The Garden of Verse: Explaining to Your Spouse Why You Had to Use 'That Word' in a Poem and Other Insights Into How Poets Do Their Thing

In April's "Verse-Virtual," poets offer hints at what they do in poems about poetry. What it is, how they do it. Unsurprisingly, they have a lot to say on this close to home subject. What's impressive is how various, how different these poems prove to be. But then, again, they're poets.

            Joan Colby's "Processes" explains, and embodies, the practice of allowing a part to stand for a whole (synecdoche), as in this fine figure:

"A few hieroglyphs
On the snow
Said everything there was
To know of winter."

            It's a device that lives forever in poetry because it enables a little to say lot, and concision of expression (most poets appear to agree) is at the technical heart of poetry. You get to go farther, faster. Read the rest of "Processes" to see how far this poem of wonderful self-examination travels.

            A poem has a "persona" according to Ed Conti ("Dramatis personae"), explaining the use of the word "fuck" in a poem to a reader who happens to be as close a reader as can be found (a spouse). It's impossible not to quote this justification:

"It’s the voice of the poem, I explain,
the speaker, the someone
who’s saying these things and
I, the poet, declaim them,
like an actor."

            This poem knows that its persona has mounted a soapbox and is setting himself up for a fall. The spouse's reply is priceless. 

            Robert Wexelblatt's extended metaphor in "Basement" offers us an esthetic theory in a poem, illustrating how metaphors are for making poems. This poem follows the natural associations of the basement: a foundation for a house, something to build on. Also perhaps some place to hide, or to go deep inside yourself -- a "damp womb of words."

            And then, of course, a final resting place. As the poem tells us:

"Some people just can’t help thinking of graves,
Of a future when the basement’s all there
Is.  So my cellar’s a memento mori too." 

            In a second poem on metaphor ("Twenty Lines on Metaphor"), those lines demonstrate what metaphor can do, as in this stunning example of the synecdoche:

"The art
of the broken twig invents the forest."

             Speaking of 'forest,' Diana Henning gave us a parable in "A WORD LED ME INTO A FOREST/ OF TALL TREES & EVERGREENS" that begins:

"The lovely poem married a dog.
When the poem wanted inspiration,
the dog fetched. When the dog wanted
a bone, the poem wrote a piece
entitled Bone."

            What does this 'lovely poem' tell us about the nature of poetry? Perhaps that there is no substitute for the imaginative quality traditionally called "invention." This poem has it in -- spades? Well, the whole deck.

            Then there is Carole Stone's approach of gathering something of the nature of poetry by examining the life of the poet, in this case a "Celebrated" one. The poem's perfectly achieved description of the famous (or 'popular') poet reading expressively on stage shows what seems to me either the pursuit of the actor's art or a state of temporary insanity:

"To sing a little tune, dance a few steps
before each poem, one hand raised,
waving, each simple gesture
a celebration and a mourning?"

            The poem superbly imagines the horrors of the head-on pursuit of fame. I don't behave like this (or know any poets who do), but -- ah-ha -- maybe my poems do? Dear me!

            Marilyn Taylor's quick-paced, witty review of three common poetic forms, among other virtues, reminds me of the appeal of the double dactyl (an educated taste I hope some day to acquire) in "Nice Try: a Double-Dactyl." Emily Dickinson is one of those exemplifying double-dactyl names. The poem starts with ED but goes a long way in a few lines.

            "Subversive Sonnet" demonstrates the exact opposite of doing what the final couplet tells us what may happen in sticking to formal verse script:

"Go that way,
and you’ll convince us that there’s nothing worse
than writing really lousy formal verse."

            Alarie Tennille's  poem ("Poetry 101") is almost too clever for words -- but then the poem is those words -- illustrating something true, but squishy, about the nature of poetry by offering what appears to be a didactic poetry lesson, but consists entirely of figurative language. While also being a peerless satire of a poetry writing class. When the class is asked to write a poem about a jellyfish -- why a jellyfish is not like a poem; or maybe it is? -- we get this:

Because you can see through a jellyfish to what lies behind it,
suggests Mr. Loves to Talk. Like in a poem, he adds.

            I love that "like/ in a poem." (All we know, perhaps, and all we need to know.) And I love this poem.

