Poetry Bookclub 2

I was going to quote myself again, from the Stalinist piece I mentioned, but since I fear getting virtually stoned:D, let me use Macbeth to make a point about immersion:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


Macbeth, V.v.19-28 (Macbeth)

This is a famous soliloquy not simply because it conveys the suffering of a once honorable protagonist, but also because of how this suffering is immersed in an imagery which is ultimately comforting in its dramatic outplay. If Plath had done the same with her shallow "I am a Jew" business, maybe I'd have more sympathy, but she does not allow her imagery, such as it is, to merge into suffering and make its own motif. It is terribly bad work and turns my stomach.

Again, I have coupled European/Holocaust history with mental illness and emotional pain, but never to make the comparison with myself. I lose my own suffering and experience of it in the poem. Here is a snippet of what I mean from one of my booklength manuscripts I am submitting, this from Black Bear Review:

Before They Found Him in Neshaminy Creek

Wild eye woman of the northeast in a mug
shot we see you and oh
how the baby cries in the sound of Saturday porcelain
shellac smooth in the squall of bubble bath
social workers fail to discern
bathroom night
knife in the kitchen indeed
night of the long knives, your
mind fractures swastika crosses
/when Hitler invades
Poland is gone to Himmler and the
Black Guard to Gestapo, the
glory of the Reich in a laurel

(snipped)

I can honestly say, knowing my own output, and knowing a good deal of Plath, that I come far closer to what I was hoping to achieve with the force of this narrative (I couldn't resist, but it does go to my point).

THE GOOD WIFE TAUGHT HER DAUGHTER
Lordship is the same activity
Whether performed by lord or lady.
Or a lord who happens to be a lady,
All the source and all the faults.
A woman steadfast in looking is a callot,
And any woman in the wrong place
Or outside of her proper location
Is, by definition, a foolish woman.
The harlot is talkative and wandering
By the way, not bearing to be quiet,
Not able to abide still at home,
Now abroad, now in the streets,
Now lying in wait near the corners,
Her hair straying out of its wimple.
The collar of her shift and robe
Pressed one upon the other.
She goes to the green to see to her geese,
And trips to wrestling matches and taverns.
The said Margery left her home
In the parish of Bishopshill,
And went to a house, the which
The witness does not remember,
And stayed there from noon
Of that day until the darkness of night.
But a whip made of raw hippopotamus
Hide, trimmed like a corkscrew,
And anon the creature was stabled
In her wits as well as ever she was biforn,
And prayed her husband as so soon
As he came to her that she might have
The keys to her buttery
To take her meat and drink.
He should never have my good will
For to make my sister for to sell
Candle and mustard in Framlyngham,
Or fill her shopping list with crossbows,
Almonds, sugar and cloth. ... {excerpt, and a sample for those unfamiliar with McGuckian}

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/12/hobson.htm Review of the biography...ALLEN TATE: ORPHAN OF THE SOUTH by Fred Hobson of the Atlantic.

Is Poetry Still Possible?
"The Nobel Prize has been awarded this year for the seventy-fifth time, if I am not misinformed. And if there are many scientists and writers who have earned this prestigious recognition, the number of those who are living and still working is much smaller. Some of them are present here and I extend my greetings and best wishes to them. According to widespread opinion, the work of soothsayers who are not always reliable, this year or in the years which can be considered imminent, the entire world (or at least that part of the world which can be said to be civilized) will experience a historical turning of colossal proportions. It is obviously not a question of an eschatological turning, of the end of man himself, but of the advent of a new social harmony of which there are presentiments only in the vast domains of Utopia. At the date of the event the Nobel Prize will be one hundred years old and only then will it be possible to make a complete balance sheet of what the Nobel Foundation and the connected prize have contributed to the formation of a new system of community life, be it that of universal well-being or malaise, but of such an extent as to put an end, at least for many centuries, to the centuries-long diatribe on the meaning of life. I refer to human life and not to the appearance of the amino-acids which dates back several thousand million years, substances which made possible the apparition of man and perhaps already contained the project of him. In this case how long the step of the deus absconditus is! But I do not intend to stray from my subject and I wonder if the conviction on which the statute of the Nobel Prize is based is justified: and that is that sciences, not all on the same level, and literary works have contributed to the spread and defence of new values in a broad "humanistic" sense. The response is certainly affirmative. The register of the names of those who, having given something to humanity, have received the coveted recognition of the Nobel Prize would be long. But infinitely more numerous and practically impossible to identify would be the legion, the army of those who work for humanity in infinite ways even without realizing it and who never aspire to any possible prize because they have not written works, acts or academic treatises and have never thought of "making the presses groan", as the Italian expression says. There certainly exists an army of pure, immaculate souls, and they are an obstacle (certainly insufficient) to the spread of that utilitarian spirit which in various degrees is pushed to the point of corruption, crime and every form of violence and intolerance. The academicians of Stockholm have often said no to intolerance, cruel fanaticism and that persecuting spirit which turns the strong against the weak, oppressors against the oppressed. This is true particularly in their choice of literary works, works which can sometimes be murderous, but never like that atomic bomb which is the most mature fruit of the eternal tree of evil."

