Muriel Rukeyser

from The Life of Poetry


In the author's note before the book begins, R. writes:

A way to allow people to feel the meeting of their consciousness and the world, to feel the full value of the meanings of emotions and ideas in their relations with each other, and to understand, in the glimpse of a moment, the freshness of things and their possibilities...There is an art which gives us that way; and it is, in our society, an outcast art. [poetry]

...

I have tried to go behind the resistance, which is often a fear of poetry, and to show what might be ahead of this culture in conflict, with its background of strength and antagonism. If we are free, we are free to choose a tradition, and we find in the past as well as the present our poets of outrage--like Melville--and our poets of possibility--like Whitman.

...

I have attempted to suggest a dynamics of poetry, showing that a poem is not its words or its images, any more than a symphony is its notes or a river its drops of water. Poetry depends on the moving relations within itself. It is an art that lives in time, expressing and evoking the moving relation between the individual consciousness and the world. The work that a poem does is a transfer of human energy, and I think human energy may be defined as consciousness, the capacity to make change in existing conditions. It appears to me that to accept poetry in these meanings would make it possible for people to use it as an "exercise," an enjoyment of the possibility of dealing with the meanings in the world and in their lives.

while the snow is accumulating I think: what a day for a daydream
or, I think: how can this dog keep sleeping, what noise, what distraction
and I wonder: a space of cold, a monday in february, an inclination toward the softest powder

I could write you a response, something about the body or a bombing or how long it takes to float down from the very top floor or the building

or instead I could imagine a world without poetry

just kidding

but I think someone mentioned it. what is the purpose of poetry. or, what I mean to say is, what is the purpose of not poetry, of no poetry, how can there be any purpose without poetry

while the snow is accumulating it becomes clear that rukeyser and women poets and poetry are imperative

to a sense of (re)articulating, of understanding how language creates and unmakes us, how we can and can't use words to do anything, how policy and politics and journalism and science do their thing and poetry does a thing and sometimes these are related, complimentary, reciprocal, responsive to one another, and sometimes they are all doing totally separate things and that is how it is.

this sounds like a stein essay. no really. sometimes they are related and sometimes seemingly not. but one cannot have only political poetry or only aesthetic (aesthetically playful, innovative, etc etc) poetry (poetry interested in its aesthetic value or presentation vs having political content).

I am watching the snow accumulate and realize I have no point. about rukeyser or much else. not yet. but what is extra-ordinary about rukeyser, about women poets, about women modernist poets in their play between public (social, political, identificatory) and personal (aesthetic, linguistic, poetic, intuitive)...social location, the scientific, gender and intellectual politics... how is "the political" to be teased in layers, played through figurative and sensory inclinations, woven like the fabric of our very lives that are never simply a matter of form or content but a constant shifting and nuanced negotiation of both, of the continuum of these to always different degrees from one moment to the next.

more on rukeyser. that paper needs written. a possible layering of poems and snow and/or I procrastinate shoveling. waiting for spring, for concrete language, for images that resonate and help us clarify our own questions about the world. or ask more questions, maybe kind of the point, what kinds of questions will make us more...

Langston Hughes

Why Hughes is still important, popular, engaging, relevant, poetic, lovely, and great...

Just read The Weary Blues or listen to the version with music by Mingus. Or go to the National Portrait Gallery to see Winold Reiss' famous and fabulous portrait of Hughes: reflective, chin in hand, book open, the colors and lines of the portrait evoking the music and energy of the Harlem Renaissance. I wish Hughes had done the Inaugural Poem for Obama. Instead of empty emotionally manipulative patriotism (sorry Richard Blanco, I think you could have done better) Hughes would have inspired us and made us sway with his rhythms and his refusal to shy away from real content. The way he could bring us in with music and call our attention to the details of real life for real people. The boogie-woogie rumbles its continuing dreams, always present but patient, subtle, clever, linguistically tuned, musically savvy, politically subversive, revolutionary, peaceful, engaging. In Dream Boogie the narrator tells us to listen closely...ain't you heard... the beats are rumbling the music is playing dreams may be deferred but they are not destroyed. We can talk about the sun and the mood all day long or we can listen closely, for the beat, and see what will come of it. If we are lucky, we can become a part of the making of all that continues to come next.

