Poetry Bookclub 4

[quasimodo1]

So far, in this early phase, JBI has chosen Susan Goyette's collection...THE TRUE NAME OF BIRDS. As for myself, I recommend William Matthews' RISING AND FALLING... Medbh McGuckian's ON BALLYCASTLE BEACH... and Allen Tate's THE WINTER SEA. When we have additional choices, I'll order them in a clear listing. To all intending to join in... please choose more than one collection. q1

[quasimodo1]

update: Margaret Avison and Fred Wah have been added to the list... collections still to be determined.

[Virgil]

Oh I would love to read Bill Mathews. I met him when I was in college. But let me think and perhaps I'll nominate one myself.

[quasimodo1]

The True Names Of Birds
"The True Names of Birds is the first book-length collection from a voice that has captured the attention of Canadian

poetry readers for the last half-dozen years. Deeply centred in domestic life, Goyette's work is informed by a

muscular lyricism. These are poems that push the limits, always true to their roots. --- --- --- --- ---

http://www.flipkart.com/true-names-b...998-hax3fvim0f --- Title: The True Names Of Birds
Author: Susan Goyette
ISBN: 0919626998
ISBN-13: 9780919626997, 978-0919626997
Binding: Paperback
Publishing Date: 11-1998
Publisher: Brick Books
Number of Pages: 64
Language: English

[quasimodo1]

To say: "I don't undertand what this means," is, at least, to recognize that "this" means. The problem is that

meaning is not a totality of sameness and predictability. Within each word, each sentence, meaning has slipped a

little out of sight and all we have are traces, shadows, still warm ashes. The meaning available from language goes

beyond the actual instance of this word, that word. A text is a place where a labyrinth of continually revealing

meanings are available, a place that offers more possibility than we can be sure we know, sometimes more than we want

to know. It isn't a container, static and apparent. Rather, it is noisy, frequently illegible. Reading into meaning

starts with a questioning glance, a seemingly obvious doubloon on a mast. The multiplicity can be read, should be

read, even performed. But then again, perhaps meaning is intransitive and unreadable, only meant to be made. No

sooner do we name meaning than it seems to dissipate. As a sure thing, it eludes us. It arouses us to attempt an

understanding, to interpret. But this is usually unsatisfying since whatever direction we approach from only leads us

to suspect there is no one direction. No single meaning is the right one because no "right ones" stand still long

enough to get caught. But because we do not know does not mean we are lost. Something that is strangely familiar, not

quite what we expect, but familiar, is present. That quick little gasp in the daydream, a sudden sigh of recognition,

a little sock of baby breath. Writing into meaning starts at the white page, nothing but intention. This initial

blinding clarity needs to be disrupted before we're tricked into settling for a staged and diluted paradigm of the

"real," the good old familiar, inherited, understandable, unmistakable lucidity of phrase that feels safe and sure, a

simple sentence, just-like-the-last-time-sentence. One makes (the) difference. Meaning generates and amplifies

itself, beyond itself, but never forgets; fragments of its memory and its potency exceed itself with meaning full of

desire and can only be found hiding between the words and lines and in a margin large enough for further thought,

music at the heart of thinking, go ahead. --- http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wah/write.htm ----Music

at the Heart of Thinking Ninety-four


"This is no mass synapse I'm after and I've known awhile now being lost is as simple as sitting on a log but

the fumble jerked mystique clouds grabbing as the staked mistake or stacked and treasured garbage belongs familiar to

a gardened world disturbed as heat..." {excerpt "from Music at the Heart of Thinking Ninety-four"}

[quasimodo1]

Favorite Pig," which the reviewer dubbed "charming" and deceptively lighthearted.

In Blues If You Want, Matthews focused on jazz, with many poem titles taken from favorite jazz tunes. Kenyon Review contributor Fred Chappell thought the collection was occasionally marred by "self-indulgence," but on the whole "warm" and "genial." In the Bloomsbury Review, Christopher Merrill pointed out the poet's exploration of the relationship between music and language, and lauded Matthews's "curiosity" and "wit."

