The Close Reading of Sadomasochistic Poets

I just started reading Break, Blow, Burn by Camille Paglia, and I am already in love with it. Paglia is just one of those personalities that you love and hate, like the smart and pretty best friend who gets all the attention, and you want to just despise her, but you can't. Because she's pretty and brilliant. Whenever I read Paglia's prose, I'm prone to fits of envy and laughing.

Here are two examples.

From the introduction: "During the past quarter century, humanistic principles and honest practical criticism could reliably more be found among low-paid adjuncts faithfully teaching service courses at community colleges than among the vain, showy professoriat of the elite schools."

As a former adjunct wage slave and someone who probably will never rise to the level of professoriat... Amen!

And from her explication of "Daddy," which I flipped to first, naturally: "If Plath has no literary successors, she certainly has her peers -- but they are in popular music. I nominate Sylvia Plath as the first female rocker. ... The nihilistic wipeout of the last line of "Daddy" is also in the fractious rock spirit: it parallels the smashing or burning of guitars by the Yardbirds, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the peak of expressiveness being a destruction of the instrument -- in the case of the poet herself."

I mean, can't you imagine it? Plath on a stage, burning her guitar? I'm sure I'll be quoting liberally from this book in the next few weeks. So, if I start mentioning Freudian phallic imagery and sadomasochism, you know now why.


Post Script: I typed in Google Images "Rockstar Poet" to find a picture to go along with this, and found this website. I also found this site, when typing in Camille Paglia.

I give up. No pictures for this post.

Poems, from A to Z

I'm reading Matthea Harvey's Modern Life, in preparation for our Poetry Book Club discussion at the end of the month. So far, I am enjoying her slightly surreal take on the world.

One of the aspects of her book that intrigues me is her use of abecedarian (alphabetical) poems. Her series of poems, "The Future of Terror," use alphabetical lists of words embedded in the text to flesh out the descriptions. Most of the poems go from the letter "g" to the letter "s" or "t". It's a brilliant technique, because she stretches towards a unique vocabulary. In the poem I linked here, we get everything from garden gnomes to napoleons.

When I think of alphabet poems, I always think of the more formal style. Christina Rossetti's "An Alphabet", is emblematic of that style. Intended for children, it contains still hidden philosophical gems like, "I am I—who will say I am not I?" The beauty of the abecedarian poem is the way it forces the poet to fill in words, and surprise ourselves in the process.

Similar to my surprise and joy at Natasha Trethewey's mirror image poem, Myth, this new take on the alphabetical poem may inspire to write some actual poetry yet.

I hope you're enjoying Modern Life as much as I am!

The First Two Bite the Dust

Over the next year, I'm going to be keeping track of the books I'm reading and the resulting "pages" I've read. In the past two days, I've downed my first two books of 2008. They were:

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama (453 pages)

The Dog Says How by Kevin Kling (178 pages)

Both were excellent. Obama is a surprisingly good writer and his story is touching and endearing. But I'm biased. I really was interested to see the formation of his political consciousness, from his childhood through young adulthood.

I'll post my review for Kling's book, after I've published it in the Uptown Neighborhood News. The short review, though, is that it is a very funny and easy read and a good insight into the Minnesota subconscious.

Total for 2008: 631 pages
Genres: Memoir (1), Essays (1)

Thinking About New Hampshire in a Different Way

Why do I love the New York Times? Because, today, they published an excellent editorial from Donald Hall about voting. Sort of. It was really about the weather in New Hampshire and the snowfalls of his childhood. Sort of. It was really really about the noise that has been invading his state for a year and a half, the noise that is unnatural and will be leaving in 24 hours. It's about how he's craving the silence in his state. Sort of. It's about all of these things.

What I love most about this editorial is not the sentiment. It's kind of typical --a childhood recollection, a smattering of quiet political observations, a longing for the political process to be about community, and a communion with nature. Some of these are already Hall's tropes. But it's the fact that in 2008, we can be on the eve of an important primary, and the Times gives space to see what Donald Hall can say to us that makes us think about it in a different way. That's the power of poetry. So, go read him pontificate.

