Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago « POETICKS-

Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago « POETICKS

Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago

Just about three years ago I wrote a version of the following poem:

. Poem has a question

.             Whose sleep is the sky?
.             For hours and
.             hours Poem
.             wondered.

I improved it just now by deleting its previous two last words, “about that.”

Note: I find that the day after I wrote the above, I “improved” it by adding ten or twelve lines to it. I hereby disown that version.

The following is a re-done poem I sent a year or more earlier to something going on in Mexico. I was trying to do something with the show’s theme of International friendship, or something. Barely worth keeping, I’d say but may some will enjoy it.

Note: as should be obvious from the way I strained tofind things for this entry, I’m still blah.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Bob Grumman, Mathematical Poetry Specimen, Of Poem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago”

marton koppany says:

27 February 11 at 2:25 AM

Whose sleep is the sky.
Bob Grumman says:

27 February 11 at 6:43 AM

Aah, you minimalists!

But possibly yours is an equal but different version of the poem; I like Poem physically in his poems, though, and the emphasis on the time the question intrigues him. There’s even a juxtaphor (implicit metaphor) between the motion of the sky and the motion of Poem’s wonder–for me, at any rate.
marton koppany says:

27 February 11 at 7:52 AM

It just came to my mind as a possible “answer” to Poem’s “question”. Perhaps, yes, because he was physically there.
Kevin Kelly says:

6 March 11 at 2:11 PM

I’m still working my way in reverse (top to bottom) on your blog, Bobby, so I may find more like these, but I think there’s something really interesting going on in “Mathemaku No. 21,” specifically in the figure after the minus sign. I like the possibilities with the reverse type creating new shapes inside those already created in the mashing up of letters.
Bob Grumman says:

6 March 11 at 3:23 PM

Thanks for the look, Kevin.

Entry 398 — “The Tide,” a Poem Poem « POETICKS

Entry 398 — “The Tide,” a Poem Poem

. The Tide

.            A long stare smelled its way
.            past the lantern’s purpled lisp
.            against kerosene mares radiant in
.            the prenatal barn storm
.            that Poem
.            was tearing the petals off of.
.            Behind him, the Hawaiian sidewalk
.            sidled dangerously into a canasta game,
.            like misspelled lemonade
.            remembering where the jewels were.

. The tide was later than usual.
.

I threw the above together so as to have something here. Believe it or not, I then revised it! I only changed a few lines, though.

I’m beginning to think I’ll never have a blog entry with any real content again. A real disaster, Kevin Kelly is now prowling this here territory, lookin’ for poems to throttle, and he’s brutal. I could deal with him back when he lived in or around Port Charlotte, but he’s gotten a lot meaner since he moved.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 6th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Bob Grumman, Of Poem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Entry 398 — “The Tide,” a Poem Poem”

Geof Huth says:

6 March 11 at 5:20 PM

You know that Kevin Kelly guy always reminded me of Surllama for some reason.
Bob Grumman says:

6 March 11 at 6:51 PM

I’ve always suspected they were one and the same–the two l’s in Surllama are strong evidence of it. And, of course, they are both maximally crude fellows. . . .
Kevin Kelly says:

6 March 11 at 8:17 PM

Ha, ha! Remember Todd Russell aka Huck Finch? He told me before I moved to California, something to the effect of: “Don’t let California change you, Surllama, I mean Kevin” and I remember thinking, “Nothing can change me!” … and then I became a snob. It happened about four years ago, to be exact. I’ll have to admit, it felt good to give in, like a warm bath of salt.
Kevin Kelly says:

6 March 11 at 8:20 PM

But seriously, sir, I’m trying to ONLY comment on the stuff I like (hence, the scarcity of any comments … I kid!) … and I like this here poem. I have to admit, I’ve always liked your poetry when you start talking about the tide and the phone ringing to itself, etc. My favorite line by far: “like misspelled lemonade” Good imagery! So there.
Bob Grumman says:

7 March 11 at 1:13 PM

Well, I’ve always said negative comments are more helpful than positive ones, but your positive ones have definitely been helpful. As for Huck, we’ve exchanged e.mails since you’ve left. He’s sent me invitations to the parties he yearly has, but I’ve not yet been able to get to one. You should e.mail him, or facebook him. I think he’s on Facebook.

Entry 474 — “Poem’s Boringness” « POETICKS

Entry 474 — “Poem’s Boringness”

Poem’s Boringness

Poem was well-aware
how boring he was, but
how could he be otherwise,
alter-egoing for
a sickness so wholly
over-burdened with ambitions
to which it could only get close enough
to pule its futility about into texts
like this . . . for some for
ever incomprehensible reason?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Of Poem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago « POETICKS

Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago

Just about three years ago I wrote a version of the following poem:

. Poem has a question

.             Whose sleep is the sky?
.             For hours and
.             hours Poem
.             wondered.

