I've never smoked, and I've always hated the smell of cigarette smoke.
When I was 14 or 15, however, I once stood at some kind of outdoor event at a park, on a summer evening. (A musical performance or a play, I don't remember what.) A few feet away from me stood a woman in her late 20s or early 30s. She was fairly short and wore little make-up, and seemed quite absorbed in the performance, whatever it was. She was smoking cigarette after cigarette, and I made no attempt to move away. When I got home, of course, my shirt smelled strongly of smoke, which would have ordinarily been repulsive to me, but I slept in that shirt that night. Its repulsiveness, in fact, contributed to the erotic charge I felt all night long, associated as it was with this particular woman I had been standing next to for maybe an hour, and who probably was not even aware of my presence.
Eroticism, for me, has often had that double movement of presence and absence, of attraction and repulsion, and of metonymic displacement. Without that smell there would have been no experience to be remembered now. I haven't thought of it for years.
18 sept 2006
There's a serious radio debate. One side saying torture is a good thing we need to use. The other side, not. I kept waiting for TOTN host Neil Conan to say, "Look, here at Talk of the Nation we don't treat the pro-torture side as just one side of a civilized debate, so I'm going to have to hang up on you now, University of California, Berkelely Law Professor asshole John Yoo." Needless to say, Neil never said this.
14 sept 2006
I've been reading a lot of poetry of a particular group of Spanish poets. Gamoneda, Casado, García Valdés, Suñén, Mestre. Poets who, seen from the outside seem to share a similar language. (Most are from Castilla-León.) But each very individual, with quite different styles, when seen from a position closer to the group. That is to say, the further away the perceiver is from the group, the more uniformity there will be. The closer one is to the group, the more the differences become evident. This is simply a universal law of perception, by which familiarity breeds greater differentiation.
I was never a good generalizer. Lumping always seemed lazier to me than splitting. And to the extent I do still lump, it is a function of laziness.
I was never a good generalizer. Lumping always seemed lazier to me than splitting. And to the extent I do still lump, it is a function of laziness.
13 sept 2006
The idea that there are different aesthetics, and that we have to judge a poem on its own ground rules--I reject that. A recent James Tate poem is inadequate, if it is inadequate, according to James Tate's own aesthetics. That is, the aesthetics of his best work more than twenty years ago. He lost it at some point in the mid-70s and never really came back. (The Oblivion Ha-Ha was a good book.) Is it my fault that Philip Levine only wrote one good poem, then endless variations on the same? Why blame me that Mark Strand, that W.S. Merwin, became more insipid with each succesive book? That Ashbery's been phoning it in since who knows when? Is it my fault that Jorie Graham is so pretentious? I've tried to read her many times. There really isn't but one aesthetic. Otherwise couldn't each poem have its own private aesthetic, according to which it was brilliant by definition?
I've been a little bit of a perdonavidas lately. I won't apologize for that, because the perdonavidas does not apologize.
***
Spain calls to me. New York calls to me.
I've been a little bit of a perdonavidas lately. I won't apologize for that, because the perdonavidas does not apologize.
***
Spain calls to me. New York calls to me.
I'm about 20 pages into the catalogue of my books, much less than half-way. Of course, I have to stop and actually read some of them, so the process is fairly slow. I am going to find, I suspect, that I own more books by Leopoldo María Panero than I really need. He basically writes the same book over and over.
I still am missing books from my summer's move. I'm hoping the next move in October will restore these missing items to me. I have a nagging sense that one box of Very Important Stuff is lost forever.
***
Fish once diagnosed the self-loathing of academic humanists in "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos." There is a kind of contempt for what we ourselves do, most evident in a lowering of expectations. On some level we think we deserve our comparatively low salaries and windowless offices.
***
I'm beginning to think Olvido García Valdés is the Spanish poet of her generation, of my generation, that I need to read most assiduously from now on. There was a barrier I needed to get past to read her work, which can sound aloof or inconsequential at first. Two of her books are missing, though one I had very recently, after moving to the apartment, so I'm sure it will turn up.
I still am missing books from my summer's move. I'm hoping the next move in October will restore these missing items to me. I have a nagging sense that one box of Very Important Stuff is lost forever.
***
Fish once diagnosed the self-loathing of academic humanists in "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos." There is a kind of contempt for what we ourselves do, most evident in a lowering of expectations. On some level we think we deserve our comparatively low salaries and windowless offices.
