Lots and lots of neat

recommended: Timothy Donnelly

"Apologies from the Ground Up," by Timothy Donnelly
from A Public Space 15 

What isn't funny about narcissism? And I don't just mean narcissism like the Howard Stern kind. That's more a talking narcissism, which I would compare to the "talking cure," except with Stern it's like all the language he generates actually reconstitutes itself on his command to become a gigantic trophy. And he can hang from his neck. Think albatross. Think Flava Flav but much more unwieldy. The narcissism Timothy Donnelly is talking about is different. It's more like the one where, when you're 17 years old, you figure you'll probably be President of the United States by the time you're 37, or 41. Which might sound like a delusion. But for the narcissistic, it's called self-importance, which is this uninhibited force inside you whose trajectory extends beyond your 20s, your adulthood, and includes even the historic ramifications of your life. FYI, there are encyclopedia articles that are part of those ramifications. So you'd be best to remain sharp.

"Apologies from the Ground Up" is talking a narcissism that looks at a painting of the Tower of Babel, and feels that magnitude of ego required to order such a spectacle, and thinks: I am that king. For I am willful. I am powerful and demented. I direct the people's will. And, yes, I may have to admit it was ill-advised to start on a project such as this. But "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

It may be that this narcissism of presumption is what we feed off of in 2012. Listen to Kanye West. Listen to Arcade Fire. Listen to about 3/4 of the pop music that comes out these days. We are pressed daily with so many ennobling spirits. We are urged to the imagined violence of the fighter. If there was ever a poetic needle Wallace Stevens could have ordered up so that he could inject nobility into our very sensitive egos, he just needed an iPod on 2012 Genius Mix. The world is ours to conquer, says the imagination. Donnelly's poem even makes light of this easy obsession/mistake of thinking that life caters to our wills. The occasion for "Apologies from the Ground Up" is a ride on a Manhattan-bound express, where the speaker is able to avoid "a general rupture from the keeping / of thoughts to oneself." This to the extent that it almost feels that these people keep themsevles to themselves for the speaker's benefit.

Is this detachment of 2012 self from other 2012 selves equivalent to the King who orders the Tower of Babel be built? Donnelly says yes. Or actually what Donnelly says is that every presumptive thought, when extended beyond its reasonable extreme, will continue to rationalize itself. And yet, in the end, if we are to continue the analogy, it seems we are all victims to individual languages that are specific to our overindulgent subjectivisms. Which is to say, all us narcissists make for the most alienated population. And we seem to take some strange pride in it.

Recommended links:
The Cloud Corporation
Recent LotsofNeat review of The Cloud Corporation
6 poets Timothy Donnelly recommends 

recommended: Jorie Graham

"The Bird that Begins It," by Jorie Graham
from A Public Space 15 

Please, Lord, please do not let Jorie Graham reconcile the mystery that binds the self to its body, or that keeps the abstract so inextricably assigned to the concrete worlds it informs. Early-ish in Graham's carrer, in her book The End of Beauty, she refers to a veil that separates the world of volition, emotion and consequence from the physical world. As it turns out, this is a subject of inexhaustible depth for Graham. There is no end to the poems she can and does write on this subject.

And thank the Lord for that. Because when Graham writes that poem about the irreconcilable relationship between spirit and flesh, I go weak in the knees. For Graham cannot be dettered, and her method of inquiry is indefatigable. "The Bird That Begins It" starts quietly. It is just before the morning. It is when the self is rousing itself to wake. But why? Why would the body react to light? What part of the body is "listening" for the command to waken? And, most particularly, why would this poem endeavor to inhabit the time that marks this very sensitive transition from sleep to waking?