I improved it just now by deleting its previous two last words, “about that.”

Note: I find that the day after I wrote the above, I “improved” it by adding ten or twelve lines to it. I hereby disown that version.

Note: as should be obvious from the way I strained tofind things for this entry, I’m still blah.

5 Responses to “Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago”

marton koppany says:

27 February 11 at 2:25 AM

Whose sleep is the sky.
Bob Grumman says:

27 February 11 at 6:43 AM

Aah, you minimalists!

But possibly yours is an equal but different version of the poem; I like Poem physically in his poems, though, and the emphasis on the time the question intrigues him. There’s even a juxtaphor (implicit metaphor) between the motion of the sky and the motion of Poem’s wonder–for me, at any rate.
marton koppany says:

27 February 11 at 7:52 AM

It just came to my mind as a possible “answer” to Poem’s “question”. Perhaps, yes, because he was physically there.
Kevin Kelly says:

6 March 11 at 2:11 PM

I’m still working my way in reverse (top to bottom) on your blog, Bobby, so I may find more like these, but I think there’s something really interesting going on in “Mathemaku No. 21,” specifically in the figure after the minus sign. I like the possibilities with the reverse type creating new shapes inside those already created in the mashing up of letters.
Bob Grumman says:

6 March 11 at 3:23 PM

Thanks for the look, Kevin.

Entry 580 — “Poem Becomes Another Person” « POETICKS

Entry 580 — “Poem Becomes Another Person”

Poem Becomes Another Person

                                 One day Poem spontaneously
                                 became another person, Problem.
                                 He shrugged it off. His author no doubt
                                 no longer had any more chores for
                                 him as a combination poem/alter ego.
                                 He assumed he was still an alter ego–
                                 his author had never shown any ability to create
                                 a human being of any complexity at all
                                 that wasn’t 97% himself.

                                 Problem wandered around for several lines
                                 without being or encountering anything
                                 problematic.

                                 Was that a problem? He quickly
                                 spiffled a gumshoe, rhinestones
                                 being out of fashion.

* * *

Wednesday, 30 November 2011, 4 P.M. A pleasant-enough day. I ran around seven this morning, planning to cover a mile but only was able to run half that. I blame it on going too fast to begin with–after not having run for two or more weeks. Not that I start all that fast. After walking a little, I ran a little, and felt good. I ran a hundred yards or so after that, feeling almost like I was really running. After breakfast, I got another exhibition hand-out done, and worked some on my Hardy Boys mathemaku. It’s not framed, so I’m replacing a framed one with it–mainly because I want to get the framed one unframed so I can scan it into my computer. I have to have a computer copy of it somewhere but haven’t been able to find it. Its framing was professionally done, so I don’t want to mess with it. I’ll take it to the frame shop I’ve done business with and have the guy there switch poems. Along the way, I had two short naps. I feel pretty okay now. I’ve done all my chores, getting a short blog entry out of the way a little while ago, and not having work on the book to do for a few more days. Reading–another Clancy (mainly)–and A new game of Civilization, with my Civilization winning streak up to 3.

Later note: I wrote a second exhibition hand-out for the day, a little commentary on my Hardy Boys mathemaku.

Blue Nile Discount Codes

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Bob Grumman, Of Poem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Entry 12 — Line Breaks « POETICKS

Entry 12 — Line Breaks

I may know as much as anyone in the world about the nature and function of lines breaks. That’s not a major boast: there isn’t much to know about them, and understanding them doesn’t take research or study, just a little commonsensical thought. I’m making them the subject of this entry because of a thread at New-Poetry I got involved with. A few of the contributors to the thread seemed to me to be having trouble fully understanding the device. Anyway, I’ve decided to write a minor primer about it, bringing back my recent Poem poem to illustrate its simplest functions:

. Another Failure

.                                  For half the night
.                                  Poem struggled mightily
.                                  to sing himself a sleep
.                                that melted understandings into him
.                                as intricately deepening as April rain
.                                  dislodging a woodland’s smallest wisdoms;
.                                  but nowhere in it did
.                                  anything extend beyond
.                                its decimal point.

I will now repeat it, with a comment in purple under each of its lines:

. Another Failure

. For half the night

The poem’s first line-break notifies the reader that he’s in a poem, as does every poem’s first line-break; slows his read to force him to pay at least a little more attention to what’s going on in the language of the poem and what its expressing, particularly its imagery, as do all line-breaks; with the corroboration of the poem’s other lines, if the reader glances at them, informs him of the poem’s pace, in this case comparatively quick; gives his mind a resting place from the possibly difficult material of the poem (again, like all line-breaks); presents a hint (possibly misleading) of the kind of poem the will follow as to style, subject matter, rhythmic nature, technique, point-of-view, and the like, in this particular case, mainly suggesting quotidianness via a commonplace diction, and the representation of a highly standard image; and, finally, setting up a rhyme by leaving “night” in an emphazied location of the poem.