***
I'm beginning to think Olvido García Valdés is the Spanish poet of her generation, of my generation, that I need to read most assiduously from now on. There was a barrier I needed to get past to read her work, which can sound aloof or inconsequential at first. Two of her books are missing, though one I had very recently, after moving to the apartment, so I'm sure it will turn up.
6 sept 2006
It's not every day a story about me is published in the Daily Kansan, the student newspaper here:
Kansas Spanish Professor Jonathan Mayhew has signed a new, five-year contract that guarantees him at least $1.5 million a year, according to an announcement made today.
The new contract more than doubles his guaranteed salary, which was previously nearly $610,000 a season. The contract is written to begin Jan. 1, 2006 and expires following the 2010 academic year. The new contract make Mayhew the fifth-highest paid Big 12 Spanish Professor.
"I want to thank Chancellor Hemenway for his strong and continued support," Mayhew said in a release. "We all share the same vision for excellence in our Spanish program."
In the new agreement, Mayhew's base salary is raised from $128.438 to $220.000. He will also be paid $1.28 million for public appearances and radio and television shows. The contract also pays as much as $650,000 in incentives.
"This is a significant day in the history of the Kansas Spanish program," Kansas Chancellor Hemenway said. "Jonathan Mayhew has done an excellent job reviving this program. I think it's important that we not only reward Jonathan for the job he's done, but also give him the support and stability he needs to continue to turn this Spanish program into a top-tier program. We are happy to be able to make this announcement before this academic year starts."
Kansas Spanish Professor Jonathan Mayhew has signed a new, five-year contract that guarantees him at least $1.5 million a year, according to an announcement made today.
The new contract more than doubles his guaranteed salary, which was previously nearly $610,000 a season. The contract is written to begin Jan. 1, 2006 and expires following the 2010 academic year. The new contract make Mayhew the fifth-highest paid Big 12 Spanish Professor.
"I want to thank Chancellor Hemenway for his strong and continued support," Mayhew said in a release. "We all share the same vision for excellence in our Spanish program."
In the new agreement, Mayhew's base salary is raised from $128.438 to $220.000. He will also be paid $1.28 million for public appearances and radio and television shows. The contract also pays as much as $650,000 in incentives.
"This is a significant day in the history of the Kansas Spanish program," Kansas Chancellor Hemenway said. "Jonathan Mayhew has done an excellent job reviving this program. I think it's important that we not only reward Jonathan for the job he's done, but also give him the support and stability he needs to continue to turn this Spanish program into a top-tier program. We are happy to be able to make this announcement before this academic year starts."
For me, all middle-brow culture already wears a huge "Kick me, I'm stupid" sign. It's yards of bare flesh in a mosquito-infested forest. It's when the middle-brow presumes to lecture its superiors that it should be beaten down mercilessly. And I'm the person to do it! And I don't really care whether you are offended by it. This blog is not *for* you. It is *against* you, if you are l'homme moyen sensuel middle-brow subject. I don't know art but I know what I like.
Go watch some "quality" television. I have to bite my tongue enough as it is in my daily life. Take your tired, insipid, earnest arguments elsewhere. Go fret about the precarious state of literature at some other blog. If you really cared about poetry you wouldn't be an insufferable bore in the first place! Didn't you ever see a citizen split in two by lightning? Sorrentino, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
Go watch some "quality" television. I have to bite my tongue enough as it is in my daily life. Take your tired, insipid, earnest arguments elsewhere. Go fret about the precarious state of literature at some other blog. If you really cared about poetry you wouldn't be an insufferable bore in the first place! Didn't you ever see a citizen split in two by lightning? Sorrentino, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
Next time some suit in a high-rise lectures to you about how poets are "out of touch with reality."
Next time someone writes an ignorant article about how TS Eliot made poetry popular, but that poetry lost its popularity again after World War II (Ginsberg, anyone?)
Next time an ex-corporate vice-president and present Bush administration official reads his iambs to you, making sure to thump them out in a sing-song voice.
Next time someone tells you how the factory workers in the Victorian age sang Tennyson in chorus.
Next time someone tells you how he memorized "The Cremation of Sam McGee."
Next time someone cites a blurb from Oprah's magazine on the Diane Rehm show.
