Juliana Spahr's Response (Sun and Moon, 1996)

something encloses the impossible in a fable

an unreal world called real because it is so heavily metaphoric

we can't keep our fingers of connection out of it

**

while the end of lunacy in art was explicit in [name of major historical figure]'s rhetoric

while when the nation turns to art, art loses its divergence

**

some co-opt this language and paint a series of meticulous and beautifully colored monumental images of people imprisoned and alone at the edge of a tedious despair

**

rewritten, the goal of the artist is to prevent reality in a true and concrete manner

**

the poverty of image among the people of [name of nation]

the continual increase in the amount of image a viewer can tolerate

**

a voice stutters in the background of our waking mind

[generic possessive pronoun] stutter is our stutter

or is it the way we define our difference?

stutter is nation

"responding"

NOTE This poem draws from an Oprah episode on the case of Ruth Finley, a woman who, because of "dissociative personality disorder," was stalked by a male persona of herself.

**

this is true

a woman calls her stalker The Poet

this is true

a woman describes a stalker in terms that describe herself

this is true

a woman stalked herself to kill herself

this is true

a woman is at times a man

"thrashing seems crazy"

this is about the role of testimony

the claims of truth in the age of cover-up and misinformation

**

attempts at comfort from those without the vocabulary of comfort

"testimony"

when terrible things happen they must be witnesses

**

how much self can be removed and the self remain?

**

the anger is to draw attention to the way anger is a just response to how they will be angry until just witness is begun

**

the futility of screaming at the assistant well represents the futile necessity of anger

"witness"

The SoundEye Poetry Festival, Cork, 11 July 2009--Part 2 of 2

Saturday night's reading at the Eason Hill Community Centre I'd been looking forward to since I knew I'd be attending: Peter Manson, Maggie O'Sullivan, and Tom Raworth. Some years ago I heard Raworth read at Birkbeck College to a packed, hot classroom--and I hung on his every word; but I'd never had the opportunity to hear Manson or O'Sullivan. 

Manson began with a booming rendition of a page of Adjunct, just republished by Barque. The mix of voices and registers impressed and overwhelmed. Next, at an easier pace, Manson read a new prose poem, "My Funeral," which is a single long paragraph giving intricate instructions for the speaker's funeral, to hilarious effect. One great moment was when Manson read, "Put the polished section of Madagascan ammonite I always carry with me into my left-hand front trouser pocket," and then, from the same pocket, drew out the ammonite to show the audience. The hilarity grew as the poem progressed to its unexpected, outlandish conclusion. I'm looking forward to sharing the piece with my Sudden Prose students next year. 

Manson concluded with a draft of a new long poem titled "The Baffle Stage" and with the delightful epigraph from The Fall's lead singer Mark E. Smith, "The fantastic is in league against me." The piece's relentless momentum and range of language give rise to a distinctive, analytical, intelligent contemporary sensibility. Here are a few passages I especially liked; nb, they don't appear continuously in the poem. Thanks to Manson for giving me his reading script, from which I've been able to confirm these are correct and their line breaks.

idiot guarantees of a back-story

no palindrome / but now you're worried

immersive dimplings of the carapace

pneumatic faith

the poem was acquiring language

 Maggie O'Sullivan began her reading with selections from Red Shifts and Waterfalls (both from Etruscan), which together constitute her project, her/story:eye. Her voice lent a musicality to the poems that enhanced their lyricism beautifully. Here are some choice lines (though there may be errors, sorry):

dead shine rook shrill

many a cascade

askew creased it it the echo

thousand feather

sometimes she cries        sometimes she is again

the song-flooded walls the saturated of red

easel wink marine ecstasy

The second part of the reading focused on two apparently uncollected poems, one using words from John Clare and one titled (I believe) "Jugular Parting Wild Horses." These lines are from the former work:

power hardens roughest wave

brokenly tremble how the land is returned

Tom Raworth informed us that he'd be reading 20 new short poems and "a page of old prose," the latter referring to his Equipage pamphlet, There Are Few People Who Put On Any Clothes (starring it). I enjoyed the reading, but found it too fast for my taste. Here are some choice passages:

supple mental flirtation may be behind you

inflexible in acknowledgment of doubt

the placebo send the placebo

wistful anger

80% prefer chips to poetry

bodies on the street I can't be everywhere

history portrayed by life-size working models

looks like we've got brain matter

I am the projection of my reflections

Afterwards we went to Trevor Joyce's home for conversation into the night. Part of what made SoundEye such a good experience was the camaraderie. I drifted from one conversation to another, everyone I spoke to engaged and friendly, no pretentiousness or preciousness.