. Poem struggled mightily

The poem’s second line-break does most of the things its first one did but also pretty much establishes the poem as free-verse, and puts “might” near its end to rhyme with the final word of the previous line.

. to sing himself a sleep

The next line-break does little new, but the extra time it gives the reader may help prevent his reading “a sleep,” a key contributor to whatever value the poem has, too hurriedly.

. that melted understandings into him

Coming a little late compared to the other line-breaks, this one is responsible for giving its line a feel of magnitude, importance; I believe it will be welcomed for the pause it provides the reader to think about just what its line and the preceding one mean

. as intricately deepening as April rain

The next line-break lets its line extend even more.

. dislodging a woodland’s smallest wisdoms;

Then a line-break halting its line somewhat sooner than the previous line-breaks halted theirs–perhaps indicating the we’ve reached the poem’s peak and are now quieting.

. but nowhere in it did

Another short line, now, stopped before it says anything–stopped also on a word a more standard line-break would not have, to “merely’ keep the reader from being completely on balance.

. anything extend beyond

The penultimate line-break does little more than prevent the reader from too quickly learning where the sentence he’s reading is going.

. its decimal point.

The poem’s final line-break provides it with a sharp short clear end.

Any questions?

Additional comments: when I wrote this poem, I paid little attention to the line-breaks I was making–they came pretty much naturally. I’m sure that’s the way it wis with most composers of free verse. The “did” I thought about before going with, though, and I think I came back to one pair of lines that sounded wrong, and change the line-break between them.

A reader, too, if experienced, ought not pay much conscious attention to the lineation of a work of free verse–but, if effective, it will have a great deal of influence on his understanding of the poem.

One last comment: in the right hands–those of E. E. Cummings, for example–line breaks can be employed to do much more of value in a poem than they do in “Another Failure.”

DiscountContactLenses

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 10:07 PM and is filed under lineation, Linguexpressive Poetry, Of Poem, Poetics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Schools of Poetry « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Schools of Poetry’ Category

Entry 978 — A List of Poetry Schools

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

7 or 8 years ago I made a list of linguaesthetic (words-only) poetry schools, hoping to get comments, and–best–additions to it. It was pretty much ignore. Here it is again, anyway (and because I’m running behind, thanks in part to my word-processor’s killing four days of my work on the Sonnet book):

1. Edwardian poetry–the kind of standard formal poetry written by most American poets as the twentieth century began.

2. some school between the above and the next?

3. imagistic poetry

4. country poetry, the kind Frost would be the exemplar of–and, yes, I need a much better name for it. Quotidian subject matter, formal techniques

5. surrealistic poetry

6. plaintext poetry (the kind of which Williams would be the exemplar)

7. objectivist poetry (if that’s different enough from 5.)

8. neo-formalist poetry

9. language poetry

10. infraverbal poetry

11. New York School poetry

12. beat poetry

13. ethnic poetry

14. contra-genteel poetry (Bukowski, and his followers)

15. feminist poetry

16. Haiku

17. Neo-Hopkins Poetry–what Dylan Thomas wrote at his best, word-splash, not the sprung rhythm.

* * *

Hmmm, I left out surrealist poetry and jump-cut poetry. Odd. Probably others.

Here’s a Poem poem I wrote at about the same time:

. Another Failure

Weekly Deal Event

Posted in Of Poem, Schools of Poetry | No Comments »

Poetic Practice « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Poetic Practice’ Category

Entry 791 — “. . . in the Age of Vendler”

Friday, July 6th, 2012

The following is from 1995–yes, 17 years ago (but slightly changed in three places):

Poem, as a Poet in the Age of Vendler    Sometimes,  frustrated by a bouldering  of some sky he was trying to daisle  a fresh noise through,  Poem envied the traipsers  of never fully-specified ladymoods  who monopolized the highest praise  of the tenured  and regretted the balls  that kept him mythodically direct  technically venturesome,  and socio-economically marginal--  even as he knew  in his heart of hearts  how trivial the appreciation of the academy was  compared to where he was going, however ineptly.

