Americanization of Foreign Style, Sense, and Sensibility

[miyako73]

I had a chat with this literary agent. I paid him fifty dollars per hour for two hours. I wanted a feedback that would tell me if my work could be marketed. I basically wanted to hear his perspective as a literary (and a publisher's) agent.

I was shocked by what he told me. My works are too Asian, clean, and affected and won't sell or get published--his short conclusion. It seems even my violent and nightmarish poems are too peaceful. He advised me to Americanize my stuff and not be overtly concerned with grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. because there are American editors for those. Was he bull****ting when he said that? I thought he focused on my raw style, sense, and sensibility.

I thought hard and found his advice sound. One has to dance to a prevailing music. When he gets a stage, he can dance to his own tune. Since I am seriously into this, and I really want to learn and improve, I have decided to try that American style, sense, and sensibility, an experiment of sort in my part. I want to hoard poetry collections. I pick three male and three female poets:

Wallace Stevens
John Ashbery
Robert Lowell

Emily Dickinson
Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath

Do you think those are enough for my Americanization experiment? Thank you very much!

[Calidore]

I think one agent with one point of view is an awfully small sample to base such a change on. I also think you should exhaust all options for writing in your natural voice before trying to force an unnatural voice on your work. FWIW.

[islandclimber]

I might try to find a contemporary American poet or two, seeing as 5 of the 6 on your list have been dead for at least 35 years. I mean did he suggest you follow American trends 50-100 years old, or contemporary American trends?

I'm all four reading new authors/poets, and being influenced in one's own style by said writers, but I wouldn't forcefully push it through. Immerse yourself in American poetry of the last 100 years and see what comes of it without trying too hard to change your style.

Myself, I'm partial to the Eastern European trend in contemporary literature, which has not been so overwhelmingly influenced by Latin American literary movements...

[miyako73]

Thanks, Cal. It will just be an on-the-side thing. Learning elliptical writing and adding noises, layers, textures, dirt, chaos, and confusion in my writing style, I hope, will be fun.

Thanks, Island. I don't want to read new authors. I want authors whose works have traces of the old senses and hints of the traditional sensitivities, yet modern or contemporary to my hearing and feeling.

[JCamilo]

Of course, you must look for other views, but do not dismiss his opinion entirely. It is not surprising that he may have not found your nightmares that scary, they have enough disturbing stuff on their own. About the grammar, ortography, etc, he is being pratical. Any publishing house will hire someone (or more) to review your work for this. They are usually more nitpicking, detailists and know more about the subject than most writers. If you domain is good enough, your text can sustain a first view by the editor and then someone will work on it. So, you do not need to be a Flaubert, taking 2 months to finish page and can focus on something else.

[JBI]

I had a chat with this literary agent. I paid him fifty dollars per hour for two hours. I wanted a feedback that would tell me if my work could be marketed. I basically wanted to hear his perspective as a literary (and a publisher's) agent.

I was shocked by what he told me. My works are too Asian, clean, and affected and won't sell or get published--his short conclusion. It seems even my violent and nightmarish poems are too peaceful. He advised me to Americanize my stuff and not be overtly concerned with grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. because there are American editors for those. Was he bull****ting when he said that? I thought he focused on my raw style, sense, and sensibility.

I thought hard and found his advice sound. One has to dance to a prevailing music. When he gets a stage, he can dance to his own tune. Since I am seriously into this, and I really want to learn and improve, I have decided to try that American style, sense, and sensibility, an experiment of sort in my part. I want to hoard poetry collections. I pick three male and three female poets:

Wallace Stevens
John Ashbery
Robert Lowell

Emily Dickinson
Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath

Do you think those are enough for my Americanization experiment? Thank you very much!

He's just bull****ting you. It's impossible to sell poetry without connections and even more difficult to live off of it. Still, all those are old poets. Hardly cutting edge at all.

Basically that 100$ was wasted. If you want to get published in poetry you need to talk to a poet, not an editor.

Even so, if you want my honest opinion, it isn't the "asian" content that is the problem with your work.

[miyako73]

Tell me, JBI, so I may know. Maybe we'll become friends after this. :)

That $100 I gave was my decision so he would really read the stuff I gave him and he would be honest with me.

Can you recommend books that can help me with my project? Thank you.

He also said this:

"If you read too much Rumi or Li Po, slow down. They will corrupt your voice."

I don't plan on living off of poetry. I have parents I go to for my rent, food, even gambling allowance. And if they die, the more I don't need a job or a published poetry book to survive. I just want to grapple with this challenge called "being published" not self-publication, which I can easily do. They also just want me to write without worries. So, I want to learn and improve and eventually get published at the age of 40 or 50, if I'll still be alive or if I won't relapse. I'm 30 and some months, dyslexic, and bipolar. Thank you very much.

[JBI]

Tell me, JBI, so I may know. Maybe we'll become friends after this. :)

That $100 I gave was my decision so he would really read the stuff I gave him and he would be honest with me.

Can you recommend books that can help me with my project? Thank you.

He also said this:

"If you read too much Rumi or Li Po, slow down. They will corrupt your voice."

I don't plan of living off of poetry. I have parents I go to for my rent, food, even gambling allowance. They just want me to write. I also just want to learn and improve and eventually get published at the age of 40 or 50. I'm 30 and some months, dyslexic, and bipolar.