Next time someone tells you how poetry should be more "accessible to the general public."
Next time Terry Gross interviews Billy Collins, Robert Pinky, or Tom Arnold.
Next time the wife of a Republican president holds an event to promote "literacy."
Next time someone tells you it's the fault of the English Professors, the Spanish professors, the postmodernists, Derrida and Foucault, and Zizek of course.
Next time someone say, "I saw a poem I liked in the New Yorker."
Next time Garrison Keillor features the whitest, squarest music on Prarie Home Companion or writes a humor piece for the New Yorker, and then publishes another anthology of darned good, above-average poems.
Next time Billy Collins publishes an anthology of honesttogodprettydarnedgood, above-average poems.
Next time someone writes about Collins in the New York Times Book Review, saying how, yes, he's not very deep, but we like him anyway.
Next time David Lehman edits an anthology of poems and diagnoses the situation of poetry in whatever year it happens to be.
Next time someone diagnoses "the situation of poetry" in earnest tones.
Next time someone cites in earnest tones some Republican suit's diagnosis of the situation of poetry, the crisis of poetry, how nobody reads poetry anymore.
Next time poetry "makes the news."
Next time someone says that television did poetry in.
Next time someone say language poetry is too "academic," and the person saying it is herself and academic or the suit in the skyscraper mentioned above.
Next time someone says, "Ah, Lorca, yes the duende!"
Next time someone says that rock music did poetry in.
Next time someone says our true poetry is in the lyrics to rock songs, or in hip-hop, or in advertising.
Next time someone donates millions to promote poetry, or gives the genius award to a poet.
Next time someone writes an article in Harper's magazine or The Atlantic Monthly about how James Joyce ruined fiction.
Next time someone writes an article in Harper's magazine or The Atlantic Monthly about how the "postmodernists" ruined fiction.
Next time someone writes an article condemning flarf, language poetry, or postmodernism.
Next time someone says there are too many poets.
Next time someone says that poetry isn't as good as it used to be when it was better than it is now.
Next time someone who can't name a living poet writes an article about how he can't name a living poet.
Next time someone who can't name a living poet writes an article about how dull contemporary poetry is.
Next time someone tells you about a thoughtful article s/he just read about how dull contemporary poetry is, written by a person who can't name a living poet.
Next time someone says, "You can't make a living as a poet."
Next time someone tell you the problem with poetry is it's too hard, too intellectual, too elitist.
Next time Stephen King says the problem with the literary world is that genre fiction doesn't get enough respect.
Next time someone asks "I used to read poetry in college, but who are the poets of today?"
Next time Dave Barry's blog features some amusing item he found on the internet.
Next time someone calls you "politically correct."
Next time someone points out, "Only poets buy books of poetry."
Next time someone points out to you that, "Poets never buy books of poetry."
Next time someone calls Donald Hall, "one of our leading poets."
Next time someone writes an article about the decline of the language, citing George Orwell or Mencken. (In Harper's or The Atlantic.)
Next time someone writes a book adducing hard scientific evidence for the superiority of middle-brow culture and the validity of conventional gender stereotypes.
Next time Silliman employs a superlative.
Next time Henry Gould invokes the authority of a Russian poet.
Next time one of us complains about any of these things happening...
Next time a cartoon appears in the New Yorker, featuring two dogs in a bar, a man on a psychiatrist's couch, a man being berated by his boss (who's sitting behind a huge desk), a man giving his excuse to a judge in a courtroom, a dog on an analyst's couch, a man on a desert island, a boring middle-aged couple sitting on a couch making droll observations, one fuzzy guy saying something incongruous to another fuzzy guy, one hip well-dressed woman at a cafe telling something amusing to another well-dressed woman, or a shabby couple's living room with odd-looking dogs and cats.
Next time a poem appears in the New Yorker amid these cartoons, featuring a private epiphany and some water-imagery (nod to Chas. Bernstein here).
Next time someone gripes to you about The Poetry Foundation or Poetry Magazine or Poets & Writers or about anything starting with a "P."
Next time any one of these rare and noteworthy events happens to occur, make sure to let me know right away. I'll write about it here on the blog.
Next time someone writes an ignorant article about how TS Eliot made poetry popular, but that poetry lost its popularity again after World War II (Ginsberg, anyone?)
