This continues my posting of poetry by poets on Ron Silliman’s “School of Quietude” list, which you can find in this previous post. Today’s poet is Adrienne Rich, who long ago made my personal list of poets who should get the Nobel Prize. It’s hard, I must add, to represent the scope, subtlety and power of her work, in part because she is formally adventurous, and in part because she has increasingly worked in long sequences—and it felt unfair to compare those to Mark Young’s minimalist poems, which Adam Fieled put forward as representative of strong post-avant writing. That said…:
WAIT
In paradise every
the desert wind is rising
third thought
in hell there are no thoughts
is of earth
sand screams against your government
issued tent hell’s noise
in your nostrils crawl
into your ear-shell
wrap yourself in no-thought
wait no place for the little lyric
wedding-ring glint the reason why
on earth
they never told youfrom The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004
***
WALLPAPER
1
A room paper with clippings:
newsprint in bulging patches
none of them mentions our names
gone from the history then O redkite snarled in a cloud
small plane melted in fog: no matter:
I worked to keep it current
and meaningful: a job of living I thoughthistory as wallpaper
urgently selected clipped and pasted
but the room itself nowheregone the address the house
golden-oak banisters zigzagging
upward, stained glass on the landings
streaked porcelain in the bathroomsloose floorboards quitting in haste we pried
up to secrete the rash imagination
of a time to comeWhat we said then, our breath remains
otherwhere: in me in you2
Sonata for Unaccompanied Minor
Fugitive Variations
discs we played over and overon the one-armed phonograph
Childish we were in our adoration
of the dead composerwho’d ignored the weather signs
trying to cross the Andes
stupidly I’d say nowand you’d agree seasoned
as we are working stretched
weeks eating food boughtwith ordinary grudging wages
keeping up with rent, utilitiesa job of living as I said
3
Clocks are set back quick dark
snow filters past my lashes
this is the common groundwhite-crusted sidewalks windshield wipers
liking, creaking
to and fro to and froIf the word gets out if the word
escapes if the word
flies if it dies
it has its way of coming backThe handwritings on the walls
are vast and codedthe music blizzards past
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
Hi, Joseph. I started to write something very short about liking the change to "irrelevant," but then I thought some more and like "unfair" better. But "unfair" makes the most sense in light of your expanded reasoning. Which is to say, of course these things are relevant to each other, but because they are trying to do very different things even as they apply similar techniques (the quirks of
Hi, Jeff. "Unfair" is probably the wrong word. I really mean something like "irrelevant." In his book <I>Poetry and the Public</I>, Joseph Harrington begins with a question: "Who’s better: Itzhak Perlman or The Rolling Stones?" His point being that the vastly different aesthetic aims and means of the two make the question of who’s better essentially <I>the wrong question</I>. Of course, my post
Joseph,<BR/><BR/>Why would it be unfair to compare a long sequence to a minimalist poem? Really and truly, I’m interested in your answer. I can picture reasons for both sides of this argument, but I’d like to get a handle on your poetics regarding that particular bit…