I frankly don't know a lot about poetry-- I've read a lot of it, that's all-- within my writers group I defer to real poets like Frank Walsh, but I'm curious as to what makes this a "good" or interesting poem. Thousands have been written like it. Its subject is fairly banal-- rural trivia about doors and barns. Does this really connect to people? As for the writing itself, it doesn't have a lot of what I look for in poetry; great rhythmn or euphony; the kind of thing which I'd love to read aloud. (I love reciting Shakespeare aloud.) You've mentioned Berryman. Now there's a poet! he does so much with his words. . . . Just my two cents.
Well, let's just say it connected to me. The house of poetry has many mansions. I like Berryman, too, though I confess to liking his later stuff - which the critics disparaged - perhaps more than his earlier, knottier work.
I'm dreadfully sorry you thought of my feeble attempt at poetry as fairly banal.
I accept your critique, and will learn from it. Not all peotry has a rhythem, or euphony. I think of poetry as a painting, mixing the color of words with the oils and depths of emotion. I certainly am not trying to connect people. I write what I see and feel. If it causes something in your heart to flutter, or remember, then I have accomplished something.
I appreciate your two cents. Thank you. Not that I would even attempt to write on the same grand scale as this, but I wanted to add to this my favorite poem:
Come Up From the Fields Father by Walt Whitman
Come up from the fields father, here's a letter from our Pete, And come to the front door mother, here's a letter from thy dear son.
Lo, 'tis autumn, Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind, Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis'd vines, (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds, Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.
Down in the fields all prospers well, But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's call, And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling, She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.
Open the envelope quickly, O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd, O a strange hand writes for our dear son, 0 stricken mother's soul! All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only, Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, At present low, but will soon be better.
Ah now the single figure to me, Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms, Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint, By the jamb of a door leans.
Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs, The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,) See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better. Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,) While they stand at home at the door he is dead already, The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better, She with thin form presently drest in black, By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking, In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw, To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
**** I assume in those fields there are barns. The mother must come to the door...eventually.
Note to Roberta: I have been preparing this for a couple hours or so, and without changing a word after reading your response just now, I post it. Please accept it as feedback also.
Yours, Rus
~~~~
I agree with King, that a poem with a "fairly banal" subject would do well to have instead "great rhythm or euphony." I disagree that the subject is banal. The poem is mystical, and achieves something very difficult to do, but what many shamanistic poets chose to write poetry because of.
Picking up her cues in the first stanza, the poet Roberta Nolte tells us of "ghost cows" and "dust devils." There is then a series of places where life brings mystical experiences to those who are sensitive to them. Further down, in case the reader has not meditated into the poem or stayed with it, and might think that this is simply and only an exegesis of a painting or a (fairly banal) description from a walk taken in the countryside, she gives us this stanza:
The rooms of Calliope are bare, simple shadows on the walls, a hint at hutches and couches - sideboards- an easy chair furniture that once stood strong and sturdy, gone or covered.
Nothing about the room or in the room necessarily exists. Shadows and hints exist, but the actuality of what is left behind is gone. The realest thing is that some furniture might be "covered". But "covered" is only possible, because by using the word "or", logically speaking, everything could be gone and that statement would be true. And then if something were there "covered" we might ask what with? A shadow? A hint? Possibly, only possibly, some old ghostly sheet.
In the neighborhood of Calliope's house, we have places where people have been known to have religious experiences of a sort of daily poetic kind. Of Calliope we find:
She is surrounded by over- grown roses, the old ones, that release their scent to the bees and the butterflies while birds build nests in the eaves of her front porch and mud wasps buzz at no one and nothing
This is the second stanza. Right away, we are given these winged creatures, representatives and messengers of the mystical world. They thus represent, not only the life force communicating into the mundanity of normal life, but the shaman herself. Why, though? Notice the world "scent" almost unsupported and thus almost misplaced. The sense of smell is the one that is used to bring forth memories. Like a summer day when the flora is burning smells along the roadside, causing people to remember past times in similar places, religious experiences come to the shaman poet very much the same way, often during just such a walk--but it can be from a movie, a conversation, and as here: purposely through a poem such as Roberta's "Calliope Waits". It is a beckoning into a mystical realm that exists.