The "Asian" authors you speak of would actually help your poetry a lot. The main problem you have is you are self-absorbed on your poetry without the quality of sharing. Poetry is fundamentally a sharing art and must draw in the reader with something to be provoking a kind of interest. For the most part your poetry reads like somebody trying to be clever with themselves.

Keep it simpler and use better, not bigger words. Also give up the I and replace it with the You or We. Generally verse works best with solid sort of concrete metaphors that are pungent.

Even so, publishing poetry is near impossible without a real connection.

Either way, if you want someone to take you seriously, I suggest you break with both confessional trends and what you call Asian trends. The reason that, for instance Wang Wei wrote good Buddhist poems was not because he was writing Buddhist poems, but because he was a Buddhist writing poems that were good. Stop thinking of "using" and start using what you are thinking. That way you at least will be authentic.

Basically read 1000 poets and stop reading or thinking about them while writing. If someone wants to read them, they will read them. You need a more original style anyway, and if you wish to be influenced, you better understand the material.

Almost everyone using "Asianisms" in their works do not understand what they are talking about, and are thirdaging the material for an audience that either is eating kitsch or else doesn't care. I am yet to really see Chinese poetry incorporated as a sort of Chinese poetry in English verse. Even translation kind of "loses" the poetics of the original, so a third rate imitation of a translation is even worse. Goes the same with Arabic references and with Indian references. Even educated sorts like Eliot did some real butchering with Indian content, but he managed to get some of its essence.


I guess one of the differences is between believing and using. Believing, or enjoying works far better than using. So if you hold the artistic feeling for the work beyond an elementary level. That is, if you are buddhist actually, then Buddhism in your poetry will not be too artificial. My Chinese professor totally flopped on that notion while writing about Buddhism in Chinese poetry, while "looking" for keywords and ideas, he failed to see that virtually every post was a believer, most donating to monasteries and conversing with monks. You don't talk of them as writing Buddhist poetry, which is a fallacy, since we don't talk of Marvell writing "Christian" poetry in the sense that the verse is restricted.

if you are going to use other styles, make sure you agree at least with their aesthetic sensibilities. Don't copy them, make them personal, or don't touch them. As for grammar, write the poems that work for you in your own grammatical idiom.

[miyako73]

You are actually nice for taking your time, JBI.

That's another perspective I should look and try--an authentic Asian voice displaced in a disorienting marginal space, which is still Buddhist in concept like "lotuses blooming in fire" or "water lilies blossoming from mud".


Thank you.

[JBI]

It's lotus that blossoms from mud. That's why the image is often used to describe pretty girls from poor families.

There is no authentic Asian voice anyway. There is only an authentic voice. You would not say lotus blossoming from mud, since everyone knows lotus blossoms from mud, you would just say lotus and let the connotation sit there. Then if you wanted to play differently, you would say "lotus steps" to describe a woman's walking, which would both suggest elegance as well as the Buddha's steps after birth which he took in four directions, lotus blossoming in each (according to legend). But the metaphor is also deeper since it evolved into the lotus "feet" of bound feet, which symbolize both beauty as well as virtue (virtue from suffering, a neat metaphor, or beauty in suffering, another metaphor).

There is a lot you can do with any metaphoric tradition as long as you actually subscribe to the tradition.

[miyako73]

JBI, my request: please quit antagonizing me with small and negligible stuff and with things you can easily find yourself. Engaging with you is tiresome. I feel I have to prove or support every word I say to you. I see that as laziness on your part.

That thought "water lilies blossoming from mud" (water lily-mud pairing) popped up in my mind just like that. If something pops up in my mind that is coherent and clear, I am pretty sure it has a basis or source. My mind is full. I cannot keep on parrying your petty challenge. Just to find this poet, I wasted thirty minutes. Please don't tire me. Like you, I also read to the point that reading is now tired of me--how that happens, it seems, is only unique to me.

Zhou Dunyi
Song Dynasty

"I love water lily more.
It is pure and clean though it grows out of mud."

Chou Tun-I of Tang Dynasty also paired water lily with "slimy bed" (mud).


Regarding authentic Asian voices, they exist in the American literary landscape. They are unique voices appropriating their foreignness in America. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, her voice is Indian, but her stories situated in the US are American.

Thus, in my previous post, I said "an authentic Asian voice......." because there are many Asian voices in America today.

[JBI]

I was not meaning to be antagonizing, but rather correcting, but this kind of illustrates my point. Lily is a translation of 莲，or荷 which is better rendered as Lotus(which is its standard rendering now).

Zhou Dunyi and Chou Tun-I are the same person. Both are from the Northern Song.

As for Asians and authentic, I personally do not believe in a so called "Asian" me personally being an "Asian" by descent (Central and North Asian) as well as Middle Eastern (Israeli) and a "white guy", a "foreigner" a "Westerner" and everything else. The traditional notion of Chinese culture had it that anybody versed in Confucian ideas was Chinese by culture, so that the Tang emperors who were ethnically mixed were Emperors. In terms of authenticity, I am far more culturally Chinese than most Chinese people themselves, and have seen more of China than almost anybody except a selection of rich persons and politicians.

In terms of poetry authenticity is the difference between inspiration and copying, so that we do not read derivative poets, and poets composed purely of allusions. Such discussions were made clear in China and elsewhere over a thousand years ago. The main notion is you get inspired, you do not borrow. That's why the lyrical Keats could work the Spenserian verse far better than his philosophical eulogizer Shelley.

