'THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS.' GROUP POETRY, Part Two

Pix: Pie in the Sky




It's a winter Sunday, and it's been awhile since I've posted Robert Hayden's classic, "Those Winter Sundays," which is about humility and quiet, solitary work that goes unappreciated.

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

I also see or imagine a disproportionate amount of talking about writing as opposed to writing. “Talk, talk, talk” can infringe more than it should on “write, write, write”—which means, “revise, revise, revise.” Poet Linda Pastan once said she never considers sending a batch of her work to a magazine until she’s gone back to it at least 50 times. Long ago at a reading, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. informed the audience that his 200-page masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, was originally over 1,400 pages in typescript. And there is Faulkner’s famous dictum: “Kill your darlings," in which case your darlings are your words.

Poet Thomas Lux speaks of “boiling it down.” When a student returns with a rewrite, Lux often says, “Boil it down some more.” I suppose that might be bluster, but I doubt it; Lux strikes me as an honest, hard-working guy. Also consider: if an honest, earnest, smart writer can bear to cut something, it most likely needed to be cut. (And you don’t burn the old version; you put it in your junkyard drawer and, maybe, return to it someday for potential spare parts).

I also wonder if the kind of celebrity attached to professional writers at these affairs amounts to The-Poet-as-Rock-Star more than the poet as monk or mentor. In any case, Famous Dude Syndrome infringes more than it should on the actual work of any headliner poet.

It’s the work that needs to be studied, the work on the page more than the work at a reading, the work in solitude, along with other writers' commentary have said about that work or that poet. The only justification for readings is the fact that readers might get a glimpse of writing they didn’t know and will want to explore it further.

The value of a reading has little or nothing to do with the intended or accidental meaning injected into the work by the writer’s speaking voice. Homer’s been dead awhile now, yet mavens of the reading scene speak reverentially about the importance of the oral tradition begun by Homer. Should we quit reading Homer because we can’t hear him read aloud?

For several centuries now, writing has occurred on the page—and recently in cyberspace as well. If someone can’t connect to it there, hearing it read by its creator cannot rescue the essence of that work for that reader. Thinking that it does converts the text to a performance, a theatrical event. A typical play has two or three hours to get itself into an audience’s head and heart, after which it might not outlive any transitory enchantment that it caused. That should not be the case for poetry or fiction, which should be absorbed by the ounce, read and re-read, silently or aloud, in bed or in a coffee shop, one line or sentence at a time. The work can be memorized for its healing powers. It’s not fast food or a strip tease. It's a little jar of Truth and Beauty. Apply slowly. Repeat.

A reading, no matter how artful, is oratory more than writing; it’s a little like a night at the movies. Yes, of course, there’s some connection between the written text and what audiences hear at readings. It’s not an either/or proposition. I get that. But I’m not sure that those disagreeing with me—the majority, it seems—get the fact that one’s final, meaningful response to the written word is a private, quiet affair, a romance, or a battle, perhaps, between the written words and a reader.

My concern is that, in our Attention-Deficit, YouTube culture these days, the reward of a party atmosphere and instant gratification, the sense of the conference as a social club . . . all that eclipses the benefits of absorbing legitimate views, both the friendly and the challenging, from peers and celebrity teachers, about the work of both student and headliner. Workshops and readings can be helpful, to be sure, but it’s also easy for the face-to-face and voice-to-voice to override the eye-to-text experience. In a workshop we might remember the person who made the comment more than the comment itself. We might remember the celebrity’s hotness factor without remembering five words or two ideas from his reading.

Back to Hayden's winter Sundays . . . maybe I think of the polished shoes as the father's poems. They are what he made. I picture them sitting in a corner, near the door, not in the center of the living room where they deserve to be, but that's the way it is with so many labors of love, objects of quiet pride, products of our work. It's one more reason that isolation and alienation are such dominant themes in literature.

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden


to be continued . . .

