Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Daily Growler Poetry Issue

Poets, Are They Warped Fools or Geniuses?
Poems fall like the leaves of the trees in fall but in spring they spring back to leafy full lushness again. In summer they brown and in October they fall again. A cycle. Here's a raw poem submitted by a man who says he's sailing on the oceans of the moon these days.

Broken...but

I am broken...
but broke?
Not yet,
Though surely...
Yes, surely...
Surely soon.

Nothing's working
And all tills
Are falling into
Empty spaces
When groped for.

I am broken
And breaking,
Yes, O.K.,
Breaking more,
Yes, I agree,
But like the
Flowers in winter,
You know they'll
fill out again
Come spring again,
That same spring
When the
Spring is back
In your step
And you walk
As though on
Waters flowing free
Though nothing
Is free
When you're broke.
___________________________
I capitulate. It isn't a bad poem as though it is no poem at all but just a jest. Jesting is certainly poetry. Like Hip-Hoppers--yes, they are seriously jesting, but as though written in graffiti on the walls of space, what they are babbling and rambling through and rhyming heartily is afterall poetry. Are all wild statements the statements of poets?

Here's another little diddy from the same moon-sailing-dreaming dude.

Can Can-Can

I can't cant
like trotters
trottin' like tots,
but I can can-can,
can't I?,
or may I?,
or deed I do
that hoodoo
that boohoo
That how-to-do
Howdy do,
do, do, or don't
do if you can't,
but do if you
can can-can.
_____________________________________________________
Ooo, a justly just poem of tidbit thinking--of jotted notations on current thinking and verbal actions unionized. Any words that have to be deciphered are ah wilderness words.

Here's another from this moon-ocean sailor boy:

After Reading Toni Morrison

Stunned!
Unable to be cognitive,
a cog in a tiff,
a hum from a spliff,
a waxing of the floor,
the parquet floor of the mind
that minds the store
that sells to miners
or minors or
minions, and still
stays stale,
the same old
same, sure, same.
Unable to be cognitive
in such a grinding
of every motion, totally,
during same everyday days.
Just plain stunned.
___________________________________________
Otro mas, por favor?

When Was...Then Is Now

When was;
Then is now;
Which was once
But isn't
Anymore there.
Because when it
Knows exactly where
Today is now,
Then yesterday
Was when you
And tomorrow
Were forever.
_________________________________________
Reads like "Barnacle Bill the Sailor." Well, after all, this poet is a moon-sea sailor. Hasn't been writing poetry long? Long enough, I would hazard a guess. Not Longfellow enough; oh no! I hope I'm trying not to be too harsh on this harsh "little" poet?

Shall we give him (or her) one more shot?

Including ME

I try,
I crunch,
I scribble.
I will
Write my will,
I will,
Leaving nothing
But a will...(breathe).
I did try though;
I did stall, yes, but
I lengthened my scribble
And I wrote a novel
Called My Will.
Still I will
Leave nothing
In my will or
My Will
But words
Upon words
Upon words
That express
What WE all are,
Including ME.
______________________________________________
I'm not into definitions of poetry. Poetry is wide open, isn't it? What's a poem? Aram Saroyan publishing a book of blank pages? He called that poetry. Robert Creeley called his one-word slammer-jammers poetry. This "unknown" poet, me thinks, studied with Robert Creeley at the University of New Mexico--where he met Lenore Kandel while she was reading her poem "Fucking With Love." And he fell for Lenore, but then, what man who ever met her and heard her read "Fucking With Love" didn't fall in love with her?

For a true mad-male appreciation of Lenore, he's a link for you studs and brilliant ladies to enjoy--pleasure and peace, all we women are after:

www.divineanimal.com/yates_article_on_kandel.htm

Men sometimes are disgustingly historical; remembering a time when they were the masters and their women were their slaves. Lenore Kandel seems to enjoy throwing sexual objects at men, especially men who she knows are putty in her "perverted" hands.

Here's a quote from Lenore Kandel:

“Those who read modern poetry do so for pleasure, for insight, sometimes for counsel. The least they can expect is that the poet who shares his visions and experiences with them does so with no hypocrisy. To compromise poetry through fear is to atrophy the psyche. To compromise poetry through expediency is the soft, small murder of the soul.”


Once is enough. Have we all forgotten Jacqueline Suzanne?

helenhighman-klein-lacloos--poetrix
for The Daily Growler

Note: The above poems are by "The Unknown Poet," or "Tup," as he would like to be known. One could call his poems "Tupperware."

1 comment:

Marybeth said...

Hello Poetryman. I see your friend wood s lot has been putting up the poetry of Lyn Hejinian lately. I once went to a reading of hers in San Francisco. She shared the bill with Ron Padgett who read first. Lyn's piece was called REDO and started with

"Agreement swerves
a sonnet to the consonants.
Sparrows. As a wind
blows over the twigs of a rough nest
entered by a bird that impales

a vowel on its beak.
When unable to think of two things
unless we think twice, the rower
in the water jerks to travel. Her autobiography
is ninety percent picaresque."

... and on and on into infinity. It was an endless poem. There were moments of sly humor in it though.

I liked Ron Padgett better. His poems were short and direct. In one of his poems he "tied [his] shoes to [his] feet" which upset my companion for the evening, another Stanford engineering grad student, who insisted that you don't tie your shoes to your feet. He didn't seem to understand that poetry is not the rigorous and meticulous language that mathematics is.

Here's a Ron Padgett poem:

Little Crush on Jenny Dunbar

Into your life tonight
a girl of planetary beauty steps
for the second time ever
a girl you could fly over everything for
well almost
because you would have to fly over yourself
completely
that is be not just "another you"
but a different someone entirely
I wouldn't
not even for the astonishing perfection that is you

So let's say I bump
into your arm
going out the door
putting my hat on and
my elbow rises into your arm
That's enough and
Excuse me

I liked his reading a lot. He had a wry sense of humor, as opposed to sly, and I preferred him. My friend, a guy, preferred Lyn. Well, I suppose I tend to be partial to all things male for reasons that are unreasonable.

During the intermission, as I was buying a book at the little card table in the hall, I saw Ron Padgett standing near the door to the auditorium, his slender body and sneakered feet silent like a cat, watching, watching me buy a book of his poems. I watch him watch me. He smiled and so did I before I scurried away in my shy way. I spent that whole night in love with Ron Padgett. I think it was 1985.