As for authentic Asian, you are probably look at as Authentic Asian as you are going to get. Asia itself is a very non-Asian construct.

You missed my main point though, it has to do with borrowing verses digesting and then making personal. Since we now have established the Lotus as a symbol, why would you need a further line about it reusing it. Anybody familiar with the former essay, which is every school child in China, will think you redundant. Merely say Lotus, and Boom, the connotation of growing through the mud, and Buddhism etc are brought in there. Zhou is not exactly talking about a flower anyway. Chinese poetry is quite elusive to readers namely because it is so reliant on metonymy and allusion. Zhou is layering on the meaning by encoding the lotus, rather than merely suggesting a flower. Nature in general rarely functions outside of constructions in East Asian verse anyway. A good book on the topic for Japanese culture is Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons. For China a book has not been written yet in English to any satisfactory level, but with hope will be. Either way, training manuals and poetry anthologies since the 4th century in China have been arranged by "item" categories, such as each flower, each tree, each star, wind, rain, etc to teach about proper use of symbol and allusion. Saying the lotus is good is deliberately calling something else bad, or rather, proclaiming the superiority of the mundane excellence (the lotus) over others. Such categorical referencing is so common that poets have written cycles on every category in the traditional books, such as the imperial poem cycle on things (120. Poems) by Li qiao (Li Jiao) commissioned as a didactic manual by Wu Zetian.

One of the general things people fail to grasp is how assigned Chinese categories are.

[miyako73]

Don't blame me. Blame Han Zao Li

The Water Lily Pond: A Village Girl's Journey in Maoist China

page 234


The Cho Tun I lapse is my misreading of "The Language of Flowers". He mentioned Tang in it with authority as if he already existed then.

Not everyone here is an expert of Chinese Literature. I have one room full of critical theory and studies books, but I only have ten books related to Chinese literature in my bathroom. Please don't be anal with us. Let the small stuff go if it won't affect the flow of the discussion.

[miyako73]

Anyway, let's proceed. I added the poem below for him to read, so I could also get a feedback. One of my minimalist styles is "effortless writing for effortful reading". For obvious reason, I don't find it challenging enough-no language play but play of serenity and silence. Two or three of this are fine, but a collection is surely boredom?


A Monk's Journey


To the left,
the poplar tree
by the river
that murmurs.

To the right,
the bamboo hut
on the hill
adoring the sky.

Behind, the road,
wide,
empty,
barren.

Ahead, the temple
of incense,
of saffron,
of nothing.


I found his response very enlightening. "Why would Americans read that from you when they have been reading Thich Nhat Hanh," he said. I think he is right. Then he added, "Remember Rumi is the best selling poet in America today." I did not know that.

[Lykren]

Personally I don't understand the value of paying a literary agent to have your poems critiqued. Ultimately it's up to you, who writes the poems, to critique them and improve them based on what you see wrong with them.

I don't know if there's any surefire way to go about improving one's poetry, but I feel confident saying that learning to take your time, to be honest with yourself when you write a particularly bad line, and reading lots of poetry, both modern (i.e. written by living poets) and older, are things that might have a positive impact.

What JBI says here:


In terms of poetry authenticity is the difference between inspiration and copying, so that we do not read derivative poets, and poets composed purely of allusions. Such discussions were made clear in China and elsewhere over a thousand years ago. The main notion is you get inspired, you do not borrow.

makes good sense. It is of course difficult to distinguish between novelty that will surprise one time and bore the next, and inspiration that touches on something deeply felt by yourself. Even when you are genuinely inspired, you still have to take the time to craft the poem, otherwise what you want to share will not be communicated as powerfully as it was felt.

[miyako73]

I already got the perspectives of the poets from several workshops I attended, but not those of literary agents. Money makes people do things for you; thus, I offered. It was only one hundred dollars. A good bottle of wine is fifty bucks. Yes, I wasted that money because I wanted to make sense of my mother's old, big LV chest full of my poems. Should I burn them and start all over again with new voice, style, and sensibility? That has been bothering me. How about you? What is your goal if you have been writing since grade school? Do you write for the hell of it? Do you write because it is therapeutic? I think writers must have goals. Even self-publication can be a goal. Anyway, I'm seeing him again end of this year to find out if he can represent me.

I believe JBI's purist contributions are admirable, but he should remember that Western literature is currently in the Postmodern period--particularly in critical analysis and literary appreciation-- in which the purism of the classical Chinese poetry has no place.

[MorpheusSandman]

all those are old poets. Hardly cutting edge at all.Gotta disagree here. Whatever is "cutting edge" in poetry today, those poets have had a tremendous influence in shaping. Ashbery and Stevens seem more cutting edge than most of the poets writing today, and even Dickinson, the oldest poet on the list, is embedded into the sensibilities of every modern, radical, elliptical poet I know of. Even if Lowell and Plath's confessionalism is a bit dated, it's also still producing award-winners like Olds and Gluck. So, I'm not sure what you mean by "cutting edge," but in terms of what I see getting published and winning awards, all those on miyako's list seem like pretty direct influences.

