Poet Hayden Carruth died last week. I did not read and have not read a lot of his work, but what I did read was good, in my opinion. Also, he did seem to have one of those names that seemed manufactured just for a poet. He's considered an important American poet.
My most specific memory regarding him goes back to an evening maybe two decades ago when I was having dinner with three other poets, Lee Bassett, Sam Hamill (best or most recently known for the Poets Against the War project, but also a fine poet, translator, and publisher), and Madeline DeFrees. This was not long after Richard Hugo had died, and Madeline was angry about a bad review Carruth had written about Hugo--maybe it was about his collected poems. I don't know. I never tracked down the review. I just remember that Madeline, not the type to anger easily, was pretty miffed at Carruth's review, especially where it (according to her) had observed that Hugo "had no hear"--for poetry, that is. Hugo's poetry is deliberately clipped and sometimes purposely monotonous and/or staccato, but he had a great sense of language. My own view is that he was writing in the way he'd heard language when he was growing up, working class, Pacific Northwest. And he just leaned more toward the Anglo Saxon side of the language as opposed to the Latin side. Carruth probably just didn't get what Hugo was doing, but Hugo had studied with Roethke, after all, and Roethke was all about sound. If you've read Hugo's The Triggering Town, you know Hugo was almost all about sound, too.
To digress from the digression, the NY Times obituary (which I think I found online) of Carruth mentioned his once saying that he wrote a lot about loss, a statement that made me giggle because, well, don't we all write about loss, even people who don't write? Then I scolded myself for a) giggling and b) writing about loss too much myself. So I made one of those precipitous resolutions. I resolved to write about joy more. I don't know precisely why I chose joy as the opposite of loss when gain, possession, interest-accrued, or permanence would probably have been more reasonable choices as opposites to loss. Fulfilling the resolution hasn't gone all that well, but here's one poem, at least, allegedly on joy--with one of my classic, numbingly obvious titles, which Carruth probably would have hated, along with my poetry, although I doubt if he ever read even one by me, unless maybe one I had in Ploughshares. (Anyway, Mr. Carruth, I'm sorry you're dead.)
Concerning Joy
When an infant laughs,
especially at nothing,
joy has scrawled a note
for anyone to read
and get a giggle.
When people see someone
they love receive what's right,
joy juices a corpuscle of time.
When you sense that thing
move through you, the one
that feels as if your bones
just told a joke to your nerves,
which then told your feet
to dance (knowing full well
your feet ache) joy just might
have been nearby. Mercurial,
needed, and nimble,
as small as a thimble
and as big as a moon,
joy is, I'm telling you,
welcome most any time,
including midnight,
noon, and soon. I'm
saying something about
joy, okay? I'm not trying
to reproduce it, so don't
get all joyless on me. If
joy comes to you, let it.
If it doesn't, ask around.
See what you can find out.
Somebody has to know something.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
Showing posts with label Joyce Kilmer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joyce Kilmer. Show all posts
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
On Halloween, A Review of the "Holidays"
Since today is Halloween, I thought I'd briefly review some of the "holidays" (using the term loosely, in some cases). I'll start with my least favorite first and work toward the one I like the best; it happens to be the best one for poets, too, in my opinion. Here we go--and don't take offense; if you really like a holiday that I don't, more power to you, and may you write or read a great poem about it:
1. I don’t like the Fourth of July. I know: not liking the Fourth of July is un-American. This kind of thing could have gotten me hauled before a Congressional committee in the 1950s--maybe today, too--who knows? I have two main reasons. I don’t like the interminable noise of fireworks and how such noise terrorizes animals (and there's the problem with fires, too). And if I were inclined to celebrate “the birth” of the U.S., I would probably do it in a more cerebral (and, I admit, boring) way—by meditating on the Constitution and its origins, for example.
2. New Year’s Eve. I used to like this “holiday” a lot, but now I dislike forcing myself to stay awake until midnight, so this is strictly age- and life-style related. I also worry very much about all the drunk-drivers out there, although I do everything I can to stay off the roads. At the same time, there’s really not much pressure to celebrate, so it’s all good, I guess. The Times Square thing was always bizarre for West Coast people because it was tape-recorded.