Tom Raworth, Swantje Lichtenstein, yours truly, and Luke Roberts 

at Trevor Joyce's after the reading

Bring on SoundEye 2010!

Thanks to Tony Frazer for the photo

"The BBC's poetry season was let down by poor production"

I largely agree with this piece on The Guardian's Books Blog by Nathan Hamilton and would be glad to know others' thoughts.

The SoundEye Poetry Festival, Cork, 11 July 2009--Part 1 of 2

The first event I attended on Saturday was a show of sound poetry at St Fin Barre's Cathedral (great for the acoustics) with three performers, Christine Wertheim (Aus/US), Jerome Rothenberg (US), and Jaap Blonk (NI). Wertheim's sound poems worked through the use of different character voices, frequent sonic repetition, with pure sound (as opposed to words) only employed occasionally. The poems tended to circle back to their beginnings with little semantic content but a suggested emotional trajectory. 

Rothenberg began with sound poems by other writers, including Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters. In the first work, a short Dadaist piece, Rothenberg used a long piece of neon plastic tubing to create a high-pitched whirring sound when he spun it overhead. Between the device and his declamatory delivery, his performance was, for me, reminiscent of Ginsberg. 

Rothenberg's final piece was his own "translation"; here is his account of it: "In '17 Horse-Sons of Frank Mitchell'--from traditional sources in Navajo--I engaged for a number of years in what I was calling 'total translation,' going beyond the semantic level of the words to try to find equivalents for the non-lexical vocables in Navajo song & even one step further, for the music--the melodies--by which the words & sounds were carried. The resultant pieces when performed, for single voice or with multiple chanters/performers, created a new sound poetry both faithful to & totally divergent from its original source. The relation to soundings in our own time & place is also worth noting." In performance the "horse-songs" were nuanced and engaging.

Then came the pièce de résistance, Jaap Blonk, who gave an impressive selection of the range of his work. He began with a new translation of one of his Dutch sound poems into English, "Sound," a work of intelligent, jubilant play, a look of delight recurring on Blonk's expressive face. He followed this with a "phonetic etude" to the letter R, a continuous performance of its range of possible sounds or pronunciations. I couldn't help but smile and laugh in the pleasure and play of Blonk's inventiveness; he has a magisterial vocal flexibility that is impossible to imagine without hearing it for yourself.

Blonk's next three pieces were in an invented language he calls the language of the Underlands--a parallel, he says, to the language of the Netherlands, incorporating Dutch accents, dialects, and suggestions of particular social situations. Perhaps the most delightful was "The Underlands Drinking Song," during which Blonk stumbled this way and that down the centre aisle in the course of his performance; I was sorry when it came to an end. 

The sixth piece was another English translation, "Let's Go Out." As with the drinking song, the performance was not just of Blonk's face and vocal cords but his whole body. There were some lyrically inventive phrases and lines in the piece, including "ravenhorn," "thunder mole," "mist guide," and "was this quiet or was it just misquiet." The final two pieces were Hugo Ball's sound poem, "Lament for the Dead" (1916), and a "Dutch bebop tune," "Oblibumbop" (I'm guessing at the spelling!). If he hadn't ended by wandering off, making the end of the piece uncertain and thus dissipating the last of its energy, I'd have been on my feet in the applause. I can't imagine how it could have been any better: a perfect performance. 

Photo by Tony Frazer. Thanks too to Wurm im Apfel's Kit Fryatt and Dylan Harris for making the recording of Jaap Blonk's performance at their series in Dublin several days prior to Blonk's appearance in Cork.

The SoundEye Poetry Festival, Cork, 9-10 July 2009

I spent the weekend at the SoundEye poetry festival in Cork and, having had a marvelous time, thought I'd review a few of its events here. For those of you unfamiliar with the festival, it's devoted to alternative poetries without advocating a single school, as the founder Trevor Joyce's history explains, and it's been running since 1997. 