{from Montale's Nobel Lecture}

In Search of the Present
"I begin with two words that all men have uttered since the dawn of humanity: thank you. The word gratitude has equivalents in every language and in each tongue the range of meanings is abundant. In the Romance languages this breadth spans the spiritual and the physical, from the divine grace conceded to men to save them from error and death, to the bodily grace of the dancing girl or the feline leaping through the undergrowth. Grace means pardon, forgiveness, favour, benefice, inspiration; it is a form of address, a pleasing style of speaking or painting, a gesture expressing politeness, and, in short, an act that reveals spiritual goodness. Grace is gratuitous; it is a gift. The person who receives it, the favoured one, is grateful for it; if he is not base, he expresses gratitude. That is what I am doing at this very moment with these weightless words. I hope my emotion compensates their weightlessness. If each of my words were a drop of water, you would see through them and glimpse what I feel: gratitude, acknowledgement. And also an indefinable mixture of fear, respect and surprise at finding myself here before you, in this place which is the home of both Swedish learning and world literature.

Languages are vast realities that transcend those political and historical entities we call nations. The European languages we speak in the Americas illustrate this. The special position of our literatures when compared to those of England, Spain, Portugal and France depends precisely on this fundamental fact: they are literatures written in transplanted tongues. Languages are born and grow from the native soil, nourished by a common history. The European languages were rooted out from their native soil and their own tradition, and then planted in an unknown and unnamed world: they took root in the new lands and, as they grew within the societies of America, they were transformed. They are the same plant yet also a different plant. Our literatures did not passively accept the changing fortunes of the transplanted languages: they participated in the process and even accelerated it. They very soon ceased to be mere transatlantic reflections: at times they have been the negation of the literatures of Europe; more often, they have been a reply."

{from the Nobel Lecture by Octavio Paz}

Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Fontan in Odessa, Ukraine. Her childhood does not appear to have been happy; her parents separated in 1905. She was educated in Tsarskoe Selo (where she first met her future husband, Nikolay Gumilyov) and in Kyiv. Anna started writing poetry at the age of 11, inspired by her favourite poets: Racine, Pushkin, and Baratynsky. As her father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, she chose to adopt the surname of her Tatar grandmother as a pseudonym. .


Grey-Eyed King (1910)
Hail to thee, o, inconsolate pain!
The young grey-eyed king has been yesterday slain.

That autumnal evening was stuffy and red.
My husband, returning, had quietly said,

"He'd left for his hunting; they carried him home;
They found him under the old oak's dome.

I pity his queen. He, so young, passed away!...
During one night her black hair turned to grey."

He picked up his pipe from the fireplace shelf,
And went off to work for the night by himself.

Now my daughter I will wake up and rise --
And I will look in her little grey eyes...

And murmuring poplars outside can be heard:
Your king is no longer here on this earth.
Many of the male Russian poets of the time declared their love for Akhmatova; she reciprocated the attentions of Osip Mandelstam, whose wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam, would eventually forgive Akhmatova in her autobiography, Hope Against Hope. In 1910, she married the boyish poet, Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for lion hunting in Africa, the battlefields of World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband did not take her poems seriously, and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous Neo-Eurasianist historian.