3. Christmas. I’m ambivalent about this holiday. I rather like a light-oriented celebration in Winter, and the Swedes especially emphasize this part. I also appreciate the celebration of The Birth, just as I appreciate other religious holy days or periods of observance that occur during the same time of year. The shopping part is way out of control; it’s really turned into a kind of national madness. A relatively new Catholic, I tend to like the masses that occur throughout the year, and I like the meditative quiet that “surrounds,” so to speak, a mass. So I did not take immediately to the Christmas-masses, and I learned that many Catholics attend mass only at Christmas and Easter. At the same time, it is pretty cool to see all the children at the mass, and I’ve gotten used to the noise. One simply has to understand and accept that it’s a different kind of mass. I very much enjoy other people opening gifts, as long as they rather like the gift. I enjoy opening gifts, especially if they’re books, of course. Our family has a very eclectic, eccentric collection of tree-ornaments, so there is great quirky pleasure in hauling those out every year. I’m actually in favor of the plastic trees, not just for environmental reasons but because they’re so wonderfully tacky. I haven't been able to convince my family yet, though. My favorite songs are “Go Tell It On the Mountain” and “Mary’s Boy Child,” a Jamaican song. I think the best version is by none other than. . . Vanessa Williams.
4. Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving’s okay because family and friends get together. I don’t like the massive meal, and if one has to deal with air-travel at all, Thanksgiving is hopeless. I think it’s probably a good idea to give thanks. I don’t really get a sense that people think much about the alleged Puritan/Pilgrim origins of this holiday, but I could be wrong--and often am.
5. Halloween is good for kids, I think. They enjoy the costumes. I tend to think of “gothic” writers like Hawthorne and Poe. Trick-or-treating has become dicey because the parents and guardians essentially have to accompany the children like a security-team, and there’s a great deal of pressure to buy huge bags of candy. Many college students seem to like this "holiday."
6. Easter’s good for a Catholic, like me. When I was young, we had the infamous Easter-egg hunts, and my father, being competitive, hid many eggs that were never found. That’s kind of amusing, now that I think about it. Probably the eggs were eaten by raccoons that very night. A cautionary tip for cat "owners": lilies are poisonous to cats, many of whom (of which) like to chew on lilies.
7. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, birthday. I like this holiday very much, not simply because of King but because interesting things happen on or near that day in schools and communities. It’s a holiday that’s handled well, in my opinion.
8. Arbor Day. Not really a holiday, I suppose, and I’ve never really celebrated it. I’ve planted lots of trees, but I’ve never planted one on Arbor Day. I need to do that. I think this Day should be turned into a bigger deal, but I don't want to see it commercialized with Arbor Day greeting cards (that would be environmentally ironic) or Arbor Day gifts.
Most trees are excellent, after all, so why not celebrate this Day? I think it’s an especially good holiday for poets, in spite of Joyce Kilmer’s infamous poem with its extraordinarily mixed metaphors. Joyce was a man, as you probably knew, and he died in World War I. Ezra Pound thought there were too many tree poems, and that was 60-70 years ago. I don’t think you can have too many tree-poems, although more of them should probably appear online as opposed to on paper, to “save” trees. My favorite tree is probably the oak. Cedars are very admirable, too, and sequoias are impressive. I planted a sequoia next to a Victorian house we once owned. If all the subsequent owners will leave it there, it will tower over the neighborhood one day, and no doubt many poems will be written about it, pax Ezra.
1. I don’t like the Fourth of July. I know: not liking the Fourth of July is un-American. This kind of thing could have gotten me hauled before a Congressional committee in the 1950s--maybe today, too--who knows? I have two main reasons. I don’t like the interminable noise of fireworks and how such noise terrorizes animals (and there's the problem with fires, too). And if I were inclined to celebrate “the birth” of the U.S., I would probably do it in a more cerebral (and, I admit, boring) way—by meditating on the Constitution and its origins, for example.
2. New Year’s Eve. I used to like this “holiday” a lot, but now I dislike forcing myself to stay awake until midnight, so this is strictly age- and life-style related. I also worry very much about all the drunk-drivers out there, although I do everything I can to stay off the roads. At the same time, there’s really not much pressure to celebrate, so it’s all good, I guess. The Times Square thing was always bizarre for West Coast people because it was tape-recorded.
3. Christmas. I’m ambivalent about this holiday. I rather like a light-oriented celebration in Winter, and the Swedes especially emphasize this part. I also appreciate the celebration of The Birth, just as I appreciate other religious holy days or periods of observance that occur during the same time of year. The shopping part is way out of control; it’s really turned into a kind of national madness. A relatively new Catholic, I tend to like the masses that occur throughout the year, and I like the meditative quiet that “surrounds,” so to speak, a mass. So I did not take immediately to the Christmas-masses, and I learned that many Catholics attend mass only at Christmas and Easter. At the same time, it is pretty cool to see all the children at the mass, and I’ve gotten used to the noise. One simply has to understand and accept that it’s a different kind of mass. I very much enjoy other people opening gifts, as long as they rather like the gift. I enjoy opening gifts, especially if they’re books, of course. Our family has a very eclectic, eccentric collection of tree-ornaments, so there is great quirky pleasure in hauling those out every year. I’m actually in favor of the plastic trees, not just for environmental reasons but because they’re so wonderfully tacky. I haven't been able to convince my family yet, though. My favorite songs are “Go Tell It On the Mountain” and “Mary’s Boy Child,” a Jamaican song. I think the best version is by none other than. . . Vanessa Williams.
4. Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving’s okay because family and friends get together. I don’t like the massive meal, and if one has to deal with air-travel at all, Thanksgiving is hopeless. I think it’s probably a good idea to give thanks. I don’t really get a sense that people think much about the alleged Puritan/Pilgrim origins of this holiday, but I could be wrong--and often am.
5. Halloween is good for kids, I think. They enjoy the costumes. I tend to think of “gothic” writers like Hawthorne and Poe. Trick-or-treating has become dicey because the parents and guardians essentially have to accompany the children like a security-team, and there’s a great deal of pressure to buy huge bags of candy. Many college students seem to like this "holiday."
6. Easter’s good for a Catholic, like me. When I was young, we had the infamous Easter-egg hunts, and my father, being competitive, hid many eggs that were never found. That’s kind of amusing, now that I think about it. Probably the eggs were eaten by raccoons that very night. A cautionary tip for cat "owners": lilies are poisonous to cats, many of whom (of which) like to chew on lilies.
7. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, birthday. I like this holiday very much, not simply because of King but because interesting things happen on or near that day in schools and communities. It’s a holiday that’s handled well, in my opinion.
8. Arbor Day. Not really a holiday, I suppose, and I’ve never really celebrated it. I’ve planted lots of trees, but I’ve never planted one on Arbor Day. I need to do that. I think this Day should be turned into a bigger deal, but I don't want to see it commercialized with Arbor Day greeting cards (that would be environmentally ironic) or Arbor Day gifts.
Most trees are excellent, after all, so why not celebrate this Day? I think it’s an especially good holiday for poets, in spite of Joyce Kilmer’s infamous poem with its extraordinarily mixed metaphors. Joyce was a man, as you probably knew, and he died in World War I. Ezra Pound thought there were too many tree poems, and that was 60-70 years ago. I don’t think you can have too many tree-poems, although more of them should probably appear online as opposed to on paper, to “save” trees. My favorite tree is probably the oak. Cedars are very admirable, too, and sequoias are impressive. I planted a sequoia next to a Victorian house we once owned. If all the subsequent owners will leave it there, it will tower over the neighborhood one day, and no doubt many poems will be written about it, pax Ezra.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Sea Monster
One of the first things we learn when we learn to analyze literature is the concept of personification, wherein something non-human is described in human terms: the sun awoke, the tree waved at me, the boulder ignored me, etc. Around the same time, we're likely to get introduced to the broader epistemological concept into which personification fits: anthropomorphism, wherein everything is fitted to a human scale.
It is always tempting, of course, to describe something in human terms; metaphors, similes, and analogies that personify come much too easily to mind, so we're likely not just to personify but to do it in a manner that's cliche: a double error. And if the personifying metaphors are mixed, then (to mix metaphors) we have a hat trick--a triple error.
Even if we don't personify, per se, however, is there any way not to view the world in human terms? True, it's probably better to describe a tree in a way that doesn't compare it to a human body (arms, hands, etc.). In fact, Joyce Kilmer's infamous tree poem gets into trouble because the personification is mixed and the tree-human seems to be doing impossible things, even as we agree to let the tree be human for a moment. But even if we're not explicitly anthropomorphic, aren't we still always implicitly anthropomorphic? . . . . Some colleges have courses with titles like this: "Literature and the Human Experience." As opposed to what? Literature and the dog experience?! All we know is human.
But as poets (not philosophers), we can pretend to emphathize, I suppose. That's what I did in a poem I wrote many, many moons ago. It was the first poem I published in a national journal, as opposed to a school-publication or something local. The basic move I make in the poem is a very old one: writing "as" a creature, so that the creature "speaks." Of course this is not literally possible. It's clumsy poetic ventriloquism. At the same time, the exercise does force a body at least to try to think less self-centeredly; to imagine.
While I was attempting to imagine and empathize, however, I was really mainly just playing with language. The poem is really "about" certain words and sounds I like, and the business about the sea monster is secondary, from my point of view if not the reader's. Also, I think this poem is from a time when I had just begun to study "deep grammar"--the Chomsky idea about the grammar that's allegedly in the bedrock of all our brains. I was learning to diagram sentences using "transformational grammar"; it was great fun, but I have no idea how accurate transformational grammar is with regard to describing what goes on in our brains when we produce language. I see another philosophical problem has reared its head (personification): how well can we know the brain by studying the brain with a brain? Hmmm.