Next time an ex-corporate vice-president and present Bush administration official reads his iambs to you, making sure to thump them out in a sing-song voice.
Next time someone tells you how the factory workers in the Victorian age sang Tennyson in chorus.
Next time someone tells you how he memorized "The Cremation of Sam McGee."
Next time someone cites a blurb from Oprah's magazine on the Diane Rehm show.
Next time someone tells you how poetry should be more "accessible to the general public."
Next time Terry Gross interviews Billy Collins, Robert Pinky, or Tom Arnold.
Next time the wife of a Republican president holds an event to promote "literacy."
Next time someone tells you it's the fault of the English Professors, the Spanish professors, the postmodernists, Derrida and Foucault, and Zizek of course.
Next time someone say, "I saw a poem I liked in the New Yorker."
Next time Garrison Keillor features the whitest, squarest music on Prarie Home Companion or writes a humor piece for the New Yorker, and then publishes another anthology of darned good, above-average poems.
Next time Billy Collins publishes an anthology of honesttogodprettydarnedgood, above-average poems.
Next time someone writes about Collins in the New York Times Book Review, saying how, yes, he's not very deep, but we like him anyway.
Next time David Lehman edits an anthology of poems and diagnoses the situation of poetry in whatever year it happens to be.
Next time someone diagnoses "the situation of poetry" in earnest tones.
Next time someone cites in earnest tones some Republican suit's diagnosis of the situation of poetry, the crisis of poetry, how nobody reads poetry anymore.
Next time poetry "makes the news."
Next time someone says that television did poetry in.
Next time someone say language poetry is too "academic," and the person saying it is herself and academic or the suit in the skyscraper mentioned above.
Next time someone says, "Ah, Lorca, yes the duende!"
Next time someone says that rock music did poetry in.
Next time someone says our true poetry is in the lyrics to rock songs, or in hip-hop, or in advertising.
Next time someone donates millions to promote poetry, or gives the genius award to a poet.
Next time someone writes an article in Harper's magazine or The Atlantic Monthly about how James Joyce ruined fiction.
Next time someone writes an article in Harper's magazine or The Atlantic Monthly about how the "postmodernists" ruined fiction.
Next time someone writes an article condemning flarf, language poetry, or postmodernism.
Next time someone says there are too many poets.
Next time someone says that poetry isn't as good as it used to be when it was better than it is now.
Next time someone who can't name a living poet writes an article about how he can't name a living poet.
Next time someone who can't name a living poet writes an article about how dull contemporary poetry is.
Next time someone tells you about a thoughtful article s/he just read about how dull contemporary poetry is, written by a person who can't name a living poet.
Next time someone says, "You can't make a living as a poet."
Next time someone tell you the problem with poetry is it's too hard, too intellectual, too elitist.
Next time Stephen King says the problem with the literary world is that genre fiction doesn't get enough respect.
Next time someone asks "I used to read poetry in college, but who are the poets of today?"
Next time Dave Barry's blog features some amusing item he found on the internet.
Next time someone calls you "politically correct."
Next time someone points out, "Only poets buy books of poetry."
Next time someone points out to you that, "Poets never buy books of poetry."
Next time someone calls Donald Hall, "one of our leading poets."
Next time someone writes an article about the decline of the language, citing George Orwell or Mencken. (In Harper's or The Atlantic.)
Next time someone writes a book adducing hard scientific evidence for the superiority of middle-brow culture and the validity of conventional gender stereotypes.
Next time Silliman employs a superlative.
Next time Henry Gould invokes the authority of a Russian poet.
Next time one of us complains about any of these things happening...
Next time a cartoon appears in the New Yorker, featuring two dogs in a bar, a man on a psychiatrist's couch, a man being berated by his boss (who's sitting behind a huge desk), a man giving his excuse to a judge in a courtroom, a dog on an analyst's couch, a man on a desert island, a boring middle-aged couple sitting on a couch making droll observations, one fuzzy guy saying something incongruous to another fuzzy guy, one hip well-dressed woman at a cafe telling something amusing to another well-dressed woman, or a shabby couple's living room with odd-looking dogs and cats.
Next time a poem appears in the New Yorker amid these cartoons, featuring a private epiphany and some water-imagery (nod to Chas. Bernstein here).
Next time someone gripes to you about The Poetry Foundation or Poetry Magazine or Poets & Writers or about anything starting with a "P."