"Things that don't last" are the subject of Matthews's 1995 collection, Time & Money: New Poems, according to a Publishers Weekly writer. The more than forty poems gathered here range from meditations on a visit to New York City by Ronald Reagan, to reflections on the death of Matthews's father, to a eulogy for jazz musician Charles Mingus. Several reviewers noted the ironic voice Matthews expresses in the poems, with notably different shadings from one piece to the next. Donna Seaman in Booklist, calling the works "fine, quietly furious poems," also praised Matthews for the linguistic gifts evident in the collection." excerpt from bio...The Poetry Foundation --- --- --- THE CLOISTER by William Matthews

The last light of a July evening drained
into the streets below: My love and I had hard
things to say and hear, and we sat over
wine, faltering, picking our words carefully.

The afternoon before I had lain across
my bed and my cat leapt up to lie
alongside me, purring and slowly
growing dozy. By this ritual I could

clear some clutter from my baroque brain.
And into that brief vacancy the image
of a horse cantered, coming straight to me,
and I knew it brought hard talk and hurt ... {excerpt} http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=179280

[quasimodo1]

Allen Tate (1899 - 1979)Allen Tate was a well-known man of letters from the American South, a central figure in the

fields of poetry, criticism, and ideas. In the course of a career spanning the middle decades of the twentieth

century, Tate authored poems, essays, translations, and fiction. Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor James

T. Jones wrote that his "influence was prodigious, his circle of acquaintances immense." Tate relished his "man of

letters" reputation—he consistently held for the highest standards of literature, feeling that the best creative

writing offers the most cogent expressions of human experience. Sewanee Review's J. A. Bryant, Jr. called Tate a

"sage" who "kept bright the instrument of language in our time and . . . made it illuminate as well as shine."

Tate was born and raised in Kentucky, the youngest of three sons of John Orley and Eleanor Varnell Tate. His family

moved frequently when he was young, and his elementary education was erratic. Influenced by his mother's love of

literature, however, he read extensively on his own, and he was admitted to Vanderbilt University in 1918. Tate

proved an excellent student, earning top honors and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. More importantly, while an

undergraduate he became aware of the special circumstances of Southern culture and sensibility. Dictionary of

Literary Biography essayist James A. Hart wrote, "With a Border background [Tate] had to face the question of whether

he was a Southerner or an American. Affirming the first, he had to confront the dominant positivist and materialistic

Yankee values which were supplanting the older values of the South." Under the influence of his teachers Walter Clyde

Curry, Donald Davidson, and John Crowe Ransom, Tate began to analyze his inheritance from a critical, but respectful,

perspective ... excertp from bio... The Poetry Foundation --- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?

id=6750#career ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-SONNETS OF THE BLOOD by Allen Tate

I


What is the flesh and blood compounded of
But a few moments in the life of time?
This prowling of the cells, litigious love,
Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.
Consider the first settlers of our bone,
Observe how busily they sued the dust,
Estopped forever by the last dusted stone.
It is a pity that two brothers must
Perceive a canker of perennial flower
To make them brothers in mortality:
Perfect this treason to the murderous hour
If you would win the hard identity
Of brothers—a long race for men to run
Nor quite achieved when the perfection’s won.



II


Near to me as perfection in the blood
And more mysterious far, is this, my brother:
A light vaulted into your solitude.
It studied burns lest you its rage should smother.
It is a flame obscure to any eyes,
Most like the fire that warms the deepest grave
(The cold grave is the deepest of our lies)
To which our blood is the indentured slave:
The fire that burns most secretly in you
Does not expend you hidden and alone,
The studious fire consumes not one, but two—
Me also, marrowing the self-same bone.
Our property in fire is death in life
Flawing the rocky fundament with strife. ... {excerpt from poem of 9 parts}

[JBI]

http://www.amazon.com/True-Names-Bir...9678704&sr=8-1

I'll do more thorough intros for my poets tomorrow.