Nonetheless, I did want to demythologize sea monsters--I do remember having that particular goal in mind. Assuming they exist, sea monsters must have a pretty rough time of it. Being a monster in the ocean has to be a tough job. And as if things weren't tough enough, there's always some Ahab out there wanting to turn you into a nemesis or a symbol or both. At any rate, here it is--an old poem about an old sea monster (and thanks to the late Quentin Howard, the editor who took this poem, giving a young writer a boost of confidence):
Sea Monster
I drift beneath a grammar of sharply etched shapes
and clear contrasts. Eddies dance as if to mock
my dumb back as I pass under a cove’s calm surface.
Sometimes a seabird’s shriek thuds through thick
water. I feel forever dark weight of water.
It’s as present to me as my own body as I push
through it with ridiculous flippers. One day I will
just stop and drop to ancient mud;
clouds of mud will mushroom out about me, swirl,
disappear on currents. I’ll roll on one side
with one eye buried in muck and one still staring
at black water mottled with insinuations of light.
A sound will grow in me, rise out of my
mute years, build into a moaning like a sunken
ship’s crushed hull, then race into a scream smothered
by seawater, seaweed. A white bird will cock its head, thinking
it’s heard a fish, dip to the surface, and seeing nothing,
sail back to bright bluffs. I will have become
an inundated continent of grief, overwhelmed.
Copyright 2007
It is always tempting, of course, to describe something in human terms; metaphors, similes, and analogies that personify come much too easily to mind, so we're likely not just to personify but to do it in a manner that's cliche: a double error. And if the personifying metaphors are mixed, then (to mix metaphors) we have a hat trick--a triple error.
Even if we don't personify, per se, however, is there any way not to view the world in human terms? True, it's probably better to describe a tree in a way that doesn't compare it to a human body (arms, hands, etc.). In fact, Joyce Kilmer's infamous tree poem gets into trouble because the personification is mixed and the tree-human seems to be doing impossible things, even as we agree to let the tree be human for a moment. But even if we're not explicitly anthropomorphic, aren't we still always implicitly anthropomorphic? . . . . Some colleges have courses with titles like this: "Literature and the Human Experience." As opposed to what? Literature and the dog experience?! All we know is human.
But as poets (not philosophers), we can pretend to emphathize, I suppose. That's what I did in a poem I wrote many, many moons ago. It was the first poem I published in a national journal, as opposed to a school-publication or something local. The basic move I make in the poem is a very old one: writing "as" a creature, so that the creature "speaks." Of course this is not literally possible. It's clumsy poetic ventriloquism. At the same time, the exercise does force a body at least to try to think less self-centeredly; to imagine.
While I was attempting to imagine and empathize, however, I was really mainly just playing with language. The poem is really "about" certain words and sounds I like, and the business about the sea monster is secondary, from my point of view if not the reader's. Also, I think this poem is from a time when I had just begun to study "deep grammar"--the Chomsky idea about the grammar that's allegedly in the bedrock of all our brains. I was learning to diagram sentences using "transformational grammar"; it was great fun, but I have no idea how accurate transformational grammar is with regard to describing what goes on in our brains when we produce language. I see another philosophical problem has reared its head (personification): how well can we know the brain by studying the brain with a brain? Hmmm.
Nonetheless, I did want to demythologize sea monsters--I do remember having that particular goal in mind. Assuming they exist, sea monsters must have a pretty rough time of it. Being a monster in the ocean has to be a tough job. And as if things weren't tough enough, there's always some Ahab out there wanting to turn you into a nemesis or a symbol or both. At any rate, here it is--an old poem about an old sea monster (and thanks to the late Quentin Howard, the editor who took this poem, giving a young writer a boost of confidence):
Sea Monster
I drift beneath a grammar of sharply etched shapes
and clear contrasts. Eddies dance as if to mock
my dumb back as I pass under a cove’s calm surface.
Sometimes a seabird’s shriek thuds through thick
water. I feel forever dark weight of water.
It’s as present to me as my own body as I push
through it with ridiculous flippers. One day I will
just stop and drop to ancient mud;
clouds of mud will mushroom out about me, swirl,
disappear on currents. I’ll roll on one side
with one eye buried in muck and one still staring
at black water mottled with insinuations of light.
A sound will grow in me, rise out of my
mute years, build into a moaning like a sunken
ship’s crushed hull, then race into a scream smothered
by seawater, seaweed. A white bird will cock its head, thinking
it’s heard a fish, dip to the surface, and seeing nothing,
sail back to bright bluffs. I will have become
an inundated continent of grief, overwhelmed.
Copyright 2007
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