1. among twenty showy writers
the only moving thing
was the eye of a boycott
2. I was of three miseries
like a trigger
in which there are three boycotts
3. boycott whirled around the aviary chime
in the shadow of a pantomime
4. a man and a woman
are one
a man and a woman and a boycott
are one
5. I do not know which to prefer
the symbol of the honored guest
or the symbol of a friend
the boycott whistling
or just after
6. drones filled the widow
with barbaric glass
a hint of a boycott
crossed it, to and fro
the mood
dead in the shards of
the barest cause
7. genocide pros why
imagine golden vetoes
while the boycott
walks around the feet
of the women about you
8. I know sneaky absences
and vivid, racial reservations
but I know, too
that the boycott is involved
in what I know
9. when the boycott flew inside
it marked what is not
one of many nothings
10. at the sight of boycotts
outside a German spotlight
even the bookfair
would cry tears of profit
11. she flew from Manila
in a glass shroud
once, a fear pierced her
in that she mistook
the clout of her shelves
for a boycott
12. the river flowing to the sea
a boycott must be asking
13. it was evening all year
it was mourning
our boycott sat
on a small part of the limb
Ipinapakita ang mga post na may etiketa na stevens. Ipakita ang lahat ng mga post
Ipinapakita ang mga post na may etiketa na stevens. Ipakita ang lahat ng mga post
Hun 16, 2025
Set 4, 2017
Notes on John Ashbery’s “The Template”
was always there, its existence seldom
questioned or suspected. The poets of the future
would avoid it, as we had. An imaginary railing
disappeared into the forest. It was here that the old gang
used to gather and swap stories. It
was like the Amazon, but on a much smaller scale.
Afterwards, when some of us swept out into the world
and could make comparisons, the fuss seemed justified.
No two poets ever agreed on anything, and that amused us.
It seemed good, the clogged darkness that came every day.
[ The Times Literary Supplement ]
—
These are often “greeted” with derision, most interestingly I think by those in search of something new, something else. Ashbery’s closing here strikes the same set of notes as Rumi’s line, at least for me, both seem to embrace what we customarily fear: darkness, pain.
—
In philosophy they ask, “What is the color of an orange in the dark?” In linguistics there was some curious play when Chomsky said “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” but in physics, Schrödinger had us thinking of a cat inside the box with some trap or radioactive bit, then asked us if the cat was alive or dead. When it was asked, it was suddenly us who were “in the dark” (definitely not in the same darkness that the cat was, and I’m now considering the Reinhardt variants as proposed). Was the cat dead or alive? The answers yes and no come, but neither and both also become thinkable, and so this cat plus darkness plus our multiplying answers (also, inadequacies) result in a state called superposition.
I think that’s what we’re embracing here, what’s clotting: the multiplication of possibility that only happens when we engage (as opposed to flee, or fight—as in your encouraging regard of fear) the darkness. And the magic of it is, we do something like it all the time, when we read and think, when we speak to each other: forming opinions about things we don’t fully comprehend, answering half-baked questions, finishing each other’s sentences.
—
His school seems to come alive in the amusement in the second stanza. Would love to see that explored. I remain partial to the clotting wound reading (nursing one at the moment, minor gardening mishap, and because of “The wound is the place where the Light enters you”), but your post remains a favorite spot on this thread. Light enters it.
—
Based on your edit, are we looking at catharsis here? I’ve been wondering about the source, where’s the conflict that got us to the wound and to the clotting? Did trying to fit into the template harm us? No two poets agreeing, that sounds like a whole forest of debaters, so much agon and agony: are each of the issued arguments in fact wounding? (If so, then there might as well be a hint of desperation, and this is maybe why I’m drawn to your use of lifeline).
—
Add to those, his pantoums.
Looking now at how he cut the first line at “its existence seldom” and it seems as if the these “templates and railings” flicker in and out of the world. As if they’re really only there when we question and suspect them, and maybe only as communities, conventions in the truest sense of the word.
“No two poets ever agreed” okay, but the amusement is shared. That’s the (new?) template begotten by the all the fuss over traditional forms and custom styles.
—
This portion of the thread takes me to the root of template, a temple, as it is an open, consecrated place, associated with what is solemn, calm, in search of order and a force.
—
That imaginary railing seems to come out of that tennis court without a net. That it leads to a forest, wow. It’s like the template preceded us, was ancient, or an ancient need. We’re in that discourse where the world is a jungle and the poem is something of a preserve or a garden, but if the form came before anything else, then it seems to me that poetry takes us to the wilds, is the closest thing we have to it, and that our everyday lives merely derive from this. Clot signals a wound, perhaps day is that wound. Or light, or reason, or civilization. It inverts Genesis where Yahweh also found that “it was good” but referred to what ensues after light.
—
Now that you mentioned it, that sort of railing lines up right between questions and stories. I remember that thought experiment about a tree falling in the forest without anyone hearing it.
—
What there might be some sort of template for is the “storytelling” in the clearing. Someone tells the story one way, say Petrarch. Then others follow suit, so it’s a Petrarchan series. Someone says it another way, keeping some of the oldspeak, putting in some novel spins and turns. Let’s call them Elizabethans. Soon others follow, after many nights of this, we have people like Dickinson and Williams and Stevens giving it a go, often refusing to tell it any way other than theirs, but they’re still taking a place among the others, in the wilds, dead of night.
—
I would love to see how that that plays out. Will it be like milieu but on a cellular (bodies, antibodies, templates, anti-templates), evolutionary level?