Silver Age
In 1912, she published her first collection, entitled Evening. It contained brief, psychologically taut pieces which English readers may find distantly reminiscent of Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy. They were acclaimed for their classical diction, telling details, and the skilful use of colour. By the time her second collection, the Rosary, appeared in 1914, there were thousands of women composing poems "in honour of Akhmatova." Her early poems usually picture a man and a woman involved in the most poignant, ambiguous moment of their relationship. Such pieces were much imitated and later parodied by Nabokov and others. Akhmatova was prompted to exclaim: "I taught our women how to speak, but don't know how to make them silent".

Together with her husband, Akhmatova enjoyed a high reputation in the circle of Acmeist poets. Her aristocratic manners and artistic integrity won her the titles "Queen of the Neva" and "Soul of the Silver Age," as the period came to be known in the history of Russian poetry. Many decades later, she would recall this blessed time of her life in the longest of her works, "Poem Without a Hero" (1940–65), inspired by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.
{from the reference section of dictionary.com}

Her years at Vassar were tremendously important to Bishop. There she met Marianne Moore, a fellow poet who also became a lifelong friend. Working with a group of students that included Mary McCarthy, Eleanor Clark, and Margaret Miller, she founded the short-lived but influential literary journal Con Spirito, which was conceived as an alternative to the well-established Vassar Review. After graduating, Bishop lived in New York and traveled extensively in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and North Africa. Her poetry is filled with descriptions of her journeys and the sights she saw. In 1938, she moved to Key West, where she wrote many of the poems that eventually were collected in her Pulitzer Prize-winning North and South. In 1944 she left Key West, and for fourteen years she lived in Brazil, where she and her lover, the architect Lota de Macedo Soares, became a curiosity in the town of Pétropolis. After Soares took her own life in 1967, Bishop spent less time in Brazil than in New York, San Francisco, and Massachusetts, where she took a teaching position at Harvard in 1970. That same year, she recieved a National Book Award in Poetry for The Complete Poems. Her reputation increased greatly in the years just prior to her death, particularly after the 1976 publication of Geography III and her winning of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Bishop worked as a painter as well as a poet, and her verse, like visual art, is known for its ability to capture significant scenes. Though she was independently wealthy and thus enjoyed a life of some privilege, much of her poetry celebrates working-class settings: busy factories, farms, and fishing villages. Analyzing her small but significant body of work for Bold Type, Ernie Hilbert wrote: "Bishop's poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist's discretion and attention. Unlike the pert and wooly poetry that came to dominate American literature by the second half of her life, her poems are balanced like Alexander Calder mobiles, turning so subtly as to seem almost still at first, every element, every weight of meaning and song, poised flawlessly against the next."
{this is quoted from the Poetry Foundation website}

Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963)
In the six months before her suicide in a London flat, SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963) produced poems of shocking intensity

at a fever pitch; collected in Ariel (1965), these won her enduring posthumous fame. Born in Massachusetts and

educated at Smith College, Plath had crossed the Atlantic with her English husband, the poet Ted Hughes; he and two

young children survived her. Among Plath’s other popular works is The Bell Jar, (1963) an autobiographical novel.
{from the Poetry Foundation}----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-Sleep in the Mojave Desert
by Sylvia Plath


Out here there are no hearthstones,
Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry.
And the air dangerous. Noonday acts queerly
On the mind’s eye, erecting a line
Of poplars in the middle distance, the only
Object beside the mad, straight road
One can remember men and houses by.
A cool wind should inhabit those leaves
And a dew collect on them, dearer than money,
In the blue hour before sunup.
Yet they recede, untouchable as tomorrow,
Or those glittery fictions of spilt water
That glide ahead of the very thirsty.

{first stanza, of two}

To all the Plath disenters: Ok, that was one poem "Daddy". I'm sure there is a poem by everyone who has ever written that I can find I don't like. But you are indicting her entire work. Surely she was young and didn't get a chance to write fully and reach her maturity. I'm not saying she's the greatest poet of the 20th century, but I thnk there are enough poems of quality to put her in the canon. Here's possibly my favorite Plath poem:

Quote:

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Fever 103°
by Sylvia Plath

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.
[Snip]

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http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/p...th/poems/18937

Read the whole thing because the ending fabulous. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by quasimodo1

Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Fontan in Odessa, Ukraine. Her childhood does not appear to have been happy; her parents separated in 1905. She was educated in Tsarskoe Selo (where she first met her future husband, Nikolay Gumilyov) and in Kyiv. Anna started writing poetry at the age of 11, inspired by her favourite poets: Racine, Pushkin, and Baratynsky. As her father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, she chose to adopt the surname of her Tatar grandmother as a pseudonym

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quasi,

Even though I did not vote for Akhmatova, she is running for me as a mildly interesting third place choice:)--but again, in terms of logistics, chasing my tail around Philly for a decent collection of hers in translation is not optimal for me at the moment, so I hope digging up samples online would be enough; if not, I'll muse quietly with my hand on my chin.:D

Is it too early to ask for a running vote tally?