TRIBES and VILLAGES. Thomas Lux, "The People of the Other Village"

The People of the Other Village by Thomas Lux : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

In the Visitor Comments here, for my Oct. 25 post, M says, "cities (or tribes) must compete with one another." Although I probably agree, “Must" is a big word.

Also, I'm hearing the word "tribe" more and more in the national parlance. A couple of poets at conferences have referred to their colleagues and the audience as their Tribe. There must be tribes of journalists, print and broadcast, global, urban and village, and so forth. Tribes of M.D.s. Tribes of every damned thing, including New Critics vs. New Historicists.

Maybe it's all too huge to discuss here, much less solve, but the first obvious problem is how far we should take all forms of Us vs. Them business. It's probably an evolved and/or genetic thing, a sensing of danger in any Other, an instinct that’s necessary for survival; but surely our goal should be the prevention of knee-jerk hostility and blind allegiance to Tribe.

Maybe I’m a pessimist, but when I hear references to “my tribe” I feel an intent to exclude and raise arms more than a healthy sense of warmth and welcome into this or that small group or surrogate family.

The Hatfields and McCoys were two Tribes. What did it get them? Nazis were one tribe, weren't they. And our current Skinheads. Or the Amish and the Methodists? The Crips and Bloods? Red States and Blue States? Sunnis and Shiites? Oh my, the Tea Party!



“It takes a village” — to do what? I grew up in a village, where I got, yes, a clear sense of identity, rank, belonging, security, fellowship . . . and, yes, lack of privacy, rank, ample gossip and backbiting, provincial and belligerent thinking about various forms of The Other (certain families, big cities, minorities, other religions, other nations).

Along those lines two old expressions have been . . . born again? . . . in my consciousness in the last decade or so. A person might not be “our kind of people,” and, conversely, a person might “think he is somebody,” in which case he is again not our kind of people.

So when President Obama said something like, “Let’s talk first about where we can agree, where we can come together,” it struck me as enormously, movingly profound. Though it was a simple and vaguely familiar suggestion, it felt like centuries since I’d heard such a constructive, rational, calming, welcoming thought.

That Warm Fuzzy has pretty much gone to Hell in the last year or so, but it remains one of the reasons I value Obama so much. So when I hear of towns where adults genuinely hate a rival town’s sports team, want to see their players hurt, or at least humiliated, I genuinely don’t understand it. I’m sick of the New York Yankess and New England Patriots, but I don’t wish their players any harm. If you can’t beat ‘em, say so and surrender. Trying, behind the scenes and outside the rules, to kill superior opponents misses the point and turns the wannabe assassins into soulless vermin.

Indeed, the Yankees of Forever and the Patriots of the 2000s are not your kind of people; they’re better than you and yours and mine ever hoped to be. So why not withdraw and improve our teams? Illegally killing the better teams proves nothing except your own lack of character.

Poet Thomas Lux is able to muster more humor on the subject than I have.

The People of the Other Village by Thomas Lux : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

CONTINUED TOMORROW OR SOON
***

Robert Frost, "Design"

Northern Parula Warbler and Yellow-rumped Warbler, Magee Marsh in NW Ohio: sitting pretty, scanning for food, mate, territory, and nerds with long lenses.



Here is Robert Frost's sonnet, "Design," which I offer as a comparison to Sunday's Lux poem. It's probably not debatable that the Frost is denser and verbally more complex, including the rhyme, meter, and the tradition of the sonnet. Is it therefore a better poem? Is its philosophical content larger, more substantial, more complex, more legitimate? Is its language more pleasing or more compelling than Lux's? If Lux's monkey poem is better, what makes it so? (And "better" is not the same issue as "I like it more." Your mom might be prettier or wittier than my mom, but is she a better mom?).



Design - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

Thomas Lux, "To Help the Monkey Cross the River"

To Help the Monkey Cross the River by Thomas Lux : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Maybe this is the Thomas Lux poem that will make you a fan, especially if you like story problems in math class, or monkeys, or underdogs, or oblivious creatures who ought to be desperate. Or if you've noticed how wide some rivers are. Or if you like poets whose inner tough guy struggles with a big, soft heart.

