The Word Woman

 for the memory of W.B.

She remained available to words
any day of time or night.  Sang
words if they wanted thrumming,
mumbled humbled ones, bathed
others in black ink.  Words
were people in her mind.  Without
them she couldn’t imagine the
something she’d be without them.
Come on, come in, she said when
they arrived.  She fixed a place
for each, knew most of their
morphological needs.  They
knew they might denote, connote,
obscure, shade, or just freely lie
around her home.
Toward words she truly
tried to act the perfect hostess.

"Men Who Leave," by Wendy Bishop

Thirteen Ways

(image: Wallace Stevens)

We're going to discuss Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" today in the poetry-writing class. Then we'll do some writing based on prompts springing from the poem--and from other poems that express multiple perspectives.

Arguably, the poem is Stevens at his best: philosophical but whimsical, very playful with language, and pleasantly self-conscious about imagination and imagining. The poem is indelible.

For some reason, I don't like his use of Roman numerals to number the sections. They seem too heavy for the poem--maybe that's it.

If forced to pick a favorite way, I'd probably go with XII:

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

Here we have quintessential "poetic 'logic,'" and also the kind of primitive logic that sometimes operates when one is in or around nature. The lines provide the kind of "leap" that Robert Bly treasures and that he claims isn't in American poetry to a sufficient degree. I also appreciate how comparatively flat the phrasing is--in comparison to that of other sections, where the lingo is lush.

*

Sometimes readers new and not so new to the poem get frustrated by some of the sections, which seem too cryptic to them. The poem is really a bit of linguistic jazz, so listening to it as jazz and not worrying about decoding every "note" comprise one way around the frustration.

My friend, co-writer, and co-editor, the late Wendy Bishop, wrote a superb creative-writing textbook that takes its name from Stevens' poem: Thirteen Ways of Looking For a Poem. It's full of good poetry, great discussions of writing poetry, and superb specific prompts for poems. Published by Longman. And Wendy's own collected book of poems is My Last Door.

And here's hoping the week goes well for you in at least thirteen ways.

Gazelle Ghazal Gets Monday Going

As Ron Padgett notes in his splendid book, The Handbook of Poetic Forms (Teachers & Writers Press, New York), the ghazal is a venerable form of Persian poetry with which the poets Hafiz and Rumi are associated, among others. I'm always reticent to use forms that have such a long history in other cultures because I assume that when the form is transferred to English, it will lose much if not most of what makes it distinctive in its own setting. The ghazal, for example, had its own patterns of rhythm and rhyme in Persian, whereas in English those features tended to fall away. In fact, Padgett's view (p. 88 of his book) is that the contemporary ghazal in English really need only be in the form of (unrhymed) couplets and approach its subject-matter with something of a mystical or philosophical perspective. Adhering to one custom of the Persian ghazal, the ghazal in English may also end with the poet's name. I've brought exactly one ghazal in for what I consider to be a successful landing. It first appeared in Wendy Bishop's textbook, 13 Ways of Looking for a Poem (Longman). Unfortunately, the narrow margins of the blog make what should be long couplet-lines run over, so one will have to make allowances for that.

This Is The Gazelle Ghazal

This is the piano which holds its white hat in its black hands. This is the shovel
that says Excuse me and enters an important person’s office and will not leave.

This is the pebble that politely intrudes and, like a hard seed, sprouts
discomfort. This is the important person, leveled by regret, desperate for hope.

This is the outside, which is rain, and this is the inside, which is dry.
This is the student, who wants to be older. This is the teacher, who wants to be younger.

This is the love affair, so raging it convinced itself it would last forever but ended.
This is the friendship, which began before it knew it began and will not end.

This is the gazelle that springs onto suede savannas of mind as you read.
This is the name that writes the last of the gazelle ghazal: Hans Ostrom.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Poets Today

Although I read and teach a lot of Old School poetry, I also try to continue to read contemporary poets, although it's hard to keep up with the all the poetry that's out there. That's not cause for despair; it's actually cause for celebration. Professor and writer Judith Johnson, I believe, applied the term "a false economy of scarcity" to the impulse some people have to create narrow canons of literature--an impulse that may be guided in part by a fear of abundance. An abundance of literature may make some people feel as if literature is "out of control." It may be out of their control, but it's not out of control. Some people may feel as if, with new literature pouring out all the time, "the standards" may disappear. Canons shift all the time; just look at any poetry anthology from the 19th or early 20th centuries. Standards vary according to criteria, in spite of a yearning to establish the indisputable list of great works.

Among the contemporary poets I've enjoyed reading are, in no particular order, Natasha Trethewey, Marilyn Chin, Mark Halliday, Jim Daniels, Virgil Suarez, Rita Dove, and Kevin Clark--to name only a handful. I like some of Sherman Alexie's poetry, and I've enjoyed poems by Gary Soto, too. I'm partial to my late friend Wendy Bishop's posthumous collection, My Last Door, but I think even if I hadn't known Wendy, I'd be impressed with it.

I also just like reading poetry in the magazines in which I publish, or in magazines I just pick up. Often I don't remember the name of the poet whose work I like. But there's good poetry appearing all the time. In recent years, I've placed a few poems in British magazines, and it's nice to see what sorts or things are going on poetically over there. I've read a smattering of contemporary Swedish poetry in Swedish, and I even translated one. It's by Marie Silkeberg, from her collection, Black Mercury. It appears in a book I wrote with Wendy Bishop and Kate Haake, Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively. Here's the untitled poem (in English):

Mother! my son called in the night.
Mother! I can't see you.

You can, my precious.
You can see my voice.

Listen to the sky now, so wildly blue,
And to black birds when they fly.


Thanks again to Marie Silkeberg.

Copryight Marie Silkeberg; translation copyright Hans Ostrom 2007.

Old Technology

In class we were studying the grim poem, "Ballad for Miss Gee," by W.H. Auden, and the poem refers to Miss Gee's bicycle, which is braked by reversing the pedals. Of course I rode such a bicycle when I was a kid, but I assumed that such old technology had long ago gone by the wayside. So I asked my students if they'd heard of such a braking system, and not only had they heard of it, but several had also ridden such bicycles--and recently. I was thrilled that some piece of old technology had persisted, unlike slide-rules and typewriters--not that I miss either of these items. Technology that persists, however incidental it may be, adds continuity to life.

My late friend, colleague, coauthor, and fellow student Wendy Bishop edited several books for Boynton/Cook-Heinemann publishers beginning with The Subject Is. . . . in the title. The Subject Is Writing, The Subject Is Reading, and The Subject Is Story are among them. They collect essays written chiefly by college teachers but pitched to college students; they're nifty, useful little books, eclectic, grounded, and innovative, just like Wendy was.

I borrowed the template of her titles for the following poem about a bicycle, if indeed the poem is about a bicycle:

The Subject Is The Bicycle

This is not I repeat not about me.
It is about the bicycle.

I could have been anyone and was.
Only the bicycle could have been and was the bicycle:

bent, oxidized, built for flatness but
mis-fortuned to High Sierra.

One wheel rubbed against a chrome
deco fender: a rhythm of wear,

an indentured, oblong Cole Porter
song, a raw wound on physics’ perfect hide.

The bicycle went on to represent me in Congress.
It praised my auto-didactic schemes,

which were not I repeat not about
me but about just trying to move along,

even if the chain needs oiling, even if a slow leak
betrays the tube, even if the handle-bars slip.

Motion means balance. Stasis falls over.
The subject is riding persistence.

Copyright 2007