¡Bemsha SWING!

21 jul 2005

Jordan on Glûck. Isn't the problem here a certain tone-deafness? Both the 3rd person narrator and the Greek Goddess Demeter speak in a stiff, hyper-literary "poetic diction." Yet the reference to a "politician" rings totally false. You can't imagine anyone saying these lines. The language is tired. "wandering the earth." "She has no wish / to continue as the source of life." "Tell me, how can I endure the earth." Yet this diction is forced to do all the poetic heavy lifting. Glück has lost her ear for verse rhythms and the images are out of focus.

5 comentarios:

shanna dijo...: I liked The Wild Iris collection quite a bit (about 10 yrs ago) but then read Ararat hoping for more of the same. Then gave up.

Reading aloud poems with language like what you've highlighted makes me feel totally silly. It definitely feels unnatural to me, but not in the "ooh, what is this new tingly sensation" way.; 2:31 p. m.
Pamela Johnson Parker dijo...: If there is stilted/unnatural diction in a poem, it at least ought to advance the poem--and also sound good. This is too abstract and too flat. The difference in musicality between this poem and "Mock Orange" is huge.; 3:00 p. m.
Jordan dijo...: I didn't think that was so bad about the politician-in-the-abstract. How would you have put it? (Not a fair question, I realize, since you wouldn't have written this poem...); 4:03 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: ***

I would have at least substituted the word "Sophist" for politiician. Or maybe Rhapsode? Keep it in the ambience of Ancient Greece.; 4:07 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: ***

What I'm saying, a better poet would have known to be more self-aware about putting a "politician" in a mythic context. There's an anachronism, which is fine if you think the poet means it be be anachronistic. Otherwise....; 4:20 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!

21 jul 2005

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