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Charles Simic, Poet Laureate

Wonderful news from the world of poetry and the world of honorable leaves landing on someone's head.  Charles Simic has been appointed America's Next Top Poet Laureate, and recently won the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.   But you know who really wins here?  All of humanity.  Particularly people who like Charles Simic?  Oh, and Simic wins, too.  He gets the money.  Good for him!  Money is nice.

I started reading Charles Simic in college and discovered not only a world of weird, fully consistent images and rhythm, but also a reassuring voice for all those nights I couldn't sleep.  I don't know how to sleep properly and there's something about being the only one awake that gets to me.   The futile energy, the endless series of self-asked questions.  Simic doesn't offer any answers but he lets you in on his own worries and dreams, not in a confessional sense but more as someone who lets the poem take its own path toward some obscure goal.  You don't generally "get" a Charles Simic poem, or solve it like an equation, but if it affects you, you get to carry it around like a colorful scrap of foreign currency.  Here are some more samples of his work, see what you think.

In The Unemployed Fortune-Teller, a collection of essays and memoirs, Simic mentions that he sometimes walks around the house, opening books at random and writing down images to use in a poem.  But he doesn't trust pure chance enough to just let them sit there, so he re-works them to play off each other in interesting ways.  That's the key to "surrealist" poetry that actually works.  Be random, then start cheating.  If you set out to write something random, you'll end up with, say, "Octopus.  Cheese.  Parking tickets.  Mint."  All of that is worthless, except for "mint".  "Mint" is solid.

But the opposite is also true.  Once you have a thing that you're trying to say, you need to stop trying to say it.  Otherwise, that's not a poem, it's a very concise essay.  Let the unknowing part of yourself have a whack at it.  So you kind of hop back and forth until the poem is done or you're exhausted.  You'll know it's done if you don't remember how you wrote it, although that could just be the exhaustion.  Then you should go eat something.  Eat something nice.

Speaking of which, here's a little Simic poem from The Book of Gods and Devils:

CABBAGE

 

She was about to chop the head

In half,

But I made her reconsider

By telling her:

"Cabbage symbolizes mysterious love."

 

Or so said one Charles Fourier,

Who said many other strange and wonderful things,

So that people called him mad behind his back,

 

Whereupon I kissed the back of her neck

Ever so gently,

 

Whereupon she cut the cabbage in two

With a single stroke of her knife.

 

Technorati Tags: poetry, Charles Simic, poet laureate, cabbage

Beowulf: The Game

That's Beowulf: The Game.  Don't get confused and walk out of Gamestop with Beowulf: The 1000 Year Old Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem, because I guarantee your PS3 can't read that shit.  So now you can dismember monsters and their moms in your very own home!  Hopefully you can play as Beowulf, not some new character inserted into the story named Rickywulf.  I also hope that was just some generic monster in the trailer and not Grendel or Grendel's mom, because it's not nearly tough enough.  It looks like a Weeble with claws.  It may as well be a tubercular tadpole feebly slapping Beowulf's toe with his tiny, moist fist.

I used to listen to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf while driving at night.  It's great stuff.  Seamus Heaney's poems often have several really thick, meaty words balanced with a few bright, gleaming ones to create a certain kind of earthly music.  Beowulf was already a pretty juicy story, but Heaney makes it so chewy and clangy your jaw hurts and you might get metal poisoning.  Sometimes I would slow down in the fast lane so I could devote my full attention to his voice.  I liked to think that if I got in a wreck and had my arm lopped off it made more sense to do it to Beowulf than, say, Chumbawamba.  Because, odds are, I won't get up again.