PS: I am not quite sure I understand Acmeism, from the short summaries I am reading on it. Not to impose, but this might be a useful mini-discussion for me.

Eugenio Montale was one of the giants of 20th century poetry, standing along side the likes of T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Rilke, Pasternak, Wallace Stevens, etc... He was most certainly the most important Modern Italian poet... probably THE most important Italian poet since Leopardi. At a time when Italian poetry had slid into a sort of decorative effete mannerism not unlike the worst indulgences of Victorian poetry and Symbolism, Montale brought about a new clarity... a new muscularity... a new Modernism. Montale brought an international awareness to his poetry. As an avid autodidact he was well read in Shakespeare, browning, Donne, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Henry James, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Valery, Rilke. Montale also was a voracious but selective reader of Italian classics. The three major poets to inspire and challenge Montale were D'Annunzio, Leopardi, and Dante. Inspired by the example of T.S. Eliot, who Montale realized was greatly responsible for bringing about a muscular new manner of English poetry while maintaining a profound debt and admiration for the achievements of the past, Montale confronted his Italian predecessors... especially Dante... head on.

In limine

Rejoice when the breeze that enters the orchard
brings you back the tidal rush of life:
here, where dead memories
mesh and founder,
was no garden, but a reliquary.

That surge you hear is no whir of wings,
but the stirring of the eternal womb.
Look how this strip of lonely coast
has been transformed: a crucible.

All is furor within the sheer wall.
Advance and you may chance upon
the phantasm who might save you:
here are tales composed, and deeds
annulled, for the future to enact.

Find a break in the meshes of the net
that tightens around us, leap out, flee!
Go, I have prayed for your escape- now my thirst
will be slaked, my rancor less bitter...

Eugenio Montale
from Cuttlefish Bones
tr. William Arrowsmith

Godi se il vento ch'entra nel pomario
vi rimena l'ondata della vita:
qui dove affonda un morto
viluppo di memorie,
orto non era, ma reliquiario.

Il frullo che tu senti non è un volo,
ma il commuoversi dell'eterno grembo;
vedi che si trasforma questo lembo
di terra solitario in un crogiuolo.

Un rovello è di qua dall'erto muro.
Se procedi t'imbatti
tu forse nel fantasma che ti salva:
si compongono qui le storie, gli atti
scancellati pel giuoco del futuro.

Cerca una maglia rotta nella rete
che ci stringe, tu balza fuori, fuggi!
Va, per te l'ho pregato, - ora la sete
mi sarà lieve, meno acre la ruggine ...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

I am not quite sure I understand Acmeism, from the short summaries I am reading on it. Not to impose, but this might be a useful mini-discussion for me.[/COLOR]

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An anqutience of mine first brought Acmeism to my attention. I find it to be quite interesting, and Akhmatova is my favorite of the few poets I have thus read within the Acmesim movement. There is something about this form of poetry which appeals to me.

In the first round of voting I voted for her.

JoZ and all: Let me explain the intricate calculus of the vote...a first choice vote=1.oo points/ a second choice vote= 0.50 points/ a third place choice= 0.33 points. As of last night, late, the tally was Tate (2.00), Paz (1.00), Montale (1.00), Plath (1.00), and Bishop (0.83). I need to check the last posts for changes.

acmeism = a school of early 20th-century Russian poetry whose practitioners were strongly opposed to the vagueness of symbolism and strove for absolute clarity of expression through precise, concrete imagery.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by quasimodo1

JoZ and all: Let me explain the intricate calculus of the vote...a first choice vote=1.oo points/ a second choice vote= 0.50 points/ a third place choice= 0.33 points. As of last night, late, the tally was Tate (2.00), Paz (1.00), Montale (1.00), Plath (1.00), and Bishop (0.83). I need to check the last posts for changes.

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tres bien mon ami