[MorpheusSandman]

He advised me to Americanize my stuff... I thought hard and found his advice sound. One has to dance to a prevailing music. When he gets a stage, he can dance to his own tune. Since I am seriously into this, and I really want to learn and improve, I have decided to try that American style, sense, and sensibility, an experiment of sort in my part. I want to hoard poetry collections. I pick three male and three female poets... Do you think those are enough for my Americanization experiment? Thank you very much!I would agree with JBI that the foreign-ness is not really the problem with your work. That said, I never think it's a bad idea for a poet to immerse themselves in reading great poetry, contemporary or classic, especially from the language they're writing in. Reading contemporary work gives you an idea of what's getting published; reading classic work gives you an idea of what has influenced contemporary poetry; between the two, you should be able to find some mixture of the past and present that gives your work a unique quality. Unlike JBI, I do think imitation of great poets is immensely valuable as a writing exercise. While your imitations will probably be crappy at first, over time you consciously or unconsciously learn what elements of each poet's style you can assimilate into your own, and how various devices, forms, voices, structures, subjects, etc. work in various contexts. It also helps if you can mentally catalog these things, so at first you think "now I'm going to practice this device/mode/style."

Using Stevens as an example, you can see in his early work a "formlessness groping after form" (to reverse a line from The Auroras of Autumn), so that he has incredibly dense, rich, and difficult poems like Owl's Clover jostling up against lyrical, skeletal poems like The Man With the Blue Guitar; he has narrative poems like The Comedian of the Letter C next to collections of short aphorisms like Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery. You can see that by the time of his late long poems--Auroras of Autumn, Credences of Summer, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, An Ordinary Evening at New Haven, etc.--he's found a form and voice that can accommodate all of these modes at various moments, without lapsing into the pitfalls of any of them. On the other hand, there are poets like Dickinson that seemed utterly singular and original from the get-go. I think it's much, much more difficult to achieve that kind of distinct voice and style from the beginning.

Anyway, what I see as the improvements I've made in my own writing has come from a combination of the above method of reading other poets, gleaning what appeals to me in their work, imitating that, and then being brutally honest with myself about my own work and trying hard to understand what I like and what I don't. I won't completely disagree with JBI that poetry is a "sharing" art, but I will say that most great poets seemed to write for themselves first and foremost, and secondly (if at all) for their friends. You don't become Ashbery by trying to write for and appeal to other people, and I do see in poets like him a conscious playfulness that is more concerned with impressing himself and his coterie than publishers/editors (it just so happens he HAS impressed publishers/editors).

Two more pieces of advice: one would be to subscribe to multiple contemporary poetry/literary publications. I have 7 subscriptions myself: Poetry, American Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, Ploughshares, Rattle and Field. They're cheap, and this is a great way of getting an idea of what kind of work is being published, and even in the work you dislike I'd highly recommend trying to understand WHY an editor might publish it. Two is to start sending your work to these magazines (and others). The vast majority of your work will be rejected, but this is true of all authors. When you finally get something published (and you will if you persist long enough), it will do you good to ask yourself what it is about this piece (or these pieces) that got accepted.

Anyway, if I was to offer advice about your work it would be this: Work on incorporating detailed imagery and figurative language. When I say "detailed imagery," I mean to avoid things like, to use this poem (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?78212-A-Stalker-s-Last-Reincarnation) as an example, "profound silence" or "coldness of still walls" or "dull painted ceilings." One can't imagine in a sensuous way the "profundity" of silence, or a cold wall, or dull paint. When it comes to silence, I've found it more useful to render it by what CAN be heard (like Tolstoy rendered silence in War & Peace by soldiers hearing water drops); describe the paint itself, and let its "dullness" be implied in the description; instead of saying the wall is cold, you could, eg, describe a hand touching something cold and compare it to the wall. For comparison, the line "I observed your oiled hands" is nice, but "played with your skin" is weak because it's too general; it would've been better to describe precisely what the oiled hands did. Such a poem, because it's, in essence, a dramatic soliloquy, would also be a good way to play with characterization. EG, the "I saw... I watched... I observed" parallels in S2 could be more suggestive about the speaker's character. The "I observed" is the most interesting of the three formulations as it suggests a kind of detachedness, which is, of course, the OPPOSITE of what stalker's are about. So you may consider making the speaker's language as detached as possible, so as to suggest that this is how s/he sees what s/he's doing, and contrast that against what us as readers see what s/he's doing (ala Browning's My Last Duchess). Anyway, I don't want to get too detailed about this one poem, as these are just some ideas of how to think about writing that you can apply to any piece, even those of a completely different nature.

[islandclimber]

Gotta disagree here. Whatever is "cutting edge" in poetry today, those poets have had a tremendous influence in shaping. Ashbery and Stevens seem more cutting edge than most of the poets writing today, and even Dickinson, the oldest poet on the list, is embedded into the sensibilities of every modern, radical, elliptical poet I know of. Even if Lowell and Plath's confessionalism is a bit dated, it's also still producing award-winners like Olds and Gluck. So, I'm not sure what you mean by "cutting edge," but in terms of what I see getting published and winning awards, all those on miyako's list seem like pretty direct influences.

I'd suggest Plath, though embedded with that "confessionalism" also certainly opened up a new sort of poetic vision that reconciled a kind of domesticity with the surreal, and certainly seemed rife with the issues of second-wave feminism. Morpheus, I know Plath and Lowell are often linked together with confessionalism, yet I've always found Path to be quite a bit more modern in sensibilities than Lowell?

The good thing with Miyako's list is that all of these poets would be direct influences on those writing and winning awards today. I made a mistake in my first suggestion in this thread. Unless one wants to move beyond the contemporary scene, in which case reading much of contemporary poetry/literature would be quite beneficial in order to work on constructing a new paradigm of sorts, one would be better served reading the works of the generation immediately prior, so as to understand how the current paradigm came about. In this case this list is quite appropriate.

