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.