one of the things i really appreciate about taking a poetry workshop or seminar is that i'm forced to read things i ordinarily wouldn't think of picking up. when i make the margins of my mind less narrow, the effort shows up in my poetry later...
on that note, i'm reading "cascadia" by brenda hillman, one of the women poets who's coming to barnard this month. i wonder if saskia gave me her books intentionally, as hillman writes exclusively about science or that way of viewing the world. at times, the words and poems are so dense they daunt the eye: pages and pages of close-set lines. it's like holding a wedge of clay in your hands, thick and difficult to mold into something understood...but, the lines are frank and deliberate. if i listen closely, i can almost hear her reading them to me, or inscribing them in my brain.
i write short poetry and adore short poetry. to me, it shows the author understands that words are weighted and each one should be something worth. but, it's interesting to read something you don't necessarily like and force yourself to see its fine aspects. (sort of painful, though...)
in any case, i'll end by sharing a (short) piece i particularly liked:
songless era
A fine ash obscured the sun.
Leaves grew large as rooms.
Stamped recreants strolled near the pond of wands.
There was a great and terrible brightness
that was pretty much like a fire
but it had lots of eyes in it.
Four syntaxes correspond to four styles of going on.
Can you hear? (How 'bout now.) Non-chanson:
lie down in the tent of a servant-queen
lie down in the dust; go on.
One kind of sentence remembers the accident;
one kind of sentence is a scar.
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what think you?
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it's very interesting how this poem is like a meditation on the kinds of attention a sentence can create. especially in the first 3 lines, which are so isolated that one can mistake them for statements/sentences in themselves, and I found that i couldn't exactly conjure up the images of the words in the lines, but simply just heard the rhythm and cadences in them. like listening to songs and ignoring the lyrics - and interesting how it is a "songless" era, with a snippet of a "non-chanson" near the end. the difference in intention between sentence and lyric. really interesting.
i feel the same way sometimes about long poems, but there are some great lengthy poems too. i would suggest reading bishop, whose poems vary from 1 page to 5 pages long, and even her lengthy poems are truly wonderful, without being dense or excessive, but really follow-able and natural. i totally agree that reading things you ordinarily wouldn't makes itself evident in the poetry you write. thanks for sharing this one!
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