[miyako73]

Morpheus, I use the following...

"profound silence"
"coldness of still walls"
"dull painted ceilings."

...because the "I" in the poem is a lizard longing to reincarnate as a man.



The following should be read as a whole...

"When you played with skin,
Sticky hair,
And flacid bones."

...because it is about erotic massage.

Nice pieces of advice. I'll keep those in mind. Thank you.

[MorpheusSandman]

I know Plath and Lowell are often linked together with confessionalism, yet I've always found Path to be quite a bit more modern in sensibilities than Lowell?I wouldn't disagree with this, though what I would say is that I think it was more due to the increasing value of feminist poetics and the decrease in value of "sincerely agonized straight white male" poetics, from which the likes of Berryman and Larkin have suffered too, and less due to any divergences in style/modes between. Both Plath and Lowell could be uncomfortably personal, but Plath's feminist intimacy still has a lot of stock.


The good thing with Miyako's list is that all of these poets would be direct influences on those writing and winning awards today. I made a mistake in my first suggestion in this thread. Unless one wants to move beyond the contemporary scene, in which case reading much of contemporary poetry/literature would be quite beneficial in order to work on constructing a new paradigm of sorts, one would be better served reading the works of the generation immediately prior, so as to understand how the current paradigm came about. In this case this list is quite appropriate.I absolutely agree, though it's a bit difficult to delineate "generations." Lowell and Ashbery are decidedly, at least, a generation removed from Stevens (as the former's major contributions came in the 60s and 70s, and the latter from about the 40s onward); while Plath and Bishop are, at least, several generations removed from Dickinson. I think it might be more helpful to think in terms of poetry "schools" (Confessional, New York School, New Formalists, Black Mountain School, etc.) and how they have influenced what's out there now.

[miyako73]

I read contemporary stuff. I appreciate them, but I always want to dig their early influences--the provenance of their sense, sensitivity, craziness, and confusion. So the six books are the ones I have noticed to be influential. The sparse love poems of Dickinson, I hope, can teach me in trimming down the verbosity of my poetic idea of romance.

[MorpheusSandman]

Morpheus, I use the following...

"profound silence"
"coldness of still walls"
"dull painted ceilings."

...because the "I" in the poem is a lizard longing to reincarnate as a man.I understood what it was about based on your lone comment, but my criticism about their lack of sensuousness still stands. When I finish the poem I can't "see" these things in my head, not like I can "see" Keats' gathering swallows or red-breast, or hear his hedge-crickets; or imagine Eliot's night in the sky like a patient on a table. Such things are memorable because of their specificity and originality. They provoke new and vivid ways of seeing and thinking about the world that we sense. I mean, there are OTHER ways to be memorable (Pope's aphorisms, eg), but I think this focus on imagery and figuration are best suited to the kind of poetry you write.

[islandclimber]

I wouldn't disagree with this, though what I would say is that I think it was more due to the increasing value of feminist poetics and the decrease in value of "sincerely agonized straight white male" poetics, from which the likes of Berryman and Larkin have suffered too, and less due to any divergences in style/modes between. Both Plath and Lowell could be uncomfortably personal, but Plath's feminist intimacy still has a lot of stock.

I hadn't thought about that. You are right there. Probably more so than a genuine difference in "ars poetica", it was the independently arising and increasing value of that second wave of feminist theory. I might be biased towards Plath, as I've always found Ariel to be one of the more haunting poetic collections I have read, partially from an inability or lack of desire to remove the poetry it from authorial context.


I absolutely agree, though it's a bit difficult to delineate "generations." Lowell and Ashbery are decidedly, at least, a generation removed from Stevens (as the former's major contributions came in the 60s and 70s, and the latter from about the 40s onward); while Plath and Bishop are, at least, several generations removed from Dickinson. I think it might be more helpful to think in terms of poetry "schools" (Confessional, New York School, New Formalists, Black Mountain School, etc.) and how they have influenced what's out there now

Schools are a better idea. What do you think of Bracha Ettinger's transgenerational transmission of memory/trauma? A kind of Anamnesis of traumatic histories maybe, that is absent or perhaps unpresentable but at the same time ever-present? Her idea of "the artwork’s working-through of the amnesia of the world into memory is a transcryptomnesia: the lifting of the world’s hidden memory into its outside with-in-side..." Art/literature as a way of transporting trauma and memory from generation to generation. Perhaps an explanation of the way in which "schools" of poetry, art, literature, etc. transcend and pass through generations.

[kelby_lake]

I would have thought that the 'foreigness' isn't necessarily an issue; in fact, it can be an advantage- and of course, every poet writes about what they know. What he was probably suggesting is doing something like the film of Memoirs of A Geisha- fetishising the East for a Western audience.

But what you should really be doing is hanging out with other poets and get noticed that way.

[miyako73]

That was my initial guess, Kelby, but he was Asian, and he only wanted to be honest with me about the current literary trade.

Now, how do you make a poem not "clean and affected"? I've been reading Oliver since last night. So far, she has said nothing about that. Anyone?

[MorpheusSandman]

I might be biased towards Plath, as I've always found Ariel to be one of the more haunting poetic collections I have read...I certainly don't want to imply that Plath is undeserving of her reputation. I do think she's a very fine poet whose qualities/abilities and influence are both on par with Lowell. In fact, I'd rank them about equally, with perhaps just a slight edge to Lowell given that he wrote so much more (I tend to value artists with greater oeuvres, all other things being equal).


