read and write more poetry

but I’ll share it anyway.

I was stressed out and concerned in part about how out of control my life seems at times (and especially certain moments lately). I started thinking about why we strive for control instead of balance and harmony, why we focus on avoiding conflict or on feeding off of conflict instead of actively seeking synergy and feeding off of that.

-

sure, I have known peace:
a calmness of pleasant heft to the soul -
not a stifling burden, or abstention.
energies, when freed from conflict, unfold
in synergy, completion, connection.

that is what I need:
all my earnest striving for self-control -
what improper nonsense, self-deception.
let me function as a coherent whole,
then I might manage the right direction.

8/24

moon waxing gibbous
affixed by telephone lines
to honest ether

delusion secures
briefest freedom, dominion
as I stand grounded

pulled by my personal moon
no longer apostrophe

The Woodspurge
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82)

THE WIND flapp’d loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walk’d on at the wind’s will,
I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was, 5
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.

MY eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon; 10
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flower’d, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me, 15
The woodspurge has a cup of three.

_{I feel compelled to refer to another poem for a moment; this is a tangent. the last poem I posted was woodsworth’s daffodils, and, even though part of the joy and surprise was the daffodils growing wild, they were not weeds. woodspurge is a weed. lest anyone disparage weeds, however, I send you to the poem identity by Julio Noboa Polanco. I’ve had that poem for ages, and I’d rather be a tall, ugly weed too. ;)}

the first thing I noticed about this poem was how similar he sounds to woodsworth (in that phrase, I wandered lonely as a cloud): no will of his own, to be pushed and pulled about. he is very lonely, but it is not just a melancholy loneliness; it is an intense grief and depression.

the grief has seemingly deadened him to the world, but he is still aware. he just does not have it in him to act, or react, or to even discern.

the fact that the woodspur has three cups means as much to him as anything else would at that time, because nothing can mean anything to him at all. he has lost the other, and his grief has consumed him; he feels self-less (and, therefore, dead, but horribly not in the sense that he can’t feel pain).

and there is no revelation. there is nothing that comes in and saves him, redeems him. there is only the weed.

yet you know that he lives on, and that he overcame it, as the last lines read: One thing then learnt. it is in the past.

and he does not remember the suffering or pain except that there was suffering and pain; he does not relive it. he has overcome it and moved on.

I just really like this one. :) the flow of the first two stanzas, not so much, but they are representative of how he was when he was grieved.

and of course all of this is my subjective interpretation and probably projection. hopefully appropriate projection, though.

I think the flowers in my avatar are daisies. would be too much of a coincidence otherwise (this av is an old one of mine from two years ago somewhere else that I came across again and wanted to put back up).

“Daffodils” (1804)

I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch’d in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

now, this may have been said a thousand times before, or it may just be me projecting. I was listening to a discussion of this poem today but this was not mentioned therein, so I’m not sure. (I do know that he did actually go on a walk _{with his sister Dorothy} on which he came upon daffodils quite unexpectedly, about two years before he wrote this poem.) it’s just my immediate and partial incomplete interpretation.

“lonely as a cloud” – why is lonely like a cloud? to me, it is because when one is lonely, one is losing one’s sense of self. a human needs other humans to be a complete self. you can only be you in relation to other people, and the other people make up part of who you are. we are all interconnected to each other and to the greater world in this way. when I am apart from others, not just physically but also emotionally or spiritually, then I start losing my self, and become lonely. I become as ephemeral as a cloud, insubstantial, without binding force or will, subject to dispersal as by the winds or the sun.

being by myself is not the same as being alone or being lonely. being by myself automatically implies that I still retain that vital connection to others and to the world, for I still have my self. being alone or lonely implies that I am losing my self because I have lost connection to others or the world. I can only be by myself when I am the only person around, but I can be alone/lonely anywhere.

he is wandering alone without will or the ability to direct himself in a world he feels separated and disconnected from. he is high above the peaks and valleys of regular experience, drifting along in numbness or maybe ceaseless melancholy. he comes across the daffodils who are not single but a great crowd, and who are firmly rooted in the earth. they are connected to the world and to each other.

the daffodils welcome him (implied as one meaning of Host) and invite him to join them, but he is so distant in spirit that, although he knows that he ought to be happy (a poet could not but be gay), their joy and company seems as elusive as the waves or as the stars in the heavens. they have made him feel more real (he is no longer a cloud), but his ability to connect with them is so weak that now it is they who seem far away and unreal, even as they are personified and made more human.

in the conclusion of the poem, you see that in time he does gain the strength and substance to reconnect, as the image of daffodils returns to him, and he is able to dance with them.

now like I said I might be projecting mightily, with the poet cloud as the lonely dissipating self, and the daffodils as the others connected in joy, and poet in time finding himself in them again. I’ve been thinking about that theme a lot recently.
_{previously: here and then here}

I could not help but think of this video as I thought of him dancing with the daffodils:

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2977277/8534761

I love that video.

dated August 2007. thought I’d share part of it here.