I flew in on Thursday afternoon, missing the first day and a half of events but making it to the evening event, the SoundEye Cabaret, including poets, performance art, music, etc. Early on, a couple of individual performances were disappointingly poor (fortunately I don't know the criminals by name), but the quality picked up as the programme progressed. My favourite performance would have to be a performance art/poetry piece by the young Sam Forsyte, formerly of Cork and now resident in Frankfurt. Apparently it was videotaped, so as soon as I have a clip or a link, I'll post it here. I also enjoyed the performance group Boiled String, whose three readers performed John Goodby's cut up of Dylan Thomas's work as well as a Lynette Roberts poem, with a double bassist plucking away in the background. 

On Friday afternoon Kevin Perryman (Ire/Ger), publisher, translator, and poet, Michael Smith (Ire), poet and translator, Swantje Lichtenstein (Ger), poet, and Stephen Rodefer (US), poet and translator, read. Perryman's work bordered on and at times transgressed into a sentimentality reminiscent of southwest American spiritual poetry, with such lines as "the rain won't talk to the mountain" and "never again to hold your hand." Michael Smith divided his time between his translations from Spanish, beginning with several excellent poems by Vallejo, and his own work. He seemed more confident with the translations, as when he read his own poems he sped up to the point of losing some of the nuanced interpretive tones that marked his earlier reading. 

Swantje Lichtenstein proved a revelation. Assuming I can trust the translations, Lichtenstein is a compelling and original poet; I dearly hope a book of her work in English will appear soon. Rodefer ended the set with brusque, vigorous poems that vividly mixed registers, moving deftly amid hackneyed expressions, abstractions, images, etc. with frequent semantic and sonic wordplay. 

That night at Meade's Bar there was a packed open mic, with Mairead Byrne as an ideal emcee. Delights included Kit Fryatt's passionate performance of the original and her translation of an Anglo Saxon work, "Wulf": "It was easy to sunder / what was never together"; and what was the name of the piece Peter Manson delivered so commandingly? 

(Tomorrow I'll continue with reviews of some of Saturday's events.)

"The Mole" by Ben Wilkinson

Ben Wilkinson's first pamphlet, The Sparks, has been published as part of Tall Lighthouse Press's Pilot initiative for poets under 30. It can be ordered directly from Tall Lighthouse. 

The Mole

In the same way that the stone rolled back

from the cave and the grave-clothed

Lazarus emerged, the earth burst

into mounds on the garden, hunks of turf

disturbed by the seemingly dormant

deep-now-surface diggings of it,

boar or sow. Unmovable, unbiddable

by spade or shout: my father and I

watched from the window, dry-brown

heaps churning gently out; blinking,

aerating and tilling the mineral-dead layers

of blank soil, opening up to a sudden downpour. 

Ben Wilkinson

"The Mole" first appeared in The Times Literary Supplement.

Kristiina Ehin's The Drums of Silence (trans. Ilmar Lehtpere)

Translated from Estonian, The Drums of Silence won The Poetry Society's Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation in 2007. The book can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk. Thanks to George Ttoouli for introducing me to Ehin's work.

you learn a foreign language

and chirp the dark sap of your feelings out

but the tall trees of my childhood

have rolled up their swings

and are fleeing for the sea

"Come what will"

the stars crackle

like fires on marsh islands

"your heart falls into my lap"

the moon is making a heavy rope

from the hair of a corpse

and is coming

down

tonight

"the moon howls"

a good man

puts a woman out to grow like woundwort

*

long so long are the years

but

life is fleeting

"woman of gold"

what are we to believe then

here in this land of tree worshippers

where the pulpits still flow with spilt blood

blood

the tree gods were without

last stanza of "the afternoon sun..."

the time is at hand

when you dance your ungainly dance

rub your hips against your shadow

*

the time is at hand

when the iron door of your heart is open

earthen tiles will not burn

the handrail will not waver

you can see what mineral you're made of

what plain water

what rarefied air

"the time is at hand"

fidelity--rough as a man's cheek

raw meet that draws you close

a trail that remains

a trail that can't be abandoned

last stanza of "I smell you at the crossroads..."

our mouths close

innocence and death

tremble in my nostrils

innocence and death

vibrate in your fingers

*

two days later we were suddenly superfluous

our glances strayed along the muddy town

soaked through

we sat in the snack bar

and didn't see through each other's city faces

"on the way to Siberia"

magnanimous night

the gentle fever of sweet scent

in your hair

opening of "magnanimous night"

woods barren of berries and mercies

"it is a time you can see"