I’ve been thinking about your sense of railing. That invisible railing as a structure seems like an internalized restraint, akin to the missing tennis court net. Railing as complaint or set of charges seem to me unrestrained, an spilling out of anger into outrage. Kept in only by the domain of speech, but almost always a mere breath away from physical violence.
—
There it was, word for word,
was always there, its existence seldom
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,
would avoid it, as we had. An imaginary railing
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
used to gather and swap stories
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
was like the Amazon, but on a smaller scale
Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
and could make comparisons, the fuss seemed justified
The exact rock where his inexactnesses
seemed good, the clotted darkness that came every day.
—
Yes it is! And thank you for bringing this mountain here, it fits. Actually, it supplants, it overwhelms, it might yield if we ask nicely, but I do think that these two (as with all of us here) might be brought to speak to each other. Though Ashbery in this case would seem the more sociable guy, but I’m sure they would soon be lost in each other’s landscapes.
—
questioned or suspected. The poets of the future
would avoid it, as we had. An imaginary railing
disappeared into the forest. It was here that the old gang
used to gather and swap stories. It
was like the Amazon, but on a much smaller scale.
Afterwards, when some of us swept out into the world
and could make comparisons, the fuss seemed justified.
No two poets ever agreed on anything, and that amused us.
It seemed good, the clogged darkness that came every day.
*
[ The Times Literary Supplement ]
*
—
These are often “greeted” with derision, most interestingly I think by those in search of something new, something else. Ashbery’s closing here strikes the same set of notes as Rumi’s line, at least for me, both seem to embrace what we customarily fear: darkness, pain.
—
In philosophy they ask, “What is the color of an orange in the dark?” In linguistics there was some curious play when Chomsky said “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” but in physics, Schrödinger had us thinking of a cat inside the box with some trap or radioactive bit, then asked us if the cat was alive or dead. When it was asked, it was suddenly us who were “in the dark” (definitely not in the same darkness that the cat was, and I’m now considering the Reinhardt variants as proposed). Was the cat dead or alive? The answers yes and no come, but neither and both also become thinkable, and so this cat plus darkness plus our multiplying answers (also, inadequacies) result in a state called superposition.
I think that’s what we’re embracing here, what’s clotting: the multiplication of possibility that only happens when we engage (as opposed to flee, or fight—as in your encouraging regard of fear) the darkness. And the magic of it is, we do something like it all the time, when we read and think, when we speak to each other: forming opinions about things we don’t fully comprehend, answering half-baked questions, finishing each other’s sentences.
—
His school seems to come alive in the amusement in the second stanza. Would love to see that explored. I remain partial to the clotting wound reading (nursing one at the moment, minor gardening mishap, and because of “The wound is the place where the Light enters you”), but your post remains a favorite spot on this thread. Light enters it.
—
Based on your edit, are we looking at catharsis here? I’ve been wondering about the source, where’s the conflict that got us to the wound and to the clotting? Did trying to fit into the template harm us? No two poets agreeing, that sounds like a whole forest of debaters, so much agon and agony: are each of the issued arguments in fact wounding? (If so, then there might as well be a hint of desperation, and this is maybe why I’m drawn to your use of lifeline).
—
Add to those, his pantoums.
Looking now at how he cut the first line at “its existence seldom” and it seems as if the these “templates and railings” flicker in and out of the world. As if they’re really only there when we question and suspect them, and maybe only as communities, conventions in the truest sense of the word.
“No two poets ever agreed” okay, but the amusement is shared. That’s the (new?) template begotten by the all the fuss over traditional forms and custom styles.
—
This portion of the thread takes me to the root of template, a temple, as it is an open, consecrated place, associated with what is solemn, calm, in search of order and a force.
—
That imaginary railing seems to come out of that tennis court without a net. That it leads to a forest, wow. It’s like the template preceded us, was ancient, or an ancient need. We’re in that discourse where the world is a jungle and the poem is something of a preserve or a garden, but if the form came before anything else, then it seems to me that poetry takes us to the wilds, is the closest thing we have to it, and that our everyday lives merely derive from this. Clot signals a wound, perhaps day is that wound. Or light, or reason, or civilization. It inverts Genesis where Yahweh also found that “it was good” but referred to what ensues after light.
—
Now that you mentioned it, that sort of railing lines up right between questions and stories. I remember that thought experiment about a tree falling in the forest without anyone hearing it.
—
What there might be some sort of template for is the “storytelling” in the clearing. Someone tells the story one way, say Petrarch. Then others follow suit, so it’s a Petrarchan series. Someone says it another way, keeping some of the oldspeak, putting in some novel spins and turns. Let’s call them Elizabethans. Soon others follow, after many nights of this, we have people like Dickinson and Williams and Stevens giving it a go, often refusing to tell it any way other than theirs, but they’re still taking a place among the others, in the wilds, dead of night.
—
I would love to see how that that plays out. Will it be like milieu but on a cellular (bodies, antibodies, templates, anti-templates), evolutionary level?
I’ve been thinking about your sense of railing. That invisible railing as a structure seems like an internalized restraint, akin to the missing tennis court net. Railing as complaint or set of charges seem to me unrestrained, an spilling out of anger into outrage. Kept in only by the domain of speech, but almost always a mere breath away from physical violence.
—
There it was, word for word,
was always there, its existence seldom
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,
would avoid it, as we had. An imaginary railing
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
used to gather and swap stories
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
was like the Amazon, but on a smaller scale
Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
and could make comparisons, the fuss seemed justified
The exact rock where his inexactnesses
seemed good, the clotted darkness that came every day.
