Eratosphere Forums - Metrical Poetry, Free Verse, Fiction, Art, Critique, Discussions Able Muse - a review of poetry, prose and art

Forum Left Top

Notices

Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Unread 02-26-2005, 01:51 PM
Dick Morgan Dick Morgan is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Hawthorne,CA, USA
Posts: 1,944
Post



I was quite pleased with the openness and conversational quality of Dee Cohen’s “Dismantled” and the way she made the distant mountains rise out of the rubble for me. But mostly I was taken with her line (paraphrased) in a reply to the critters that she thought her poems had become more like telegrams and “Dismantled” was an attempt to move away from that. After reading other poets work in the workshop setting, it seems to me there is a mummification process that takes place from the first draft to last that leaves me feeling I am searching for signs of life in a catacomb with only a penlight; and why is it my obligation, as a reader, to bring the penlight in the first place? Why are poets like Billy Collins given short shrift for being conversational and prosey – and accorded lesser standing among his peers—and yet he is or was the poet laureate of the United States?

This is not intended to disparage the craftsmanship of people far-far more talented than me but to welcome the idea of making poetry more accessible to more peopleand expand the market for poetry.

Dick Morgan

Reply With Quote
  #2  
Unread 02-27-2005, 10:17 AM
Kevin Andrew Murphy Kevin Andrew Murphy is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: San Jose, California, USA
Posts: 3,257
Post

Dick,

If the idea of accessible to more people is your idea of the height of art, then the finest restaurant in the world must be Denny's.

I probably shouldn't knock Denny's. It's the only restaurant you can go to with a crowd of twenty people, ranging from strict vegans to rampant carnivores, epicureans to the proudly meat-and-potatoes types, and have everyone able to order something they'll be reasonably pleased with. Not thrilled with, but reasonably pleased. I generally have the sampler appetizer platter and a carafe of grapefruit juice cocktail.

However, if you want folk to be thrilled, you go to a place that's more angled "for folk who like that sort of thing." And sometimes you even go to a restaurant that's not a massive chain where you have an executive chef who invents dishes that are not only to his taste, but those of the local patrons. And we're not even getting into the further specialization of the home chef, who cooks for the taste of himself, his family and occasional guests.

I cook the way I write poetry. I have twenty-five gallons of mead in my garage, waiting to be bottled. If you go to Medieval Times or the Excalibur in Las Vegas, you can't even order it. (I have a friend who tried.) Instead, they give you a mai-tai in a mug shaped like a knight's helmet. This to accompany your "medieval" game hen and baked potato. (Though I'll admit that a game hen is just a miniature chicken, and flavor-wise, that's perfectly fine for medieval cooking. I have one I'll probably be cooking for dinner tonight, with rosemary, lemon and lavender. And you can't get swan for love or money, so even the Society for Creative Anachronism just roasts a turkey and looks the other way.)

I've got a collection of rare spices--things like grains of paradise and long pepper, not seen in European cooking since the middle ages--and I use them in cooking the same as I use obscure words, archaisms and poeticisms in my poetry. Folk who like that sort of thing may be charmed or enchanted by finding something so rare and exotic. My spoiled nephew may be somewhat less charmed by something odd and unfamiliar, but even he has been known to chow down on dishes that would not be out of place at a medieval banquet or a roman feast.

I can also cook a really good burger or write an amusing limerick, and sometimes I'll admit that's what I'm in the mood for myself and will go to restaurants or books that have that sort of thing. But I refuse to limit myself to these as an artist, or pretend that since they're to the taste of almost everybody, they're the paragon of the arts.

As for Billy Collins, I think they went out of their way to find a Poet Laureate who the current president could comprehend, or at least who fit with the folksy populist motif the current administration has been selling. As for being accorded status among his peers, by definition, peers tend to be more educated and sophisticated about their art than the general populace. As such, having Wolfgang Puck or Martha Stewart compliment you on your cooking means more than similar praise from George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld.