...thoughts those free elusive

swallows

fly hither and thither

looking for food from feelings

"to walk and to walk my own road"

the steep shores of sincerity

"down below the city growls"

I paid and went

in dream's muddy buses

no notion of waking

no fear of inspection

the last stanza of "in a dream"

the day lingers

and it's gone

suddenly even the maps are frozen solid

the last stanza of "fog appears imperceptibly"

icicles drip and

the hall door is open

so we can cry

our laughter out

spring came

over our feathered shoulders

and our hearts were kindled aflame like

cleansing spring fires

"man and bird"

dreams are like deer

shy and self-contained

I am a hunter on the foggy shore of dreams

a hunter who never takes aim

but never takes

her eyes off

first stanza of "dreams are like deer"

"Heroin Song 2"

Removed on 8 July

Roy Fisher's The Thing About Joe Sullivan: Poems 1971-1977

Into the purpose: or out.

There is only, without a tune.

timelessness of desire.

*

What's now only disproved

was once imagined.

first and last stanzas of "Timelessness of Desire"

The light is in the earth if anywhere. This is already the place where it was. We've hardly started, and I want to do it again.

last stanza of "At Once"

Beyond him

a dissolution of my darkness

into such forms

as live there in the space

beyond the clear image of an owl:

forms without image;

pointless to describe.

*

I saw what there was to write and I wrote it.

When it felt what I was doing, it lay down and died under me.

*

The kites are the best sort of gods,

mindless, but all style;

even their capriciousness,

however dominant,

not theirs at all.

*

The pilgrim disposition--

...

domestic to-ing and fro-ing

uncoiled and elongated 

in a dream of purpose.

*

Everything still along its level

except the middle zone, the harbour water,

turbulent with the sunlight

even in calm air.

"Diversions"

Instead there is blankness

and there is grace:

the insistence of the essential,

the sublime made lyrical

at the loss of what's forgotten.

last two stanzas of "Some Loss"

On a ground remarkable for lack of character, sweeps of direction form.

first stanza of "A Poem Not a Picture"

                                      I can

compare what I like to the salts,

to the pot, if there's a pot,

to the winter if there's a winter.

The salts I can compare

to anything there is.

Anything.

last two stanzas of "The Only Image"

If you're living

any decor

can make a wraith of you.

last stanza of "Corner"

                  --the turn

where here and there

change places, the moment

always a surprise: 

on an ordinary day a brief,

lightness, charm between realities;

on a good day, a break

life can flood in and fill.

*

Getting home--getting home somehow,

late, late and small.

*

The cemetery's a valley

of long grass set with marble,

separate as a sea.

*

the din compelling

but irrelevant

has the effect of a silence

*

Travesties of the world

come out of the fog

and rest on the boundary.

"Handsworth Liberties"

Whose is the body you

remember in yourself?

*

The light. The rain. The eye. The rainbow--

horizons form, random and inevitable as rainbows

over bright fields of change.

"Inscriptions for Bluebeard's Castle"

Horizons release skies. 

*

After a fair number of years the distasteful aspects of the whole business became inescapable. Our frustrations will die with us, their particular qualities unsuspected. Or we can make the concrete we're staring at start talking back.

"Rules and Ranges for Ian Tyson"

                             Even

love's not often a poem.

"Of the Empirical Self and For Me"

It was still the same sunless afternoon,

no north or south anywhere in the sky.

*

                                    Some things

are lying in wait in the world, 

walking about in the world,

happening when touched, as they must.

"Staffordshire Red"

"The Duration," a new poem

taken down after a few days, as is my custom

"It Is Writing" by Roy Fisher

IT IS WRITING

Because it could do it well

the poem wants to glorify suffering.

I mistrust it.

I mistrust the poem in its hour of success,

a thing capable of being

tempted by ethics into the wonderful.

Roy Fisher

The Thing About Joe Sullivan: Poems 1971-1977 

(Carcanet, 1978)

The day's on fire! (literally and figuratively!)

A few months ago, Claire Crowther and I decided we'd take a week to write, enclosing ourselves in her and her husband's flat in Somerset (without said husband, lovely though he is). When I  submitted the leave form for work, I could hardly believe I was taking a week off solely for my writing--for years I've combined my visits home with writing rather than going to writers' retreats, but since my father's illness and death (that is, since February '07), it's been harder to set aside the time to do so given increased family responsibilities. 