            I also love Steve Klepetar's "Submission Guidelines" for capturing so completely the editorial voice of too many born-yesterday poetry journals. I think almost anyone who "submits" -- and that's the word for it -- products of their hard-won creative work to people they don't know in the entirely reasonable expectation that they're not wanted will recognize every line in this laugh-and-cry parody. The hackneyed 'with-it tone' is spot on: 

"We like
edgy, poems that foam at the mouth, work
unafraid to dig its way to China..." Be sure to read the rest.

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Tricia Knoll's "Just My Luck to Never Know" has me at its first lines. (Really, the titles alone of so many of these poems tell us how willing poets are not to take themselves too seriously.)

"What boon is it that English
rhymes bone with stone?"

          The unstated poetic principle here is that poetry is, or may be (and sometimes clearly is) about jumbling words together that, logically speaking, appear to have nothing to do with one another. There's some game-playing involved in this business, isn't there? "Bone" is sort of like "stone" in that they're both hard. But only sound connects either to 'boon" -- which, however, happily rhymes to moon, soon, strewn, loon, etc. This "lucky" poem goes on to give us remarkable happenstance associations such as:

"Why did an online haiku generator
call me a leftover geometry
in a timeframe of glass?"

      Maybe somebody else's poems will provide the answers to questions like that. 

        Find these poems and others in the April 2018 issue of Verse-
Virtual. Here's the link:

http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html

April Poetry: Cutting the Season's Corners, Updating Narcissus, and Paying a Vernal Vist to the Hair Salon

April is National Poetry Month. I committed myself to write a new poem each day, responding (however loosely) to each day's prompt from National Poetry Writing Month. 

           Cue the song birds, children's laughter, the electronic lament of the weed whacker.

4.22 The Prompt: "Today, I’d like you to take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens: The sun can’t rise in the west... A circle can’t have corners... Pigs can’t fly... The clock can’t strike thirteen."
            Here goes.

Cutting Corners

Trees don't grow upside down

The dried brown leavings covering the new greens

don't spring from the ground and bag themselves

Our hidden garden is a forest floor

I reveal to the sun by gestures of removal,

walking old man winter to the garden door.

Rake in hand, bending, pile-gathering, bagging,

grappling the last dead-end, vine-entangled refuseniks with gloved hands.

Birds don't fall from the sky,

but the songs of their vernal longings do

I fly on wings of song, pigging out on spring's arpeggios.

Arcing past rooftops, the golden hour rises in the west,

lighting the thirteenth candle of daylight in April's baker's dozen

After the storms of March and the lingering tease of the longed-for season,

I turn a corner in the tensioned spring

And square the circle of the yearly swing.

4.21 The Prompt: "After reading the myth of Narcissus, try writing a poem that plays with the myth in some way. For example, you could imagine that imagine the water is speaking to you, the narcissus flower. Or you could write a poem in which the narcissus berates the Kardashians for stealing their neurosis. Or a poem that comments on the narcissism of our time, i.e. beauty and body obsession, etc."

Noli Me Tangere

I think that I shall never see

A symbol of perfection that touches me

Or even comes close, within a mile or two:

            stop right there, that's close enough

Noli me tangere, by the way,

I have an appointment with my personal enshriner,

so mustn't muss the hair

Or lessen any part of me

It really takes the heart of me

when scribblers scribe my every word

It makes me wish that I could lay

the equal of a verbal turd

And then the photogs always snap

when, waking from a beauty nap,

I step outside to catch a ray

I like to give the sun some time with me

Sun so deserves something good to see

But videographers by the score

Cannot help but wish to validate

the look of one they so adore

Every gesture, every move

every word and every wave

Is the epitome of what I gave

when first I rode in on a wave

Some other, I know, gave this stamp a lick 

But my perfect imitation turns the trick

Don't flatter me with media imitation

I've given birth to that whole nation

And if you wish to register

your admiration faithfully

My images can now be found

at Narcissus-dot-intheround

And there give me your many 'loves'

by touching gently, wearing gloves.

4.20 the Prompt: "...Write a poem that involves rebellion in some way. The speaker or subject of the poem could defy a rule or stricture that’s been placed on them, or the poem could begin by obeying a rule and then proceed to break it (for example, a poem that starts out in iambic pentameter, and then breaks into sprawling, unmetered lines). Or if you tend to write funny poems, you could rebel against yourself, and write something serious (or vice versa)."

            My response: A sonnet that breaks some rules. Hardly much of a rebellion.