There is always the question of whether a mystical experience should ever be communicated, or was its "purpose" (if it had one) only for the receiver. After all, most come and go, never written down, bouying the earthbound shaman. Religions spin off what shamans write down, apparently inevitably leading inquisitions, crusades, and gestapos to take such experiences written down to be grievously misread with horrific results. And then we have the case here, where the shaman pens the poem, with terrific care and writing skills, staying true to the muse, accomplishing that leap that all poets would love to do each time they write--and a skilled reader, never mind an unskilled one, misses it. Was the musing, the message from Calliope's place, only for Roberta, then? Would she have done better to tell us how she approaches raising children, which car to buy for reliability, or the favorite family recipe? Would this serve the world better? Her response:
The box woods yearn to be brushed by giggling hands and the front step sags from the weight of years, not steps.
There is that beckoning. It is ever-present during those unmystical times of the shaman, the regular guy or gal we know, but a great welcome-home-here is there when the experience is present. So what we do is get into Zen, for instance, and sit in the lotus position, another way to meditiate and allow a full experience to be fully present, through state of mind. Maybe even concentrate on a koan, as here in Roberta's next stanza:
Even the screen door caught by a wind claps alone with one hand - wishing for laughter
Hoping.
The sound of one hand clapping. Beyond the laughter that comes with joy of such experience, there is a joke here to laugh at as well. If you get the joke, you're with it. Skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to know, or refuse in principal to hear a joke explained. (parenthetical segway) You have stayed with me here in this paragraph. Isn't it funny that we have Calliope, Homer's muse, getting Roberta to give us a Zen Koan at Calliope's door? No? This is the koan that Bart Simpson, Homer's son, famously solved.
We see Roberta bringing the Ancient Greek mystics in with the Zen, and she does is by including very earthly experiences and playing on usual human intuition. Thus, not only does the world of Calliope revel in all human beings, including those of us of the present day, but she goes further, and includes religions that may be left out. In the final stanza:
Calliope waits - she has for years - and will continue to yearn for those that would make her home
This is a direct inclusion of the Christian message. There's not a whole lot of the Bible you cannot meditiate on in relation to that simply-stated final stanza. Replace "Calliope" with either "Lord God" or "Jesus" (and switch gender pronouns), or do "Allah", if you want. It's a nicely done statement this way. In fact, it was fairly bold of Roberta to use Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, in such a short lyric or pastoral, as it were. She is a mystic with the authority to tell the rest of us that Homer was a mystic too, that those instances that speak mystic-to-mystic anyway, come through loud and clear to her, as her poem now can. It's the same Greek Muse, same house.
I frankly don't know a lot about poetry-- I've read a lot of it, that's all-- within my writers group I defer to real poets like Frank Walsh, but I'm curious as to what makes this a "good" or interesting poem. Thousands have been written like it. Its subject is fairly banal-- rural trivia about doors and barns. Does this really connect to people?
ReplyDeleteAs for the writing itself, it doesn't have a lot of what I look for in poetry; great rhythmn or euphony; the kind of thing which I'd love to read aloud. (I love reciting Shakespeare aloud.)
You've mentioned Berryman. Now there's a poet! he does so much with his words. . . .
Just my two cents.
Well, let's just say it connected to me. The house of poetry has many mansions. I like Berryman, too, though I confess to liking his later stuff - which the critics disparaged - perhaps more than his earlier, knottier work.
ReplyDeleteDear King,
ReplyDeleteI'm dreadfully sorry you thought of my feeble attempt at poetry as fairly banal.
I accept your critique, and will learn from it. Not all peotry has a rhythem, or euphony. I think of poetry as a painting, mixing the color of words with the oils and depths of emotion. I certainly am not trying to connect people. I write what I see and feel. If it causes something in your heart to flutter, or remember, then I have accomplished something.
I appreciate your two cents. Thank you. Not that I would even attempt to write on the same grand scale as this, but I wanted to add to this my favorite poem:
Come Up From the Fields Father
by Walt Whitman
Come up from the fields father, here's a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here's a letter from thy
dear son.
Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the
trellis'd vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately
buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain,
and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm
prospers well.
Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's
call,
And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right
away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps
trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.
Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, 0 stricken
mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the
main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry
skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.
Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and
farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks
through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to
be better, that brave and simple soul,)
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping,
often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep
longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape
and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
****
I assume in those fields there are barns. The mother must come to the door...eventually.
Note to Roberta: I have been preparing this for a couple hours or so, and without changing a word after reading your response just now, I post it. Please accept it as feedback also.
ReplyDeleteYours,
Rus
~~~~
I agree with King, that a poem with a "fairly banal" subject would do well to have instead "great rhythm or euphony." I disagree that the subject is banal. The poem is mystical, and achieves something very difficult to do, but what many shamanistic poets chose to write poetry because of.