So this is that week. Claire and I arrived in Somerset on Sunday night, made dinner, and talked about our plans. We'd decided to introduce one another to a poet who was important to us; we'd write from first thing in the morning till lunch, then get out for a while, then come back for dinner and to work; we'd comment on one another's poems; we'd read some of the books we'd been wanting to read; we'd get started on some reviews. 

And we've had three heat-ridden, exhausting, vegetarian (with the understanding that I'm not--yet--vegetarian), exciting, tremendous days.

We both came with different goals. I wanted to settle into work on my second book, Divining for Starters; Claire had many poems she wanted to revise; we both had reviews we hoped to start and finish for TLS. Because of mutual determination and reinforcement, we've both been successful. I read and took notes on Jennifer Moxley's Imagination Verses and reread Linda Gregg's Too Bright to See and have begun reading--and loving--Luke Kennard's latest, The Migraine Hotel; I drafted three poems on the first day, two poems each day since, pushing myself to experiment with form and style; and I'm well into my review for TLS, which I expect to finish by week's end. But the least measurable element has been the best--a steady stream of conversation about poetry, romantic relationships, family, and more poetry. I've never had a better friend.

Jennifer Moxley's Imagination Verses (Tender Buttons, 1996; Salt, 2003)

I could have grown tall,

but I awoke to no words and wonder left.

"Home World"

...equal measures

of air and earth

came to me

precious enough,

I wore them

well knowing

my thoughts

would think me

hollow, exiled

to the abandoning

company

of all

my illusory 

ends.

last lines of "Ode on the End"

(double spaced in the original)

down that rabbit hole my liege

I'm a camera gathering brightness

"Bi-coastal Fleshings"

Were we the land's

before we were landed?

"The Winged Words"

Where is my field of wheat,

my flock, my ocean,

my arsenal, my knight errant.

"Ode on the Son"

I dreamt

a petal's depth of hatred

            hovered at my ear

while vagaries worked

            to rough me up.

*

                  A girl,

I have seen tragedy

      consider being

such as we are.

"Ten Still Petals"

and know again

there's a place for us, and such

a country.

end of "Underlying Assumptions"

(double spaced in the original)

Come along, you can join us 

if you lose that proclivity 

for worship--any medium size

planet will do. Just think,

four walls and a microwave

could really keep us busy.

end of "Studio Life"

(doubled spaced in the original)

I grow phallic

with each dissemination

"The Removal of Enlightenment Safeguards"

It's as if to be real

you and I must garner backers

without a rib to call our own.

We make ripples

with daily effort and then suddenly

flood the place with anger.

opening lines of "Ode to Protest"

(double spaced in the original)

enough

ignorance

to fell unclouded truth, truth

like a tunnel to the heart

            fluttering

*

punished dreamer

failed redeemer

man, or country

"The Ballad of Her rePossession"

(double spaced in the original)

...in the frozen field of aim, beside the gift of all intention

            perhaps I'll cry away the day

            perhaps I'll choose a different wreck

perhaps I'll live this appalling destiny

                  in the economy of night.

the end of "Wake"

(double spaced in the original)

I suspect the water's edge is enamored of the water,

a quiver on the surface tells me not the wind

but the wish to drift will devastate the sand.

It is the future's focal infection, this insistence on death, 

like when my mother and father cradled me

as the answer to each other's desperate tread towards union.

For this is a universe where things are not apparent

in their cruelty, but continual, and the sweetness of order

is increasingly evanescent. If I could hide this day forever

from the pleasure of renewal and banish all contingency

from happening I would, but I have never seen planet X

or the wooden ships on the Eastern horizon.

Up until now my life has faced West, sequestered

reason reaching for an injudicious kiss.

second and final stanza of

"The Waver in the Orbit of Uranus Becomes Unexplainable"

...we have built what we imagine

others building. Behind other

summer-lit windows 

there must be wall paper

worth waking up to....

*

                                    It was

the year the phones went dead

on Mother's Day, though most mothers

preferred fully realized human potential

to letters home or regular calls.

"Lucky So and So"

"Survivorman" by Sherman Alexie

Online at The New Yorker.