You can see why Beowulf fits the gaming trends of today.  It's mythical and violent, like God of War, and I bet it appeals to the Ren Faire crowd as well.  However, the original story only has three actual fights, and the third one doesn't go so well.  Anything else you throw in there is filler.  And I can't imagine how they would deal with my favorite part of the text, the weird bits of advice on honor and manners.  "Always reward someone who does you a favor, and double rewards if they die."  "If someone kills a family member, hunt down their whole family and kill them, unless they pay you a lot of money."  They cleverly weave the advice into the tale via that old child-rearing trick: "Hrothgar always eats his vegetables, so you should too."  Stop comparing me to Hrothgar!  I'm not Hrothgar, all right?  And I never will be!  (Runs to room, sobbing, and slams the door)

Technorati Tags: Beowulf, Grendel, Seamus Heaney, God of War, games, tubercular tadpoles

Children's Poet Laureate -- For Kids!

I'll write more about this another time, but I wanted to show you Jack Prelutsky, who the Poetry Foundation named America's first Children's Poet Laureate in September.  $25,000.  That's some serious dough.  I bet I could write some decent poetry for kids.  Tell me, who do I have to blow around here to become Children's Poet Laureate?  Just kidding -- I know that's not how it works.

He seems like a nice fellow, and I have nothing bad to say about his stuff or children's poetry in this post.  (In another post I will totally lay into those damn children and their poetry.)  And he looks pleasant and friendly, like a low-carb Santa.  That's the kind of face you want for a Children's Poet Laureate.

But what about . . .  

THIS GUY!  Michael Rosen, Children's Poet Laureate for the U.K.  Graargh!  Author of A Child's Garden of Terror featuring this gem:

I'm nobody!  Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell

The Ichor Demons trapped in Hell.

 

How dreary to be Somebody!

How public, like a kitten

Perhaps the one I sacrificed

As tomes of bone were written.

I'm just joshin' ya, Michael Rosen.  You just look a little sinister in that pic.  You're a nice man and a good poet and I'm impressed that you found time to write when you're not teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts.  That poem was actually written by Emily Dickinson, the Belle of Amherst, who lies peacefully in her grave, for now.  I used to visit it pretty often just to make sure.  Sometimes she got halfway out but I would read her some of my poetry which helped her fall back asleep.

 

Technorati Tags: poetry, Poetry Foundation, Jack Prelutsky, Michael Rosen, Children's Poet Laureate, Emily Dickinson, sacrificial kittens

(The banditos stole photos and whatnot from here -- good article, good blog, but not mean or slanderous enough)

The Poetry Foundation's Unholy Deviltry

Is unholy deviltry redundant?  Or is, perhaps, not sufficiently redundant enough?  Bad Poetry Foundation!  Bad, wicked Poetry Foundation!  Stop sucking so very much!

The nation can't stop not talking about the new direction of Poetry magazine since it received a hojillion dollars from Ruth Lilly and created the Poetry Foundation, headed by John Barr, a "businessman poet" with some odd ideas about how to increase the cultural relevance of poetry.  His plan doesn't involve giving money to poets, which I think is kind of a shame.  I mean, the Poetry Foundation gets over three million dollars a year.  If they spent a million each year and bought a hundred poems from a hundred different poets for ten thousand each, they would kick-start a goddamn Poetry Renaissance.  First of all, everyone would know those poems.  Secondly, those poets would be set for life, not from the money, but from the fame.  We'd live in a country where everyone had a favorite poem (countries like that exist, just not this one) and being a poet would suddenly become a respectable career choice, or at least as respectable as trying to be a movie star.  And while poets are actually kind of more self-absorbed than movie stars, they usually drive sensibly and don't make sex tapes (thankfully).

Instead, the Poetry Foundation created a website that is supposed to be your one stop shopping spot for upbeat, accessible poetry and criticism, and funded a few of those programs that show up every time we get a new Poet Laureate.  Children's outreach stuff, contests, and a couple of odd grants, like one for a first book published by a poet over 50.  The Poetry Out Loud contest is a sort of national spelling bee where kids memorize and recite poems.  From the website:

While some element of performance is appropriate, the recitation of poetry, in this context, is a bit different from theatrical acting. Overdone, highly dramatic performances will often distract the audience and the judges from understanding and enjoying the poem. For example, character voices and exaggerated gestures are usually not appropriate.