Hair: The Rebellion

In Salon Neo on Hancock Street

The ladies there cannot be beat

They till the soil of human hair

on flesh reclining in a chair

They chatter in a foreign tongue

You cannot tell the old from young

They know my name and trim my hair

And cover up what's not much there

Then to my garden I repair

With rakes and bags and clippers style

the shapes of vine and leafy branch,

such grassy fronds, such earthy hair: 

I do at home what they do there

And whisper words that plants can't hear.

    To get the full story from National Poetry Writing Month, here's the link to their site. 

http://www.napowrimo.net/2018/04/

The Garden of History: Why "The Post" Tells Us What We Still Need To Know

     

             When the release of the Pentagon Papers made the headlines in 1971, people like me were still 'the kids,' and the people who ran the ran the important news media such as the New York Times were the wholly unreliable 'grownups.'

            The grownups, who also ran the government, the TV networks, the corporations, and the domestic households, and the opinion polls, were shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that the American government had been lying to them about the Vietnam War. Lying about the reason we got into it, the phony Tonkin Gulf provocation, the justifications offered by successive administrations -- Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon -- not only to continue an evilly stupid war but double down on the failed policy by sending more and more troops, bombing more and more roads and cities in both Vietnams and neighboring countries. And to offer dangerously paranoid and self-defeating myths like "the domino theory" to justify a vast expansion of death and destruction.

            JFK knew that an American military intervention in Vietnam was a poor military gamble, but decided it was politically impossible to admit the truth publicly in an election year. His party could not afford to appear 'weak' in the face of Communism.  

            That is, in order to maintain an appearance -- the illusion that 'anti-Communism' justified any sacrifice -- more American soldiers -- not to mention Vietnamese -- would have to die.

            This was the same choice, made on purely partisan political grounds by LBJ and Nixon: to preserve a politically convenient illusion -- and evade an inconvenient truth -- human beings must die in great numbers and countries far from America must be destroyed.

            I can see why anyone, for whom this revelation was news, would be disturbed to learn it.

            But for people like me, the 'kids' of the anti-Vietnam War protests -- however strange it is to recall that angry youthful perspective -- what the "grown-ups" were doing or thinking had long ceased to matter.

            Of course -- we knew -- the war was unwinnable, undertaken on a fraudulent basis, and wholly immoral. Of course the idea of trying to impose our ideas on a country and people we knew nothing about "in the name of anti-Communism" was both wrong and stupid.

            Of course the North Vietnamese 'enemy' we slandered as 'Communist' was seen primarily as a 'nationalist' and anti-imperialist force for freedom and self-determination by the majority of the Vietnamese people.

            And of course the Vietnamese people would go on resisting our attacks, no matter how costly we made the war for them, just as patriotic Americans had resisted the overpowering might of the British Empire in the determination to be free of foreign domination. In all likelihood North Vietnam was likely to outlast us, just as our determined Patriots of the 18th century had outlasted the domineering British Empire.

            And -- most certain of all -- of course the political leaders of the corrupt older generation -- our presidents, our generals; our perfidious FBI director -- have all along been lying to the American public about the nature and conduct of the war, and why more and more Americans had been sent there to kill and die.

            I never glanced at the Pentagon Papers when revealing portions of them were published by newspapers in 1971. Never read the New York Times' initial story on their existence after someone handed this heavily "classified document" over to that paper.

            Didn't follow the story when the government got a court injunction to prevent the Times from publishing any further parts or information from the infamously long-concealed analysis of a failed American policy. Or pay attention when the Washington Post, having been given another copy of the hijacked Pentagon Papers, began publishing them --

            ... and when Nixon's government took the Post to court for publishing "important government secrets" as well -- succeeded in winning a Supreme Court judgment in favor of the right of a free press to publish the truth despite the government's desire to suppress its dirty secrets.

            Unimportant to me then. Because, as I said, these facts were what we protestors believed (knew) all along.

            But both astonishing -- and wholly moving -- to me now.

            Being now, of course, and for a very long time, one of the 'grown-ups.' And grown-ups need their illusions; or, you might call them, their 'stories.'

            Which made Spielberg's recent movie about the release of the Pentagon Papers, "The Post," which Anne and I finally got around to seeing, so much fun.

            The high points: Meryl Streep's portrayal of Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, as she hesitantly seats herself in a conference room with 25 men in identical black suits as they discuss taking her company public. This is the 'grown-up' world of 1971: We had such a long way to go. How far have we come?

