The Horn Answers

...so lock your horns with roiling fiends of the deep,
And tiptoe lightly through the gates of sleep,
Every return is a false turn you’ve taken,
As every feigned love is a lover forsaken.

Spent too long chasing the red ribbon cape,
Snorting and bluffing the illusory shape,
And every empty chase leaves bite of the blade,
Like how red roses bloom in the dim-dark shade.

The sweetest petals spring from a crimson seed,
Like sharpest thorns are sharp from a hell-sprung deed;
And the only secret left is when to prune,
The drips and runs from your neck’s growing wound.

So fight on—fight doom to the bloody end,
Dig in your weathered heels and aim to rend;
The hidden hand may move a bit too slow,
And you’ll catch him unawares with a goring blow.

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Nut Again

A squirrel at work in morning,
Digging shallow holes,
Hiding walnuts that he’ll forget,
Till trees break out in full.

The sapling born a tiny sprout
And bearing stems thread-thin,
Stands not a chance to hold its root
When squirrels will dig again.

And when the sprout meets busy hands,
Out will come the nut,
One squirrel buries, another reaps,
Plus one to fill the rut.

And so it goes, this cycle vain,
One nut in, another out,
A tree to bloom but never grow,
And squirrels with not a doubt.

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The Perfect Word

Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart used to talk about “the perfect note.” It’s a note that, after a preceding sequence of notes, is chosen perfectly, almost as if it choses itself. The perfect note is a note that couldn’t be any other. Every other choice would be inferior. It could only ever be that one, singular note. That’s the perfect note.

So, we have this model of creation where the aim is to assemble a constellation of materials wherein the perfect choice of material can occur.

We can imagine a poem where a single word is perfect. Any other word would be worse, or even wreck the entire poem. We could even imagine the ideal poem where every word is perfect, and even a single change would grievously harm the whole poem.

We don’t have to imagine very hard, either. We’ve all read poems that use a single word perfectly, or poems that hinge on an individual word or phrase; Or even poems that build up to a single, perfect line.

And so we have ourselves a genuine Artistic Problem: How can we make poems that induce the creation of Perfect Words? Naturally this is very difficult. We would probably make perfect poems all the time if we could.

In lieu of perfection, Novelty is a possibility. The perfect word is when the most befitting choice is made, however less befitting choices can also be made. Using less befitting, inferior choices create inferior works, but when an inferior work is artfully crafted it may result in Novelty, thus remaining of interest to us.

While the novel work may be inferior, it proves distinct. It distinguishes itself from both superior works and mundane works. And because it’s distinct, the novel work (despite its inferiority) serves to fill out our total aesthetic experience. Even though it is not better, it is at least different. The inferior throws the superior into a new relief thus assisting our appreciation of it. The inferior acts as the shadow of the superior.

Of course, there are some who prefer the shadow over the thing itself. The critic is always under self-duress because he is attracted to inferior works of art that require his critique to complete it. The inferior, imperfect, incomplete work of art is in need of the critic’s ability to defend it, propagandize for it, or otherwise fill in the gaps. In this way, the critic is predisposed towards lesser works as a means of self-justification. But I digress.

We crave satisfaction of our total aesthetic experience. Even when we’ve seen “the perfect” we desire to see “the different.” What does X mixed with Y look like? What if A was cast in the form of B? Therefore we experiment, and sometimes we do indeed discover new things; But experimentation almost always bears the marks of desperation.

However, experimentation is necessary because the idea of the Perfect Note or Word is relative (as in relational.) There’s no single, perfect, formulaic construction. The Perfect Note and Perfect Word arise out of their context.

We develop these constellations of materials wherein we can explore and develop the potentialities of words, form, and genre. Our experimentation within these constellations map out the potency of words’ color, rhythm, and meaning. We’re trying to properly demarcate our immediate materials. Since words and times are always changing, this must be done again and again. What was once new is now old and must be made new again. This must be a renewal or a resurrection, but not a return.

The experimental—Novelty—pursues the twin aims of cartography and total aesthetic satisfaction. And if we drop either pursuit, we are deprived of something either way. Pursue only the cartography of perfection and find anorexic homogeneity; Or pursue only aesthetic hedonism and find bizarre, perverse antinomianism. Ironically, no matter the aim, both of these sole pursuits result in the triumph of banality.

Poetry for the People

You hear a great deal about “The People.” Who are these People? I have never met The People.

Also, why do they need poetry? You know a funny thing? The people who keep saying that “The People” need poetry are never “The People.” It’s always the poets saying this.

BREAKING: Local Boondoggle maker exclaims, “The People have been deprived of Boondoggles for too long. Boondoggles for The People!”

More news at eleven.

Naturalism

A kaleidoscope does not help you see, but it is a pleasure to see. It is new and unique sight. It may not be “real” sight, but it pleases us. Should we throw it away because it is not “real?” Or should we have more faith in our instincts and keep it?

Representations are lenses and prisms. They are exaggeration machines. They throw familiar things in new relief and help us see what we could not see before. Representations ought not be censured because they exaggerate.

Now, there is a cult of Naturalism. They tyrannically reject formalism, affectation, and artifice. “The art of Art is hiding art.” A line of verse is never allowed to sound unnatural. Unnatural!? Oh the horror! Someone slip me a fainting couch.