What amuses me (and I knew it at the time) is that it’s about 90% an Iowa Workshop Poem. To show how this is so, we have to turn to my 2000 description of the “100% Iowa Workshop Poem” (which I’ve revised today, but not greatly):

It is a poem that:

1. involves quotidian, usually suburban subject matter, employing telling concrete details out of everyday life, accessibility being a key aim

2. uses near-prose (i.e., free verse with few or no frills or unconventionalities of expression)

3. ends with a standard epiphany or anti-epiphany

4. is genteel in vocabulary and morality

5. strives for anthroceptual sensitivity (i.e., sympathetic awareness of other human beings)

6. acts more as a means to self-expression, or bringing the self to life than to capture a scene, some object or idea–and is never an end in itself, as a beautiful verbal artifact

7. the self brought to life is almost always a sensitive, politically-correct average, if cultured, individual (the most extreme of Iowa Workshop Poems seem to be begging the reader to like the poem’s author)

8. can be direct on the surface, but aims for Jamesian subtlety in what its author would consider its most important passage

9. is not controversial in thought or attitude, or–really–close to explicitly ideational

10. is usually first-person

11. is generally short–one page, although it can run to three pages

12. wouldn’t be caught dead harboring a poetic technique not in wide use by 1950 at the latest–or anything that might , if its author were capable of using it–get in the way of its accessibility

When I wrote this description, my impression was that I’d written quite a few 100% Iowa Workshop Poems myself, but when I started going through my files to find examples of them, I realized I haven’t. Even poems of mine from thirty years ago like the one below:

Saturday Interval    In the park just down the road  from the rear-view mirror factory where I work,   and about a mile from the room I rent,  I sit by myself among scattered  stonefuls of midsummer sun,  brooknoise,  and patches of daisies.  I've brought a book  but haven't bothered to open it.    From time to time Persephones climb  through the stones' slow pulse  or into the affections  of the flowering fields,  but never,  even briefly,  down  my darkening.

This certainly begins Iowanly, and has the Big Epiphany at the end, but its metaphors (and maybe that internal rhyme) prevent it from being a 100% Iowa Workshop poem. I’d still call it one. Which is not to belittle it. I’m with those who respect the Iowa Workshop Poem. It seems to me a kind of poem that, once discovered, caught on because it is biologically- right: an informal equivalent of the sonnet in that it generally summarizes a single human circumstance and caps it with a reaction, in its case, an epiphany. I suspect the sonnet and it are the size of what might be called a normal moderately-deep reflection on human existence. I’m more sure that the haiku is the size of a single rich moment plus a reaction to it. The sonnet and the Iowa Workshop Poem may be a step up in size from the haiku. Just musing. My main point is that I have nothing against the Iowa Workshop Poem–except that too many teachers, anthologists, grants-bestowers and critics act as though there’s just about no other viable kind of poem around.

The main thing to note is that the items listed need not apply to a poem for it to qualify as an Iowa Workshop Poem, just most of them. 2. and 3. must apply; it might evade 11. by its use of some new technique, but not centrally–it must seem, in general, a standard work in free verse.

All this being the case, my age of Vendler poem almost qualifies. It has 4 unconventionalities of expression to make characteristic 2 not entirely applicable to it–but still applicable enough since it is rather lacksadaisically expressed in free verse. Its subject matter isn’t all that “suburban,” but fairly close, mainly because many Iowa Workshop Poems are, like it, about composing a poem–a quotidian subject for makers and readers of this kind of poem. It is (on the surface) direct for the most part, but not quickly direct at the end; once it is uncouth–in a politically-incorrect male-chauvinist way, which makes its transgression decidedly more serious than it would otherwise have been. That and the controversial attitude the word contributes to, are what finally disqualify the poem as an Iowa Workshop Poem. Especially as its point of view is the opposite of any good Iowa Workshop Poet’s. It becomes, for me, a “contra-genteel” poem, like similar poems of Bukowski’s (which are really negative Iowa Workshop Poems).

Smart Bargains Coupon

Posted in Of Poem, Poetic Practice | No Comments »

Entry 544 — Thoughts on “Skips”

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Today (25 October) I feel in the mood to knock out a few preliminary thoughts about Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino’s “Skips.” Eventually I’ll try to work in some of his terms. Right now, I’ll just go with first thoughts–well first attempts at analysis after having read the poem several times. I’ll re-post the poem, with my comments interrupting it.

Skips

one bus,
said of certain places

Here’s the first skip: “one bus” will not strike many readers as being something likely to be “said of certain places.” But it can make sense for places isolated so having only one bus in and out each day (or week?). In any case, an image of a bus stop entered my mind.

which may, at sites, be
or, for such as certain sites

26 October: At this point we can be sure we’re in what I call a syntax poem, which is a kind of language poem (in my poetics). A syntax poem, to put it simply, a poem whose syntax is goofy. Gregory, I’m sure, has a different name for it. “Logoclastic poem,” I think may be it. A terrific word (like so many of my neologies are, but suffering, like them, from being too idiosyncratic). Gregory would also consider his poem “cubistic,” which it can’t be, for what an artwork becomes cubistic mainly by showing a scene from two or more angles simultaneously, which words can’t do. Gregory is probably presenting his scene like Stein presented many of hers, with fractional objective and subjective (often, to my taste, too subjective) descriptions repeated many times in varied form. A kind of Jamesian hesitancy to be direct. When effective–as here, I believe–it can make a commonplace scene take on enough obscurity to allow the reader the eventual joy of solving it. Or coming close enough to doing that.

a, saying, or, for standing
a, may be holding places

I still feel like I’m at a bus stop, or maybe even in a bus station. But, helped by later sections I’ve now read more than once, I find the poem discussing language, too. One reason for that is that so many of these kinds of poems do just that. But “saying” is what language does, as well as a word (or close to a word) for “so to speak.” Using words or phrases in this double way is, of course, a primary activity of poets, but language poets tend to be more interested in doing it than other poets–enough to warp their poems’ syntax to help them do it.