Next time any one of these rare and noteworthy events happens to occur, make sure to let me know right away. I'll write about it here on the blog.
Envy of the great and envy of the mediocre.
Envy of true accomplishment is easier to bear. It is easy to relatively easy to see a superior artist receive just recognition. It doesn't offend my sense of justice.
Mediocrity-envy is much more corrosive of the soul. To see a mediocre scholar's work touted as the best of the field, as happened in my own field at one time, creates a curious sort of vacuum in the soul. It's hard to explain--or maybe it's self-evident, I'm not sure. I'm not particularly proud of this kind of envy. It's not that praise of the mediocre takes away from me directly--it just devalues the currency. Suppose I win some prestigious award. The next year a monkey wins the same award. I don't envy the monkey, per se. Rather, I feel that the currency has been devalued.
Please feel free to praise my own mediocre poems, though.
No, actually, don't.
Envy of true accomplishment is easier to bear. It is easy to relatively easy to see a superior artist receive just recognition. It doesn't offend my sense of justice.
Mediocrity-envy is much more corrosive of the soul. To see a mediocre scholar's work touted as the best of the field, as happened in my own field at one time, creates a curious sort of vacuum in the soul. It's hard to explain--or maybe it's self-evident, I'm not sure. I'm not particularly proud of this kind of envy. It's not that praise of the mediocre takes away from me directly--it just devalues the currency. Suppose I win some prestigious award. The next year a monkey wins the same award. I don't envy the monkey, per se. Rather, I feel that the currency has been devalued.
Please feel free to praise my own mediocre poems, though.
No, actually, don't.
5 sept 2006
Suppose someone owned several hundred books of poetry. That is in the order of tens of thousands of individual short poems. I own many books from which I remember no specific poem, others that I know from cover to cover. To get a Master's Degree in my department one would have to read maybe 100 pages of poetry from modern Spain, between 1700 and 2006. It is actually harder to understand the reading because so little is read. The reading list would be much *easier* if the students could just read about 1,000 pages, or 20 fifty-page books. They would get a better feel for the material. Of course they also have to read novels, plays, etc... from both Spain and Latin America. Here too, reading in greater quantity would be helpful, but of course the students are intimidated by the list as it stands. You couldn't increase it with the justification that it would make the reading easier. Nobody would buy into that.
It's a little like Kenneth Koch's maxim that if you write every day, you will be assured of writing every year.
***
Does anyone read Vicente Aleixandre any more? He was a post-war hero, and the Nobel prize came his way. A few books of his still seem fundamental, but I sense a waning of interest--both here in translation and in Spain itself. My own interest has waned, I have to say. The mediocre books of the 1950s don't help. Jorge Guillén also became a complete mediocrity from the mid-40s through the 80s. The later Cernuda is over-rated too!
There is something depressing about a book without a single memorable line or successful poem. The inertia of a career that has a life of its own, allowing someone to publish work of no discernible value. There is no corrective, no one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car.
***
Wishing my friend Bob Basil a speedy recovery from his surgery.
It's a little like Kenneth Koch's maxim that if you write every day, you will be assured of writing every year.
***
Does anyone read Vicente Aleixandre any more? He was a post-war hero, and the Nobel prize came his way. A few books of his still seem fundamental, but I sense a waning of interest--both here in translation and in Spain itself. My own interest has waned, I have to say. The mediocre books of the 1950s don't help. Jorge Guillén also became a complete mediocrity from the mid-40s through the 80s. The later Cernuda is over-rated too!
There is something depressing about a book without a single memorable line or successful poem. The inertia of a career that has a life of its own, allowing someone to publish work of no discernible value. There is no corrective, no one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car.
***
Wishing my friend Bob Basil a speedy recovery from his surgery.
4 sept 2006
I'm cataloguing my books. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe to fill the dead hours when I am too tired to concentrate on anything significant. The first impression I have is a marked preference for primary sources over secondary or theoretical works. That speaks in my favor, if nothing else does. There is no particular merit in being obsessive or in owning 15 books by Kenneth Koch. It's just a fact about me. I don't have that many novels, plays, or works of criticism. The library is fine for those.