sonnets

are about love and are not, have specific lengths and numbers of lines and don't, sound good or sound bad or sound otherwise, have a turn of thought in the middle or at the end, or stay on a topic, or jump around like ted berrigan...oh ted your collages and your common place vocabulary and your sex and your poems...what have you done to the sonnets what are the sonnets doing still? You are shakespeare you are italian you are frank o'hara you are 1960 you are new york. can we all not let some things go? play language sing poems sweat words assemble images or let them fall where they may on the page.

Let the sonnets fall where they may, here today.

from The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan

LXXXIII

Woman is singing the song and summer
Only to others, meaning poems. Because everything
Sorry about West Point. But where else was one to go,
Southwest lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift on dream smoke
Against whose griefs I would most assuage
(A cast-off emotion) A hard core is "formed."
Musick strides through these poems just as it strides thru me
my dream a drink with Lonnie Johnson we discuss the code
   of the west
After Ticonderoga.       Beware of Benjamin Franklin, he is
   totally lacking in grace
What else. Because he tended to think of truth as "The King's
   Birthday list"
This is called "Black Nausea" by seers.
My dream DEAR CHRIS hello. It is 3:17 a.m.
Your name is now a household name, as is mine. And in any case,
although I failed, now we need never be rivals

having gotten out of the habit

My new year goal: to sit down once in a while and write something thoughtful like I ask my students to do, and some of them do it so well... see the following in response to a chapter in Julia Cameron's The Right To Write:

http://alyssafreda.blogspot.com/2012/12/0-0-1-524-2992-washtenaw-community.html

Teaching is so fabulous--after breaking through the stress and the ridiculous that on occasion occur and make the fabulous blurry--because sometimes the students really do inspire and call us to be better ourselves, as people and as teachers. This is a good lesson to realize and remember at this yet another end of a semester.

Now Available!

Send $10 plus $2 shipping to:

Jill Darling

Frog Island Press

English Department 612 Pray-Harrold

Eastern Michigan University

Ypsilanti, MI 48197

or email frogislandpress@gmail.com for more info

Sex in the Library is an anthology of nine provocative, text-based performance pieces by members of the Writing for Performance class at Eastern Michigan University (Winter 2012). These texts represent an extensive range of textual and performance strategies examined and actualized over the course of the semester. The texts are captivating on the page: visually, linguistically, syntactically, and in terms of their performative, textual presentations. Each piece further points to its own dramatic realization off the page. From a musical score to an improvisational divination, the work included here is smart and dynamic, serious and hilarious, and of the caliber and genre-busting spirit of great Poets Theater work. Sex in the Library is a textual event indicative of many further off-page events to come.

Table of Contents

Emily Clarkson
Sound of Modern Silence                   

Emily Riopelle
The Monster                        

Kay Crawford                       

Melissa Bowling
What Was Once a Woman                   

G. Matthew Mapes
(rhetoric) X (labor) : an identity play in one act   

Matt Catania
iSpy and Sorel                       

Jonah D. Mixon-Webster
And We Made Them Kings                

Jill Darling
Mercury’s Conjunction to Venus               

Miranda Metelksi 


http://frogislandpress.blogspot.com/

Frog Island Press Ypsilanti, MI

Check out Frog Island Press!

i will tell him. on my own terms. in specific language. articulate the details.  i will show him. precisely. in no uncertain terms. explicitly. all of my hypotheses. conclusions. deductions. the process of logic. and support. for each point. i make each point with evidence. data. examples. rational explication. calm denotation. i explain to him my intention. my suppositions. my interests in the matter. my projections. forecasts. predictions. lay out my research. findings. supporting materials. i set up an organizational flow of content. draw connections. use transitions. make everything transparent. apparent. clear. decisive. i present him with my results. process plus product. trajectory. time line. goals. procedures. an array of clarity. indisputable. unanswerable. without question.

