On What I Said Earlier

"With a writer like James Joyce, the way it is written is of equal or greater importance than the story, but who can argue that the end of The Dead is not great specifically because of what is being said rather than how it is being written?"

Here is the final paragraph of James Joyce's "The Dead"
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A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
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It is quite foolish to look at that paragraph and to even attempt to "separate" - whatever that means - the form from the content.

I can imagine as Joyce worked on the story he knew exactly what the content needed to be, but he wasn't quite sure what collection of words, lines and rhythm would ultimately fill the page. Painstakingly, word after word, he composed that final paragraph until it completely filled and inhabited the feeling that had guided the genesis of the story.

He chose his words the same way a poet might, which isn't to suggest that Joyce, the fiction writer is any different from a poet. In fact, there is no difference.

Perhaps the only real difference between poetry and fiction is "focus," in that a story focuses on characters while a poem may focus on an emotion or an inanimate object. But then, a work of fiction can do just the same.

Perhaps the only difference is form. The form of a poem easily stands out from fiction. But then there are works of fiction that clearly alter and experiment with the traditional fiction form of paragraphs and chapters.

In fact, perhaps, there is no difference between poetry and fiction. Perhaps it's all just writing.

I really cannot even conceive of the difference between poetry and fiction. What is it? What are they?

From Anthony Burgess's "Re Joyce:"

"Oddness is more easily excused in a poet than a novelist. The poet's trade is with words, an odd trade anyway, and he has to arrange them oddly to draw attention to the mystery of language (a mystery which is a distraction in the market-place). But the novelist's trade is less with words than with people and places and actions. Most novel-readers want to get at the content of a novel without the intermediacy of a kind of writing that seems to obtrude, rivaling the plot in its claim to be looked at."

...

In a commentary on the story, the commentator describes the work: "Although Joyce presents the congeniality, warmth, and love of a Christmas party very convincingly, images such as these serve as reminders that the shadow of death is never far behind the fullness of life."

• A collection of podcasts about "The Dead"
• The final scene of John Huston's "The Dead", featuring the events of the final passage
• The full text of James Joyce's "The Dead"

What Does Galway Kinnell Sound Like?

Galway Kinnell


"Kinnell believes that poetry is inherently personal - it's one person's exploration of life, of what it means to be on earth."

Listening to Kinnell's voice in class reminded me of Charles Bukowski's voice. I'm almost surprised that Joe Mills calls this a "reading." It kind of begs the question of what is the fundamental difference between a "reading" and a "performance" because I would say that listening to Kinnell or Bukowski read their work is as affecting emotionally as any slam poet.

However, life is short and this question almost entirely irrelevant, so let's move on and just say that both work well enough.

• Galway Kinnell reads After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
• Charles Bukowski reads Dinosauria, We
• Animated Version of Charles Bukowski's The Man With the Beautiful Eyes
• Harry Dean Stanton reads Charles Bukowski's Bluebird
• Billy Collins reads The Lanyard
• Some guy with a gravely voice reading Billy Collin's Forgetfulness
• James Joyce reading
• T.S. Eliot reads Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
• Dylan Thomas reads Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
• Richard Burton reads Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood in a car commercial
  

These are Matthew Yeager

Matthew Yeager


Matthew Yeager's "A Jar of Balloons or Uncooked Rice" is one of many works in Best American Poetry 2010 that don't really look like a poem. That is to say the poem is a mass of unorganized text. "Balloons" narrowly avoids this accusation with the use of clearly defined line breaks.

Compared to a poem like Corinne Lee's "Birds of Self-Knowledge," Yeager's work seems less like a work of poetry simply because of how it looks. But I find greater interest in "Balloons" than "Birds." So does it matter?

The above pictures are each culled from a Google Image search of the name "Matthew Yeager." Each of those people is named Matthew Yeager, yet only one is the author of "Balloons." But each face was included in the same search result. They are all Matthew Yeager, but they are not the same Matthew Yeager. They would not each call themselves a poet, just as they might not all call themselves a student, or a budding filmmaker, or a sales representative. But they would call themselves Matthew Yeager.

"Balloons" and "Birds" are both collected in a book of poetry, and (presumptively) their respective authors would both call these works poetry, but does that mean they are exactly the same? Is poetry a function of form or is form a function of poetry?

Is it worth my time?

Corinne Lee


When a person approaches a poem for the first time, he or she might ask, "What does this mean?" I tend to ask, "Is this worth my time?" That's certainly what comes to mind when I first saw Corinne Lee's "Six from 'Birds of Self-Knowledge'." Perhaps there was a meaning behind the seemingly random use of line breaks; maybe the word choice was not pointless but purposeful; probably the poem means something, I guess. There is also meaning behind the Egyptian hieroglyphs. I think both, for me, hold equal levels of interests, which is to say basically zero, outside of a passing fascination.

