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  #1  
Unread 03-04-2004, 02:43 PM
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eaf eaf is offline
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I have been wanting to post poems that I thought were interesting - for various, sometimes very different, reasons - to see what everybody else thought worked well (or didn't work well) with the pieces.

So here's a free verse (at least, what appears to me to be free verse) poem I thought I'd throw out there. I'd be very interested to know what you think works, or doesn't. It's by Donald Hall. I pulled it from The Best American Poetry 1993.

Pluvia

In the nation of rainy days
XXtractor-trailers spray and glissade
gray through rain down blacktop
XXwith a sound like cloth tearing;
an airplane circles above clouds
XXthat conceal the balding mountain
and engine-sounds waver like a dream
XXvoice saying, "please, please"

In the nation of rainy days
XXthe white cottage downstreet vanishes
into gray air, disappearing
XXlike a vessel lost in a hurricane;
rain draws wavery vertical lines
XXagainst the black doors of a barn
and chimney smoke kneels on flattened
XXgrass, praying to dissipate.

In the nation of rainy days
XXclouds hang tatters of shaggy muslin
as pale as winter on maples
XXthat sink like shipwrecked cottages;
deer lost in overgrown orchards
XXdissolve in the mist and drizzle;
abandoned by honeybees, old roses
XXand soaked clover curve earthward.

Day after day, we wake to green rain
XXdrenching the garden; we slog
through our chores slow-dancing
XXto rain's brute tune that drones
the same saturated phrase in the same
XXcadence again and again
like a lost airplane still circling
XXover the nation of rainy days.

****************

I like this one fairly well, though at times it seems maudlin (probably for good reason) and some of the images strike me as out of place. Glissade, slow-dancing, and the chimney smoke wishing to dissipate didn't strike much of a chord with me. Some of the storm imagery didn't work so well for me, either, considering the tone.

-eaf

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  #2  
Unread 03-04-2004, 03:38 PM
Golias Golias is offline
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Some of the images are nice enough, but there's nothing in it to prefer over straight prose. Making the lines roughly the same number of centemeters in length and ending most on strong words hardly helps.

You can't dance to it. What more is there to say?

A very few poets I have read work magic and produce poems that are in technically free verse, but which sing as well as almost any. The late Dick Barnes was one such poet. I will post a couple of examples of his work after others have had a chance to react to this one.

G/W

[This message has been edited by Golias (edited March 04, 2004).]
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  #3  
Unread 03-04-2004, 09:26 PM
nyctom nyctom is offline
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Ethan:

Attitudes here are so entrenched that I think this will be largely a waste of time. There will be the same partisan accusations that free verse is chopped up prose and that only metrical verse is "real" poetry. Quite frankly, I would rather count the pixels on the monitor--it's less tedious.

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  #4  
Unread 03-04-2004, 10:50 PM
Steven Schroeder Steven Schroeder is offline
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You'd probably be better off to post a couple free verse poems on a specific theme. As it is, here's a free verse poem I like:

Fort Robinson

When I visited Fort Robinson,
where Dull Knife and his Northern Cheyenne
were held captive that terrible winter,
the grounds crew was killing magpies.

Two men were going from tree to tree
with sticks and ladders, poking the young birds
down from their nests and beating them to death
as they hopped about in the grass.

Under each tree where the men had worked
were twisted clots of matted feathers,
and above each tree a magpie circled,
crazily calling in all her voices.

We didn’t get out of the car.
My little boy hid in the back and cried
as we drove away, into those ragged buttes
the Cheyenne climbed that winter, fleeing.

Ted Kooser

------------------
Steve Schroeder
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  #5  
Unread 03-05-2004, 02:57 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Thanks for posting this, eaf. Who edited the 1993 BAP, do you remember? My guess is that while it isn't great Donald Hall, decent Donald Hall is still more accomplished/controlled than a lot of stuff that was being published in 1993; also, highly likely that the editor was a friend. Now I think there is a lot more interesting stuff of all stripes being published.

To keep this from going too far afield, maybe we can discuss either Donald Hall or BAP choices.

There's a lot of nice low-toned assonance here. But I guess I agree with you that the dance/music images don't quite cohere with the nation of rain, the airplane, etc. The cloth image appears twice--as tearing and muslin. The second stanza seems to me the least necessary or linked. To be honest, it doesn't strike me as free verse exactly. (There's a sort of loose three or four beat business.) At least, it seems to work more like metrical verse. And what's the deal with the indented lines otherwise? A lot of this feels like a good writer on an off day. What about, for instance, the fancy Latin title? What's gained by that? I guess this is the sort of accomplished poem that leaves me with a shrug.

The Kooser poem is of course worth a discussion in its own right. Thanks for posting, Steven.