Every line of verse should sound as natural as the unprovoked utterances of a monstrously obese, greasy woman taking a dump in a shit-ridden truck stop bathroom.

But what is a Poem except words at play? When you play, you do weird things, silly things, odd things. Man at play does things outside of the norm. Unnatural things, even.

The mundane, workaday world proceeds according to set rules, but the world of play proceeds along its own established rules. The rules of Play bend the rules of the Mundane.

So I ask, “Is Naturalism any fun to play with?”

Pretense

The ultimate pretension of art is that it aspires to replace life itself. It desires to displace the art of living with a life of art.

Formalism

Formalism is to Poetry what Recipe-following is to Cooking. It is necessary for a dish to possess structure and order, however blindly following a recipe without understanding the whole, or without adjusting to the immediate ingredients ends in disaster.

A Formal poem easily turns out as a platter of pretty but tasteless crap. It may take the Form of the whole without understanding the aim, ambition, and purpose of the whole; Or it may not properly respond to the immediate time and place thus sealing itself within an Ivory Tower of flaccid, futile, and ouroboric complacence.

Case in point:

Rebel Angels. The ole’ New Formalism. I really don’t mean to be too hard on this book. I haven’t even finished the thing. Never could get very far with it. Every time I pick it up, it rejects me. I have a hard time even remembering a single poem from it; And I know I’ve read some multiple times.

Some of the stuff in Rebel Angels is alright, and some of it is the drizzling shits (i.e. Elizabeth Alexander.) But to be clear, I’m not exactly making the accusation of tastelessness that I started with. I was exaggerating a bit, but just a bit.

Which brings me to Dana Gioia, who’s featured in this collection. Pretty popular as far as poets go, and he seems like a nice guy. Genuine. And he seems to actually like poetry.

I must’ve read something like two dozen Gioia poems. But I swear I can’t remember a single one—not a one of ‘em stuck. Gioia seems like a good idea on paper. But the poems? Oof.

Now, two dozen poems is a drop in the bucket, so you won’t hear any definitive statements from me. I’ll give him another shot some time.

Anyway, here’s a poem of his featured in Rebel Angels.

~~~

Maze without a Minotaur

If we could only push these walls   
apart, unfold the room the way   
a child might take apart a box   
and lay it flat upon the floor—
so many corners cleared at last!   
Or else could rip away the roof   
and stare down at the dirty rooms,   
the hallways turning on themselves,   
and understand at last their plan—
dark maze without a minotaur,   
no monsters but ourselves.
                                          Yet who
could bear to see it all? The slow   
descending spirals of the dust   
against the spotted windowpane,   
the sunlight on the yellow lace,
the hoarded wine turned dark and sour,
the photographs, the letters—all   
the crowded closets of the heart.

One wants to turn away—and cry   
for fire to break out on the stairs   
and raze each suffocating room.   
But the walls stay, the roof remains   
strong and immovable, and we   
can only pray that if these rooms   
have memories, they are not ours.

~~~

Minotaurs, mazes, madness, melancholy, metaphor. This should be right up my alley. Like it’s got all my favorite things. This should appeal to me. But it doesn’t.

So I’m trying to figure out why it falls flat for me. I mean, it’s not a bad poem. It’s competently constructed. He plays out the poem’s idea. It sounds alright out loud. But it just doesn’t excite or interest me.

Some reasons why:

L3: “a child might take apart a box”. So, it’s a cardboard box, but you don’t really “take” apart a cardboard box; And a kid certainly doesn’t. I was a kid, I tore apart boxes, or cut them apart. “A child might tear apart a box” seems much better to me. “Take” is weak there. We were talking about perfect words earlier. Well here’s an imperfect word.

I know it’s a minor thing, but this is poetry! Scrutinizing every word is kinda the point. There’s more words like it. L7: “dirty rooms”. Why are they dirty? They’re crammed with old stuff, but not necessarily dirty. Why not “filthy” or “rancid” or “dingy”?

There’s a fair amount of simple, plain word choices. Which doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but here it comes out as weakness.

The verse is unrhymed, so you lose access to that avenue. The phonic echo is subtle. It’s only somewhat sonically engaging. The dearth of acoustic excitement shifts the impetus on to other things, which only accentuates the weakness of the weak word choices.

It’s tetrameter, which means less room for adjectives. Though he does ameliorate that by using enjambment. Which leads us to the poem’s Formalism. It’s written in regular iambic tetrameter. It’s metrically solid, which is its strongest aspect. (Along with the rooms as an unfolded cardboard box—the poem’s best image.)

L11: “no monsters but ourselves”.

Ugh…

Ten lines in, and I just haven’t bought in. Then when he hits L11—I’m out. The “We’re the real monsters” theme finds absolutely no purchase with me. Even in a very mild form like this, I have zero patience for it.

So there it is, probably the main reason this poem fails for me: There’s no Minotaur. Maze without a Minotaur? More like Poem without a Minotaur. There’s no there there.

We “ourselves” are the Minotaur, but we don’t act like it. The monster isn’t real. It doesn’t do any monster things. There’s no action. The speaker limp-wristedly wishes for this, wishes for that. He won’t set the fire on the stairs—won’t do nothing. There’s no drama. Add all this stuff up, and the poem lands flat.