—
Yes it is! And thank you for bringing this mountain here, it fits. Actually, it supplants, it overwhelms, it might yield if we ask nicely, but I do think that these two (as with all of us here) might be brought to speak to each other. Though Ashbery in this case would seem the more sociable guy, but I’m sure they would soon be lost in each other’s landscapes.
—
May 3, 2017
Hun 9, 2016
Notes on John Ashbery’s “This Room”
The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
[ PennSound ]
[ Poetry Foundation ]
Because of the title, I came into the poem thinking of Stevens's "Gray Room". Those last two lines compel me to look the two up together.
Ashbery:
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
Stevens:
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.
Stevens begins his room with "Although you sit in a room that is gray," but here the "you" is denied. I'm finding it a hard to take a bite of this poem without intertexts so I suppose I should unburden myself of some of these so I can somehow enter this dream within a dream (Poe). And by unburden, I mean that I would like to get to Ashbery's last two lines without Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" suddenly playing in my room.
I don't see imagism as Ashbery's main project in this poem. I did try to think of it in terms of the manifesto, but I became something of a very partial bouncer. Ashbery mumbled something in a distinct, lovely way and so I let him in, believing it was the password.
Thinking about the possible tones of "You are not even here". Is it matter-of-fact, bitter, melancholic? Is it a nudge, as in a teacher's or a roommates's hey: you're not here aren't you? You're thinking of your own sofa, the time you had a dog or wished for one, and yes, your own Sunday with your own helping of tomato sauce. You never had quail, at least not one so "induced" so you're leaving that to me, okay, but please come back.
Poetry's the most lucid dream possible. And that's only part of the magic. It doesn't merely double when somebody else enters, participates. Something more happens ("shimmers"). I think some poets do their poems like Vatican I with their backs to the readers. That's not Ashbery, at least not how he seems to me. And certainly not in this particular poem. I'm not even sure he's Vatican II. Though no, he's not doing it Whitman-style either: I am in the midst of you and of you, assuming you assuming me. He is trying to participate in all these roles, to contain his own multitudes with a sense of connection, some refreshing nonchalance, a lack of pomp:
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
We might want to tentatively read Ashbery's "you" as the reader who isn't in the room—or the meta-room?—with the macaroni and the dog portrait. The reader is "induced" into the poem with the last two lines, the presence stressed by the act of denial... or expression of longing.
You are not even here.
Let's look at "even" in the sense of balance or fair. The lines certainly aren't cut "even", there's a ten-word opening and a three-word portrait. Perhaps in you's own room or some other elsewhere, "evenness" is possible, desired, and sometimes achieved. But not "here" where "here" can't be plainly decided much less leveled.
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
I found another poem where Ashbery writes a line that goes something like "Why do I tell you these things?". It's "Yes, Dr. Grenzmer. How May I Be of Assistance to You? What! You Say the Patient Has Escaped?" which appears in Can You Hear, Bird (1995). It goes like this:
like pickling spices. And all the girls turned away
to weep, but were changed to ivy
and stuff like that. Why am I telling you this?
In this earlier Ashbery though, we get something different, not the dismissive (or bitter, or matter-of-fact) "You are not even here."
To assuage my conscience, perhaps, hoping bad dreams
will go away, or at least become more liberally mixed
with the good, for none are totally good
or bad, just like the people who keep walking into them,
and the scenery, familiar or obvious though it be.
"This Room" invites (and rewards) contemplation on certain types of poems, Stevens and likely Dickinson types, poems that are in, of, and about the mind. How can you be "hard and clear, never blurred and indefinite" about something like a dream? That would defeat the purpose of the dream, or lack thereof.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
*
[ PennSound ]
[ Poetry Foundation ]
*
Because of the title, I came into the poem thinking of Stevens's "Gray Room". Those last two lines compel me to look the two up together.
Ashbery:
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
Stevens:
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.
Stevens begins his room with "Although you sit in a room that is gray," but here the "you" is denied. I'm finding it a hard to take a bite of this poem without intertexts so I suppose I should unburden myself of some of these so I can somehow enter this dream within a dream (Poe). And by unburden, I mean that I would like to get to Ashbery's last two lines without Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" suddenly playing in my room.
*
I don't see imagism as Ashbery's main project in this poem. I did try to think of it in terms of the manifesto, but I became something of a very partial bouncer. Ashbery mumbled something in a distinct, lovely way and so I let him in, believing it was the password.
*
Thinking about the possible tones of "You are not even here". Is it matter-of-fact, bitter, melancholic? Is it a nudge, as in a teacher's or a roommates's hey: you're not here aren't you? You're thinking of your own sofa, the time you had a dog or wished for one, and yes, your own Sunday with your own helping of tomato sauce. You never had quail, at least not one so "induced" so you're leaving that to me, okay, but please come back.
Poetry's the most lucid dream possible. And that's only part of the magic. It doesn't merely double when somebody else enters, participates. Something more happens ("shimmers"). I think some poets do their poems like Vatican I with their backs to the readers. That's not Ashbery, at least not how he seems to me. And certainly not in this particular poem. I'm not even sure he's Vatican II. Though no, he's not doing it Whitman-style either: I am in the midst of you and of you, assuming you assuming me. He is trying to participate in all these roles, to contain his own multitudes with a sense of connection, some refreshing nonchalance, a lack of pomp:
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
*
We might want to tentatively read Ashbery's "you" as the reader who isn't in the room—or the meta-room?—with the macaroni and the dog portrait. The reader is "induced" into the poem with the last two lines, the presence stressed by the act of denial... or expression of longing.