[quasimodo1]

Medbh McGuckian (1950 - )Irish poet Medbh McGuckian has won acclaim for her imaginative verse, her lyricism, and her

themes on the feminine psyche. McGuckian's work has been compared to verse by such poets as Marianne Moore and

Elizabeth Bishop, and she has been called an "Irish Emily Dickinson" by Anne Stevenson in Times Literary Supplement.

Using lyrical language—rich in sound and emotion—to express the thoughts and feelings of the speaker, McGuckian

juxtaposes the concrete experiences of domestic life with evocative, dreamlike imagery. The resultant poetry is

sometimes described as esoteric, often erotic, and highly symbolic. Calvin Bedient, writing in Parnassus, enthused

that McGuckian "is Ireland's first great female poet—indeed, arguably its most original. No doubt she's too difficult

and Romantic to please everyone, at least right off. But of twentieth-century poets writing in English, she strikes

me as one of the most original and compelling—and as easily the most white-hot Irish poet since [William Butler]

Yeats." --- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...t.html?id=4565 ----------------------------------------

THE GOOD WIFE TAUGHT HER DAUGHTER by Medbh McGuckian

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. ... {excerpt} --- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=178907

[quasimodo1]

JBI, please do Susan Goyette especially as I couldn't (as yet) find much relevent about her.

[JBI]

You won't find much - I doubt there is much, if anything, written about her. I'll check the CAN Lit-L and Canadian Literature Quarterly for some scholarly stuff, but in truth, she only has two volumes out, one in 98, and one in 04, so she is very new.

The Moon on Friday Night:
....................................erased all path to saturday
and swept up footsteps from the day before. It coaxed buttons
to the lips of buttonholes and whispered, 'you're beautiful,
so beautiful,' to women who speak the vernacular

of loneliness. Softly it slid into the hands of the men
they were with and lent its light to everything they touched.
'See,' the moonlight seemed to say, 'there are so many ways
to be naked and so many ways to be

Far from home.' The Light reminded the women of songs
they knew, songs written to gauge distance. Later,
still later on this island of Friday night, they sang
those songs under their breath as they bent

To tie their shoes. And they stayed bent for long after
their shoes were tied, hearing the wind for the first time
caught in a bucket of baby teeth.
......................(snip)


[.........]It light's up corners they'd kept dark, lights
their words and gives them new meaning. At night
they hold their husbands' hands to their mouths
'know this light,' they pray, 'touch me with this light.'

I'll send the remained to anyone who wants it.

[JBI]

Susan Goyette, The True Names of Birds (Brick Books) $12.95

Deeply centred in domestic life, the poems of The True Names of Birds are informed by a muscular lyricism. The first book-length collection from a voice that has captured the attention of Canadian poetry readers for the last half-dozen years, this book is full of poems that push the limits yet always remain true to their roots.

From http://www.writers.ns.ca/e_press3.html

[JBI]

Although published in 1998, Susan Goyette’s first collection, The True Names of Birds, is still a ‘hot’ book. Birds received considerable acclaim, including its inclusion on a Governor General’s Award shortlist. This acclaim is warranted; Goyette’s is an original and arresting voice in Canadian poetry. I don’t think I’ve read such compelling poetry based on the domestic world since Bronwen Wallace. Like MacDonald, Goyette probes those all-consuming, human questions: how do you live? How do you make a home?

