these kids are amazingly talented and insightful. Most of the poems will stand on their own without their charismatic performers. Even if you don’t subscribe to HBO, you can see the shows on HBO.com. Watch it.