if she said. and then i said. and we agreed. or had a conversation. argued. a tone of voice. i would say. she would respond. we had this talk before. i tell her. she explains. we sigh. i yell. i apologize. i yell at the dog. i apologize for being loud. she said. in silence. i replied. in signs. if she intended. i would concur.

if you were here. I would tell you purple. if you were otherwise. I would be here. if purple were a name. I would recall childhood memories. if I were feeling yellow. you would return. if you returned. I would be here. if I return. we would meet at purple. if purple returned. we would have a conversation. if I ignored purple. you would bring the flowers. if I were here and you returned. there I would feel orange. if I were orange then I would know you were on your way. if I were on a journey. you would find me. if I met you there. we would celebrate yellow. if purple interceded. we would have a truce. if we draw up the papers. everyone will be happy. if we take another journey. no one will go astray. if we find each other. we will call all of the colors. if we shade our emotions with the pastels. it will rain in neon. if we draw out lime green and hot pink. we can be sure to find a new path. on any new path. we will eat skittles.

Monday Poetry at Noon at WSU

Department of English @ Noon Reading Series 2012: April 9, 2012 

Rob Halpern and Jill Darling

Date: Monday, April 9, 2012, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Location: 10th Floor Conference Room, 5057 Woodward Avenue

Rob Halpern is the author of two books of poems, Rumored Place (Krupskaya 2004), which was nominated for a California Book Award, and Disaster Suites (Palm Press 2009), as well as several chapbooks, including Weak Link (Slack Buddha 2009) and Imaginary Politics (TapRoot Editions 2008). 

Jill Darling is a recent Ph.D. graduate of the English Department. She has published Solve For and Begin with May.

Free and open to the public.

at 3am

sometimes reading student blog responses to readings we do for class makes me smile out loud... especially when I'm reading at 3am...

Da fuq? Where'd the bass line go?

write a story that contains a variety of words. Cage is like Stein and then some. silence or nothingness. the space between the composition and the performance. each line will be performed for one second. one after another. the lecture is indeterminate. the performance is indeterminate. there are instructions. however the outcome is indeterminate. this is an example. i repeat. the example of nothingness. to say everything to say it all. someone said that. in silence it seems as if nothing is said. a cough. a scratch. turning pages. sound happens. life happens. don't play music over the text but fill in the spaces. or let the space resonate. it seems as if we are getting nowhere. over the course of things. a certain presence. nowhere but here. write a story that contains a multitude of sounds. a cacophony of climax. resounding resolution. cackling characters. a sizzling scene. the silence and singing space of narrative. in line breaks or dense blocks of text the page is a visual performance of language. performance of words and sound on paper. spilling into a three dimensional performance in the world.

story

When I take vacation I vacate. Or lean to the side, continuously. I can tell you, this is not a confession. It is an endeavor. To search for the limits of vacation, in terms of time and space. Where once was a beach, a tree, a broken heart, now exists a circle of accent and shades of tropical color. Where once existed optimism and woven dresses, now entails the continuum of gendered variation, skins layered with complexity. I was once heading in every direction. Leaving from every which way, or toward any other means of communication, when I decided. To vacate. The verb. Empty. Flee. Undo. Undone. Without. Dismissed. Disappeared. Once I went to the woods. Grew beans. Lived in a cabin. Once I went to the sea. Caught fish. A fish. Followed that fish to my death. Once I traveled to Venice. Winding streets, lost forever to the present. Once I hid in an attic and wrote poems for months on end. Once I traveled to Florida. Found love. Lost it. And traveled home again, alone. Once, even the horizon had become too much. Leaning, further on, against the end of days, I can tell you, this is a mystery story. Science fiction contained by metaphors of the past. Having left only traces, contained by syntax. And vertical form. In this space, having vacated every other, I found conflict. And resolved to continue on.