[This message has been edited by Kevin Andrew Murphy (edited March 08, 2005).]
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Unread 02-27-2005, 11:37 AM
Dick Morgan Dick Morgan is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Hawthorne,CA, USA
Posts: 1,944
Post

God Kevin, don't hold back on my account. Surely you're not equating Dee's poem to a Denny's menu? From my limited viewpoint I thought her inner structure was excellant. It was an inverted pyramid that increased in tempo until she had the kids doing wheelies on their bicycles. It's that kind of poetry I am talking about. As far as your disparagement of Billy Collins by equating him with the taste of Bush and Rummy--does that comparison extend back to Pinsky(sp)? He was as emotionally involving as lying down and letting the moon shine in your mouth.

Dick

[This message has been edited by Dick Morgan (edited February 28, 2005).]
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Unread 02-28-2005, 06:24 PM
Jerry Glenn Hartwig Jerry Glenn Hartwig is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Fairfield, Ohio
Posts: 5,509
Post

Dick

Having grown up in a line of carpenters, I like good, solid wood furniture. It's sturdy. It lasts. The wood can be carved, shaped and finished to a fine luster.

If I want something to abuse: something that's cheap and I don't plan on keeping, I may purchase a sawdust and glue composite with wall-paper veneer. I wouldn't put it anywhere it could be seen, however, because it won't take long for the veneer to peel, and the composite to break down, or someone bumps into it and a piece breaks off. Still, it's cheap and can serve a useful function for a while.

In the long run, however, solid furniture is the best investment. We've tables and other furnishings that are as old as we, yet as lovely and durable as the day they were crafted (not assembled in a factory or garage). If everyone else in the world would rather buy inferior products that cost more over the years due to the need for replacement, I have absolutely no objection, it's none of my business; but why should I conform? If I find a group of like-minded people, and we wish to discuss the crafting and care of solid wood furniture, why should you object? It's none of your business.

Please do not walk into my workshop and tell me what I should build, or tell me how to furnish my home. Please don't tell me I should cater to the rest of the world, who could not tell mahoganey from oak from a paper-veneer surface; who would not know a table saw from a router. I certainly would not tell you what to create in your studio. It would be audacious of me to do so, as my ignorance would be readily apparent.

Dick, the person of average literary aspirations, imo, wants nothing but to to be entertained. They don't want to think. They wanted it handed to them on a platter so they can parrot other people's views and sound knowledgeable. Poetry once had an important place in culture - it educated, informed and entertained: but the reader had to use his noggin. Today, everything must be explained - give it to the listener / viewer so he can comprehend it without thinking about it. They don't have time to think, they might miss the next episode of 'Survivor' or 'American Idol'. Think about things? Heaven, forbid! Oprah will tell me everything I need to know. I understand my rights: Judge Judy explained them to me.

These, my friend, are not the people I wish to communicate with when I write. Unfortunately, I spend most of my day with these people trying to explain, in simple terms, that their life is screwed up due to their own actions -not because they're victims. 'I can't help it. I'm an alcoholic.' Well whose fault is that? "All the good ones are taken. My third spouse just left me!" Ever consider the problem might be you?

When I get a crit, and someone says 'I don't know what that word means', they're really saying 'I'm too lazy to pick up a dictionary - if I even have one.' Then don't ask me what it means - I don't have time to be a babysitter. When they respond to crits with 'You obviously don't understand', they're saying 'I don't know how to communicate this to you, and I don't want to learn. I'd rather blame you than try to figure out how I can improve.'

Well, Dick - you asked. In legal terms, your line of questioning opened the door to the topic, and you can't close it without listening to the answer.

So if you want to make poetry accessible to these people by redefining what constitutes poetry, go right ahead. If calling a sale flyer 'poetry' will, in your opinion, make poetry more accessible to people, then have at it. To me, it's still a sale flyer, and you're just giving sale flyers to people who already appreciate them.

See you on the Art side.



[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited February 28, 2005).]
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Unread 02-28-2005, 07:57 PM
Kevin Andrew Murphy Kevin Andrew Murphy is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: San Jose, California, USA
Posts: 3,257
Post

Dick,

Would you care to reexamine your own posts?

In your first post, you praise Dee's latest poem for its accessibility. Not its artistry, it's accessibilty.

Then I come in and compare accessibility to Denny's, and then you are defending Dee's poem in terms of its artistry. Not its accessibility, its artistry.

You're shifting ground. Stop it.