            Reporters working from pay phones trying to write down a crucial phone number while stuffing more quarters into the phone. (It's still hard to write down all the info while talking on the phone.)

            Tom Hank's Ben Bradlee, the Post's editor, lounging in his glass office while he worries aloud to reporters that New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan has "got something."

            What Sheehan 'got' was a copy of a multi-volume study commissioned by the Defense Department back in 1968 to analyze the decision-making process that led to massive US troop commitments to a disastrous military adventure in Vietnam.

            The expression on Matthew Rhys's face (the lead in "The Americans"), playing Daniel Ellsburg when he realizes that Defense secretary Robert McNamara, who knows the war is a disaster, is saying exactly the opposite to a group of American reporters. Ellsburg then decides to steal bound copies of the highly-secret study and copy them, eventually leaking them to the Times.

            The Post reporter played by Bob Odenkirk ("Better Call Saul") being chased down by a Post company lawyer and forced to admit that his copy of the Pentagon Papers may have come from the same source that leaked them to the Times. If so, that would make the Post vulnerable to a charge of "violating the government secrets act."

            And of course, Graham's courageous decision to allow Bradlee to begin releasing the papers in her newspaper at great legal and financial risk to the future of a newspaper founded by her father -- because the American people needed to know the truth about what their government's leaders (including her close personal friend McNamara) had done and the self-serving, spectacularly immoral reasons for doing it.

            And -- what I can only appreciate now and was unable to appreciate back then -- the Suprem Court's decision to reject the government's pleas to keep the Pentagon Papers secret because the U.S. Constitution guarantees to the American people the right of the free press.

            That decision came too late to save all the lives wasted by the political crimes committed by America's leaders.

            But it cemented the press's right to try to prevent similar ones.

            Which is where we are now, when a current pretender to the office of POTUS threatens to start a nuclear war to distract people from paying attention to his other corrupt acts.

            Leading to a few questions:

            Why are there still so many government secrets? (What I really feel is 'why are there any?')

            Why, after the "lessons of Vietnam" did America's government get away with starting another absurdly unnecessary war in Iraq, displacing a million Iraqis, killing, arresting and injuring them by the hundreds of thousands, and killing and maiming thousands of American troops?

            Where are the Pentagon Papers for that atrociously costly disaster?

            Why do America's laws still protect the policy-makers of torture and death in the Middle East -- some of whom were recently appointed to high positions by the current maggot in the White House?

            Why do our laws still prosecute those who bring the truth to light by making public certain perfidious "classified secrets"?

            Why does the American public not have a right to know everything done by government officials in our name?

            And when the current scumbag-in-chief continues to go after newspapers, or TV stations, or websites that expose his lies and crimes, in an attempt to silence them...

            will American courts still be willing to protect a free press in the service of the public good?

April's Poems: The Seven Ages of Delay, 'Jerusalem' Turned Upside Down, and Some Anecdotal Evidence

April keeps moving along. We have no choice but to go with it. Three more days of National Poetry Writing Month, with three more poems.

 

4.19 The Pitch: Today we challenge you to write a paragraph that briefly recounts a story, describes the scene outside your window, or even gives directions from your house to the grocery store. Now try erasing words from this paragraph to create a poem or, alternatively, use the words of your paragraph to build a new poem.

            My response: These prompts get more and more baroque. Here's my story.

Obstacles Everywhere

            It's not easy to get from my house to the grocery store. First there's the cat, prowling and mewling with a perennial air of cruel neglect. What are you doing for me? she whines. Don't forget my bag of treats. Then there are the birds, queuing up beneath the feeder. You think it's easy? the blackbird squawks, to find another seed in the this pecked-over feeder? That's black oil sunflower, got-it? Got-it? Got-it? I turn away to face to face with the neighborhood urchin, with his bowl-cut hair and his heavy eyes, kicking a stone down the gutter on his daily slog unwillingly to school. He glares at me: why do I have to walk while the likes of you get to ride? The lover is next, gazing longingly into the trees, his lips moving no doubt in some complaint of the coolness of his beloved's glance -- er, actually, is that some kind of wire planted into his ears.