Picking up her cues in the first stanza, the poet Roberta Nolte tells us of "ghost cows" and "dust devils." There is then a series of places where life brings mystical experiences to those who are sensitive to them. Further down, in case the reader has not meditated into the poem or stayed with it, and might think that this is simply and only an exegesis of a painting or a (fairly banal) description from a walk taken in the countryside, she gives us this stanza:
The rooms of Calliope
are bare, simple shadows
on the walls, a hint at hutches
and couches - sideboards-
an easy chair
furniture that once stood
strong and sturdy, gone
or covered.
Nothing about the room or in the room necessarily exists. Shadows and hints exist, but the actuality of what is left behind is gone. The realest thing is that some furniture might be "covered". But "covered" is only possible, because by using the word "or", logically speaking, everything could be gone and that statement would be true. And then if something were there "covered" we might ask what with? A shadow? A hint? Possibly, only possibly, some old ghostly sheet.
In the neighborhood of Calliope's house, we have places where people have been known to have religious experiences of a sort of daily poetic kind. Of Calliope we find:
She is surrounded by over-
grown roses, the old ones,
that release their scent
to the bees and the
butterflies while birds
build nests in the
eaves of her front
porch and mud wasps
buzz at no one and
nothing
This is the second stanza. Right away, we are given these winged creatures, representatives and messengers of the mystical world. They thus represent, not only the life force communicating into the mundanity of normal life, but the shaman herself. Why, though? Notice the world "scent" almost unsupported and thus almost misplaced. The sense of smell is the one that is used to bring forth memories. Like a summer day when the flora is burning smells along the roadside, causing people to remember past times in similar places, religious experiences come to the shaman poet very much the same way, often during just such a walk--but it can be from a movie, a conversation, and as here: purposely through a poem such as Roberta's "Calliope Waits". It is a beckoning into a mystical realm that exists.
There is always the question of whether a mystical experience should ever be communicated, or was its "purpose" (if it had one) only for the receiver. After all, most come and go, never written down, bouying the earthbound shaman. Religions spin off what shamans write down, apparently inevitably leading inquisitions, crusades, and gestapos to take such experiences written down to be grievously misread with horrific results. And then we have the case here, where the shaman pens the poem, with terrific care and writing skills, staying true to the muse, accomplishing that leap that all poets would love to do each time they write--and a skilled reader, never mind an unskilled one, misses it. Was the musing, the message from Calliope's place, only for Roberta, then? Would she have done better to tell us how she approaches raising children, which car to buy for reliability, or the favorite family recipe? Would this serve the world better? Her response:
The box woods yearn to
be brushed by
giggling hands and
the front step sags
from the weight of years,
not steps.
There is that beckoning. It is ever-present during those unmystical times of the shaman, the regular guy or gal we know, but a great welcome-home-here is there when the experience is present. So what we do is get into Zen, for instance, and sit in the lotus position, another way to meditiate and allow a full experience to be fully present, through state of mind. Maybe even concentrate on a koan, as here in Roberta's next stanza:
Even the screen door
caught by a wind
claps alone with
one hand - wishing for
laughter
Hoping.
The sound of one hand clapping. Beyond the laughter that comes with joy of such experience, there is a joke here to laugh at as well. If you get the joke, you're with it. Skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to know, or refuse in principal to hear a joke explained. (parenthetical segway) You have stayed with me here in this paragraph. Isn't it funny that we have Calliope, Homer's muse, getting Roberta to give us a Zen Koan at Calliope's door? No? This is the koan that Bart Simpson, Homer's son, famously solved.
We see Roberta bringing the Ancient Greek mystics in with the Zen, and she does is by including very earthly experiences and playing on usual human intuition. Thus, not only does the world of Calliope revel in all human beings, including those of us of the present day, but she goes further, and includes religions that may be left out. In the final stanza:
Calliope waits -
she has for years -
and will continue
to yearn
for those that would
make her
home
This is a direct inclusion of the Christian message. There's not a whole lot of the Bible you cannot meditiate on in relation to that simply-stated final stanza. Replace "Calliope" with either "Lord God" or "Jesus" (and switch gender pronouns), or do "Allah", if you want. It's a nicely done statement this way. In fact, it was fairly bold of Roberta to use Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, in such a short lyric or pastoral, as it were. She is a mystic with the authority to tell the rest of us that Homer was a mystic too, that those instances that speak mystic-to-mystic anyway, come through loud and clear to her, as her poem now can. It's the same Greek Muse, same house.