I don’t really have any desire to continue the scrutiny. However, for the sake of thoroughness, and so that the reader doesn’t feel that I’m being capricious, I’ll finish the critique.

The diction register rises only just above plain speech, which is fine. But unlike other poets who do it well, like Robert Frost, this poem’s statement is not buried deep in the image. It’s floating on the top. Which is to say that the poem’s statement is not as artfully incorporated into it’s conceit as a Frost poem might be. As in “The Leaf Treader”, for instance.

The catalogue of objects in the middle part is nice, but cataloguing is overused, and over-relied on. But more to the point, this catalogue in particular uses less than striking elements.

“But the walls stay, the roof remains/strong and immovable,” is dull. Also, why do the walls stay? We want to “raze each suffocating room” but we can’t because the “walls stay”. The walls are passive and they don’t act on us or stop us. Their “plan” is to contain us in the maze. But how do they do it? Presumably we can’t act because “who could bear to see it all”. So, both the walls and ourselves are acting in mutual inaction.

We conclude this poem with “we/can only pray that if these rooms/have memories, they are not ours.” But we’ve spent the rest of the poem establishing that these rooms do have memories, and that those memories are indeed ours. Both “Yet who could bear to see it all?” and “all the crowded closets of the heart” establish these inferences.

If after all, the rooms do not trap us in our memories, just as the maze traps the minotaur, what was the point of the poem? And so the poem ends resolved to wish for an impossibility. All we can do is wish for things to not be as they are.

You can see that the poem’s conceit has promise. Our memories of the past, substantiated in that list of aged, worn-out objects, trap us in a maze just like the Labyrinth traps the Minotaur. But the poem doesn’t have enough follow-through to overcome its flaws. The take-off was good, but the plane doesn’t land.

Well, that’s enough of that.

Now, there happens to be a similar poem called “The Wolves” by Allen Tate. You can read my ramblings on it here.

They both have “a monster in the house.” (Though “Minotaur” feels like it’s urban—maybe an apartment building.) They are both about “Man confronting Man.”

But “The Wolves” is better. Stronger conceit, stronger words, stronger images, and a more expansive statement. “Minotaur” lacks the style and the guts to draw me in.

Post-Modernity

I think that Post-Modernity will finally, fully begin when Tradition has erotically devoured Modernity.

Recovering Tradition

Don’t bother to try recovering “tradition.” You’re resuscitating a corpse. You have to have more faith than that. A reminisced past is dead as an imagined future. Live in the present. And I mean the present, not the Right Now, the Immediate, or the Moment. The present in the terms of man, not the terms of angels or artifice.

The past is recapitulated in the present, and the present gives birth to the future. The past is the roots of the present. They are subterranean. They are unseen. And if you wish to remember the past, they are best remembered in the blossoms of tomorrow.

Whether you treat a sapling as a tree or a tree as sapling, you will kill it either way. Things are living. They are growing. If treated as dead, they will die.

You tend to things as they are. You can’t give birth in the past, nor give birth in the future. You can only give birth in the present. And regardless whether you desire birth in the past or birth in the future, you must pursue Eros in the present to achieve it.

To Be At Work; To Be At Theory

To be at Work is a flowing stream. To be at Theory is a sitting pond. Things must move and things must rest. However, rest too long and stagnate, or move too much and exhaust.

Both streams and ponds are bodies of water, just as Work and Theory are the same bodies, but differ in state. Same substance, different form.

It is difficult to think of Theory in the midst of Work. The Worker must first pause and then pull Theory in as if drawing from a reservoir. When the stream runs dry, the reservoir must supplement. For what is the purpose of a stream but to move?

Problems

I am unable to totally extricate myself from the moral and political concerns of today. As a man, I can accept this. For better or worse, it’d be inhuman to unburden oneself of these things.

However, what of poetry?

Will a poem solve a moral or a political problem? No.

Moral and political problems are solved by action. Reading a poem is non-action, and making a poem lies somewhere between action and not.

At base, problems of the world are solved by violence, the threat of violence, and the avoidance of violence.

Poems are provocation and seduction. They sit at the vestibule of violence.

Men solve worldly problems. Poems solve artistic problems. The Poet stands astride the gap between the two. By diverse stratagems, by trial and error, by hook or crook, he must do what he can to retain his balance.

However at the end of the day, a poem solves an artistic problem first and foremost.

Gargoyles

I have long considered my own poems to be gargoyles. They’re things that sit around and pull funny faces. They’re little monsters that, with a bit of luck, might scare away the big ones.

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Love Repays 

Your slender body against my flesh,
Hearing your heart within your breast,
I burn to pull you back within,
And lay replete in wholesome rest.

But separate parts are luscious grace,
And different limbs are pleasure’s gain,
As supple soft is vigor lean,
As virgin gifts are night-silk’s stain.

If pain, then pain, for love bears pain,
The simple cost of sacred games,
If wager some, then none retain,
To pay the price for Cupid’s aim.

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Desert Banal

The alcove of the mind runs over with blood,
And rolls a crimson drape of locks untamed,
Rushing headlong through tributaries dammed
By smooth and maudlin stones that weep in shame.

One eye of earth, one eye of god, beset
The river’s face, stopping the cataract
From answering demands of barren sands,
For Desert Banal, with drought, does blood attract.