I just drove along the Ohio River for a couple of days, and at some point I recalled another of Lux's poems, where he offers one of the better lines anywhere: "if a river could look over its shoulder." In one sense, that line is a team player in the poem, blending in, doing its job; it's not especially interested in stardom. In another way, it tore my head off. What if something as powerful and important as a river is as nostalgic, wistful, uncertain and maybe as sad as we humans are, to be leaving?

So why a goat picture? First, I don't have a monkey pic; secondly, goats are almost as goofily fetching. Finally, as Vonnegut says, "Vy you, vy me, vy anybody?" (Slaughterhouse-5).


To Help the Monkey Cross the River by Thomas Lux : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Thomas Lux, "I Love You Sweatheart"

I Love You Sweatheart by Thomas Lux | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

I don't mean to be pushy about Thomas Lux, but I've seen more than one audience love this poem, and it shows a lighter, softer side of Lux that might not have been evident in previous poems I've offered. Also, this is Friday, time for a lite.


One more thing: Lux does worlds for his students, for rising individual poets, and for the contemporary scene in general. We owe him. (So much for The New Criticism. I told you I was not a fanatic.).

Be sure to look at spelling in the poem. And take advantage of this chance to hear Lux's unique reading style. You'll see where to click at The Writer's Almanac site.

I wonder if the poem was written for this female Downy Woodpecker. I wish I could've convinced her to hold still, but I'll take it as my first photo capture of a Downy.

I Love You Sweatheart by Thomas Lux | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Yeats, Lux, Ciardi, Toomer: Can We Pull It All Together?

A Little Tooth - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

For Instance by John Ciardi : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.


RPO -- William Butler Yeats : A Prayer for my Daughter

Reapers by Jean Toomer from Cane, 1923



Thanks to bloggers Altadenahiker.blogspot (hereafter, AH) and Brenda’sArizona.blogspot (Brenda) for substantial and clever responses to Thomas Lux and William Butler Yeats poems that I discussed only lightly on March 23. What I say today will make more sense if you check out that day’s exchanges in the Visitors’ Comments and have a look at yesterday’s poem, “Reapers,” by Jean Toomer.

I agree with practically everything AH and Brenda say, except that I wouldn't be as hard on "Little Tooth” as they are.

AH, your comparisons have never been better, including the coffee and salad remark (I won't rush it with today's talk, which is really just part 2 of Tuesday's talk, and thus pretty long, for which I apologize). Your linking of Daisy Buchanan to Yeats’ hopes for his daughter seems right on the money to me.

Or, how about this: Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire aspires to be, or thinks she is, Daisy Buchanan because she lacks . . . what? . . . the character? the depth . . . to think about herself the way Yeats thinks about his daughter? Blanche seems to mistake graciousness and dignity for aristocratic noise (southern style). Or, are Yeats’ hopes almost as aristocratic, muted by a dollop more intelligence and grace?

Also, AH, your comparison of "Little Tooth" to Ciardi’s "For Instance" (see the Feb. 17 Banjo52) is intriguing. Someone (not me) could probably make an interesting argument about the ways one of those poems succeeds more than the other.

Brenda, I think you and AH are both right about reasons the Yeats is not sexist, but I bet there are those who disagree. (I know there used to be such folks).

In Lux’s “A Little Tooth” I see him pulling the camera lens back, looking at all people, families, parents, and all daughters from a distance, and saying something like, "Here's what we look like once you strip away our soft self-interest, our delusions about our importance in the larger scheme of things, and various other sentimentality.”

Even from that sort of cold, scientific or sociological perspective, the conclusion, "Your daughter is tall," packs a wallop for me. It's a variation on the old Latin maxims, tempus fugit and ubi sunt. Or, remember Malvina Reynolds' famous song, "Turn Around”—“Turn around and you're a young man with babes of your own”--isn't that the line? Well, that’s a nice song (which I don’t mean to be dismissive—I’ve always liked it), but if a serious poet tried that, without the music and with different expectations from his audience, it would come off as sentimental claptrap.