What do you think of Bracha Ettinger's transgenerational transmission of memory/trauma?Never heard of it. Sounds like typical lit-series "loldeep" nonsense from your description. As for that kind of thing, I prefer Bloom's notion of each generation reacting and misreading their predecessors. As for the idea of the trauma/amnesia across generations, that is probably truer in more insular and oppressed cultures. I think of, eg, the films of Theo Angelopolous which are palpably haunted by the traumatic history of Greece. Problem is, we're mostly talking about authors from the dominant cultures, not the oppressed and repressed ones.

[JBI]

I think Plath is mediocre. I get if she didn't kill herself she wouldn't be famous. She is a self-diagnosing hysteric whose rich upbringing in what only seems like a loving home is overshadowed by the tragedy she casts for herself by using imagery from pseudo-scientific nonsense likeFreud.

The audacity of this rich obnoxious woman to trivialize the holocaust by comparing her Elektra Conplex to a Jew in a death camp is both rude and disgusting. Her legacy is to influence countless copycat hysterics who interpret her work as somehow deeper and more tragic then it is, even after pretty much being rewritten by her "horrible" husband.

If you want authentic suffering try reading an author who actually did experience real trauma. The same criticism to Margaret Atwood.

Those poets are all old poets and not cutting edge. They are either dead, or almost, and all have been anthologized and become classroom texts. If you want to write contemporary poetry in the contenporary vein, read contemporary poets and engage in their poetic discussion, not their parents' and grandfathers'.

[miyako73]

JBI, what makes a poem confessional? If you write a poem inspired by your apartment that you find desolate without saying you are mentally ill, is that confessional? It seems to me any poem can be confessional if it's in first person, autobiographical and existentialist.

[sandy14]

Now, how do you make a poem not "clean and affected"?

An affected poem is one that uses poetic technique for no other reason than the fact that you are writing a poem. It is quite common (and I certainly was guilty of this) amongst folk who start writing poems and copy Keats and Wordsworth. This means you get lots of thees and thous and the word order gets reversed or everything rhymes and there is absolutely no reason for it, apart from the fact that "it's a poem."

A clean poem is one that has clarity. The poem is transparent - the poem is not stuffed with big long words that are out of place or make the reader do more work than they have to. The reader should be able to get an understanding of the poem without needing to be aware of thousands of years of poetical history or look stuff up. Sometimes you get "rabbit in the hat" poems where the first few verses hide the topic from the reader, and then the last verse reveals all and the reader is supposed to be impressed. It doesn't work. Clean means the reader can follow the line of thought/sound through the poem without being misdirected by overused or careless use of language. This includes the use of clichés which communicate very little to the reader.

I think Walter Carlos Williams and Robert Frost's poems are probably good examples of both.

However the style of "clean" poetry has come under fire. It is a good discipline to write "clean" poems, but poetry does not always have to be "clean" to work.

[MorpheusSandman]

If you want authentic suffering try reading an author who actually did experience real trauma.I don't give a fig about Plath's biography or early death, nor how (in)authentic her "suffering" was as depicted in her poetry. I read "Daddy" as a delightful linguistic and rhythmic romp. Plath may fall short of being "great," but she is not mediocre either (unless you are one of those whom have a perversely high standard; like, if a poet isn't one of the top 50 poets ever in their language then they're "mediocre.").


Those poets are all old poets and not cutting edge. They are either dead, or almost, and all have been anthologized and become classroom texts. If you want to write contemporary poetry in the contenporary vein, read contemporary poets and engage in their poetic discussion, not their parents' and grandfathers'.Way to repeat yourself and ignore what I said. Being dead, almost dead, anthologized, or a classroom text doesn't prevent a poet from having a profound influence on what's contemporary. Gluck and Olds, both recent winners of major poetry awards, including the Pulitzer, are essentially working off the template of Confessionalism that Plath and Lowell pioneered. I don't see that any wannabe-contemporary poet would get more out of reading them than Plath or Lowell. In fact, perusing over a list of contemporary Pulitzer winners, I see nothing but a list of poets who are working firmly in traditions established mostly by poets before the 1950s, and in most cases I'd be more inclined to refer someone to their predecessors.

[JBI]

I don't give a fig about Plath's biography or early death, nor how (in)authentic her "suffering" was as depicted in her poetry. I read "Daddy" as a delightful linguistic and rhythmic romp. Plath may fall short of being "great," but she is not mediocre either (unless you are one of those whom have a perversely high standard; like, if a poet isn't one of the top 50 poets ever in their language then they're "mediocre.").

Way to repeat yourself and ignore what I said. Being dead, almost dead, anthologized, or a classroom text doesn't prevent a poet from having a profound influence on what's contemporary. Gluck and Olds, both recent winners of major poetry awards, including the Pulitzer, are essentially working off the template of Confessionalism that Plath and Lowell pioneered. I don't see that any wannabe-contemporary poet would get more out of reading them than Plath or Lowell. In fact, perusing over a list of contemporary Pulitzer winners, I see nothing but a list of poets who are working firmly in traditions established mostly by poets before the 1950s, and in most cases I'd be more inclined to refer someone to their predecessors.
No doubt, the same way Homer influenced the Renaissance, yet nobody in the Renaissance was writing to imitate Homer.