The shapelessness of sand is comfort to some,
Those souls that long desire the total mold 
Of edgeless impress—at freedom to change
From same to same in hands with perfect hold.

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My thanks to for a helpful critique.

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Songstress Rage

Rage! Rage! Rage! Rage!
Kick at the pickets, kick at the gates,
Squeeze the page to bleed out it’s names,
Raze the dead and rip up their graves.

Twist the spigot till the water breaks,
Fill up the pit and burn down the lakes,
Whatever you treasure quickly forsake,
Kill what you like, lick up your hate.

Fight through the night, defy your ill fate,
Eat your own flesh till hunger be sate,
Sigil your fingers to scare away
Deathly moments of indomitable days.

Abolish the world, bring judgment to all,
Abolish the Spring, condemn the Fall,
Abolish death, cast down the pall,
Abolish abolishment, answer your call.

Through rocks and caves, in bogs, in dens,
Out-fly your frights to the best of your ken,
Since peace be lies, trust devil’s kin,
Surrender confession and marry your sin.

Children of choice, born from the mind,
Invisible brats, the death of your kind,
Do no wrong, you can always rewind,
Unspool the past, leave futures behind.

Die in the womb, give life to the End,
Annihilate birth, obliterate Men,
Practice your craft that your presence be felt,
Perfect the Void and destroy yourself.

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XXXIX
The weeping willow wraps a draping arm
Around some damp and darkened fertile earth,
Keeping the tender spot away from harm,
A sweeping shelter for her private mirth.
    Below lay buried a man in sleeping,
    Befitting rest to end his weeping.

XL
The knights will scurry, lords will rage and thrash,
The peddlers patter down the crowded street,
Barons will scheme, and smiths will burn their ash,
And cobblers fashion boots for busy feet,
    Bustle and hustle, hobnob and exchange,
    The dungeon’s empty cause we’re all deranged.

XLI
Books and pens are terror’s master,
Reading, writing, over-thinking,
Page producing mind disaster,
Subtle souls confined to inking.
    Paper hearts will bear no bleeding,
    Paper ears are deaf to heeding. 

XLII
The tiger woman leads astray the little
Boys that cross her way; Her stripes and claws,
Her slender middle—she purrs and nips a nibble,
And slurped up boys slide down her easy maw.
    A tiger woman treads the tiger trail,
    And tracking close behind, she’s on your tail.
   
XLIII
I’ve spent my time awaiting time to end
Its tick-tock-tick around the chiming clock,
For hours in pain to pass their numbing rend,
For pin-prick minutes to release their shock.
    Time come now to a stuttering sprung stop,
    Open your silent hands and let me drop.

XLIV
The reptile slides its secret ways in dusk,
Daring a man to snatch a wrathful hold,
And swallow the tail for Lord of the Husk,
And bite off his tongue for whispers of gold.
    Go catch the lizard in the waning moon
    And drink your own blood in the dark of noon.

XLV
The world and flesh is hate born out of hate,
For hatred sires itself from like and like;
With coital sameness does a hatred mate,
To queerly dam new springs with tandem dike. 
    A living water stops—barren and stilled,
    If nature’s currents empty unfulfilled.

XLVI
Out from the dark sees two eyes, three eyes, four,
One pair of peering beasts, or one monstrosity,
Be nature or be myth, or some lean lore
That once spun cannot be undone with ease.
    When myth has died in history’s careless heaps,
    Imagination resurrects what poorly sleeps.

XLVII
My wilted flower crowds the hurried path,
Refulgent neon winking demon’s eye,
Bare torque of broken bones sing sinew’s wrath,
A stifled fetus wyrm dissolved in lye.
    Devour my soul and slurp the inner marrow,
    Dine well this feast and feed your rotten farrow.

XLVIII
Nested nightmares bide their time in regress,
Wholly kept in perspicacious chainage,
Writhing wracking tendrils threaten egress,
Pressing psychic pressure chthonic drainage.
    Slouching sloth of Argus seeping, seething,
    Thousand eyes are waiting, reaching, breathing.

XLIX
The lonesome night intrudes upon a mind
When sleep compels a wakeful man to doze,
But fate entwines a shadow knit to hide
A nemesis that drapes the gloaming’s throes.
    Our heads will burn by day and hang by night,
    For darker the shade, the brighter the light.

L
Your hair was jasmine in the morning dew,
Your eyes were sapphires set in alabaster,
Your tawny skin glowing with florid hue,
Your crown now wreathed in rows of purple aster,
    I bury in sleep my sore and sorrowed sigh,
    I kiss your lifeless lips and kiss goodbye.

My thanks to and for their helpful feedback on poem L.

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Vampire Incunabulum

I asked a lady with a crystal ball
If she could tell that I’m of demon couth,
She said, “I know the depths of mankind’s fall
And all the lies they tell themselves as truth,
    But demon you are not; For I know well
    Just what it means for creatures truly fell.”

“But if you’d like, I’ll gladly teach you things,
Like how the dog eats bile with pleased content,
Or how the buried mandrake sweetly sings,
Or how the sword can swing without relent.
    Lend me your ear and place it on my ball,
    I’ll show you how to hear the fall in all.”