Do Politics and Poetry Mix?

Here are some pictures of a collage I made while listening to the Republican and Democratic presidential debates on Saturday night. (The bottom right picture is of my cat, Said, who is named after Edward Said, not the Lost character.) Yes, that's exactly what I did on Saturday night. I listened to 10 politicians discuss their policy differences and played with magazine cut-outs, paper and paints. I think that's why the paper is red and blue.

I'm torn (no pun intended) on what to do with all of the interesting things I'm learning about the presidential race. I've decided to volunteer more heavily with the Obama campaign, something that I started to do back in December. It's exciting and fun and interesting, and I'm really enjoying being involved in the political process, for once in my adult life. For instance, we went to an awesome campaign rally in Minneapolis on Saturday and got to meet some very nice fellow supporters.

However, the campaign is quickly taking over my brain and I'm wondering whether or not it belongs on this blog. I thought about starting a new blog just for this section of my life, because (if we're lucky and successful) I'll be volunteering on this campaign almost all year. I've always envisioned this blog to be about my poetry and personal life, not my political practices. But now, they're all coalescing together.

The larger question I'm asking myself is whether or not politics and poetry and real life mix. To be honest, I've always written political poetry. But it's political ideology, not political reality. There's something that seems sort of messy and mundane about who's running for president, as opposed to the systems of our culture. The blog issue is just representative of the larger question. I could segregate the political stuff to a separate blog, so that I could see the easy division of these spheres of my life. (And also not annoy readers with any political polemic. I certainly don't want to bore people with policy issues if they're expecting free verse.) But the spheres aren't that separate. It wouldn't be authentic to separate them, because the I live it all together, which is why I was collaging while listening to debates. This is the shape of my life right now: poetry, real life, and politics, all smooshed into one.

Don't worry, I won't be writing sonnets about presidential politics. (There aren't that many rhymes for mandates or ethics anyway.) I just want to be authentically representing what's going on in my life. What's going on in my life, right now, is that I'm participating in democracy. And it's really fun!

Edgar and Annie, Sitting...

..on my desk. Edgar Allen Poe and Annabel Lee were a Christmas gift and now they're watching me type. I was so excited when I got them on Monday, that I kept telling people how Annie sleeps in a sepulchre by the sea. Yes, I know they're just dolls. But, I hope they come out with more in this series. Below is Poe's poem, which inspired the dolls and my inner dorkiness this past week.

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Belated New Year Goals

I've been bowled over by a wretched cold, so I've spent most of my days off blowing my nose and watching DVDs. But since I'm staring down the barrel of a brand new year, I figured I should review how I did on my last year's goals, and craft some new ones for 2008.

So at the beginning of 2007, I gave myself the following goals.

1) Write 3000 words/week. (Result: 159,000 this year.)

Mmm, this was when I was writing fiction. I stopped counting about 3/4 of the way through the year, but at last count, I was at 30,452. But, I was writing relatively consistently.

2) Work on getting published in journals once a month.

I submitted poems more sporadically, but had some good results, especially with articles.

3) Send out my book manuscript once every two months.

Didn't send it out once.

4) Maintain my blog consistently all year.

Success! I totally did that!

5) Make regular time in my life for my writing practice.

This is the one where I feel I've made the biggest strides. I've changed my job and schedule in order to write articles and poems. So, that's a good thing.

Reviewing this list, I realize that the ones that I did well on were more abstract goals. The concrete goals floundered pretty quickly.

With that said, here are some goals for 2008.

1) Work on getting my manuscript published.
2) Work on getting poems published.
3) Work on getting articles published.
4) Write and revise poetry consistently.
5) Maintain my blog and my journal for the year.
6) Read books that will feed my writing practice.

There's a little less accountability possibilities with these goals, but I think that they are all attainable. I think, in order to keep myself honest, I'll keep a poem count, article count, and reading count on this blog.

Here's to doing a little better this year.