At this juncture I’m taking a break until tomorrow. Hey, I could say more, but I think I’ve given you students enough to think about for this session! (Note: I can’t resist putting in another plug for the value of close readings–I find it as much fun to discover something in someone else’s poem, which I feel I’ve done here [for myself, at any rate], as it is suddenly to discover something I can use in a poem of my own that I’m working on. I really feel sorry for those who can’t appreciate close readings.)

and doubtless other combinations
one bus.

and if it is but agreeable
a hand or glove or calendar

as, he was
but not in certain places

which, when sounding
just above, and, sounding just above

are gone, or, for some time
by rote or involuntary action

between highest and lowest
is present, and absent, is gone and when

that aspect, to be events
alike, in which they are alike

between highest and lowest
the features

perceived or thought about
seem suddenly, to fit

also spelled insight or solution
the use of, or, as means his present station

and doubtless other combinations
which are themselves

his means
the skin, the hair, the coat

are fairly, then, it matches, either of the two
in which, unfit variations

are discarded
are held at mutual right angles, say

as when a new hat
or sometimes used as synonyms

is part
or,

as a rule, a new hat
is considered of involuntary action

or,
in respect to suspended judgment

in which, a measure of degree
they are, so alike

being highest, possible highest
the skin, the hair, the coat

an irrepressible action
or

due to lips
and doubtless other combinations

attained by involuntary action
as when a new hat is considered part

of one’s coat
or rival, or station

Jet Blue Airlines

Posted in Close Reading, Poetic Practice, Poetics | No Comments »

Entry 493 — W N E S in My PluraestheticPoetry

Monday, September 5th, 2011

I feel I ought to keep up my blog better. So here’s another entry. I was thinking about my latest poems–about all the things I was trying for in them, worrying a bit that I was doing too congestively much, but proud, too, that so much was going on in them. One thought occurred: that my visio-mathematical poems were getting more and more visual–but at the same time more verbal. It appeared to me that thirty years ago most of my visual poems were often interesting neither visually nor verbally but only visiopoetically. Most of my mathematical poems similarly were interesting neither mathematically nor verbally, but only mathepoetically. (And almost never visually.)

I think the mathematics in my poems is conceptually interesting but never interesting as mathematics. Hence, my current visio-mathematical poems are verbal, conceptual, visual,and not significantly mathematical. Many are only very indirectly what I call anthroceptual–having to do with people. There’s no persona in the latest, for instance–it’s all about things. Their final importance, of course, has to do with their affect on people, but they strike the mind first fundaceptually only (i.e., as what they are sensually), then mesh (if the poem works) into a kind of philosophical meaning that eventually resolves itself into a universal human feeling. I think almost none of my pluraesthetic poems are directly anthroceptual. Just about all my Poem poems are. But add anthroceptuality to verbality, conceptuality and visuality as one of the four directions of my visiomathematical poems, their W N E S.

I should add that I have many non-mathematical poems that also have these four directions, a mathematical component not being necessary to make one of them conceptual.

Posted in Poetic Practice | No Comments »

Entry 332 — Not Quite a Zero-Interest Entry

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

I didn’t start the new year with an explosion of productivity but did work out and complete a new mathemaku, which I like right now. It’s for Bill DiMichele’s Tip of the Knife Blog. I hope to make one to three more mathemaku for Bill but have only one idea for one in mind, and it’s very vague. The one just done came about as many of mine do: I sketched a few ideas, then decided on a final version . . . but couldn’t energize myself into going to Paint Shop to execute it. Today, I felt I had to finish it, but dawdled again. At which point my eyes strayed across a copy of my This Is Visual Poetry, and I instantly saw the cover image as perfect for my mathemaku. It’s now the remainder of the latter. It may be my first long division remainder that is the focal point of the poem it’s in. The rest of the poem is words and the long division apparati.

So, another example of my unconscious preventing me for finishing a piece my conscious mind thinks adequate until a flaw is corrected. This can only happen, I believe, for very slow workers.

I won’t show the poem here since it’s for Bill’s blog, but will provide a link to it when he posts it, which should be in a week or two.

