Robert Hass, "Dragonflies Mating"

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Blurry with desire
















All aflutter




I wonder if Robert Hass’s “Dragonflies Mating” is a history of humanity, at least our breeding, our complexity in love, including the evolutionary and the Oedipal implications. The poem is a bit long, so I’m offering the following teases in the hope of pulling you in.

“Such a terrible thing / came here with their love.”

“weeks of drinking she disappeared into.”

" . . . I’d bounce
the ball two or three times, study the orange rim as if it were,
which it was, the true level of the world, the one sure thing . . . “

“. . . [I] feel the grain of the leather in my fingertips and shoot.
It was a perfect thing; it was almost like killing her.”

“ . . . they mate and are done with mating.
They don’t carry all this half-mated longing up out of childhood
and then go looking for it everywhere.”

Notice how plain this language is. “She” disappeared into her drinking, or “I’d bounce/the ball two or three times,” or “then go looking for it everywhere.” Couldn’t such language be overheard in a coffee shop or a neighbor’s yard? But the ordinary words quickly lead to (or have grown from) images, actions, or thoughts that are anything but casual.

Here is the whole of "Dragonflies Mating":

Dragonflies Mating by Robert Hass : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

When I talked about Hass’s “Faint Music “ (May 27, 2010), I mentioned that he has me on the edge of impatience with his talk-y language. Is it poetry or prose, as I’ve asked repeatedly about contemporary verse? In both “Faint Music” and “Dragonflies Mating” I think Hass lands well inside the unsafe, tense zone of that which is poetry, where details are precise and compact, and the questions plopped on our plates are huge. Maybe it could be called poetry masquerading as conversation. The reverse of that is what causes my grumpiness.

It’s been a while since I’ve explicitly thanked The Poetry Foundation for the richness of what they make available to us. At their site, www.poetryfoundation.org , we find not only the poem, but a Dan Chiasson essay about it, as well as other work by Hass. The Poetry Foundation came into a bundle of money a few years ago, and I’m glad to see them spending it well. (Yes, my approval will make them shiver with delight).

**

Poetry, Two Movies

Not sure why, but a Cowbird for the two movies seems right, though I give each a 3--for doing something new?

First, about poetry:

Yesterday I stumbled onto a Dan Chiasson review of Frederick Seidel's poetry, and both had the kind of excitement that's often lacking in poetry and talk about poetry--bold but plausible statements, lines, and images, ideas you cannot dismiss even if they seem extreme or mean, and cleverly turned phrases by the dozen. I'm eager to get a book or two by both those guys, so I wonder if anyone out there has a comment or recommendation. I'm embarrassed that Seidel has escaped my attention till now.

Movie Reviews, 1 (low) to 4 (high):

Whatever Works, Woody Allen's newest, starring Larry David. 3.

I'm not a huge Woody Allen fan, though I've liked some of his work. I liked Whatever Works in spite of overwriting and overacting in the the female lead's stereotypical rendering of the dumb southern belle. If you remember A Streetcar Named Desire fairly well, you might have fun seeing Woody's uses of it. Or that might just be grating.

As always, I found a lot of the supposed wisdom of Woody Allen to be very ordinary, if not trite--and certainly repetitive. In the mouth and antics of Larry David, the best lines and gestures are terrific, but there's also a lot of dead weight (no pun intended--oops. See the movie).



Bruno, the ballyhooed follow-up to Borat. 3.

If you liked Borat well enough to see Bruno, I don't think you'll be disappointed by the new show. Bruno probably lacks the substance (meaningful social criticism, for example, or implied questions about the role of spontaneity in art and definitions of art) that Borat might have had, and Bruno's best moments aren't quite as good. But I did find them funny, and so did others in the theater. My psychic jury will be deadlocked for a long time regarding the merits of these two films--if they're saying anything, do they have to say it that way? But apparently they are turning new earth, and anyone who can handle the notion of film as an offensive weapon should enjoy Bruno well enough.