this invisible

i told you there may have been some sort of rhetoric

involved, in the combination of

events, toward the evolution of

circumstances

you cannot see it, but i know it like

thunder, and the accumulation of

sentences, subject, verb, a clarity of

intention, what was said and wasn't

said, quietly misarticulated and a

suggestion for more (words sounds metaphor)

take license with the only keys available so that

circumstances

will not determine outside of each structure of

feeling

at the top of the tallest building
array of color
film cut: Berlin in the 80s
cut again: Paris
wonder in image fragments
light swirl my stomach
from a building above, a prerogative
interrogate, flash image of
apartments
streets, littered with color
crumbling like graffiti from
the wall, cut
to a poet speaking in verse
verses likes lines of the film
in 16mm, and sliced, like a layer
of fog, celluloid fantasy of the real
viewer silent frame by frame
ventriloquises her own dialogue
over images of glen close, faded
a ghost of features: eyes, lips
in slow motion, nearly stopped
circus music, and the distraction of
make believe, suspended belief
words fall from glen's hair
secretly

how detroit is half full, of color, graffiti lines etched
on a postcard, coral against blue, outline of a skyscraper

a skyscraper, against a forest, can you hear it, in color
like graffiti that is art, publicly, on a wall, that is a city

a quixotic illusion of space, on a horse or in a dream
a city that is a heart full of water, pumping, like life in the veins of an ocean

an ocean of coral colored art, on posters that surround the city
of water, against a building of glass and dreams, or excursions

from one story into another, an adventure etched in lines
on a wall, against a city, as large as Quixote, as real as the fantastical

postcard, layered in blues, pumping like veins half full
of illusion and scenery, a windmill falling, a knight striving

etched in opposite pages, of space, layered in colored graffiti
like an ocean, told on walls, in grooves, at the very tip of the tallest building

instrumental imaginings
while the blue girl swims toward
death, she gurgles, breathing, blotches
for skin, and marshmallows
melting into her lips and washed
away, like the blue girl, enclosed with
secrets, others' mystery or guilt
like sugar, melting on her lips, washed
away, secrets of a life, of a blue
wave, ebbing and flowing
toward or away from saving, a living
and dying, intrumental to the succession
of imagined realities, like secrets, held
in the chests, of the drowned

a body or a voice

reading Lolita. the body. the disembodied. the narrative voice in first or third person. Lolita is not a voice. is not a point of view. is an object of the narrative. of narrative desire. of desire. Lolita is a fantasy. a possession. to be. possessed. tamed. those nymphets are driving me crazy (Humbert.) I will find out the mystery, the evil, why they possess me, by possessing them (Humbert). Her. she is them. the nymphets. this is an obsession. an addiction. but it is not. evil. evil handsome charming violent offense. the body or the voice. a voice of a nation. the landscape of a country, before the interstate system. from one highway to another. through one town and another. visiting one and then another and then another tourist trap, scenic byway, historical monument, cave, lake, hotel, marked hotspot on the map, famous attraction, whatnot. driving. reading. the body. a narrative of lack. lacking it's own main character. not a character. a voice. not even a voice. an idea of a voiced desire. fantastical elimination of subjectivity and free will. voice subject to constraints of power and gender. a manipulation of rational emotion. intoxication of power. possessing and containing. creating a void of a body, of a life, of a point of view. narrative homicide, gradual and violent torture.

untitled

this is part of a longer fictional prose narrative work I am playing with... don't know what it is or where it's going, but I just know that it's continuing, at the moment, which pieces like this...


I brought some envelopes with me this time. And then I ran into the clowns. Clowns for jesus. Really they were congregating on the corner, in their full body patterned clown suits, their faces painted about grey beards and facial hair, and two of them used canes to balance and walk around. I got so distracted when I saw the clowns that I gave them each an envelope, told them thank you for helping to save the world from evil, and then proceeded to give the rest of the envelopes as alms in the nearest church. By the time I got to the parade I had little to do but hand out beads and drink cold sweet tea while the marching bands passed by. I believe I will embark on a new mission to fill red envelopes with messages of immanent despair. I mean, when the refineries are burning at full blast and the plastic cups turn to mountains in the muddy street in front of our most colorful houses, then it can only lead to one thing. Or a series of things that include bad air and damaged emotions. In the future we will negotiate with trees, for oxygen and shared ingredients for color.