And so I dropped my ear upon her weird,
To learn of matters dark and dimly deep,
To leer the vast unknown stripped bare appear,
To take which hidden as my own to keep.
    Now let me see or let me die as blind,
    Capture my willing ear and free my mind.

All things I find within my searching touch
Shall find their ends as the beginning lines
In augurs of the subtle powers much
Forgotten by these humdrum human signs.
    Take quick away this burdensome dense flesh,
    All once unjust repair with lush redress.

“Bite me, open this vein with your dull teeth,
Tear my frigid flesh and suck the nectar
Which spills freely from out its weeping bleed,
Drink full and quench, my body, yours to enter.
    Exchange in spirit, death in living life,
    Relinquish your lust on the edge of a knife.”
        
“Surrender your desire unto my altar,
Worship unhampered with rampant escape,
Forward now, press on, let feet not falter
Beneath the raven hairs of my sanctum’s drape.
    Burn perfect your last sacrifice in rite,
    Dances in ash release the darkest light.”

All things to come, all things now present stood,
Roll over this red flesh in shameless swell,
Retrieve the inmost seed of this thorn’d wood
Which runs its root into the hungry dell.
    Let vine receive in life what death can feed,
    Where garland steps of fertile depth shall lead.

Satiate this hidden thirst now sprung,
Give all, or none, or all I slake away,
The bell once rung will not be fast un-rung,
A toll once tolled must quell with full repay. 
    This swollen temple swirls on maudlin dreams
    To hear its halls resound with pleasant screams.

To whom, to where, from hence, and evermore,
I hunt a precious game for sorrow’s gain,
A growing ache to fill my growing sore,
That I in death might youthful life retain.
    In tongue, In tooth, let pureness live abused,
    All time possessed that heaven lounge unused,

“Your love is grand and grand will rise transformed,
To wit the dawning of the sun’s eclipse,
Arise anew, with luring grin adorned,
These ceaseless days you found between my lips.
    More the hunger is greater the snuff,
    For the darkest dark is never dark enough.”

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Renewal

There is only one option going forward: The total surrender of all pretensions.

The complete and utter death of pretension.

Effect vs Function

I. Definition

I have two different names for two similar concepts: Poetic Effect and Poetic Function.

Poetic Effect is a reader response. It’s the feeling that afflicts a reader when he believes he has just experienced poetry—something truly poetic. It might be awe, joy, sadness, horror, or serenity. In whatever way, the poem causes movement in the reader.

Poetic Function is a characteristic of the poem. It is the mechanics, features, or other aspects which make the poetry. Poetic Function is what the poem does, not the reader. We have lots of names for various poetic devices: metaphor, concentration, rhythm, irony, and so on. All of these things, in action, amount to Poetic Function.

If we were to connect these concepts, we could posit a simplistic formula: Poetic Function causes Poetic Effect. However, this does not bear out in reality.

The truth is that Poetic Effect is unreliable at determining anything about the nature of a poem. And Poetic Function is unreliable for producing Poetic Effect.

In addition to being two different descriptive concepts for a poem, they also suggest two different approaches to writing poetry.

Poetic Function writes for the poem. Poetic Effect writes for the reader. It’s the same difference as “Playing the Game vs. Playing the Player.”

II. Demonstration

I’m going to attempt a demonstration between Effect and Function. I’ve got two poems, one from Rupi Kaur and one from Ben Jonson. It’ll be a bit extreme, due to the disparity between the poems, but hopefully it helps for clarity’s sake.

First is Kaur. Watch carefully as she goes full “five year old with a ballpoint” and deconstructs Shel Silverstein.

This poem has no poetic effect on me. It makes me laugh though. I think it’s funny because I think it’s stupid. The tragedy, of course, is that it’s meant as serious and sincere.

This poem has no poetic function. Well, almost no poetic function. It just does one thing: The personification of sadness. There are two functionally poetic words: “Living” (and live) and “places.” Both of which are weak and abstract.

There’s nothing here. Nothing to think about, nothing to feel about.

The poem will run out of poetic function quicker than it takes to light Milk and Honey on fire as a burnt sacrifice to Horace that you might expiate your own poetic sins for even having read it in the first place.

This is a poem for a kindergartener. A baby’s first poem. But this is in a book about pain and trauma written by an adult, for adults.

BUT, I know for a fact that this poem had caused Poetic Effect. To some, it has been a breath of fresh air. It’s the wind to fill their sails. This poem has moved people. But I guess some people can’t tell the difference between a gentle breeze and a stiff fart.

Anyway, just to try and drive the point home, I’ll my put money where my mouth is. Here’s a few lines on the same theme—an affliction of unjustified sadness—written with Poetic Function in mind.

~~~

Sadness settles where sadness should not grieve,
Building its sorrowed nest in shadow's cracks,
Where what may hatch might hunt without relief,
In sore pursuit to gather which it lacks.

~~~

The reader can decide which poem he thinks is better. I will not claim that my poem causes greater Poetic Effect than Kaur’s. However, I do believe mine has a good deal more Poetic Function.

Well, there you have it, Kaur’s poem has no Function but still produces Effect in (some of) its readers. The poem, taken in context with her whole book, was written to effect teenage girls who enjoy the poems for reasons that have little to do with Art. It’s an example of Poetic Effect oriented writing—playing the player, not the game.

