Could you help me out? I like the poetry of William Everson (Brother Antoninus). Would you consider his language abstract? If so how does he avoid the usual pitfalls?

If there are poets who do use abstract language and get away with it, I'd like to read them.

In exchange for your answer I'll show you how to use a hand working tool (expertly)

Thanks, Reader

I am wholly ignorant of Everson. Perhaps you'd like to post a short poem? The great 20th century master of abstraction is probably Wallace Stevens.

Reader,

Shoould that be "Santa Ysabel" in the San Diego back country? I am a native San Diegan, and have an artist/architect/writer freind out there named James Hubbel.

Anyway, in my opinion the best of Everson is almost wholly concrete. See "Canticle to the Waterbirds", for example. From memory:

Clack your beaks,
you cormorants and kittiwakes,
north on those rock-croppings finger-jutted
into the rough Pacific surge...

...terns and pelicans,
you migratory pipers
and you shore-long gulls,
all you keepers of the coastline
north of here to the Mendocino beaches...

...break wide your harsh and salt-encrusted beaks
unmade for song,
and say a praise up to the Lord...

...for God has given you the imponderable grace
to <u>be</u> our verification...

...that you,
our lessers in the rich hegemony of being,
may serve as testament
to what a creature is,
and what creation owes...

Not sure about the line breaks, it's free verse, but these are some remembered quotes. For a spiritual poet, a religious one, I've always found Everson (Brother Antoninus) remarkably concrete.

Murphy is correct, if you want to see a "great" poet who deals almost wholly in abstraction, read Wallace Stevens :

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

(robt)

Sure Robert, I know James. Two or three "drive as far as you can sees" away. Small world. We are both sculptors, though I have made as much of a career from being unknown as he has being known. I'll say hi for you next time I see him, which isn't often though.

You must have a remarkable memory to be able to quote like that. Yes, that was concrete. I had in mind his poem "The Canticle Of The Rose." We break in to hear him as he speaks, about transgressions,

And hence [they] complete you--one and by one, as you stand free, the function of your faults forces the surging shape of your perfection.

You tread them down like shards beneath your feet, or mount upon them like tall steps to the divine,

Or laugh across them, seeing their useful uselessness in the august magesty of Christ,

Who came in their delinquence, their work of emptiness, to forge them in the long majestic function,

And hang them gleaming on the breast of God, deft talismen, the singular medals of divine reprieve.

Brooked of that unrestrainable volition of respose clearly they are transformed upon the crest of your determination,

And are exalted, as saints' sins only serve to seal their sheer intrinsic locus of perfection,

Annul themselves against the telling truth by which your virtue lives transcendet

Which makes you free, true to that searing shaping work within the awesomeness that is your soul.


and so on, it is a long poem. I don't know much about poetry, but would love to articulate such things as clearly as he, not to mention even having the insight.

Dry here, not much rain, but spring has been cool and the pastures are high.

Nice meeting you, Later, Ted



[This message has been edited by reader (edited April 30, 2002).]

Ted,

Been probably 10 years since I've seen Jim, maybe more. By all means say hi. If he misremembers, which is surely possible (he's more special to me than I to him, I have no doubt) then remind him that I'm the deaf photographer, that'll do it :)

As to Everson, my recollection of him favors the concrete, I don't even recall the poem you have quoted: and thus doth memory strangely go. In any event, I've been accused of terminal abstraction myself, so I'm not the one to adress this issue: as far as I am concerned, you're welcome to all the abstraction you can stomach...

(robt)

hi... I'm an abstract language user... not to be confused with any of the greats, of course... (just yet)

I believed there was a place for it, and I was right???

would 21st century poets (and readers).... wanting concrete and comprehensible subject matters (and so much more)... no longer like to see abstract word plays??

I have read many a piece where I simply float along with the beautiful language and have no clue where I am... or... I'm here and I'm there... I am all over the place

In any case... I like understanding and being understood ... as well as floating along clueless

and so far... I only know how to fall into pits

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zz

[This message has been edited by zbaby (edited May 02, 2002).]