You are not even here.
Let's look at "even" in the sense of balance or fair. The lines certainly aren't cut "even", there's a ten-word opening and a three-word portrait. Perhaps in you's own room or some other elsewhere, "evenness" is possible, desired, and sometimes achieved. But not "here" where "here" can't be plainly decided much less leveled.
*
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
I found another poem where Ashbery writes a line that goes something like "Why do I tell you these things?". It's "Yes, Dr. Grenzmer. How May I Be of Assistance to You? What! You Say the Patient Has Escaped?" which appears in Can You Hear, Bird (1995). It goes like this:
like pickling spices. And all the girls turned away
to weep, but were changed to ivy
and stuff like that. Why am I telling you this?
In this earlier Ashbery though, we get something different, not the dismissive (or bitter, or matter-of-fact) "You are not even here."
To assuage my conscience, perhaps, hoping bad dreams
will go away, or at least become more liberally mixed
with the good, for none are totally good
or bad, just like the people who keep walking into them,
and the scenery, familiar or obvious though it be.
*
"This Room" invites (and rewards) contemplation on certain types of poems, Stevens and likely Dickinson types, poems that are in, of, and about the mind. How can you be "hard and clear, never blurred and indefinite" about something like a dream? That would defeat the purpose of the dream, or lack thereof.
May 22, 2016
Hard Times × The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Trust me. The world is run on a shoestring.
They have no time to return the calls in hell
The first sentence asks for credence and negates credibility. The mention of “calls” and “hell” casts the speaker as a possible seducer/tempter. The second line also adjusts the image of the “world is run on a shoestring” from shoe to phone, and for me anyway: a phone abandoned, hanging on a wire from its booth.
Played a hunch that a sort of association could be made between this and a poem by Stevens. Below are the lines that seem able to participate in such a give and take—
Trust me. The world is run on a shoestring.
They have no time to return the calls in hell
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
And pay dearly for those wasted minutes. Somewhere
In the future it will filter down through all the proceedings
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
Succinctly they will tell you what we've all known for years:
That the power of this climate is only to conserve itself.
Let be be finale of seem.
Whatever twists around it is decoration and can never
Be looked at as something isolated, apart. Get it? And
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
He flashed a mouthful of aluminum teeth there in the darkness
To tell however it gets down, that it does, at last.
Will have to dispel the notion of being like all the others.
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
In time, it gets to stand with the wind, but by then the night is closed off.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
They have no time to return the calls in hell
The first sentence asks for credence and negates credibility. The mention of “calls” and “hell” casts the speaker as a possible seducer/tempter. The second line also adjusts the image of the “world is run on a shoestring” from shoe to phone, and for me anyway: a phone abandoned, hanging on a wire from its booth.
*
Played a hunch that a sort of association could be made between this and a poem by Stevens. Below are the lines that seem able to participate in such a give and take—
Trust me. The world is run on a shoestring.
They have no time to return the calls in hell
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
And pay dearly for those wasted minutes. Somewhere
In the future it will filter down through all the proceedings
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
Succinctly they will tell you what we've all known for years:
That the power of this climate is only to conserve itself.
Let be be finale of seem.
Whatever twists around it is decoration and can never
Be looked at as something isolated, apart. Get it? And
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
He flashed a mouthful of aluminum teeth there in the darkness
To tell however it gets down, that it does, at last.
Will have to dispel the notion of being like all the others.
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
In time, it gets to stand with the wind, but by then the night is closed off.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
Ago 8, 2015
Note on 106
Hi. Providing as asked, but referring to the two 30-student classes the last time I taught this. Distributed the Mayer list and asked them to bring their own dictionaries and a sonnet (four copies). Shared what I knew of the sonnet, then segued to an arc involving Dickinson's “Tell all the truth but tell it slant —” and Stevens's “Gray Room” and Waldrop's “Shorter American Memory of the Declaration of Independence,” all as prep for our sonnet-games.
Before tinkering with the sonnet though, I thought we could test-run the list and these were the exercises chosen:
* Write minimally: one line or sentence per day
* Write five short expressions of the most adamant anger; make a work out of them.
* Write a work gazing into a mirror without using the pronoun I.
After we had gone through the sonnet and the arc of mini-discussions, we used the following exercises on the sonnets we brought to the basement:
* Take a traditional text like the pledge of allegiance to the flag. For every noun, replace it with one that is seventh or ninth down from the original one in the dictionary. For instance, the word “honesty” would be replaced by “honey dew melon.” Investigate what happens; different dictionaries will produce different results.
* Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a piece of writing: eliminate all adjectives from a poem of your own, or take out all words beginning with 's' in Shakespeare's sonnets.
* Systematically derange the language: write a work consisting only of prepositional phrases, or, add a gerund to every line of an already existing work.
Then I had them choose one more experiment from the list so they could work with that. We gathered reflections after this, shared our work, our experiences during the games. Some of that reflection was directed to (what I felt was) a provocative Mayer prescription: “Experiment with every traditional form, so as to know it.”
Before tinkering with the sonnet though, I thought we could test-run the list and these were the exercises chosen:
* Write minimally: one line or sentence per day
* Write five short expressions of the most adamant anger; make a work out of them.
* Write a work gazing into a mirror without using the pronoun I.
After we had gone through the sonnet and the arc of mini-discussions, we used the following exercises on the sonnets we brought to the basement:
* Take a traditional text like the pledge of allegiance to the flag. For every noun, replace it with one that is seventh or ninth down from the original one in the dictionary. For instance, the word “honesty” would be replaced by “honey dew melon.” Investigate what happens; different dictionaries will produce different results.
* Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a piece of writing: eliminate all adjectives from a poem of your own, or take out all words beginning with 's' in Shakespeare's sonnets.
* Systematically derange the language: write a work consisting only of prepositional phrases, or, add a gerund to every line of an already existing work.
Then I had them choose one more experiment from the list so they could work with that. We gathered reflections after this, shared our work, our experiences during the games. Some of that reflection was directed to (what I felt was) a provocative Mayer prescription: “Experiment with every traditional form, so as to know it.”
Set 3, 2014
Ago 31, 2014
Notes on Wallace Stevens’s "The Emperor of Ice Cream"
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
—
D— This is carnival-speak in the first stanza, almost a step-right-up! "Let be be the finale of seem." Comes in, a surprise among surprises, how we make the carnival, the poem, the emperor real by the sheer power of "Let," by entering into it (as taking "from the dresser of deal.")
I hope others chime in soon as this is such an intricate "sheet" you spread for us here.
—
D— It seems to me the backstage ("dresser") or the admin office ("deal"). The "she" is a puzzle for me, though I have some ideas... but perhaps following you, alas, no AHA moment. That "sheet" too: is it fabric or paper, music sheet, contract, or bed sheet (or poem)? Need we entertain sheets in ice-cream making, like that paper rolled around the cone? But anyway, putting it over her face like that, for protection maybe (though markedly insufficient) or for the preservation of something? Notably, it seems she is not at all absorbed by her design, her fantails so close to her face that she most likely won't be able to see them. But visually, for the reader, the design encompasses her, save for the protruding feet.
On those feet, they're part of the seeming now, the design. As the fantails are, in the duration of the poem, a part of the being of this "she" (for we know more of this sheet than of the character, as if even in words she is covered by it).
An off-tangent: that lamp which somehow counters cold/dumb reminds me of the hot lamp (peri-light) they use on the mother's wound postpartum.
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A— i've been avoiding reading the second stanza as a deathbed scene, though in many ways it is, with the sheet over the face, cold, dumb, so forth. maybe because i'd like to see something else other than capital D death in the emperor of ice cream. because if that's the case, then i think 'let be be the finale of seem' means that only death is real, or nothing but death takes us beyond performance, seeming, projecting. thus: "The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."
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D— Yes, it's another Stevens poem. And what a title coming from the maker of "The Idea of Order at Key West"! Looking forward to your take.
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D— Aside from the fleeting taste and density, the surprising inclusion of ice cream seem to involve other things: children, childhood, leisure, Sundays. I am reminded of the Buddhist meta-parable where the father uses enticements (toys, carts) to draw his children out of the burning house.
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The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
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D— This is carnival-speak in the first stanza, almost a step-right-up! "Let be be the finale of seem." Comes in, a surprise among surprises, how we make the carnival, the poem, the emperor real by the sheer power of "Let," by entering into it (as taking "from the dresser of deal.")
I hope others chime in soon as this is such an intricate "sheet" you spread for us here.
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D— It seems to me the backstage ("dresser") or the admin office ("deal"). The "she" is a puzzle for me, though I have some ideas... but perhaps following you, alas, no AHA moment. That "sheet" too: is it fabric or paper, music sheet, contract, or bed sheet (or poem)? Need we entertain sheets in ice-cream making, like that paper rolled around the cone? But anyway, putting it over her face like that, for protection maybe (though markedly insufficient) or for the preservation of something? Notably, it seems she is not at all absorbed by her design, her fantails so close to her face that she most likely won't be able to see them. But visually, for the reader, the design encompasses her, save for the protruding feet.
On those feet, they're part of the seeming now, the design. As the fantails are, in the duration of the poem, a part of the being of this "she" (for we know more of this sheet than of the character, as if even in words she is covered by it).
An off-tangent: that lamp which somehow counters cold/dumb reminds me of the hot lamp (peri-light) they use on the mother's wound postpartum.
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A— i've been avoiding reading the second stanza as a deathbed scene, though in many ways it is, with the sheet over the face, cold, dumb, so forth. maybe because i'd like to see something else other than capital D death in the emperor of ice cream. because if that's the case, then i think 'let be be the finale of seem' means that only death is real, or nothing but death takes us beyond performance, seeming, projecting. thus: "The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."
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D— Yes, it's another Stevens poem. And what a title coming from the maker of "The Idea of Order at Key West"! Looking forward to your take.
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D— Aside from the fleeting taste and density, the surprising inclusion of ice cream seem to involve other things: children, childhood, leisure, Sundays. I am reminded of the Buddhist meta-parable where the father uses enticements (toys, carts) to draw his children out of the burning house.
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Okt 24, 2012
BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION: Mga gupit at saling-Google mula sa ilang napapanahong makata
CRANE 1871—1900
Oo, mayroon akong isang libong wika,
Kahit na ako ay nagsusumikap upang gamitin ang isa,
Ngunit patay sa aking bibig.
McKINLEY 1843—1901
Ang pagkawasak ng Spanish fleet sa daungan ng Manila sa pamamagitan ng
Panghuli, dapat ito ang maalab wish
Islands sa ilalim ng libreng bandila ng Estados Unidos.
LOWELL 1874—1925
Pininturahan ko ang isang larawan ng isang ghost
Ang mga tao ay magyumukyok
Swimming sa mga ulap.
FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN 1874—1927
Walang spinsterlollypop para sa akin - oo - mayroon kami
Ito ay sa France - ang hangin sa linya -
Isang dosenang cocktail - mangyaring -- -- -- --
ROBINSON 1869—1935
Tuwing Richard Cory ay nagpunta down na bayan,
Upang gumawa ng sa amin nais na kami sa kanyang lugar.
Nagpunta tahanan at maglagay ng bullet sa pamamagitan ng kanyang ulo.
STEIN 1874—1946
Ano ang kasalukuyang na gumagawa ng makinarya, na ginagawang kaluskos ito,
Ano ang kasalukuyang.
Line A Tinutukoy lamang ito.
STEVENS 1879—1946
Ang mga bahay ay pinagmumultuhan
Upang managinip ng mga baboons at periwinkles.
Sa pulang panahon.
DOOLITTLE 1886—1961
Rose, malupit rosas,
sa malulutong na buhangin
hardened sa isang dahon?
FROST 1874—1963
Isang bagay na may na hindi ibigin ng pader,
Mayroon kaming gumamit ng spell upang gawing balanse:
Sabi niya muli, "Magandang fences gumawa ng magandang kapitbahay."
WILLIAMS 1883—1963
sa likod pakpak
ay lalaki kasinungalingan
bote
ELIOT 1888—1965
I
Abril ang cruellest na buwan, dumarami
Ang ginang ng bansa ng mga sitwasyon.
Sa iyo! mapagpaimbabaw lecteur!-Lun semblable,-Lun Frere! "
II
Ang upuan siya nakaupo sa, tulad ng burnished trono,
Makikita niya gusto mong malaman kung ano ang iyong na pera na ibinigay niya sa iyo
Magandang gabi, mga kababaihan, magandang gabi, matamis ladies, magandang gabi, magandang gabi.
III
Tent ang ilog ay nasira: ang huling daliri ng dahon
Saan fishmen Lounge sa tanghali: kung saan ang mga pader
nasusunog
IV
Phlebas ang Phoenician, isang labing-apat na araw patay,
At profit at pagkawala.
Isaalang-alang ang Phlebas, na ay sabay-sabay na guwapo at matangkad habang ikaw.
V
Matapos ang tanglaw-liwanag na pula sa pawisan mukha
O sa mga alaala na draped sa pamamagitan ng spider ang mabait
Shantih shantih shantih
POUND 1885—1972
O henerasyon ng lubusan hambog
Nakita ko ang kanilang mga smiles puno ng ngipin
at hindi kahit sariling damit.
MOORE 1887—1972
Ako, masyadong, hindi gusto ito: may mga bagay na mahalaga higit pa sa lahat ng
o magtangi laban ng 'Mga dokumento sa negosyo at
tunay, ikaw ay interesado sa tula.
RANSOM 1888—1974
Kaya kinuha niya sa kanya bilang anoint
Masarap na amoy, tikman, Heats at treasons:
At recited, "ay magaling."
Okt 21, 2012
Threads regarding Wilbur's estimation of Plath
The poem discussed below is Richard Wilbur's "Cottage Street, 1953" starring Sylvia Plath.
THREAD 1
GE— this is it then, the weak, the strong, our desires: plath and her "brilliant negative". what do you think of plath's "involvement" in wilbur's poem? can you read her "free, helpless, and unjust" poems in this one?
AN— last two stanzas were written in contrast to each other. plath's negative against the 88 summers of ward. eternal lines or longevity. there are also two poets here, wilbur who seeks to balance the tea-timed life with poetry and Plath who only studies for a decade more ("as she must") in order to state her rebuke of life, her poems. wilbur cannot write this in free verse, even if that is within his ambit, because that would mean (within the bounded logic of this poem) that he is likewise committing to a life lived to repudiate itself (thus, "helpless"). What is unjust? That Plath had to endure one more decade of living, of interventions, of that husband, perhaps also of children in order to write out the lines that repudiate life, that show it up, bare it for what it is, a bloody chunk of suffering tight-woven by rite, by smile, by genial concern
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GE— "fun" is a good word, because humor's one thing that's definitely within wilbur's wheelhouse! of course, i'm not saying though that humor's the only way to have fun in poetry :)
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GE— thanks! will look up full fathom five and lady lazarus, because yes, i believe wilbur was keen and attentive to (and yes perhaps envious enough or at the very least: truly engaged with) sylvia plath to load his poems with echoes of hers. do consider this one, last stanza plath's "mirror", written a decade after 1953: Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,/ Searching my reaches for what she really is./ Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon./ I see her back, and reflect it faithfully./ She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands./ I am important to her. She comes and goes./ Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness./ In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman/ Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
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AN— agree with the first part of your notion. but may I ask who is doing the judging (from which she is appealing)? wilbur, ward, mother? someone or something else?
GE— in the scene it's all three, i suppose. just setting the tea involved a lot of judgment. but maybe it meant something else. posterity?
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AN— on my part, i see Plath's plight/path being romanticized by wilbur. that could be itself unjust, as her path is but the yin to ward's yang and both must "justly" be accorded equal value (and i think the form tries to do that, give each caesar her due)
DE— Sylvia Plath's poems can be read as "unjust" to Life -- upon which it has leveled a "brilliant" but "negative" judgment -- also as "unjust" to its exemplar (Edna Ward), to its supplicant (Mrs. Plath), and to its official messenger (Richard Wilbur). They could also be unjust to a kind of Life, one that stifles but, in stifling, allows her to do poetry that is "free" and unlike Wilbur's and his compatriots. They could also be "unjust" to Wilbur, because he cannot be a part of their brilliance, he being on the "positive" camp, despite all his hesitations. And against all such hesitations, he secretly admires those eyes of pearl which has beheld death and has not blinked. What is the value of his verse, his form, his office against such a vision? However, it comes at a bitter cost that he is unable and unwilling to pay.