There is a difference between being relevant and being current. Poetry is a fashion, and each periodical displays its perspective on this fashion - the same way that tastes in clothing move, so do poetic tastes. The form develops, even though the foundations remain the same. Nobody is writing to imitate Wallace Stevens anymore, despite everyone being pretty much indebted to his poetic idiom (at least in the States). The same is true to a lesser or greater extent with the whole lot of them. They are not current or fashionable (which is generally what the post is about, how to imitate the current "market" trend, which is, a fashion). Do I agree with such a discussion, no. But if one is trying to fit in with the contemporary crew, and write contemporary American verse (regardless of nationality) one should read contemporary, not dead or dying, poets.

Now, will that make one a good poet - I don't know. I somehow doubt it. But it certainly will make one fit in with the crowd, and may even get one published. I greatly disagree with your notion of copying until you can create your own. It's more like figuring out what works by trial and error than exactly "copying". Generally I think the biggest problem would be poets face is both lack of self-esteem as well as actual feedback from someone who knows what they are talking about.

[MorpheusSandman]

There is a difference between being relevant and being current...There's a difference, but there's also a continuum. I find it extremely difficult to read Ashbery and distinguish between what's "relevant" and what's genuinely "current." The major difference I see between Plath and Olds/Gluck is that the latter have generally flatter tones and less linguistic/rhythmic flashiness. Yet something like Gluck's Nocturne (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246844), published Dec. last year, very much seems like it could've come out of any Confessional collection from the 60s or 70s. I think you'd be very hard pressed to point out what makes this "current" as opposed to Plath's "relevant." I could also add that a combination of understanding both contemporary poetry and its predecessors would give one more options for how to make uses of both, rather than just one or the other.

Also, FWIW, did anyone ever really write like Wallace Stevens? The more I read from the 20th C, the more Stevens stands out as THE singular artist who created an idiosyncratic style that could only be "copied" in pieces, but not even remotely fully replicated. Really, as for the States' poets' indebtedness, I'd look more to Frost, whose careful modulation of tone, often barely rising above a whisper, sigh, or plain statements, seems far more widespread.


I greatly disagree with your notion of copying until you can create your own. It's more like figuring out what works by trial and error than exactly "copying". Generally I think the biggest problem would be poets face is both lack of self-esteem as well as actual feedback from someone who knows what they are talking about.I would say that the trial and error IS in the copying (though I said "imitation" rather than "copy"). Such imitation was expected of most classic poets, who often even titled pieces "An Imitation of..." I often find that the poets who DO create their own idiom do so out of their failures at imitation. Have you read Steven's early lyrical poetry? It's godawful, even by the standards of its time. Whitman's attempts at metrical poetry weren't much better.

I do agree about the problem of a lack of self-esteem as well as good feedback. It's hard to know where one can get either. Honestly, I have far more confidence in my ability to critique my own work than I do either in others' ability to critique it or my own ability to write it. That probably comes from me having worked at the art of criticism far longer than the art of poetry.

[JBI]

A Monk's Journey


To the left,
the poplar tree
by the river
that murmurs.

To the right,
the bamboo hut
on the hill
adoring the sky.

Behind, the road,
wide,
empty,
barren.

Ahead, the temple
of incense,
of saffron,
of nothing.



Just to give a real sense of feedback.

To the right,
the bamboo hut
on the hill
adoring the sky.

To the left,
the poplar tree
by the river
that murmurs.

A poplar to the left, by the murmuring river.
A bamboo hut on the right, adorning the sky.
The Road, behind, wide and barren.
Forward, the temple, hidden within Clouds;
Incense and Saffron and Emptiness.

That would be closer to the feeling of Chinese I would get, but there still isn't enough direction in the poem. I don't think pure ekphrastic description without any verbs work in English though. Generally it works in Chinese since the language has implied verbs, and nouns hold a heavier weight than in English, which they do not. Likewise the notion of gaze exists more than in English, since the direction of the poem is brought forward in a different sort of idiom which is very hard to explain. The main thing missing from the poem, however, is verbage or movement. One does not merely circle the subject, one must move into it. Generally this is one in a five character line by putting a verb - usually a directional verb signifying movement or existence, in the 3rd character slot, thereby separating two images on each line, with an 8 line series of 4 couplets having perfect room for parallels on the 2nd and third couplets, where much of the abstraction of the poem (and the famous quotes) appear.


A Poplar waits to the left by the humming rivulet
A Bamboo hut stands to the right, the sky vast above
The Road behind, steep and glazed with autumn dew.
Forward, the smell of Incense, hidden within the Emptiness of Clouds;

Even with twisting the poem around, I cannot help but feel it too contradictory to be capturing anything of a "moment". A temple on a hill with a river which houses a recluse would not have a barren and desolate path, especially with a river there, marking vegetation, and a hut there, symbolizing a presence (the recluse is the mountain, and the mountain is the recluse).

Generally the act of climbing the mountain is a movement through a sort of spiritual echoing within the stillness of scenery. in mahayana terms, it is a sort of spiritual awareness through an enhanced form of vision - the world that is empty, and the enhanced total vision granted by a sort of spiritual breakthrough into emptiness (Sunyata). The idea of transcending is the point of the road into emptiness, through ritual. Yet all the metaphors must work.