Uh, OK.  So you can overact, but only in that specific way that bad poets overact when reading their own work.  Swell.  So much for slam poetry -- more like gentle caress poetry.  Say what you will about slam poets (and I bet they don't care), but when it comes to performance, they go all in.  The best ones don't sound like any of the other ones, and their performance becomes an essential part of the poem, kind of a live translation.  When you combine poetry and performance, the result should be deeply personal.  But for this contest, the kids aren't reading their own poems, or even their favorite poems.  Poetry Out Loud only considers poems from their pre-approved collection.  Maybe I'm wearing out the italics here but I'm pissed.  Way to kill any possible spontaneity, you cheesy motherfuckers.  You cheesy motherfuckers.

Laura Bush canceled a poetry conference at the White House after Sam Hamill and other anti-war poets declined her invitation.  Worse yet, some anti-war poets accepted it.  They had plans to hand her some political poems or something -- it was pretty scary.  Sharon Olds' 2005 open letter in The Nation is one of the better protest gestures, but there have been plenty to choose from during these war years.  Vietnam-era poets did the same stuff, too.  So if you're trying to get kids excited about poetry, real poetry, don't send them to the national finals in D.C. to read only "acceptable" poems with "acceptable" style.  Poets come to D.C. for only one reason: to start something.  Or to become Poet Laureate.  There's also William Carlos Williams, who was appointed Poet Laureate but did not serve, because they were afraid he'd start something.  There were rumors that he was about to open a red wheelbarrow of whoopass on our nation's capital.

What set me off on all this today was The Writer's Almanac, another Poetry Foundation program that plays every morning on the local NPR station.  It's just a couple of minutes of Garrison Keillor moistly huffing his way through some writing history and birthday shoutouts to famous writers.  He also reads a poem each day.  For some reason, the choice of poem drives me absolutely crazy.  Often they're fine poems, but sometimes they're so simplistic and trite they practically ruin my morning.  One time he just quoted the lyrics to some old show tune.  I wanted to go out and slash tires.  Today was worse, though, because he cheated.  Of all the poems to read aloud, this is the undiscovered gem I heard tonelessly recited from my radio speaker:

Faith's Review and Expectation

by John Newton

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev'd;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ'd.

. . . and so on.  Aha, very tricky of you.  I'll grant you, that's technically a poem.  But in another sense, I just heard the world's least charismatic singer adding weird pauses to the world's most famous song.  Well, two can play at that game:

Holla'back Girl

by Gwen of Stefani

Uh huh -- this is my shit:  All the girls,

Stomp your feet.  Like this. A few times -- I've been around

That track.  So it's not.  Just.  Gonna happen like

That . . . Because I ain't no

Holla'back girl.

Your base and baseless calumny

Shall not draw hollas from my throat.

'Neath bleachers you'll receive from me

A punchful lesson, learned by rote.

For this shit is bananas.

 

Technorati Tags: poetry, Poetry Foundation, Writer's Almanac, refusal to holla back

Book Burning, Blood Letting

A bookstore in Kansas City is burning books to protest lack of interest in reading.  It seems like a publicity stunt, as you can "save" a book for $1 plus postage.  Are people reading less literature?  Maybe so, but burning books makes you look like a jerk.  Almost every time you hear about a book burning, it's the work of a bunch of jerks.  If you need to warm a shivering puppy, it's probably OK, but even then, you should use a newspaper or even your own body heat.  Hugging a puppy back to health usually won't make you look like a jerk.

Do public schools still teach Fahrenheit 451?  I hope so.  Like all Bradbury, it's preachy but has a rich, dreamlike quality that you don't see much in science fiction, especially dystopic tales.  I'm sure there are others, but the only one that comes to mind is Riddley Walker, and it isn't really a dystopia.  1984, for example, is well written but it's half textbook and half lecture.  Besides, if you want to read 1984, you could just chat with your most politically active friend, right or left wing, and they'll reference it soon enough.  You'll also get to read Animal Farm that way.  A shortcut: start the conversation with, "Guess what I just heard Paris Hilton say in the mainstream media?  Apparently we're at war!"