PS--Tom, uh, what's with the bile? Why not post something productive to the discussion?
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  #6  
Unread 03-05-2004, 07:05 AM
Elle Bruno Elle Bruno is offline
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I agree Eaf that there are specfic images that I like in this piece -the 'please please' voice of the engine and the fabric comparisons- but it does jump around looking for other comparisons that diminish the overall effect for me. It could have been shorter -a combo of V2 & 3 perhaps -we get it already.
In terms of presentation, the repetition of the first line and the 'prosey' way it travels seem quite effective to me -perhaps a little loosening up of the lines would help more.
Can't help but wonder if the circling plane is a reference to wife Jane Kenyon's plane in "Happiness" -her happy plane lands, his sad one cannot.
Thanks for posting this. Dee

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  #7  
Unread 03-05-2004, 08:36 AM
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Kate Benedict Kate Benedict is offline
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I like the Hall poem. He lets the poem go on and on, attenuate itself, harp on certain images, because he wants to convey the feeling of days and days of unrelenting rain. The Latinate title conveys to me a sense that this is a poem not just about rain but "rainness," the way it makes even the soul feel sodden. The only image I would question is the praying smoke.

If this is free verse, it's highly disciplined free verse. I also detect the alternation of 3 and 4 beat lines.
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Unread 03-05-2004, 10:19 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Dee, that's an interesting insight. Would you mind posting Jane Kenyon's poem?
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  #9  
Unread 03-05-2004, 11:06 AM
Tom Jardine Tom Jardine is offline
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eaf,

Donald Hall to me is like what a barfly once told me. Drinking non-alcoholic beer is terrible. You keep drinking and drinking and waiting and waiting for something to happen.

Hall is always filled with what I call 'half-thoughts' and 'half-images.'

"Day after day, we wake to green rain
drenching the garden; we slog
through our chores slow-dancing
to rain's brute tune that drones
the same saturated phrase in the same
cadence again and again
like a lost airplane still circling
over the nation of rainy days."

It says,

Day after day we wake to rain, we slog through chores to rain that drones in cadence like an airplane lost over the nation.

Now what? Where's the alcohol? (Alcohol is not intended here as a worthy metaphor. Alcohol affects the brain in a physical manner, and it can be discerned in how writers write. I could smell the alcohol in Auden 15 years ago when I read him.)

like cloth tearing
like a dream voice saying
like a vessel lost
like shipwrecked cottages
like a lost airplane

To me it "sounds like poetry," but isn't.

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  #10  
Unread 03-05-2004, 01:25 PM
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eaf eaf is offline
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Thanks for the responses. Obviously, everybody's got their own preference... one of the reasons I posted this piece was that I remembered a year or two ago when somebody posted a 'lost' Larkin poem. At first, it got a lot of praise, but there were some dissenters in the group and it was interesting to see what they found lacking. Likewise, a poem by RPW that made it into The New Yorker (I think; maybe it was the Atlantic) was criticized for a few weak lines (specifically I remember someone carping about a description of Holsteins as "black and white" being redundant). In any case, what I got out of it is that The Masters aren't exactly impervious to critique, and it can be interesting to see what works and what doesn't in their poetry. I like taking poems that are well-crafted, or appear well-crafted, and picking them apart. So I posted this piece.

The 1993 book was edited by Louise Gluck. I have no idea if Gluck and Hall were buddies, but I would say that the choice was probably motivated by more than its poetical merits. Kenyon's poem, "Battling Depression", is also in this volume. And of course 2 years later Kenyon died.

Overall, I thought this poem was fairly decent, though I agree that if it is scrutinized closely it doesn't exactly stand up. I think that the imagery is a bit raggedy -- but the mood is set very well by the repetition and the images chosen. I'm not sure I would call them "half-images", since I don't know what a "full image" would be. Maybe Hall fails to draw some readers fully into "the nation of rainy days", but for the most part I find it effective. Though not earth-shattering by any stretch. Seems like this poem is one of those that needs to be read in the context of Donald Hall's life in order to be appreciated fully. Funny, because I just posted a blurb about why it's better to ignore the author when critiquing.

As for rhythm, I can only blame my tin ear. I really enjoy poetry by folks who obviously pay a lot of attention to sound & rhythm, such as Roethke (despite some of his excesses), but I couldn't pick out a real pattern with this piece. Glad to see others being able to 'feel it'... it would be interesting to see some Free Verse poems that do some of that dancing that Golias talks about. As for tastes, I'm more of an imagery guy myself.

So anyhow, I'm glad this didn't degenerate into an argument about the merits of Free Verse vs. Metrical or any of that. The BAP series is also really controversial - most anthologies are - and I'm doubly glad we didn't descend into a discussion as to why it sucks, too, because I was a little leery of that.

-eaf

p.s. Non-alcoholic beer IS terrible, but I know one guy that drinks it by the gallon. Don't ask me why.
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