Slow Poetry

I just read a blog post (thanks to Silliman's blog) about Slow Poetry. It's this person's (Possum Ego, apparently) little call for a new sort of poetry, one that:

The slow food and slow biking movements offer possible models. By turning away from innovations that increase the speed of production, poets could rediscover valuable skills from older methods.

That sounds fun. Unfortunately, it's a sort of ambiguous (it seems to me) kind of "manifesto" or at least a "call" to me. I see it saying that rediscovering older methods can be useful, but to what extent? Are we talking about formal poetry? Isn't that the New Formalist movement of the 80s, 90s and today (thanks 96.5, you have ingrained your slogan into my mind...)? Well, according to them, it's pace:

Pace in this slow poetry sense becomes a greater concern. Value could be placed on the withholding of vital details and the slow release of vivid particulars within rhetorical situations driven by a desire to disclose new knowledge.

But I find that strange, ya know? Is pace an older method? Here, I thought pace was something already done, something ingrained (to use the word again) in our own choice of editing as well as writing poetry: one places pace within the line and outside of the line as well (the amount of white space wanted, spaces in between words, and even the line breaks themselves -- whether they call for an end-stop or to continue on into the next line, plowing through it with only that slight breath that the eye takes and not even the heart). What I do like about this is how it proposes treating the poem: as something that does not develop immediately, and has a bit of a prosey, discursive kind of feel.

When I think about it, it's trying to make a poem a Hemingway short story. It's those vivid particulars that make you figure out the driving force behind the poem.

SP contributes to systems disruptions by generating an open source platform for self-reflection in contexts where such meditations are more frequently discouraged.

Here, its political edge is shining through. The impetus here was something going on in Nigeria. I'm not in on the news since I've been out of it for a while (both literally and figuratively), so I don't know what happened in Nigeria. Basically, there's a globalization process that he's trying to include within this poetic appeal; it's where we can reflect personally on political objects, or situations like "living locally," as the blogger puts it.

I suspect we've already done a lot of these things. But I like where it's going, a lot. I might think about it for a little while, I wonder what you can do with poetry as a slow-cooker. Or developing a poem like a slow cooker. Makes me think of tsimmes and chullent, both slow cookin' Eastern European Jewish delights. Yum.


andrew

Selk'nam (revised)

In the museum of natural history
there are two giant turtles:
the sea turtle
and the giant Galapagos tortoise--
its shell
larger than I've ever seen,

large enough that
we could walk on it
if we were little --
each plate a Pangaea
a Tierra del Fuego.
We'd suffer, though.
Intense winds, winters.

Oh, the protection
we'd have to hunt for,
torpidly, spears in hand
throwing long dashes
towards a destination, hoping
to reach a target.

Moving Back

Up and up Cerro Carcel
the wind delicious but forceful:
just enough to make the nap that was promised
all the more worthwhile.
We got sand in our eyes
bits of whatever off the road
and later stopped to appreciate the view.
Earlier I said I'd miss the beer,
especially Kunstmann.
We laughed at the prospect
of an earthquake that would destroy
every single house on these hills
and yet they pop up on stilts
sideswipe the streets and say,
"I'm a house!" and exist to spite nature,

painted a pink, an orange,
anything bright that will off-set the rusted tin roofs,
one of them so brightly blue, we
couldn't notice, at first, the wood
that was missing. We were always
conscious of those impending tremors,
but we laughed. Then a car backfired.
"They got me!!!" screamed Leora.

a while back i was feeling rather angry and political...so i dedicated something to my governor

For Mitt Romney, Who I Never Knew and Wasn't Old to Vote For


To its credit, Massachusetts has a lovely
drainage system, (it is the beginnings
of winter; raining hard in Puente Alto)
and plenty of storm drains placed
where flooding occurs.
Apparently Santiago never adapted.
It had always been a dry city,
raining once or twice a year.
Now, after five soaked days
and an overflowing river,
they cut the water supply in every comuna,
leaving us thirsty and obligated
to buy clean, expensive water
to last the next few days.
The smell of mold and mud
must be filling the homes of
so many inundated floors,
while the mountains and saturated hills
glow in earthly gladness
like a school budget after its first set of unnecessary cuts.

An untitled poem revised

A love poem is a poem of pursuit.
Each word catches your
earlobe, tries to pull
you down
into a body
a biology to pick apart.

A mouse roams your eyes in pursuit
of the cream of your
pupils. What pull
the morning has on the down
of your body…
I’m falling apart.

All this searching, this pursuit
of your hair, your
eyes, gravity’s pull.
Look down:
the creases of your body
follow each other, as if playing each a part

in their own pursuit.
What I'm trying to say is your
hands are suns. They pull
space together, up, down:
Out there appears the body,
a universe apart.

What nibbles at the corners, travels the maze in pursuit
of things larger than your-
self: fingers, touching your eyes? Tug, pull
and scratch the body:
there is more to do, more than one part.

I suppose I can’t know the science of your movements, yet my pursuit
is wholly good. What counts is balance. Your
own lies in the pull
this spectrum of light trickles down
into the nooks of your body.
There are days I’d like to spend inside one, if only for a small part.

Orpheus -- this is also a little old, from senior year, it's based off the orpheus myth

When the Maenads came,
he dropped his lyre slightly and remembered
how each string was silk
like she was silk, a tunic he wore like skin.

The flash of love she heaved out of her eyes:
the disappearing autumn
spent lingering in empty trees,
stirring like imitation leaves.