{George Steiner in his Real Presences goes on and on about the perils of the secondary, but what is he but a purveyor of the tertiary and the septenary? What a blowhard. It is hard to believe the same guy wrote After Babel. If vacuous generalities paid the rent... I've been reading this book to fall asleep at night}
I'll have a pretty objective ideas of my obsessions when I'm done. Not that I don't know them anyway, but I'll have a quantitative measure: how many books by that particular author I own. You'll be interested in my top 30, I'm sure.
I am in the habit of reading most everything I own. There are exceptions, books I am sent and don't get around to for a while. So the books I own give some idea of what I have read.
When I read for presses I get free books from the catalogues. I have a lot from Northwestern, some heavy LangPo theory from McCaffery and Andrews that I'm gradually making me way through. I have a lot of U of Chicago P books to, for a similar reason. Some I won't get around to for years, I'm sure. Perloff published some things in her series for Northwestern that are basically junior versions of Perloff. I won't name names here.
I basically leave a trail of books behind me wherever I am. Car, Lawrence KS apartment, St. Louis apartment, office. Julia is the same way!
{George Steiner in his Real Presences goes on and on about the perils of the secondary, but what is he but a purveyor of the tertiary and the septenary? What a blowhard. It is hard to believe the same guy wrote After Babel. If vacuous generalities paid the rent... I've been reading this book to fall asleep at night}
I'll have a pretty objective ideas of my obsessions when I'm done. Not that I don't know them anyway, but I'll have a quantitative measure: how many books by that particular author I own. You'll be interested in my top 30, I'm sure.
I am in the habit of reading most everything I own. There are exceptions, books I am sent and don't get around to for a while. So the books I own give some idea of what I have read.
When I read for presses I get free books from the catalogues. I have a lot from Northwestern, some heavy LangPo theory from McCaffery and Andrews that I'm gradually making me way through. I have a lot of U of Chicago P books to, for a similar reason. Some I won't get around to for years, I'm sure. Perloff published some things in her series for Northwestern that are basically junior versions of Perloff. I won't name names here.
I basically leave a trail of books behind me wherever I am. Car, Lawrence KS apartment, St. Louis apartment, office. Julia is the same way!
2 sept 2006
I recently read two stories. One by Kawabata called "The Master of Funerals." Another in Murakami's new collection Sleeping Willow. I don't remember the exact title of the Murakami story. Anyway, both stories feature a relatively young man who begins to attend an inordinate number of funerals. The odd thing was that I only put together the two stories in my head several days after reading both of them--even though it couldn't have been a week between the time I read the first and the second. Now the connection seems obvious, but somehow it wasn't that obvious when I read the Murakami story. Maybe they aren't all that similar on the surface and I had to forget a portion of both of them before the similarity dawned on me.
I'm interested in these small cognitive oddities in my own brain. For example, when I wake up realizing something obvious, but something that I hadn't realized the night before.
I'm interested in these small cognitive oddities in my own brain. For example, when I wake up realizing something obvious, but something that I hadn't realized the night before.
31 ago 2006
30 ago 2006
Lineation is overrated. Take Juan Ramón Jiménez. Please, take him.
No, seriously. At the the end of his life, he compiled a huge anthology of his work entitled Leyenda. It's not his whole work, just what he wanted to save, about 1,300 poems. Anyway, he wrote out all his free-verse poems as prose. In fact, anything without rhyme, became prose. It's rather shocking, because, much as I'm ambivalent about JRJ, I would never question his ear. He practically invented free verse in Spanish, or at least one variant of it. So is this a huge blunder of an aged poet? That was my first reaction, many years ago when I first noted this. You wouldn't want to have an edition of Creeley with poems like
"As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking, John, I sd. which was not his name, the darkness surrounds us, what can we do against, or else, shall we, and why not, buy a goddamned big car, drive, he sd, for Christ's sake look out what your doing."
It seems to ruin the effect! However, the presumption that we cannot pay attention to rhythm if something is written out without lines is absurd. Any poem with a powerful rhythm will have the same rhythm without the division into lines. I wouldn't mind even reading The Prelude that way. I would still know where the line breaks were. I'd lose a few specific effects due to enjambment, but the effect would be similar to having it read aloud to me. John Hollander [The Untuning of the Skies] points out that many people have always found it difficult to discern line-breaks when hearing blank verse. This complaint was often directed at Milton: his line-divisions were more for the eye than the ear.