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GE— augustan balance? is that a matter of rhyme, cadence? or strophe alternation? will do some research on this too, but thanks if you'll weigh in :)
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GE— i've been thinking about the 'they' here in your post, and i had wanted to ask for clarification re: who these they could be (who are unjust), hughes and the children perhaps, or wilbur and the mothers. only now did it occur to me that you could be referring to the poems (which, stupid me, was what the grammar was referring to the whole time!), that they're unjust to be left behind. if that's so, then these poems of plath are also condemned to live (she condemns them to live . . . or we do, by our insistent patronage of her rhythmic confessions). dear and perceptive wilbur, if so!
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GE— certainly possible in my view. what's more it's her poems that become unjust (or become an expression of her "illness-informed" injustice)
AN— and it's at the core of the "brilliant negative" which is the opposite and equal of (or superior to, judging by the ultimate position of the stanza) ward's 88 summers—
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AN— a case may be made that wilbur's "unjust" referred to plath's poetic harshness toward her father. as I understand it, the "facts" aren't known and the family denies any possibility of incest. wilbur might have felt, no matter what the actual situation, it would be "bad form" to accuse anyone publically, in a poem. I believe her father had already passed, so it might also be "unjust" that he couldn't defend himself
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AN— i am reminded of the word "true" in dickinson's the brain within its groove. if we follow this, perhaps "unjust" could also refer to plath's state of mind. just sounding it out! thanks for this
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GE— hughes's crow poems are most telling. he sees all his tragedies as heavy black feathers that he must wear and by which he must be judged. the second wife took their daughter down with her :(
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AN— ward's phoenix and wilbur's office needs "negatives" like plath. else, what would be their raison d'etre? and plath needs something to refuse, to reject, and ultimately to abandon. or else her negative would not be anywhere near brilliant. i think the choice that we are supposed to think about "does wilbur tend toward plath or ward" could now entertain a third: we are equally being offered a choice, the many summers or the one great negative. it is in the tradition of poetic questions like does it end in fire or in ice? a bang or a whimper? you don't truly choose (wilbur is who he is, bound and prolific; plath, free and focused on death). to say that sylvia plath has a choice is to be a mrs ward or a mrs plath. same goes for free or trad verse. your soul is measured, one way or the other. the world ends, one way or the other
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AN— perhaps some of her biography too? but her poems, moreso
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AN— "and that she'd channel all this into the poems for posterity: could there be injustice in that as well?
DE— "Shall study for a decade, as she must,": In the course of the Cottage St scene, frightened Ms Plath swells into someone whose "refusal" grows larger than those who wish to intervene. I absolutely love it, especially the last two stanzas, those perfectly matched epilogues. The line quoted above is Plath's exact pair to Ward's "After her eight-and-eighty summers of ," and wow you know? What did Wilbur pack into that line? There's Plath's novel published, her poems getting out and scarred and trampled upon and praised at times, more attempts at death, and that's Ted Hughes in there, it's within that decade where he figures, his "Thunder of God" voice, his infelicities, her first child, then her second! That's just the bare outlines of it, I'm sure, already it's so much more than some of us have in a decade, and what was all that for Plath (according to Wilbur)? STUDY! It's all for study. All of it was coiling, gathering power, negativity, "unjustness" I suppose, and brilliance.
AN— seems that the encapsulation of ward's summers is less drastic than the collapse of the plath's decade into one line
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AN— curious too about why things don't materialize for you
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AN— that not just plath but Wilbur also had need of a life-preserver! i had not thought of this, and i'll reread the poem now guided by this notion. thanks!
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AN— i agree that not all poets are brooding and on-the-edge. but some are, plaths do exist, and (as lives) they are more interesting than the "non-suicidal" ones (this is so crudely put, so please forgive). so yes, it's not true to say that poets or even the best of poets are unbalanced. i think though that we associate (whether rightly or wrongly i have yet to know) a certain type of knowledge, a "slant", a type of underworldly wisdom to those you call "miserable, unbalanced, and suicidal". maybe wilbur's persona buys into this as well. if so, this poem sells it by extension
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AN— water from key west! ah that sly stevens is "making" us as we go along! maybe the beats will tap enough of that water off our systems. but what a big maybe
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AN— love how you phrase this. personally speaking though, i'll let the next 100 years love the poetry they'll love, i won't be there anyway, i'm good with what's at hand, and i've been looking at the items in the coming weeks, and it's good stuff coming in my opinion
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AN— plath thinks she's beyond help too. in "mirrors" (quoted above) plath writes: "Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness/ In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman/ Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
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THREAD 2
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AN— I believe the penultimate stanza prepares us for the word unjust. That Edna Ward got what she wanted: Life, but Plath had to suffer a decade more of a life she had been trying to shake off her chest (those "owl's talons" she kept referring to). Plath was given the words Free, Helpless, and Unjust. Ward was given Grace (but not freedom), Courage (but not helplessness and the freedom of helplessness) and, lastly, Love (but not unjust, but is love just? and that she was reaching out like that, could that mean that her 88 years had not known Love? Maybe this Life she so cherished was Unjust to her as well, that there were tears but even in her last moments decorum would win out and she would keep them to herself, perhaps choke on them, only one word escaping her, as opposed to Plath's corpus, her "brilliant negative"). No, Wilbur was not smug in my view. He was in envy of Plath, he was gazing at a far shore unavailable to him, beyond his office. Hers is a power that shall feed on itself, negate itself, but power nonetheless, tears free-flowing. And if he kept to traditional verse, it is fundamentally to emphasize how Plath was beyond him, how he is locked within the tea time, at the behest of the old mothers, even long after they are dead.