The risk for a poet of reigning in his emotions as completely as Lux does (or John Ciardi) is that he might strip the poem of feeling altogether. If most readers agree with AH that Ciardi succeeds in this gamble and Lux fails, the reasons for that are still interesting. Has Ciardi managed to leave his characters with their humanity in a way that Lux has not? If so, how?

So I don't think Lux is as indifferent as you say, especially about a daughter; instead, I think he's saying about us all, with a self-restraint that borders on bitterness, "It was hard. And this is what it all comes to. And the kid got tall. She's gone. So is everything." (I think now of Dean Young’s scarecrow . . . ).

I won't argue that that's a complete explanation of a life or a family, but I think most of us err in the other direction, looking for ways to soften hard truths, letting ourselves off one or another hook. Maybe Lux is trying to look those truths in the eye, which might actually add depth to his feeling for a daughter. "Life is pretty much over—much ado about nothing. What hurts most is her absence, her distance."

Maybe this effort at objectivity is also an element in Jean Toomer’s “Reapers” (see yesterday’s post, March 24). Labor in southern fields is a subject that might tempt us toward idealized, pretty notions of a pastoral idyll. Here, it leads to the death of a rat, blood on the blade, and nary a word of sympathy for the animal or for the workers. In spite of the sensual rhymed couplets, we have a seemingly objective portrait of rural life as a rote process, devoid of compassion.

By the way, the workers are black, and Toomer was black, a figure in the Harlem Renaissance. To what extent is “Reapers” about race? And is its perspective at least a little like “For Instance” or “A Little Tooth”?

* *

Lux and Yeats on Daughters

A Little Tooth - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More








RPO -- William Butler Yeats : A Prayer for my Daughter


Okay, okay, so I already posted "A Prayer for My Daughter" back on June 17. Here it is again. I predict you'll get over it, and it makes an interesting comparison to Lux's "A Little Tooth." Maybe someone would like to comment on that. Minimal yak from me today.

* *

Thomas Lux, "It's the Little Towns I Like"

It's the Little Towns I Like by Thomas Lux : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

In pursuit of more poems that raise the question of conversation compared to poetry, I came across Thomas Lux's "It's the Little Towns I Like." I was looking for a different Lux poem, but the small town theme in the title here caught my eye, and I like what he does with it.

With Lux, I usually do like it. Among contemporary poets, his work creates an unusual balance between accessibility and density. He tells good stories; his frequent anger seems justified, seems to be our anger, or the anger we should have if we weren't lazy and complacent; yet he makes us laugh; and he gives us imagery that's approachable and memorable.

On the side of density, he's almost always in the service of the universal themes, like social injustice, and most of his lines of, say, four words or more offer small gifts of their own as they move toward the larger gift of the whole poem. Surely it's a given that memorable imagery serves both accessibility and density. In short, Lux is no lightweight, but neither is he a tangle of techniques that are all brain, no heart. (Remember Yeats's great line in "Easter 1916": "Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart").

Still, in the end--or should I say, "At the end of the day?"--ugh, gag me with a spoon--who started that? More to the point, who were the first few to regurgitate it? They were probably too busy "going forward" and "begging the question" to notice they had jumped on the instant-oats-of-cliche wagon and steered it into the mainstream of TV anchor-speak)--

Speaking of streams, one of Lux's greatest lines is, "If a river could look over its shoulder . . . ."

--Where was I?

In the end, it was Lux's reference to fathers and the similarity to Bob Hicok's "O my pa-pa" (January 2 here at Banjo) that told me I had to post Lux's "It's the Little Towns . . . ." I predict there will be more of Thomas Lux at Banjo52.

It's the Little Towns I Like by Thomas Lux : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.