            I back the car slowly from the drive, but am compelled to brake as the warrior roars in to the curb-cut on his unmuffled scooter and lets the engine throb in passion of enmity for the unseen foe. Old Natter, the councilor at extra-large, catches me then, unpacking his bag of wise saws on the sins of municipal spending, until the letter-carrier snags his attention. I button up the window swift, but a rap on the passenger side glass delivers me to the presence of Mistress Godzip, who opines on the recent goings-on in the halfway house, sprinkled with a few choice requests: just ice, just tea, just everything... Breaking away, at last, free at last, only to find the power grid people in their silly orange hats laying cones across the road while the time-and-a-half detail cop inspects his phone: No Exit today!

           

Here's the poem:

The Seven Stages of Delay

Prowling and mewling, the cat bars my way

'What are you getting for me?' she whines

'I'm due another treat today'

Birds queue up at the feeder, syncopating beaks:

'Got-it?' 'Got-it?' 'Got-it?' sparrow squawks and mousie squeaks

The put-upon urchin dragging his frown unwillingly to school

The lover croons with soundless lips, plugged into his heart's device and reads a text from Lady Cruel

The warrior in leathered black racing the engine of his self-esteem

in defiance of a world not what it seems

The local expert, a talking head, judges and begrudges

what is wrong and what is right

expounds all-a-day and sometimes night

Old Mother Godzip, out of all but breath,

needs a few things at the store:

just ice, just tea -- just wait a tick --  

I'm sure I'll think of something more

Till I break free and corner round, to find my egress blocked

by mocking orange cones freely strewn:

I'm going home to sleep till noon.

4.18 The Pitch: "Find a poem.... Use a piece of paper to cover over everything but the last line. Now write a line of your own that completes the thought of that single line you can see, or otherwise responds to it. Now move your piece of paper up to uncover the second-to-last line of your source poem, and write the second line of your new poem to complete/respond to this second-to-last line. Keep going, uncovering and writing, until you get to the first line of your source poem, which you will complete/respond to as the last line of your new poem. It might not be a finished draft, but hopefully it at least contains the seeds of one."

            My response: This one was impossible. I chose a poem I have long loved, so dismembering it to infiltrate into its bones a wholly contrary message was pure poetic sacrifice. William Blake's famous widely loved poem "Jerusalem" has become a kind of an unofficial national anthem in England, particularly the England of old institutions such as the Church of England and, apparently, the army. In addition to re-ordering his poem from last line to first, the only change I made was to add the word "New" before the word "England" wherever it appeared.

            Here's the poem.

Upside Down in New 'Jerusalem'

In New England's green & pleasant land

Wood chippers grind and whine all day

Till we have built our new Jerusalem

in Amazonian Mammon by the Sea

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have turned our fruit to rind

Nor will I ease from Mental Fight

While birds still flutter in my mind

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

Bring me my gardener's unwieldy hoe

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me the fool who sooth-sayed so

Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Let my rich branch and brand aspire

Among these dark Satanic Mills

Men man machines, their secret thrills

And was Jerusalem builded here

Beyond the ocean, let new fear

Shine forth upon our clouded hills

And in our heart dark secrets trill

And did the Countenance Divine

Rejoice on deserts, no more to smile

On New England's pleasant pastures seen!

Where ax and saw become the style

And was the Holy Lamb of God

That now doth scream, once free to

Walk upon New England's mountains green:

And frolic in the fresh spring stream

And did those feet in ancient time

Pace through death's universal dream?

4. 17 The Prompt: "...Write a poem re-telling a family anecdote that has stuck with you over time. It could be the story of the time your Uncle Louis caught a home run ball, the time your Cousin May accidentally brought home a coyote and gave it a bath, thinking it was a stray dog, or something darker (or even sillier)."

            Response: I couldn't think of anything silly. The poem:

A Family Anecdote

My father had no anecdotes

He folded wrapping paper carefully

after opening each present

upon our Christmas times

My father had no wish for gifts

Don't buy me anything, he'd say

Better keep your money

I responded childishly, what would I keep it for?

My father had no money

He had simple tastes in food

He shared no childhood memories

of what life was like at home

My father had no home

His parents had to sell

Depression prices at their ebb

Where was he to go?

My father had no parents

when I was very small

He never spoke of his own father,

not that I recall 

My father's father left no tracks,

not that I can see

My father's father had no name,

the name he gave to me

To check out the full spiel at National Poetry Writing Month for yourself, here's the link:

http://www.napowrimo.net/2018/04/