Moving on, here’s Ben Jonson:

I have never read this poem without becoming emotional. (When I’ve sat down and read it as Art, that is. Naturally, one can read a poem analytically, or inattentively, or in some other manner which prevents vulnerability.)

When I think of Poetic Effect, I think of this epitaph.

Now, obviously Ben Jonson is one of the finest English poets to ever write…and Rupi Kaur is not. So yeah, it’s an unfair comparison. But these two poems share more in common than might appear at first blush.

If we were to attempt a justification of the Kaur, we could spin up something like this: The childishness of the poem is representative of the regression into childlike expression that the subject adopts as a form of protection in response to emotional trauma.

The immaturity of the poem is therefore justified as a reflection of the speaker and theme.

Now, when we look at Jonson’s poem we actually see something very similar. Jonson suffers the death of his son, and the poem expresses his profound grief. If we examine his reaction to this, we see statements saturated with bitter irony. “My sin was too much hope of thee,” '“could I lose all father now,” and finally “what he loves may never like too much.”

Regardless if he truly regrets having hope in his son, or if he regrets his fatherhood, I think our rational judgement tells us that these are unhealthy resolutions. And so also with his ultimate resolution to lessen his love for all things going forward. A devastating final thought. Though his grief is more than understandable, I think we all know that these attitudes will only serve to cause more misery.

In his grief, Jonson express very human though ultimately immature sentiments. Sentiments which will have to be overcome in time.

In both these poems the speakers are expressing immaturity in the face of grief. However, Jonson’s poem does not strike us as immature in the slightest. In fact it strikes us as exactly the opposite. The epitaph captures grief with incredible beauty and fullness.

If you’re like me, the line “here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry” is the one that gets you. He uses a metaphor. Jonson call his son “his best piece of poetry.”

To me, that is the perfect marriage of Poetic Effect and Poetic Function.

Jonson gives us a much more difficult poem than Kaur, and here I mean emotionally difficult. And I think this can be found again and again across many poems. Jonson uses Function and the interplay of contrasting elements to build a poem with real depth. He does not abandon Poetic Function to express himself, and the poem is all the better for it.

III. Divergence

If we were to ask whether privileging Poetic Effect or Poetic Function is the superior approach to poetry, frankly I don’t have a good answer.

I’m sure you would not be surprised to know that I lean towards Poetic Function. But I’m truly unsure. Experiencing profound Poetic Effect is a bit of a rarity for me. It doesn’t happen all that often anymore. Sure, poems make me feel things, but very few of them leave me with a pit in my stomach or a deep sense of awe.

I’m mainly attracted to things that are cool, interesting, arresting, striking, or thought-provoking. I enjoy shapes, colors, figures, movements, styles, and composition more than ever before. I’ve experienced a decreased importance of the moral and expositional content. I’ve become more interested in art as an object, as a made thing.

At base level, art is a lovable thing. It’s a thing that can make us say “I’m glad that this exists.” But these days we need theory to justify art. We can’t seem to be at ease without relegating it to social technology or religious practice. And the alternative to theory is always some thoughtless, hippy-dippy, emotional roller coaster that purposely doesn’t make any sense. Naturally, I’m not happy with that either.

~~~

One final note, returning to our poems, if you happen go to Barnes & Noble right now, there are one or two dozen copies of Rupi Kaur on the shelf. There are exactly zero copies of Ben Jonson on the shelf. Make of that what you will.

Dearth

A poem is apt of words, not lack of words.

Letting the Poem Speak For Itself

When you make a poem, I think that you should identify the poem’s sentiment and hit it hard. Let the poem say what it wants to say. Figure out where it’s going and let it go. Or if you know where it’s going, let it roam where it likes before it gets there.

This is not some principle of verse, to be sure. This is an idea I’ve changed my mind about over time. Previously I was much more apprehensive about letting a poem say something that I might personally disagree with. Or as was often the case, moderating the poem’s statement in some way. At times adding counterpoints or even weakening the point.

But I think this weakens the poem. I’d rather have a poem sharpened to a point than dulled at the tip.

I say let a poem risk something. A poem’s failure is not necessarily a poet’s failure. If a potter makes a vase, and the vase breaks, the potter does not break with it. So, too, a poet and his poem.

AI Reaction & Abstract Poems

I. Running Scared

Personally, I think it’s a bad idea to make poetry in reaction to AI. A poet purposely writing poems that an AI would be unable to write is a poet running scared.

If the goal is to “remain human,” a reactive approach is counter-productive. By developing strategies to create “AI-impossible” poems, the writer is surrendering his will over to the AI. He is simply allowing the AI to define poetry in the negative. Poetry merely becomes what AI is not.

What is the point? In an effort to retain his humanity, the poet allows the AI to determine what poetry he will make in order to escape the clutches of AI. This is clearly letting the AI’s “will” control the poet’s will. What this reveals, on the poet’s part, is a complete lack of faith in his own essence. “My poems must be different than an AI’s poems. That’s how I know I’m human.” If a man believes this, he has already surrendered his mannishness. A man is not defined by his outputs.

A poem is an expression of a man being a man. An AI is not a man; It has not and will not make a poem. It has only ever simulated a poem.

Now, If we game this out for a second, I think it’s fairly obvious where this reactive logic leads. A poet makes a “non-AI” poem. Then, the AI trains on that poem. Goodbye “non-AI” poem. Rinse and repeat. This quickly becomes a poetic arms race. And each party will be racing towards utter inexplicability.

The only way to beat the computer is to make poems that can’t be explained—that make no sense. But poems that make no sense are bad poems.

You can’t represent the ineffable with the nonsensical.

This ends with people throwing random shit together. Poets making big, blobby amalgam poems that somehow “say something.” It’ll be developing a secret language that AI can’t read, and neither can we. It’ll just be warmed-over 20th century poetry boiled on top of a turd pile stirred by a drivel spouting troglodyte.

