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China Doorknobs
Anthony Madrid is by far the most rewarding-to-read blogger on Harriet these days. One feels like each of his posts is a full bucket pulled up from a pouring brook: the taste is good and complex and one can’t forget that the brook is flowing on as one reads—that the bucketful is merely a sample. In this post, Madrid offers a wonderful quote from H. L. Mencken; I only wish he’d documented where it came from: The old-time poet did not bother with theories.Read More
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A Lot of Funny Things
So what in the world’s worth anything?Poetry is priceless (or at least that’s what they pay me).Explaining, clearly, deeply, Love, and Duty,what monkey-hearted men will never learn. —Wang Fan-chih My poems are poems,even if some people call them sermons.Well, poems and sermons do share one thing:when you read them you got to be artful.Keep at it. Get into detail.Don’t just claim they’re easy.If you were to live your life like that,a lot of funny things might happen. —Shih Te Both of the above translated by J. P.Read More
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The Creepy Pseudo-Thought of Languish Poetry
“[E]xperimentalism is often suspicious of formally conservative notions like ‘ear’ and the essentialist values they evoke. Language poetry in particular is in large part predicated on the rejection of the illusion of presence promoted by the privileging of speech and voice.” —K.Read More
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Duncan on Having “a Tongue that is Ready”
Robert Duncan What I call the Divine is what I begin to divine in the poem…. The dream, the dance, the falling-in-love, and the poem seem to me of one kind. A seizure, given to us, overcoming the pose of the ego, commanding us to attend the need, enthralling us in the spell of a form we must achieve.Read More
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W. S. Merwin on Being Sure
W. S. Merwin (top) & John Berryman Berryman by W. S.Read More
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Francisco Hernández Reads the Signs
I’ve been having fun trying to translate some poems by Francisco Hernández. He’s difficult because he often puns on idiomatic phrases. In the following case, his statements about poetry involve plays on phrases commonly found on road signs. That said… Francisco Hernández& Antojo de Trampa (the bookthis poem is taken from) Respete Las Señales Para Toño Valle No deje poemassobre el pavimento. Página izquierdasólo para rebasar. Endecasílabosa 150 m. Conceda cambiode estrofas. Precaución:entrada y salida de sonetos. No rebase con rima continua. Poesía urbana:velocidad restringida. No maltrate las vocales. Poemas con más de 10 versos,por la autopista.Read More
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Lowell’s Dolphin
Robert Lowell DOLPHINby Robert Lowell My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise, a captive as Racine, the man of craft, drawn through his maze of iron composition by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre. When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body caught in its hangman’s-knot of sinking lines, the glassy bowing and scraping of my will….I have sat and listened to too many words of the collaborating muse, and plotted perhaps too freely with my life, not avoiding injury to others, not avoiding injury to myself— to ask compassion … this book, half fiction, an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting— my eyes have seen…Read More
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Muriel Rukeyser on Sound, Reality, and Truth
Muriel Rukeyser I have been asked very often, “Don’t you care about rhyme?” I do and I don’t. That is, I care about the recurrence of sound deeply, deeply, and rhyme has never been enough for me. Rhyme, the European way, is a return of sound once in a poem. I have, in my greed, wanted more than that, wanted modulation of sound changing, climbing as I think of it.Read More
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Robert Francis on Po(e)sy
Robert Francis Catchby Robert Francis Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together,Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, every hand,Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop,Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as-possible miss it,Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly,Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant,Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy,Over the tree and the long sweet cadence down,Over his head, make him scramble to pick up the meaning,And now, like a posy, a pretty one plump in his hands.Read More
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Coetzee on “The Music”
Astonishingly, in dribs and drabs, the music comes. Sometimes the contour of a phrase occurs to him before he has a hint of what the words themselves will be; sometimes the words call forth the cadence; sometimes the shade of a melody, having hovered for days on the edge of hearing, unfolds and blessedly reveals itself. —J. M.Read More