Posted in Autobiographica, Poetic Practice | No Comments »

Entry 329 — My Poetic Practice

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Geof Huth, like I, has too many projects going. Unlike I, however, he actually carries out commendable work on his. One of them he calls A Poetics. This us up to its 60th chapter-sized section, which makes up his latest entry to his blog. It’s easier to say what it is not than what it is, other than mostly a wide-ranging work of evocature (i.e. what nullinguists would call a “prose poem”) full of sometimes loopy but almost always fascinating, provocative thoughts about poetry, mostly concerning his own practice of that art. What it is not is a work of verosophy, or serious attempt to pin down what poetry is–nor need it be. It’s made me realize, though, that we need a term for that, “poetics” having become nullingated. My immediate and therefore only suggested term is “verosopoetics,” which is short for “versophical poetics.” I would define it as “the verosophical study of the nature and function of poetry.”

Anyway, Geof’s A Poetics has inspired me to try to work out a short comparable effort, not a poetics, but a summary of my own poetic practice. I think I can do it in one sentence:

As a poet, I try to employ words or words and other elements of expression to form texts that celebrate some significantly important aspect or portion of material reality, using a sufficient number of flow-breaks to adhere to my definition of poetry, and are reasonably coherent and sufficiently fresh in some way as to give pleasure to any sympathetic, reasonably informed and intelligent person who encounters them.

I hope I can make this less klunky. Right now I think it satisfactorily sums up everything I do as a poet, but I doubt that it can, so hope for feed-back that can help me take care of that. One thing that’s intentionally not in it is anything about making the world a better place, except by increasing the number of objects in the world that give pleasure. Peace and the abolition of things like oppression and hunger are fine things to strive for, but outside my interests as a poet.

Later Note: The above is not my idea of how what “proper” poetic practice, only about why I try for as a poet. Also, “some significantly important subject” is some subject significantly important to me.

Posted in Poetic Practice | No Comments »

Enter 382 — “Poem’s Intractability” « POETICKS

Enter 382 — “Poem’s Intractability”

.                               Poem’s Intractability
.
.                               The rotund smell of electricity
.       shimmered left of less
.       as the maple syrup
.       made up its mind
.       in the Bearden colors
. wearing brighter against
. the kindergarten laughter
. Sambo was racing behind
. while, several darknesses
. in front of the scene,
.                               The tigered past
.     dallied
.                               resolutely into the center
. of Poem’s intractability,
.     permanently unrescuable.
.

I had nothing else for this entry. The above, due–I’m sure–to a dumb discussion of a controversy recently in the news concerning whether a poem by Wilsberian poet, Tony Hoagland, that is insipidly slightly slighting of Venus Williams should be denounced as offensive, came very easily. Not much to it, and more a political point of view than I think poems should be, but it may not be too bad.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Bob Grumman, Of Poem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Of Poem « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Of Poem’ Category

Entry 1734 — “Poem Meets His Author”

Tuesday, February 24th, 2015

        Poem Meets His Author            One day Poem found him          self sitting at a pic                        nic                table in a pleasantly             sunny park facing a weird,            bald-headed old man with a pony-tail           and an engaging smile.            Immediately he knew who the man was:             his author.          No mystery how he knew: everything he knew          his author provided him when his author needed          him to know it (seldom when he did).            Poem wondered what was up. That came from          his most essential self--i.e., the personality,          character, exterior or whatever you          wanted to call it, that his author had given him          when creating him.                 More accurately, it was what the author himself had gotten               from, who knows where, at some point in his               growth toward what he had been when what he was made          him recognize the need for an later ego that,                            in                            turn                     caused him to bring forth Poem.            "Blah," Poem thought. "This joker is just          another alter ego of Bob Grumman's, just one          maybe closer to his real self."            "Does that make a difference?" asked          the text's Bob Grumman. Before Poem          couldanswerthepoemstopped.

Posted in Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1732 — “Marmalooted But Carrying On”

Sunday, February 22nd, 2015

I was planning to tell you about my horrible last night. For some reason the word, “marmalooted” occurred to me, and it seemed for who-knows-why to described what happened to me. Then “unluted” followed it into my verblageniusse brain and I thought, why not instead a new Poem poem!!! Ergo, whether it’s any good or not:

     Marmalooted But Carrying On         Poem was so sure for the first three hours of the evening       that he'd be unluted the rest of his miserable life,         that he regretted he had no gods             to pray that he'd quickly die                                                   to.          No, that's not quite accurate: he did not wish for death         because certain of it (as he always had been                             when his body felt significantly more screwed up         than it always felt since, at 57, he had actually                   been afflicted with something life-                     threatening for the first time       (prostate cancer).              Be that as it may,                        every time he moved              any part of                his body, he shivered instantly below zero,     in spite of          the four layers of clothing he'd put on               including his winter overcoat,         and the three blankets and comforter he was                   lying    under.             This was not the first time he'd been attacked           for some unknown reason by severe chills.  Not only       had he always survived them, but he always got over them        no more than a few hours after they'd begun, and        the after-effects were minor and lasted no more than a day.               No exception this time.  This was unfortunate, for      it resulted in this wretchedly marmalooted report.