Reading about Corinne Lee (here), I find that she had a hard time starting out as a poet in the most literal sense possible. After taking writing courses at college, she gained a great appreciation for poetry and hoped to be published by age 25. By her second year at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, she was suddenly overcome with a physical pain when she attempted to write. Her doctor told her it was purely psychological, the result of the stress of writing. But as it turns out, she had bone defects above her elbows. Ten years of surgery fixed the abnormality and she resumed writing.

One could make a handful of mean-spirited jokes about correlation between the absurdity of her line breaks and her bone defects, but I will refrain from that.

According to that article linked above, she "compose[s her work] on scraps of paper while the poet was standing in line at the grocery store or sitting in a parking lot." No wonder everything appears entirely disjointed, unrelated, and needlessly abstract.

In the final section of Best American Poetry 2010, in which the poets provide a biography and short summary of their included poem, Corinne Lee literally goes through all of the difficult or unusual words or phrases in her poem and explains them. Sometimes, such explanations require only a definition like "bobolink." But others explain, in detail, the original idea. For instance, there is a long, unbroken, single line that reads "afterthreenightswithoutsleepIcatchmyvaginadentatabarrelingdownthehighway." In the final section, she explains that this image came out of a fever dream.

In other words, there was no real way to know what that line could have meant without asking the poet. And perhaps more unfortunate, the only person to whom that line could hold significance or meaning is the poet.

It is no wonder the article affirms - quietly, respectfully, and hidden within several statements - that Corinne Lee is "a relatively inexperienced poet."

Is such a poem worth my time?

On Mr. Collins

Billy Collins


I think Billy Collins writes the kind of poetry I can enjoy. Perhaps the only kind of poetry I can enjoy. When you read a poem by Mr. Collins the task set before you is not deciphering the purpose of a line break or the meaning behind a word choice. Surely, he puts thought into such choices but said choices are merely incidental. The point of his poetry is to understand what he is saying and to consider it in the very same way you might read a haiku by Basho or a word of wisdom from the Dalai Lama.

Certainly this is the desire of most poetry - to make you think about what they wrote. But oftentimes you spend time wondering, "What the hell does 'Spending scarlet like a woman' mean?" I don't quite understand why intent should be so hidden. The pleasure of fiction is usually in the story. With a writer like James Joyce, the way it is written is of equal or greater importance than the story, but who can argue that the end of The Dead is not great specifically because of what is being said rather than how it is being written?

Maybe the second most important aspect of Billy Collins's poetry is his sense of humor. In Grave, he reveals that his idea of "the one hundred Chinese silences" is completely made-up. But when you consider the idea, you can see it's quietly interesting, if not perhaps profound and I think that is the most important aspect of his writing - profundity. He never leaves with a cheap joke or meaningless word choice. There's always a deeper idea present in his poetry and that's why I love it.

Too Many Introductions

Red Sun, 1935
Arthur G. Dove

I began reading The Best American Poetry 2010 with David Lehman's forward, which I found interesting. I'm always interested in "frustrated deconstruction," that is, breaking down something because one is tired of this something.

Then, I thought I was about to get into the poetry when I realized there was another Introduction, this time by Guest Editor Amy Gerstler. I started reading, then grew disinterested. I figured it was one intro/forward/prologue/guest comment too much and just moved on to the poetry.

The cover image is Red Sun, a 1935 painting by Arthur G. Dove. I like that name. Wikipedia says he was one of the first American abstract painters. The image used on the cover of the anthology is a cropped version of the original painting. Interesting that artists would willingly and knowingly alter and distort the work of another artist.

According to the website of the Phillips Collection - of which Red Sun is a member - this painting "reveals Dove's fascination with both the outward appearance and underlying mystery of nature...Dove was probably interested in the idea that certain forms and colors could symbolize nature’s hidden energies." (You can read the rest here.)

Perhaps the most interesting part of that Phillips Collection website is how, beneath a very honest and genuine overlook of Dove as an artist and the genesis of Red Sun, it then goes on to describe in great detail each part of the painting. At one point, the author describes the rolling hills at the bottom of the painting as evoking the "fields of the land around Dove’s farm in upstate New York." It continues, saying that the red-orange and blue of the fields "creat[e] a visual counterpoint that expresses nature’s balance in cycles of light and darkness."

It's a nice idea, but who knows if its right? At several points on that page, the author makes guesses, saying things like "probably interested," "alludes, perhaps..." and the faint sound of the author-trying-to-make-his-or-her-ideas-seem-correct with the phrases "bring to mind" and "call to mind."

In other words, in trying to break down and understand the intent and purpose of the artwork, one can only grope about blindly, at best alluding to another art work, in an attempt to understand. But the point is you can never know if you understand. Unless the artist told you what he or she intended.