JRJ's poems work perfectly well in prose format. They aren't less rhythmical. Whatever rhythms exist in them do not disappear. It's like taking the training wheels off a bike: you know longer have that assurance of knowing where the metrical divisions are, as opposed to the syntactical ones. If there wasn't much enjambment in the first place, if the line had syntactic unity, then you still have those same syntactic units in the prose poem. It's only when enjambment is a major technique, as in Creeley, that you lose very much.
Sometimes, when listening to Ornette, I lose track of where the "one" is. There is a bar line, implicitly there, but it isn't written down anywhere. Isn't the whole point not to mark the bar divisions so rigidly, to have a greater flow? Poems in my memory, curiously, do not have line breaks, unless written by Creeley or Williams. I might know where the line breaks are, but they don't have much weight, compared to the importance they seem to have on the page: "I AM A POEM."
I read an early article by Borges, in which he outlines all the arguments against rhyme, starting with Milton. (Of course Borges' own poetry later rhymed more often than not.) At the end, he says that it's more interesting to outline the arguments against rhyme, because they are less frequently heard. I feel the same way about lineation. I feel, yes, it's very significant for most people writing poetry--otherwise they would write prose poems. But at the same time, lineation is boring and overrated most of the time. Anyone with any sense, who's been writing for more than a few years already, would run away from such a topic. Even this post is boring, since it is about this topic.
It's like fiction-writers discussing things like how to get characters in and out of rooms. It's easier just to stipulate that if a character is found in a room, he or she got there somehow, and leave it at that.
No, seriously. At the the end of his life, he compiled a huge anthology of his work entitled Leyenda. It's not his whole work, just what he wanted to save, about 1,300 poems. Anyway, he wrote out all his free-verse poems as prose. In fact, anything without rhyme, became prose. It's rather shocking, because, much as I'm ambivalent about JRJ, I would never question his ear. He practically invented free verse in Spanish, or at least one variant of it. So is this a huge blunder of an aged poet? That was my first reaction, many years ago when I first noted this. You wouldn't want to have an edition of Creeley with poems like
"As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking, John, I sd. which was not his name, the darkness surrounds us, what can we do against, or else, shall we, and why not, buy a goddamned big car, drive, he sd, for Christ's sake look out what your doing."
It seems to ruin the effect! However, the presumption that we cannot pay attention to rhythm if something is written out without lines is absurd. Any poem with a powerful rhythm will have the same rhythm without the division into lines. I wouldn't mind even reading The Prelude that way. I would still know where the line breaks were. I'd lose a few specific effects due to enjambment, but the effect would be similar to having it read aloud to me. John Hollander [The Untuning of the Skies] points out that many people have always found it difficult to discern line-breaks when hearing blank verse. This complaint was often directed at Milton: his line-divisions were more for the eye than the ear.
JRJ's poems work perfectly well in prose format. They aren't less rhythmical. Whatever rhythms exist in them do not disappear. It's like taking the training wheels off a bike: you know longer have that assurance of knowing where the metrical divisions are, as opposed to the syntactical ones. If there wasn't much enjambment in the first place, if the line had syntactic unity, then you still have those same syntactic units in the prose poem. It's only when enjambment is a major technique, as in Creeley, that you lose very much.
Sometimes, when listening to Ornette, I lose track of where the "one" is. There is a bar line, implicitly there, but it isn't written down anywhere. Isn't the whole point not to mark the bar divisions so rigidly, to have a greater flow? Poems in my memory, curiously, do not have line breaks, unless written by Creeley or Williams. I might know where the line breaks are, but they don't have much weight, compared to the importance they seem to have on the page: "I AM A POEM."
I read an early article by Borges, in which he outlines all the arguments against rhyme, starting with Milton. (Of course Borges' own poetry later rhymed more often than not.) At the end, he says that it's more interesting to outline the arguments against rhyme, because they are less frequently heard. I feel the same way about lineation. I feel, yes, it's very significant for most people writing poetry--otherwise they would write prose poems. But at the same time, lineation is boring and overrated most of the time. Anyone with any sense, who's been writing for more than a few years already, would run away from such a topic. Even this post is boring, since it is about this topic.
It's like fiction-writers discussing things like how to get characters in and out of rooms. It's easier just to stipulate that if a character is found in a room, he or she got there somehow, and leave it at that.
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