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AN— oh, that got me to thinking as well! i hope he won't mock his younger self, it's a complex piece, and grows more haunting the longer you (or at least i) think about it
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AN— i think he's projecting two mutually exclusive paths that he could have taken (two very different sorts of "life") in the persons of ward and plath and while he may have chosen ward, plath will forever be that great road not taken. just a bit of speculation on my part
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AN— yes, but the speaker wishes that the death-wish was an option
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AN— i agree with everything you just said. and i don't think i'm blind to form in this poem but i don't don't don't see wilbur showing up plath (hmm, that would be ... bad form). we begin with the phoenix flanking edna, yes, but the ending belongs to sylvia, the 'brilliant' hers now, achieved.
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DE— I read Ted Hughes's letter to their son Nicholas, and now I wonder if it's valid to think of this in the light of your "at what cost" which is a question that haunts me also.
AN— oh my, that epilogue was heartbreaking!
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THREAD 3
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AN— you're right, though my own thoughts have always been oriented the other way around, how her poetry would have been without the specific features or her life (father, husband, publisher rejections, etc).
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AN— Even if that were the case, I doubt Wilbur was "mocking" Sylvia half as much as he did the Toad (if we accept Toad as a mock-heroic perhaps against the author's wishes). But I've heard arguments either way, and have at last been convinced that Wilbur was not setting Plath up as a model. There was admiration, or at least some great interest, but in the end he eyed her limitations with sharp (perhaps hidden) criticism
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AN— took me some time to digest what you said, "freedom doesn't include throwing away one's life" and in a sense you're right. for if death is emancipatory, death "liberates" us from freedom as well.
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AN— yes!
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AN— thanks for the etymology. i think the religious sense was part of it, but maybe not his main point. or maybe it was his main sense of the word since the whole set-up was so ritualistic anyway, his office almost priestly though not one to whom the recalcitrant plath would address her "confessionals"
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DE— I see some religion (that word "bless") is a large word. But I have to agree with Andrea Singh, that it's not the central motif, even if we could be talking here of a poem that's two eulogies in one elegy.
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AN— or beyond help. yes that works too!
DE— I reread "Daddy" in order to frame a discussion of Wilbur's last line regarding Plath's poems. For him they are "free and helpless, and unjust." If we set aside, for a while, the biographies and consider the form, it's "free" because the rhyme is loose, very loose, and much more so the meter. There's a preponderance of "you" rhymes, too much, if we go by traditionally disciplined forms, but of course that heightens the nature of the poem, nursery (pretty little heart, daddy) mingled with the accusatory (mein kampf).
When viewed using the old standards of rhetoric, that's what's makes Plath's confessional poem weak (thus, "helpless"): its over-the-top sentimentality amounts to layers of ad misericordiam, its hyperbolic nature defeats itself.
It lacks balance as rhetoric, lacks discipline as meter and is therefore is "unjust". That we almost automatically read these words "free, helpless, and unjust" as referring to Plath rather than her poems is key, I think, to Wilbur's central rhetoric: the verse makes the man. A free, helpless, and unjust verse makes for a free, helpless, and unjust poet. Bad form makes for bad fate. And as a person, Plath would suffer the consequences not only of her life-choices but also of her verse-choices.
(It's telling why the elder women would arrange for Plath to see another poet, as if to restore "proper" cadence and measured breath would rid her of some internal arrhythmia.)
Balance though, is what Wilbur strives to deliver. He poises Ward against Plath and they are equal, or almost equal, as lives go, one because of longevity, the other because of brilliance. He criticizes both the phoenix and the negative in what seems to be an equal measure, with generous amounts of self-deprecation thrown into the method ("stupid lifeguard").
Balance, discipline: that's Wilbur's office! That's his poetics as well as his lifestyle. Aristotle would be proud. And it's what tips the scales.
Among the people in attendance (women, notably, and "hysterical" we assume), it is his superior judgment that is sought after. And he is perceptive: this woman is already drowned. Therefore it was correct that they brought her to him, but not that they brought her to him bereft of reason, life, agreeable verse (that is, verse you can reason with, for without that, she is truly drowned, "carried away" in every sense of the word -- and this is why it is in this part, the diagnosis, the pearl in the eyes, where Wilbur also puts on, "judiciously," some hyperbole).
That's his conceit. In his form (of poetry, therefore life), he can hold the energies of a Plath without allowing it to consume him. It is his poem (and self) after all that can hold both Ward's eighty-eight summers and Plath's brilliant negative.
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DE— Thank you very much. Took me all week to put that together. I hope it didn't sound too contrived.
AN— that must have gone through some thinking! good for you to have let it all out in one go! can't seem to do that myself
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AN— "this vulnerable self" that's true, a perfect way to put it, like she bared her spirit to life and death
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DE— Thank you. This is a healer's/insider's account that I believe should be greatly appreciated. A question: do you think Plath got anything from her poetry? Even small comfort, temporary relief, and (dare I say it) hope?
AN— you get a high after you finish a first draft, esp if it's a difficult piece. you get a high when you get published or get some affirmation. did none of these do anything for her? they're temporary, probably, but still. worth discussing methinks
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