~~~

The dishwasher tells me your secrets, where at,
dog-bone strife returns unto the running avidly,
where is now are swimming vivid screen-tone bats,
card bonds in avenue show wrongful this incarnadine
rolling shave form, fine now, fishing butterscotch
in your forming, 
         this now...Love
what are in is mine mundus,
    beautiful...beautiful...
glancing flesh whipped, my beloved tardily upon in torquely,
Chartreuse! 
Face to now this illuminate blood kitsch,
my love,     my love
    my love forever 

~~~

Do you want this? Is this what you want? For pete’s sake, we’ve already done this—are still doing this. We’ve been jamming bunches of bullshit together and blowing smoke up each other’s skirts for decades.

I don’t even know why I’m saying all this. Poems like this have been written, and are being written right now. I’ve read them.

II. Ut Pictura Poesis

Okay, listen, I’ll be serious for a sec. This AI reactive poetry can be summarized: “As painting, so poetry.” It is abstract art approximated with words. It’ll be a collection of objects, actions, and descriptions that amount to a cataract of sensory connotations. It will roll over the reader. Maybe he feels something or maybe not. It mostly depends on if the reader and poet happen to share the same set of connotations. And whatever is felt, it will likely be felt weakly.

(And just to thrown in another point about what I’m talking about, I do think this poetry is different that Imagism. This reactive poetry relies heavily on connotations, and specifically on connotative descriptions of emotions, and it relies a great deal less on descriptions of things.)

An abstract figure has never moved me more than a depiction of the human face.

Of course, there are individual abstracts which moved me more than individual faces, but the point stands.

Even the abstract painting which has moved me the most, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, moved me on account of its absence of the human. When I look at it, I see the abstraction, obliteration, and annihilation of man. Naturally, its arresting shapes, colors, and textures cannot be divorced from its effect. There’s something beautiful, or at least visually intriguing, in what’s literally on the canvas.

Despite this, the human face in film and painting has moved me more than this piece. Duchamp’s painting connects me to humanness via negation, but it still connects me. On the other hand, something like Tarkovsky’s Stalker connects me to humanness directly with the depiction of its characters. There are shots of those men’s faces which are filled with incredible depth and beauty.

Anyway, returning to this abstract poetry.

I don’t even have anything against abstract poems, certainly not in principle. I think they can be cool. However, they are limiting.

Poetry can be more than mere juxtaposition of elements, and as is specifically the current style, the bare juxtaposition of heterogenous elements for the purpose of emotive synthesis.

I don’t dislike this style, and believe me, I understand the motivations for it. I just think that the poet should make it because he likes it, not because a machine can’t understand it.

The more fundamental motivation for abstract poems is to resist the “compulsion to produce meaning,” which is consequence of the positivization of modern life. The abstract “meaning resistant” poem represents a mode of meaning which lies outside the purview of modernity’s modalities of meaning.

This is a strategy for poetry, once again, to reassert its value in the face of competition.

In many ways this juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements is simply an intensification or purification of general poetic technique. In principle there is nothing un-poetic about abstract poems. Write them if you like, but don’t deceive yourself. Just don’t write them cause the machine told you to.

III. Teleology

We ought ask ourselves, “What are we ritualistically recapitulating in our poems?” If within an abstract poem the poet hopes to alchemically yoke together strange gods that it might unchain him from his nature, he is misguided. “If I create the exactly correct synthesis of opposites in this poem, I shall be freed from the burdens of my flesh.”

I do not mean to diminish these things. There is great power here. It must be respected. Mind may indeed overcome matter, but matter is no pushover. I simply believe that it is tragic for man to live in conflict with his nature.

There is perhaps one even more fundamental motivation for abstract poems. Which is that the poet finds recourse to abstraction as means to represent the geometric glory of divinity which he finds difficult to capture via other means. To me, that seems a proper and salutary motivation for the style.

Vivisection

I have a distaste for bloodless, scientific assessment of a poem. I read a poem as a man, I judge a poem as a man, aspiring to use both emotion and reason in their fullness. I may even have differing, disjunctive reactions to a poem, but they are ultimately synthesized in my person, even if this causes conceptual difficulties.

Making Things

I think poetry is an art. I think it’s about making things: Making beautiful things, scary things, funny things, pretty things, ugly things, cool things, glorious things, wise things, hideous things, moral things, all kinds of things.

Poems are luxurious things, playful things, lovable things.

But poetry, in aspiring to be a fine art, is an unnecessary art. An art of unnecessary things. You can’t live in a poem or eat a poem.

Now we can debate the social good of poetry all day long. We can think of myriad purposes for poems: Cultural transmission, moral edification, and even mere amusement. But if poetry is considered a mere utility, it is cheapened. It is the same as if we said that the purpose of illustration is road signage, and the purpose of painting was to prevent weathering and rust.