The art of the form of landscape in East-Asian verse, something which I cannot write, is making the visual scene both immediate and universal, both metaphorical and literal at the same time. So the painting is painting a scenery, but it is also expressing the sort of political, or philosophical mentality of the world as seen by the artist when it is conceived - the twisting river, and the dangerous mountains showing inner uncertainty, or the calm murmuring of birds by a soft gentle river expressing peace and harmony. This all works through association and informed codes readers share more so than through direct speech. That is why Wang Wei, one of the most beloved poets by Western readers is also incredibly misunderstood. His verse is incredibly complex in the original, and layered with numerous possible interpretations - both political and philosophical/religious.


I'm not saying to write like this, or to write in such forms, just pointing that Chinese verse is incredibly difficult, and even harder to understand within the limits of English. Writing the recluse, be it a Daoist or a Buddhist is a common theme, yet it is very difficult to do well without a very tight command of both metaphors of landscape and a general knack for the language of poetry to make it flow smoothly (something I personally lack).

If Buddhism is a theme you wish to explore in your verse (and it is a good theme to explore in verse, even with the contemporary market, as the US in particular loves everything "Asian") then you perhaps would like to pay closer attention to the philosophical and poetic understandings of the religious body, which has a very nice collection of scholarship and translation in English and French. The general ideas of the landscape experience have been written about as well, though you perhaps are not so interested.

[miyako73]

Can you critique it using the minimalism of zen?

[JBI]

Can you critique it using the minimalism of zen?
Real Zen or hollywood Zen. There is a difference. Generally the poem is a stack of cliches, some out of place.

[miyako73]

The Zen of Ryokan.

[sandy14]

[QUOTE=miyako73;1253150]I wanted a feedback that would tell me if my work could be marketed. I basically wanted to hear his perspective as a literary (and a publisher's) agent.

QUOTE]

If you are looking at marketability, it is worthwhile taking a look at the top poetry selling lists. I took a look at Amazon UK, Amazon .com and Waterstones' websites and the results are interesting.

In the UK, the top poet is Pam Ayres with her new book, and collected poems. She's on tour at the moment. John Cooper Clark also features - Both Ayres and Clark have been performing poems since the 70's. It seems that one way to make poems marketable is to perform them and perform them and perform them and the book sales will follow. Neither poets are particularly experimental - they both use rhyme and have a direct way of writing - of course their style is different but I think that if you look at what they actually do, there are more similarities than differences.

Lang Leav features in both the US and UK with a book called Love & Misadventure. It's an illustrated poetry book and the poetry doesn't really look all that great, in my opinion, but it looks like a book that's selling well for Valentine's day. The target market looks like teenage girls. The Prophet also features strongly on both sides of the Atlantic. Larkin seems to occupy the UK slot that Bukowski occupies in the UK. In addition Ginsberg & Heaney are popular in the US & UK.

In addition there are the academic titles - Homer & Dante and the staples of most University courses.

I find the best sellers lists an interesting antidote to the academic discussions of poetry. The simplest and most direct poetry seems to be the stuff that sells best, and I think that's something worth bearing in mind. Of course, poetry can be "difficult" and it does not always have to bow to what's commercial (and frequently does not). But, if you are looking at making poetry "more marketable" it would be worthwhile taking a look at what books are selling now. It isn't the most cutting edge stuff, rather it is the stuff that is most familiar - common in a way (and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense).

[JBI]

The Zen of Ryokan.

It's suffering from what he might call "monkey brain." Too many images and trying to say too much without capturing the essence of the moment. So you have 4 directions, and 4 images, and you are trying to develop all of them at once, yet none of them is seeing the form beyond the form (the infinite behind the specific). Try instead one line: The barren road behind, in front, incense floating through spring clouds. But even that is not a particularly good poem.

[Whosis]

Make sure you get a good publishing company that will want to invest in editing. Not all companies are great at editing. It may be different for large traditional publishers.

If you want famous US poets, two of them are Robert Frost (literary poet) and Shel Silverstein, who writes mostly for children. I've found that John Grisham is an excellent example of an author who can write **** and command a following. Most writers have their own style. I think the selling factor may be just how many books you've written or intend to write. More can sell. I personally would advise against writing just for what you expect others want to read. You can always adjust and flop anyway, whereas if you wrote what you wanted to write, you'd have the pride that you did some of it for yourself--and true to yourself.

I think there's likely to be editing concerns for almost any written book. Sprucing up the plot (if this is a case) is important. I'm falling on somewhat hard times for that myself right now. If you consider The Good Earth, which is about all I know about an American perspective on Chinese culture in literature, the hero is a clean character, but he falls to certain evils in the book. Maybe that book would provide a perspective into yourself with its obvious mix. Pearl Buck, its author, lived in China for a while, which drew out the influence. If you want a considerably American novel, consider The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, which showed the struggles of an American working class during the Dust Bowl.

Maybe your gambling will help you explore a darker self? It comes up sometimes in American movies. I must mention that Gershwin, an American composer, once sought the counsel of Ravel for how to write his music. Ravel basically told him he could train him to be a second-rate Ravel or he could go on to be a first-rate Gershwin.

I think it depends on where you want to publish. Self-publishing is always an option. If it were me, I would try to heed the mentioned scenario about Gershwin. Writing isn't always a money-making proposition, and neither is music. Btw, when Ravel heard how much more Gershwin was making than himself, he advised Gershwin stick to his own guns. There will always be people who want something different or new. I myself am a fan of Oriental-themed movies.

Please keep us updated on what you do.