¡Bemsha SWING!

11 jun 2005

I was trying to write a deliberately bad poem last night when I was about 10 minutes from falling asleep. This is as far as I got:

Robert DeNiro's father was a painter
an abstract expressionist
all his paintings were destroyed in a fire
I was told this on my last trip to New York

An abstract expressionist
my information might not be reliable
I was told this on my last trip to New York
who was it told me?

My information might not be reliable...

I guess that's one idea of bad poetry. A totally "dead" style, flattened out to the extreme, somnolent beyond belief.

6 comentarios:

C. Dale dijo...: I hate to ruin this for you, but your lines aren't as flat as you would believe. The start of a pantoum, a form that seems quite capable of taking the most somnolent of material and making it strange by repetition and the surprise of how the lines take on different maenings as they progress, becomes anything but somnolent. The pantoum is a truly bizarre form. It is baffling in ways because no one I know has ever been able to explain its effects on readers well. Reading a pantoum and hearing one seem so disconnected it is almost like having two different poems. Maybe all poems are that way, but I don't think so. Anyway, going back to your lines, I would venture to guess that what follows will more than likely make or break the poem. But the lines, in and of themselves here, are merely teasing us. Funny how the pantoum seems to like the subject or "knowing" or "understanding" what the hell happened or is happening. Anyway, sorry for interrupting.; 2:30 p. m.
Anthony Robinson dijo...: I don't think it's horrible, but I do feel the flatness here, Jonathan. I'm not sure if it's the form you've chosen, but your description of the poem itself as "dead" seems to make sense. The ideas though are interesting enough--Bobby D's daddy and so forth. The lines, though, are flat. The language is uninspired.; 3:32 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: It's hard to write a really bad pantoum, I guess. It does have that "teasing" quality C. Dale noted. I'll try to do worse next time.; 3:36 p. m.
C. Dale dijo...: Yes, we want something worse. God damn it, you just have to work harder to be really bad! Get cracking!; 3:52 p. m.
shanna dijo...: one of my favorite assignments in lehman's class was to attempt to write a very bad poem. most people's were good. it was fun to fail.; 3:13 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: Lehman knows a lot about writing bad poems. There's always that temptation to sneak in something interesting.; 3:41 p. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

11 jun 2005

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