He did not stop singing when they ripped
his head off—he sang to Lesbos
like old olive branches to the Aegean Sea.

i found all these OLD poems i sorta wrote and never finished...this one's from Israel sophomore year..

Inside the Praying Area of the Grave Site of Rebbi Shimon Bar Yochai

Some men were inside, wrapped seriously
in their text, praying
to God, source of light.
Only few were shuckling.
One moved about, pacing
as if he worried
God might not hear.

I peeked into the women’s side:
it looked like hundreds of them –
bobbing, mouthing words,
caressing them as a baby.
Some wailed as if they were original sin.
Redeem me Lord, I
am the downfall of man.

A Seasonal Ghazal (revised)

A Seasonal Ghazal

What defines a ghazal is a constant longing.
Summer begins to cling, becomes quiet, slow, like longing:

In autumn the pine needles fall in droves.
Mid-fall is a fire; consumes like longing.

The crunch of winter, the acid smell of February.
Early March. Leaves freeze, trees know longing.

What’s the usual sound a leaf makes when
It hits the ground: a quick spring of longing:

Flowers and flowers drop pieces
Unintentionally. Wanting them back is longing.

What defines a ghazal is a constant, while
Seasons shape our wavering wants & longing.

A year’s length is a constant. It’s within it that we question:
“What does love look/like?” Probably like longing,

Whereas death, the other, stays obtuse,
Always pointing. This is a year’s length: love and longing.

Quote from Roethke

"It's the shifting of the thought that's important, often - the rightness (or wrongness!) of the imaginative jump. Many modern poets still are content only with the logical progression, or with metaphors - often beautiful, elaborate, fresh - but these consisting of little more than a listing of appositives. In the richest poetry even the juxtaposition of objects should be pleasurable..."


Something maybe I should start thinking about more often in my own poetry...I worry about it sometimes...

Sculptures

On M St., on the way to Georgetown,
before the main strip,
under a hotel's great brick cuppula,
appears a sculpture:

people crammed into one another,
crowding, hurrying, large-eyed
and looking at something
(we never know what)
with such intent, almost religious wonderment.
They forget

that in the back, they're pushing too.
A cigar smolders
exhaling ghosts into the air
and skeletal men laboring and laboring
as they slowly sink into the metal
that forged them.

I look at the faces of this fountain
sculpture in the entryway of Republica,
off the Alameda, in which
men and women alike
(the only difference are lumps on their chests)
stare into that bubbling spigot--
water over-flowing into the drain
at the base of the lifted bowl
(I don't know if this is bronze
or stone) and every one of them blank---
not even etched out,
just smoothed away, born without time
to mark the progression of their eyes,
how tired they must become
as night pushes itself into day---
just looking; always looking.

A quote torn from the headlines of Charles Olson's "Projective Verse" essay...

“Is” comes from the Aryan root, as, to breathe. The English “not” equals the Sanskrit na, which may come from the root na, to be lost, to perish. “Be” is from bhu, to grow.

interesting, eh?

After School Ends (pending title...this is almost all in syllabics...how did that happen??)

Comes the time again when we start to write.
It's summer and homework isn't hanging
over us like a mobile of little knives ---
no threat, we breathe, set a pen
in our hands and draw open the letters
of the year: how fall was tough
when we ended our relationship, and
especially March when our cousin died.
And then there was May, full
of hope for endings, since nothing begins
in summer: nature stagnates in heat
and humidity. Comes the pool,
comes the ice cream that fuels
the mind again, since we're out
of worries, besides August,
which levels the grass in rust,
a small signal of the September red
that we embrace like scholastic sex:
all classroom stuff & no exploration.

A Request for Good Old Age

That's not what old age is.
Hearing from my Bobi and Zaidi*
it's more like you slowing down
and trying not to let it
slow you all at once.
It always seemed a habit that
Zaidi shaved every day--
since his face looks hairless
like there never was anything to shave,

but this old man here has cuts all over
his chin, and a few on his neck;
blinks like he's confused
but I know (or guess, really;
one is only ever an observer)
he's got his faculties together.
His gaze shifts so much.
That's not old age. Younger,
I always thought it was when
veins pop out just a bit more.

When my hands shake
and I cover my face
and it ends up shaking
like a bebop tilt-a-whirl
set me straight, will you.
Keep my eyes from staring
in one place.
Why should the mind slow
just because the body dances
at tempo lento?
Mouth set, eyes sweeping.
I would do nothing else.



*pronounced Bu-bee and Zey-dee (grandma and grandpa in Yiddish)

A Seasonal Ghazal (a ghazal is a persian form, i believe, that has a pattern that you'll see that repeats)

this is from Jane Shore's poetry workshop back from last year -- took a long time to look at it again, I thought it was done for, but recently I looked at it, and revamped it. I think it's better looking, with a few kinks in the second line and fourth line...


A Seasonal Ghazal

What defines a ghazal is a constant longing.
Summer begins to cling, becomes quiet, slow, like longing:

In fall the pine needles fall in droves.
Mid-fall is a fire; consumes like longing.

The crunch of winter, the acid smell of February.
Early March. Leaves freeze, trees know longing.

What’s the usual sound a leaf makes when
It hits the ground: a quick scream of longing.

Flower and flower drop pieces
Unintentionally. Wanting them back is a longing.

What defines a ghazal is a constant, while
Seasons shape our wavering wants & longing.

A year’s length is a constant, it’s within it that we question:
“What does love look/like?” Probably like longing,

Whereas death, the other, stays obtuse,
Always pointing. This is a year’s length: love and longing.