_{oh, and before I forget, I recently received How to Read and Understand Poetry and Literary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History in the mail. it will be a while before I can get to them, probably, but they were on sale now. I hope there will be much to discuss about them (and certain other related courses I might get my hot little hands on)}

---

I love language, I love poetry.

[img]

The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

~ Denise Levertov ~

my favorite poet has always been Emily Dickinson. I know that’s probably passe, but she has such an innate connection to nature, and she is not afraid to look into the abyss, and let the abyss look into her (tag; Nietzsche’s it). I don’t think I have managed to read every one of her poems; still, all her poems, I have understood. not that I understood the same thing as she understood when she wrote it, or in the same way, but it’s as if… moments of my life match up to the poems, and now those moments have names, they have concepts, so that the poetry has illuminated something about myself and my life, by identifying these moments, that I might not have ever put into words myself.

I tend to like poetry that is a bit darker than most of the public, but I don’t find it at all depressing. in fact I think that such darkness is just as pertinent, vital, and essential to the human experience, and it deserves to be validated and liberated, so that, in the process, we are made more whole. I am drawn to direct, revealing poetry, with a sense of truth and humor, no matter how burbling or abstract.

my favorite poets include John Berryman (The Ball Poem), Philip Larkin (The Old Fools), William Stafford (Traveling Through the Dark), Edna St. Vincent Millay (Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies), Carl Sandburg (Grass); Gwendolyn Brooks (Kitchenette Building), Randall Jarrell (Seele im Raum), and I could keep going so I’ll try to stop and say Eliot, Cummings, Nash.

just not Gertrude Stein or Sylvia Plath. Gertrude Stein, I have the feeling that if I had not an inkling of what the English language meant, I could enjoy listening to and looking at the patterns of her poetry. but I do know English, and I can’t seem to sever connections between sound and meaning there, and the only time I have ever not been able to at least force myself through a poem is with Gertrude Stein. I have tried, and being stubborn, tried again, and ended up with a headache so bad that I couldn’t see. so I leave that for others now. Sylvia Plath; don’t get me wrong. she is a genius of her own sort. I love The Bell Jar (I understand it far too well, I’m afraid). I understand the art of her poetry. but it just strikes a nerve somehow; or, more to the point, curdles my blood. and not in the good blood-curdling way, but in the, er, diarrhea-of-the-blood way (this is why I shall never be a poet myself lol). it’s just personal; she afflicts me with her affliction. I feel it too profoundly, I suspect (especially after hearing her read it aloud). that’s talent, but, still, not good for me! ;)

---

a friend responds:

” ‘One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable, and therefore, not popular.’—Carl Jung

This speaks to [fateaccompli’s] point, I think. And I think poetry is particularly good at exploring making the darkness conscious. It can be done so much better through imagery.”

---

another friend:

“I pray for enlightenment. Since there is plenty of darkness, maybe at least the path is suitable.”

that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.

-Christian Winman

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

Academy of American Poets

which entitles me to a subscription to the biannual American Poet, a copy of the Walt Whitman award-winning book of the year, and a copy of the James Laughlin award-winning book of the year, and also a dvd.

this is great for the price, and also supports the awards (which support American poets) and the teaching of poetry in the states.

their site (poets.org) is great and has many audio files of poems to listen to, and a section for educators as well. (here are some poems I’m browsing through, many I know very well and am happy to read again, while I wait for everything to be processed.)

I used to be part of the Poetry Foundation, and I got Poetry magazine. I have to say, I didn’t really care for it. the poems were fine, that wasn’t the problem. but their “commentary” section, which took up a disproportionate amount of the magazine, imo, was hardly enlightening and in some cases amounted to published squabbling, and sometimes the various authors went out of their way to condemn the intelligence of the poetry readers themselves. I know artists can be touchy about their work, but I didn’t pay to read these temper tantrums. it hardly contributed to the genre.

it was hard for me to not look at that part, even by accident as I said it was a large section. SO, not going there (poetry magazine or poetry foundation) again.

I also prefer the idea of the Academy’s work to support poets in more ways than just buying a poem or two for a magazine.

well, that’s the reading more poetry part. as for the writing… I used to keep a poetry journal, and try to write a poem a day about the day, even if it wasn’t the best thing ever, just to practice. that was before I went back to school. I might try to make a goal of writing a poem a week, or month, but I’m not sure as of yet…