Good but far from great this might be as a prose text, but DOA (dead on arrival) as a poem. Hmmm, I think I would call it informrature, or a factual report rather than a poem. Oh, well, whatever it is, it’s another daily entry here.

Note: I originally put it in my blog’s “From My Poetry Workshop” category. I think it’s finished now, though–i.e. I don’t think it worth trying to improve even if I had any idea how that might be done. So it’s in the “Of Poem” category (which I’m happy to realize doesn’t claim it to be a poem).

Posted in Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1729 — “A Quanthrille of Grrr-rille”

Thursday, February 19th, 2015

I found another Poem poem from that batch of 39 I made early in 2014 and discovered I liked it quite a bit:

There’s a large problem with this, though: it’s too much like this, which I posted back on the seventh:

               A Quadrille of Deedle                   The rain lifted, but over-churched                    somewhere by the glymmyr the first                          ocean's philosophy,                        Poem                                   fell into the West                                   lighk a thousand                                spandered leaves                   A prayer away, a cloud rose just behind the dis                   tant wharf and                 remained in place.                      A girl in pale blue loy                     tered on it.                   Wordsworth and       Shelley                     joined her.  The                    rain re                         turned.  Heavily.                                           The girl                                      dissolved to the left of the poets,                                                                                                      silently,                                            in an obsolete meaning of "the."

There’s at least one more variation on the above. What to do? I suppose just making a theme and variations set? Or perhaps a splice of the two here with some of the repeated material changed? The bottom one seems before the second. I’ll have to think a while about them. . . .

Posted in From My Poetry Workshop, Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1723 — A Single Poem from Three

Friday, February 13th, 2015

I didn’t spend too much time on this but really like the way it came out:

At the First At the first ocean-wisdom, the lazy questions of the dolphins, folooping around his starplug, centered what thoughts Poem had. Gradually, his vocabulary wore away into warmth, proud to the touch, and galleoned to the top of the laughing April morning unnorming, unnorming, unnorming every worn where a syllable was abled against. Poem was uninquiserentlyy delubricated about what the word, “starplug” meant. Of course he knew it wasn’t a word the way, “way” or “why” were, just a nonciation of his high-blimeyed cre ator. Still it whatted for him at the leastest least's fringe. Was that girl somewhere in it? The one in that poem of long ago who was not at the whirlf? A potentially usable vocabulea far dis tant but still in view, Poem inquiserently salubricated the grrrlplug into his deepest wayre duculently achime in the Agincourt of his widening kingship. True merry the celubriation now inned around the now full-faring flitter Titania had choired about the many-whatted girll, and all the long-agone youmth of a particular summmermurrrr dayyy renorming into cockleblithe murmythry. . .

No doubt I’m too close to it to tell, but it seems right now the best of my revisions of the 39. I don’t think it’s quite finished, though.
.

Posted in Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1721 — Yet Another Poem Poem

Wednesday, February 11th, 2015

My excuse for taking care of another entry with just another Poem poem from the 39 is a better one: it is that I want to use as much of the day as I can to take care of a project I consider IMPORTANT! It’s just a book review to be post at Amazon, but will include passages for use in the final edition of my Shakespeare and the Rigidniks, which is one of my Major Life’s Projects. Anyway: here is today’s poem:

               A Small Stone’s Whisper                   On the top of a pine                 a small stone’s whisper                      away from                                  Poem,                  Crow                                                  burst                      into ex cathedra laughter,                 scarlet in the iambic greyness of                 the Massachusetts winter snowing                                          into April.                     Poem looked up in wonderment,                  never having come on Crow                  in any of the hinterskies                                   that had overhung his dull excursions.                             The lane that Poem had been slowly                  walking on unwogged—but only                                                                     briefly.  Then it snarled                                                halfway up the still-bleak sky,                  Poem tumbling off it.       Mean                     while Crow frayed out of sight.                        Poem got up from the snow and went on                              hindering awry, destined to be unnoticed so long                   as men have breath or eyes to see                     but too tired to care.

I revised this one more than I’ve revised the others from the 39 so far post, but nothing major. The quotation from Shakespeare is new. I’m not sure it works.

Note: I’ll probably not post many more from the 39–the ones remaining seem pretty poor to me. The one above I consider a keeper, but just barely.
.

Posted in Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1720 — “Arsummal”

Tuesday, February 10th, 2015

Another day of running around, tennis in the morning, and errands, and next, a meeting of my little local writers’ group. Ergo, nothing here but another Poem poem from my 39 thrown-togethers:

I love the image of the “unmarried knowledge,” but doubt I’ll ever know what it means.
.