Accessibility is only something I worry about with spoiled children, and even them I don't cut much slack. As Jerry said, there are some people who are too lazy to pick up a dictionary. I've even had one in a writer's group of mine once who was of the opinion that any word that was not in the Webster's Collegiate Dictionary should not be used. Not the Unabridged, the Collegiate.

As for Billy Collins, my opinion of his poetry was that it was nice but unremarkable, but that changed after this conversation and me deciding that perhaps I should read a little bit more of it, so I cruised over to his website and serendipity made me choose this poem first:

<tt>Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes of famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.


--Billy Collins</tt>

To which I answer: How incredibly fucking creepy.

And I say this as someone who is not bilingual, who only knows English and some Spanish and some German and only enough French to make out a few words on a menu. But the idea of it being "agreeable" to not be learning anything or dealing with anything unfamiliar? *SHUDDER*

I just reread Eliot's "The Wasteland" today. There's a stack of footnotes longer than my arm, words in different languages, mythological and literary allusions by the score and then some (meaning at least twenty).

Apart from the accessibility issue, and the message, I also have to say that I consider Eliot's artistry superior as well. The Collins poem above is pretty unremarkable when you come down to it, and if I weren't creeped out by the message in the context of this conversation, I would hardly give it a second thought.

I'll leave Pinsky for a later post.

[This message has been edited by Kevin Andrew Murphy (edited March 09, 2005).]
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Unread 02-28-2005, 11:45 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
Lariat Emeritus
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
Post

I was first told to read Collins by Bill Pritchard, the literary historian and critic at Amherst. I liked him, though I thought it was po lite. I'd read Kevin all day, but it doesn't take much Billy Collins to choke me up. And hey! wasn't he laureate under Clinton? Let's not blame him on Don Rumsfeld, a SECDEF in a league all by himself.
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Unread 03-01-2005, 12:07 AM
Kevin Andrew Murphy Kevin Andrew Murphy is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: San Jose, California, USA
Posts: 3,257
Post

Well, according to the bio I turned up, he was Poet Laureate from 2001-2003, so that's firmly in the Bush II era.

Give me a moment....

Ah, yes, the full list of US Poet Laureates is here

However, to be completely fair to Collins, I've only read a couple of his poems, the latest being something I was not in the mood to read, and I'm fairly certain that Rumsfeld has no interest in who is the Poet Laureate, apart from not wanting it to be Sam Hamill right now.

I think your estimation of "po lite" is fairly spot on, Tim. Doesn't thrill me, but doesn't much offend me either, excepting the way I read the last one, which was more of hearing an echo of Dick Morgan's sentiments than what Collins was writing in particular.
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Unread 03-01-2005, 04:26 AM
Bill Dyes Bill Dyes is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Centennial, Colorado
Posts: 554
Post

What is creepy is how a thread titled "For The People" leads so quickly to tribal warfare.
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Unread 03-01-2005, 04:37 AM
nyctom nyctom is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: New York, NY USA
Posts: 3,699
Post

It's a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaal big library, with lots of room in it for ALL KINDS of books. And if you don't like one kind of book, there's always another to delight.

As for Billy Collins, he has a real talent for a particular kind of poem. He makes it look easy to do. It isn't. I read tons of faux-Collins-esque poems during his tenure as PL, and most of them sagged.
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Unread 03-01-2005, 06:39 AM
Dick Morgan Dick Morgan is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Hawthorne,CA, USA
Posts: 1,944
Post

Kevin,

When I first praised Dee's poem for accesibility that didn't immediately foreclose her artistry. That was my point--there was something in her piece for "everyone" and she wasn't writing down to anyone. Dyes' comment made me LOL. Talk about "circling the wagons"!

Dick

[This message has been edited by Dick Morgan (edited March 01, 2005).]
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



Forum Right Top
Forum Left Bottom Forum Right Bottom
 
Right Left
Member Login
Forgot password?
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 8,399
Total Threads: 21,841
Total Posts: 270,805
There are 1185 users
currently browsing forums.
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Sponsor:
Donate & Support Able Muse / Eratosphere
Forum LeftForum Right
Right Right
Right Bottom Left Right Bottom Right

Hosted by ApplauZ Online