Am I doing this poem justice? For me, what Graham brings to this occasion is a scrupulous and sensitive scalpel, which she uses to tease open this mystery of self versus body--a mystery attending even the most common experiences. In the poem "The Veil" from The End of Beauty she describes the anxiety of a mother waiting for her son to come home. In "The Bird That Begins It" she talks of waking. In both, it is her ever-widening intellectual treatment of the subject that raises its significance. Sentences in her poems are like tree trunks animated using CGI so that you witness their immediate growth and maturation. And yet, even in this overflow, her attention to each instant of an event feels precise. The first light of the morning arrives "as leaf-shaped coins." Later, "the clay / in the soil gleams where dew withraws." And later still, "preparation / of day / everywhere / underfoot." Graham notes the texture, thickens that texture, and, in the process, makes day a dense lushness of time. What irony that the self gets drawn out of sleep by such a crowd of facts. Where does the self fit in this frame? Well, I'm always in a frame, says the self. Think again, Graham says. Think again.

Recommended Links:
Place
Jorie Graham has her own web site! 

recommended: sally keith

I recently found this video on youtube of starlings in one of those fluid formations. I don't know if I can really describe it, except that they are flying over a marsh, and whatever their rhythm, they appear to collapse into themselves, and to form what looks like some solid object. And that object, as soon as it drifts into itself, drifts away from its center, or coerces to form another object. I know it's a common sight. And I know every time I get to see it I'm captivated. One time, when I was living in Virginia, driving toward the Newport News Tunnel, I saw a rope of these starlings flying over the highway. They were going north. And there was no end of them that I could see.

Sally Keith's poem "Lullaby on the Marsh," in Issue 09 of A Public Space, is not about starlings, or birds. The poem is about Achilles. And it is about motive. And the way motive moves inside Achilles, sometimes solidifying, sometimes just drifting, not necessarily aware of a purpose, but acting, still, with purpose, like the men who prepare their houses for winter. For me, Keith is able to move language in her poem like those starlings. I am always aware of some solidity present as the impulse of the poem. "Shape of the wave underneath the wave" she says toward the opening of the poem. She touches that shape in different ways.

It's what I am always impressed with in her first book Design. Keith writes with an acute awareness of what matters in a scene, and she keeps that focus very present for me, even making it feel as though that concept, that focus, is a solid thing in my chest. And her poem is there to help me understand this complexity as a denseness. However quickly it might morph into another denseness.

Related Links:
YouTube video of starlings
A Public Space
Design
Dwelling Song

recommended: derek walcott

The more poems I read in magazines the more I am disappointed by their specific occasion. Whether it's the "I have an imagination so let's celebrate" occasion or the "I have found this new way to relate to my past" occasion, the depth is limited and predictable. And what upsets me most is how it seems the more senior the poet, the more efficient the poem is at fitting into either of these occasions. I understand the pressures at a magazine to feature poets who will be recognized by their subscribers, and then might attract new readers. I understand why these poets' poems are appearing. I just don't understand who can read those poems and not get cynical about those poets, and this editing system that keeps ushering these kinds of poems to publication.

The new poems by Derek Walcott in the new issue of A Public Space (Issue 09) are intriguing to me. On one side I admire the poems because I admire Walcott's poetry, and his deep consideration of citizenship, and place, and how identity weaves and conflicts with these elements. On the other side, I feel as though every book of his I've read is dealing with this issue, using very similar approaches (the larger forgiveness offered by nature by virtue of her obliviousness, the invasive nature of what Walcott terms the "enemy" in "21" from APS). And so then I wonder if Walcott is showing mere competence in these poems, an ability to write another Walcott poem, or if I should recognize and appreciate the continuing nature of his project. What does it mean to continue writing poetry?

This is probably a larger issue than I can address in these brief-ish blog posts. It's mystery enough that keeps people writing, and I suppose what I'm asking here is what obligation a poet has to his subject, and his evolution as a writer. Is Walcott still evolving? With someone of his stature, accomplishments, and, of course, accolades, this is a tricky question to pose.

Related Links:
A Public Space
Omeros
Selected Poems (2007)