For Goyette, the world is an endlessly mysterious text, an uncrackable code - "everything a sign," she writes in "To Keep You Well." "November: The Sawing of Women in Half" interrogates this notion of an over-arching system of signification that will make everything make sense:

'There must be a formation

that calls to birds. Some magic seen from the sky

that means rest. I haven’t learned it yet'

Later in the poem, we discover that "[s]ome people can translate anything into music. I’ve had to/adapt." There is, of course, no guidebook to life, as Goyette tell us: "There are books, encyclopedias in the library/explaining every magic trick invented'nothing/about music." Goyette plays effectively with the schmaltz of the magic show: "the sawing/ of women in half, the bouquet of doves." In contrast to the gimmickry, the bogus potential of ‘explanation’, there is the poem’s real problem - how to translate the world into music.

For Goyette, poetry is the art of translation. The poet-translator’s key tool is metaphor. Despite Goyette’s charmingly self-deprecating gestures - "All I’ve learned is how to pull/handkerchief after handkerchief from my sleeve/while someone else sings the blues" - she is, in fact, a highly adept ‘translator’. Her metaphors are rich and striking. In "Sisters," she writes: "We weren’t temples or even bungalows. We were apartments." "Regret is a woman who watches her reflection/in soup spoons and still water" ("Regret and All Her Nightgowns"). Many of Goyette’s metaphors are spun from the seasonal cycles and her close attention to the natural world. In "In This January," she writes: "My dreams are shoeboxes/filled with bones from my feet." Everyday activities accrue metaphorical dimensions, as in "A Gift for the Winter God" where the speaker is knitting: "Left alone, I unravel Autumn all the way/back to April and try to pick up what I’ve dropped."

After inhabiting Goyette’s poems for awhile, their weave of metaphors begins to spin into something even more profound: a mythological milieu that defines and gives musical resonance to the poet’s own life. This is how you make a home. The materials woven and translated into a music for living are, in Goyette, as often drawn from domestic objects as from the more esoteric world of nature. But the two are often connected. In "October," Goyette writes: "October leaves me with just a soup pot and a faint taste/of my mother. I make our home from cards in my pocket, pull/coins from the backs of my son’s ears." There is that schmaltzy magic again that Goyette both believes in and doesn’t. Similarly, in "The Mythology of Cures," the question of the artist’s authority arises: "I’ll create a mythology for this house. Trust me." Is Goyette winking at us here? Yes and no. These moments of self-irony point to an interesting tension between authority and tentativeness that informs Goyette’s aesthetic. There is that self-assuredness of voice in the collection’s title poem, for example: "There are more ways to abandon a child/than to leave them at the mouth of the woods." But these studied declarations function mainly as springboards into the real business of the poem which is much more exploratory, open-ended. The poems’ stated ‘premises’ are sometimes undercut by subtle irony or silence. By the end of this poem - also the collection’s opening piece - Goyette has moved us from ‘certain’ knowledge (which, as she knows, is something we construct) into a hauntingly elegiac territory:

'Here is the stillness of forest,

the sun columning before me temple-ancient,

that wonder is what I regret losing most; that wonder

and the true names of birds.

Goyette’s collection plumbs lost language, lost childhood. The poem’s tentative moments of loss and silence are striking in the way they open up possibility. But this encapsulization misses the strength of humour in Goyette’s work. "Confessions" illustrates this important counterpoint to the elegiac: "'please God of everlasting love/and lambs,/please give me something to confess/and a Barbie camper." Moments like this should not be underestimated; they ensure against earnestness.

Goyette has created a highly successful hybrid blend of narrative and lyric. Her line is long in length, rich in cadence. She is not a poet for quickie readings; her work demands time and slow immersion. And it’s well worth both.

From http://www.antigonishreview.com/bi-122/122-lynes.html

[stlukesguild]

Geoffrey Hill- The Triumph of Love
Anne Carson- Decreation
Anthony Hecht- The Darkness and the Light

[quasimodo1]

JBI: Now that's an expert exposition on Goyette and has completely captured my interest. I can see why she is a "hot' item in Canadian poetry...which always makes me ponder why American and Canadian poets experience such an arbitrary division...awareness wise. Such a long porous border yet poetry seems to need a special passport. Thanks for the lucid amplification.