Kids read Fahrenheit 451 as a sort of vaccine against burning books.  It's too tempting otherwise.  They innocently think, "Hey, I like books, and I like fire, so what if I put them together?"  Then they're like, "Where'd all the books go?  Why am I in jail?"  Bless their hearts.

Hypothetically, which books should be burned first?  The older ones?  There are plenty of Bibles in the world, so there's no danger of losing it for good.  (That extra-thin Bible paper makes a pretty fire, too, though it's a shame to waste it.)  The newer ones?  There are also plenty of Da Vinci Codes.  Prospero's Books, the Kansas City bookstore, has a "rare advance reading copy" of it for sale.  Why the hell would you keep that?  Wait,  I thought this was the advance reading copy of The Da Vinci Code.

If you could truly eliminate all copies of a book, is worse to burn the works of a dead author, who can't write anything new?  And should you start with literary criticism and other derivative works, before burning the source material?  (I'd say, "yes," unless it's effusive praise of my own writing, in which case it should be etched on a big ass diamond that I can wear on my head.)  As you can see, there are so many moral dilemmas involved in torching a pile of books, that you should avoid it whenever possible.  The next time you want to burn books, have an apple, or a carrot stick, instead.  It sounds crazy but it works.

So, here's a copy of "Dover Beach," by Matthew Arnold.  It's the poem Montag reads in Fahrenheit 451.  Now there's one more copy in the world.  You couldn't burn it if you tried.  What are you, going to burn the Internet?  Good luck with that!  I think you'll find that those blazing-fast download speeds are merely metaphorical.  You also can't use Gametap to flood the Internet.  That time I threatened people on the Animal Crossing forums with it, I was bluffing.  Sorry.  I just wanted an ark full of pets.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-- Matthew Arnold
 

Live Ink or Undead Zombie Ink?

How are you reading this paragraph?  Left to right, up and down, words make sentences, and so on? Well, you’re doing it wrong.  Guess what, you’re illiterate! We all are.  You might say we’re reading-tarded.  But now there’s hope!

A company called Walker Reading Technology has created a tool called Live Ink which reformats text into something that looks like programming code or teenage poetry.  They say the old reading method fights against biology, the new one helps readers absorb information better, and long story short, kids’ test scores are guaranteed to rise like scholastic bottle rockets.

Click the image and see which version reads more easily.  (Article from Venture Beat, via Slashdot.)  This example stacks the deck a bit, though.  The “old school text” is in three different fonts, and written in that irritatingly chatty, rhetorical question style that you see in women’s magazines and “special advertising sections.”  For another example, see the first paragraph of this post.

Now, I’m not saying it doesn’t work.  These are some very smart people with grants from the Department of Education and possibly some studies showing improved test scores.  I’m sure it works like a charm.  Unfortunately, it also sucks.  Like a sucky charm.

Check out their example of Moby-Dick in Live Ink.  Can you imagine reading the entire book this way?  First of all, it would be eighty shajillion pages long.  Secondly, it turns Herman Melville into a shitty teenage poet.  When people first try to write poetry, they break ordinary sentences into tiny breathless fragments because
every
single thought
that comes
into
my
brilliant mind
is so deep
and
meaningful
that they all
(and I)
deserve
your
com-
ple-
te
attention.

That’s not poetry, that’s stuttering.  It all looks and reads the same.  The cure for it is to read a lot of good poetry until you can recognize your favorite poets’ work just by the voice.  If you kept writing all that time, that should be just about when you discover your own voice.  Hopefully it’s a good one, because you’re stuck with it.  Keep in mind, some atrocious poets have distinctive voices, but all good poets do.  You’ll have a lot of fun liquored-up arguments about which is which.

“Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”  Fuck yeah!  Ishmael is now, at this moment, in da house.  Superficially, here are some impressions that seep from that sentence: a garrulous, somewhat defensive narrator, a rootless wanderer, unlucky but hopeful, and he’s a different man now than he was back then.  And “the watery part of the world” just flows out in the course of conversation -- you’re halfway through the next sentence before you notice its soothing, elegant beauty.

Now, that isn’t a poem, it’s a sentence, in a long, dense book full of sentences like that.  If you like it, you’ll keep reading, and if you don’t, that’s fine too.  Live Ink tries to cram it down your gullet by squeezing it into the ugliest form possible, a “poem” literally written by a machine:

Some years ago
-- never mind
        how long precisely –-
    having little
        or no money
            in my purse,
    and nothing particular
        to interest me on shore,
I thought
    I would
        sail about a little
    and see the watery part
        of the world.

That’s a fucking abomination.  Melville loved language –- he loved digressions, scholarly allusions, colorful jargon, typesetting jokes, conversational rhythms, and letting different styles of writing suddenly bubble up within one man’s narration.  If you strip all that out, “improved comprehension” is laughable.  Listen: A guy goes to sea and his obsessive captain gets killed by a whale.  Now you “comprehend” Moby-Dick as much as you’ll ever need to in ordinary life.

I like the idea of helping people who have trouble reading.  And plenty of sentences are crappy enough that they lose nothing in translation.  But if you really want to read Moby-Dick as opposed to look at its sentences, try an unabridged audiobook.  There’s no shame in that.  However, I can say without exaggeration that if you read the Live Ink version, Herman Melville will claw his way out of the grave, ride the bus to your place, smash through the door, and coil a goddamn rope around your neck.
And then he
will gnaw
your leg off.
Rrraaaah.

Legend of the Birdsock Riders

Although much has been obscured and smeared by the buttery mists of history, the legend of the Birdsock Riders lives on.  Isolated villages in the Chilean altiplano still pass down the story from grandmother to grandchild, and then back again when the grandmother forgets.  The story is always the same: one summer day, a group of preternaturally thin foreign men rode into town on llamas and left with birds in their socks.

Were they angels?  Were they aliens? Were they aliengels from Space Heaven?  I believe they were ordinary men who made their own rules about right and wrong.  Some say they would spend hours silently watching a flock of yellow finches or croaking ground-doves, estimating each bird's hardiness and lift potential.  Then, without warning, none at all, no warning, they would whip off one of their socks, pounce upon a bird, shove it in the sock, and put the sock back on.  It was all over in the blink of an eye.  The second sock would probably take longer what with the hopping.

Is the archetype of fleet-footed Hermes somehow related to the pair of frantic wings in the socks of these Chilean folk legends?  Probably; that makes a lot of sense. Certainly the Riders brought a message of sorts: "€œLook, I can fly, but it's a hassle."  Some tales describe them as merely hovering a few inches off the ground while others tell of majestic swooping and gliding among the clouds.  Crude drawings depict something akin to a barrel roll, as well as a painful-looking maneuver when the birds decided to fly in opposite directions.

I believe there is a rational explanation for this physics-defying feat.  First, consider that Birdsock Riders are typically described as "thin" or "€œwaif-like."€ In other words, a low body mass.  Secondly, South American birds are real troopers.  Finally, some modern day ceremonies honoring the Riders include holding a nest in each hand.  A bird's natural instinct is to fly towards a nest and thus by moving the arms about, one can achieve altitude and directional control.  (Modern re-enactments, rather than using live birds, substitute marshmallow Peeps.)

The full truth about the Birdsock Riders may never be known.  Still, feel free to spread this very plausible hypothesis about them.  I leave you with a traditional Aymaran song describing the experience of Birdsock flight.

Before me in the sky
I see a butterfly
But I can fly twice as high!
Take a look!
Up here
I'm up here on two birds.

CHORUS:

Tell it to the trees and toads
I am on the rainbow road
Hold me sky and don't let go
(yeah)
I got a sock full of bird
(uh huh)
I got a sock full of bird!