Posted in Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1719 — “The Game Drees Awn”

Monday, February 9th, 2015

Today the first of the Poem poems in the quartet (I think):

Again, I’m using my 39 “done-with-minimal-thought” Poem poems to get a blog entry out of the way. It looks like there won’t be much else for a while–good for me, because it will mean I’m busy with things more important to me; bad for you, unless you’re one of the few who like my Poem poems. (Note: the Joyce in these things is obvious, but, to me, the Dylan Thomas is much more loud.)
.

Posted in Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1718 — “In the Key of Null Flat”

Sunday, February 8th, 2015

Today another of my 39 quickly-done Poem poems from a year or so ago because I want to get this entry out of the way quickly so I can concentrate on my latest Work-the-will-make-me-Famous:

                      In the Key of Null Flat                                A red chord silenced by sleet;                        in                          the distance, the wharf, listened                        into down to Poem’s long lost secret fortress in                            the marshes;                                    banjo-sharp 11-year-old boys                               aglow in possibililities                                               never to history                                than accountancy,                                         turning into                                                                snow                           Did Wordsworth ever write a poem about snow .  .  .  ?

This one (which I’ve slightly revised, changing an order of lines, and just a few other smaller things) I don’t think much of, but I think it’s the introductory poem to my wharf sequence, or one of them.
.

Posted in Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1717 — “A Quadrille of Deedle”

Saturday, February 7th, 2015

Here’s another of my 30 spontaneous poems, except it’s no longer spontaneous, ’cause I revised it just now, my main change being the addition of the last three lines, which make it another masterpiece:

               A Quadrille of Deedle                   The rain lifted, but over-churched                    somewhere by the glymmyr the first                          ocean's philosophy,                        Poem                                   fell into the West                                   lighk a thousand                                spandered leaves                   A prayer away, a cloud rose just behind the dis                   tant wharf and                 remained in place.                      A girl in pale blue loy                     tered on it.                   Wordsworth and       Shelley                     joined her.  The                    rain re                         turned.  Heavily.                                           The girl                                      dissolved to the left of the poets,                                                                                                      silently,                                            in an obsolete meaning of "the."

Apparently I had religion on my mind while composing these poems. Interestingly, I think.

Note: “Quadrille” is some kind of wordplay on “quartet–due to my making a set of four poems about the wharf and Wordsworth and Shelley, etc. This one, I believe, is the fourth in the set. My impression is that the wharf comes up in more than four of the 39 poems. I love the image of “the wharf,” a receiver from afar and entrance into afar . . . Among so much else.

A thought: posting one of my 39 poems daily here until there are no more to post and seeing how many regular visitors I lose. . . . (My megalomania assures me that even these poems will be too good to attract new visitors.)
.

Posted in Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 1716 — “Bar Cripe”

Friday, February 6th, 2015

While going through my diary in search of accomplishments, I came across a poetry exercise I’d begun in March: the standard write-a-poem-a-day exercises many have tried–spontaneously, without worrying about whether or not what you wrote was any good. I’d forgotten all about it even though I wrote 39 Poem poems over the course of 39 day, putting them in my diary entries but not here (so far as I know). Often I wrote how bad they were although once in a while I thought one had possibilities. I just skimmed through them yesterday, but collected them into a single file and printed them after noticing a few I thought I might make something of. Looking over my print out, I read the very last poem of the series, and thought it possibly one of my best ever, so decided to feature it in this entry:

Actually, the above has been slightly revised. I had trouble carrying its formatting over into this entry, and at one point accidentally stuck the end of it under the rest of the poem tilted. I liked the effect, so used it as shown. Some of it depends on a reader’s knowledge of other Poem poems of mine, but I think it reasonably accessible to anyone who has read widely in poetry without know my poetry. I love the ending. Note: I myself am unsure exactly what a few locutions mean but keep them for what seems to me their tonal effect.

Posted in Autobiographica, Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago

5 Responses to “Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago”

Leave a Reply

Entry 398 — “The Tide,” a Poem Poem

5 Responses to “Entry 398 — “The Tide,” a Poem Poem”

Leave a Reply

Entry 474 — “Poem’s Boringness”

Leave a Reply

Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago

5 Responses to “Entry 390 — Two Poems from three Years Ago”

Leave a Reply

Entry 580 — “Poem Becomes Another Person”

Leave a Reply

Entry 12 — Line Breaks

Leave a Reply

Archive for the ‘Schools of Poetry’ Category

Archive for the ‘Poetic Practice’ Category

Enter 382 — “Poem’s Intractability”

Leave a Reply

Archive for the ‘Of Poem’ Category

Categories

Pages

Meta