The perfect lyric poem

Nothing came today. I've been here 3 hours and nothing. I even tried to do the exercise that we have been set for a special workshop next week in the hope that exercises are limiting and therefore easy, but nope. Which I guess goes to show that the only thing stopping me writing is me. The little voice that whispers crap and reaches for the delete button.

I read some more Jorie Graham though and Michael Palmer. I've finally finished The Lion Bridge after, I think, about 18 months. Which, for me at least, has got to be some kind of record.

We are discussing Helen's reading package this afternoon about science and writing which should be interesting seeing as I've had a bit of science and software engineering background. I think it is quite a complicated issue, made more complicated by the fact that science isn't just one thing and can range from the naming of plants (botany) to the such hugely complex and unmeasurable theoretical concepts that they can only be represented by massive computer models (quantum physics?). It seems there is some space for poetry to meddle in there, but I would suggest it is more at one end of that spectrum than the other. That's not to say poetry can't try of course and can't dream. In fact I think poetry's ability to dream and make random, surprising connections is where sometimes it's strength lies with regards to science. It has the power of sci-fi, which I guess is the romantic end of science, where the ideas are born and before the real, nitty-gritty and (usually) mundane work is done. But who's to say someone can't write the perfect lyric poem that describes all the intricacies of string theory in some kind of perfect vortex of language?

I also read the thing I wrote yesterday that was kind of spawned from a Wallace Steven's line and it seems reasonably interesting. I might have to do that again. He seems like one of those writers who writes nice open, philosophical one-liners that a ripe for quoting and reinterpreting.

Out of the oven and into the fridge

Went to a cafe today for a change of scenery. It was very noisy and I was trying to read Jorie Graham. Laughable, so I wrote something about trying to read Jorie Graham in a cafe, stealing phrased from one of her poems. She is so good at phrases, they all seem so fresh and loaded like little pockets of holy-fuck. Definitely becoming more and more of a fan. The book I've been reading is her latest, Sea Change (2008, Carcanet). And it is beautiful, like in Root End:

The desire to imagine

the future.

Walking in the dark through a house you know by

heart. Calm. Knowing no one will be

out there.

Amazing

how you can move among

the underworld's

furniture

[...]

Wow. What a singularly gorgeous idea and image, one of those that-is-so-true moments. I want to be her. Although I noticed she has a kind of limited tone in her work. I find it is all that kind of ephemeral, beautiful kind of language that fits some poems and not others. Like she wrote a poem called Guantanamo where that kind of thing doesn't seem to work so well. I couldn't help but wonder if she could be more brutal or something. But fuck it, you can't change how you write and that poem is still good. I'm just being picky and letting my own preoccupations get in there.

Going to watch Mr. Bob Hass on video interview this afternoon. Should be nice, he seems like such a thoughtful and kind man I can't see him saying anything other than pure gold.

A question of place

Been reading some Jorie Graham because it has to go back to the library soon. Some of her stuff is really nice, some of it unpenetrable. Well, maybe not unpenetrable, but it takes so much time and effort. And the look of it isn't even that inviting. I quite like that difficult poetry that at first glance seems like a walk in the park. Hers doesn't. Long lines, long stanzas, brackets, weird line breaks, indentations, lack of concrete imagery/narrative. I'm sure it all has a purpose and is carefully considered, but at first glance you are like phoar! and after reading the first couple of lines you have to have a real will power to go on. They aren't all like that though and some of her earlier stuff is definitely more in the imagistic lyric pool like Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt (Dream of the Unified Field. 1996. Carcanet Pr.):

Although what glitters

on the trees,

row after perfect row,

is merely

the injustice

of the world,

the chips on the bark of each

beech tree

catching the light, the sum

of the delays

is the beautiful, the human

beautiful,

body of flaws.

[...]

(n.b. indentaion missing) Lovely music and mix of imagery and abstract. Which I guess what she is known for. This is defintely one of her more conventional and accessible poems though.

Also been reading Kay's reading package (I found a picture of her, she's trying to hide but you cant get away from me! haha) about 'place' which inspired me to write a poem called History of this place (12) which tries to be as unplaceful, unhistoric and unspecific as possible. I think it came more from thinking about Allen Curnow's regionalism arguments about putting a frame around NZ in our writig as much as Kay's stuff. After hearing Bill Manhire talk about his poem 'On Originality' which I think is basically a response to RAK Mason poem about 'poets I want to follow them all' or something like that. So I guess I've become interested in the critical response poem, but don't I need more respect or something first? It's not even that I disagree with Curnow, at the time that is exactly what NZ literature needed. And do I know enough about those poets/poems to respond in that way, because surely people are going to criticise my criticism and they will have to stand up to it? Why do I do stuff like this? It seem to cause more problems than it resolves. Why couldn't I just write a nice poem about Wellington or something?

Promises lived up to (and Jorie Graham)

Seconds ago finished Promises of Glass have to talk about it so excited have to talk about it taken me awhile but so excited he is brilliant isn't he he is I want to be just like him don't think I am write differently so excited write more excited don't know maybe less misty just figured that out I think he writes misty just beyond reach can't grasp it unamed things undescribed things characters appearing receding fading the narrator or the reader the Michael Palmer character war rhyme has become prominent fashionable maybe I don't know he works it quite blatant but beautiful usually brings it in heavy for one stanza then drift away again something I should try maybe have to talk about it have to come down from Tower:

[...]

just now, wind and racing sky,

the distant cathedral of Epifan',

and after repeating the words pine

then pond a few so many

times I wrote them down

just now and the word crocodile,

and Beograd, Pristina, this night their fires.

Time was I would memorize

each thing that passed before my eyes

and scribe it on the magic list.

sleep's deeply secret tablet,

titled My Life as a Futurist.

Fucking amazing!

[Added 12:00pm]

Read a beautiful essay about Jorie Grahan by James Longenbach (Modern Poetry After Modernism, 1997, Oxford University Press NY ISBN: 0-19-510178-2). He was talking about her in terms of post-modernism and how she treats her writing after Pound/Elliot and then Elizabeth Bishop etc. but I get the feeling he is in total awe of her powers, the way she does something remarkably and astoundingly different with, not only every book she has written, but every poem. My curiosity is raised. It sounds like she is incredibly smart, incredibly ambitious and incredibly hard to read. I guess not aesthetically because she has good grasp of music and surprise, but because the classical references, the competing narratives, the largish words, the subtle philoosphical debates all require incredibly close reading and thought. Sounds like the kind of thing we should all aspire to write. But can everyone write like that? Should everyone try? I think attempting new things all the time is definitely worth while, but classical references, I've never been into that. But I like her ideas of melding disparate narratives, like in one poem she had some classical story (Greek or something) the story of a girl in a gas chamber and a personal story of visiting her grandmother in a home and somehow made them all one. Interesting idea. I'm going to have to get some of her stuff. I'll go look now and see what around to buy. Longenbach you are awesome!