Though the utility of these arts can and should be easily acknowledged, it is a general phenomenon that when aiming for higher things, the lower things are naturally drawn upwards. The pursuit of the high is the elevation of the low.

True poetry is a thing which, in one way or another, compels us to uplift our gaze—even if but a hair’s breadth higher.

Priorities

The Digital is a vampire.

This digital world feeds on human attention—energy. A computer does nothing without input. It needs us. We are its Mover.

I believe that its appetite for human energy vastly surpasses our ability to produce it. Although, this may not have always been the case—or always will be. The less the internet is a tool and the more it is a world-space, the more vampiric it becomes. (It’s a spaceless world-space, of course. It’s a world-space in as much as a website is an actual site.)

Putting aside the intricacies and caveats of defining the internet, my present concern is the internet, the artist, and the making of art.

Simply put, I believe that the Digital should compel us to reassess the importance of our resources.

Namely that human Energy is the resource of primary importance, and that Morale—the willingness to use Energy—is second most important.

Only after Energy and Morale should come the importance of Critique. This is because, though critique can be used to increase energy and morale, it can also be used to extinguish energy and morale.

One can tell fairly quickly whether critique originates Externally or Internally. That is, does the critique come from the inside or the outside? Internal critique is predisposed towards amelioration, while external critique is predisposed to depredation.

Just as “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” So is “Critique the continuation of War by other means.” Whereas external critique is tantamount to war, internal critique is akin to sparring.

The Digital produces a state of constant external critique—a state of constant war. It is a strange kind of war, however. It is a war to de-characterize and deracinate all things. A war to remake the world in its own image—an image of integers. A world of the Same.

The self-conscious, moral, intelligent man is castrated by the tyranny of omni-present critique. Then naturally, what is imposed becomes immanent. A man who internalizes external critique becomes an auto-alienating subject. A man of the self-alienating self. The Nowhere Man.

It is an ever occurring phenomenon that the “Supreme Good” threatens to kill the “Common Good”. Especially when these mutate into the Supreme Critique versus the Common Critique, which stems from degradation of the “perfection of desire” into the “fulfillment of desire.”

However, I do believe that these concepts of the Good, rightly understood, are ultimately harmonious; But it must be said that one does not “solve” for society, politics, or the human condition. There is no solution to Man, there is only Death.

Offensive Matters

What if I just sneak in my second most offensive poetry opinion right here?

There are many answers to “Who is ruining poetry?” Here is what I say:

Writers are ruining poetry.

Mind you, I make and will continue making literary poems. It’s what I like. But I don’t try to dissolve the Art of Poetry in an acid bath of Writing.

I elaborate no further. Look into your heart and see the truth.

Nostalgia

Last time I remembered, I still had memories. It’s difficult to remember, but it’s even harder to forget. Fantasies though, they’re the easiest. Making up memories out of whole cloth is simpler than remembering the worn jacket-sleeves of years past. Honestly you don’t even have to fabricate new memories, you can just work with the ones you already got—gussy them up a bit and make them glitter. At that point—when memories are swaddled in a fine, golden mist—forgetting isn’t hard anymore, it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Nostalgia is not to remember, but to forget.

In Case of Hopelessness Break Glass

Consequence be damned—Let swing and make it bleed.

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Anime Pillow
For Allen Tate

When I awake from dreaming and smother my seeming dreams,
I grope my pillowed girl—her desperate downy flesh,
Her threadbare flaring sides, her torso’s giving seams,
My single-action embrace has crushed her face compressed.

Flattened features, visage wrinkled false, squeezing
The air from cotton lungs—come back to me my breath,
From my own spirit, life has turned itself to weaving
The secret threads of mind that spin at life and death.

Although I know your beauty is simply sheet-thin stuff,
I uncover your nakedness by slipping off your case,
And meet you nude, canvas plain, a stretching sack of fluff,
Merely memory—imagination—echoing your empty face.

I see her form projected upon my deeper sight,
Its shock awakens love, that otherwise would keep
From eyes, these hidden subtle shapes now suddenly in light,
They fill the stuff of my heart, breaking my lonesome sleep.

I do not move before my breathless double, unless,
Glassy eyes reflect a flash of stillborn screams;
Alice, sweet Alice! Flesh of my God, God of my flesh,
Render unto me the recompense of my dreams.

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XXIX
A solar path is brightly, seemly seen,
But light enlightened sight may often blind
If dark-loved eyes have ever restless leaned
On comforts kept in dim laid sense confined.
    The violent mix of seen and missed in twain
    Delight as both the cause and loose of pain.

XXX
A man thinks forward but then feels behind,
His touch obsessed with counter propositions,
Contrary thoughts perplex his mercurial mind,
And roaming hands assuage his contradictions.
    A disposition strained by cross-wise eyes,
    He gropes the truth and caresses the lies.

XXXI
The red leaf shivers just before the fall,
Shaking from wind, dancing in gentle breeze,
Its stem tested by the chilling stiff squall,
As tree is beaten bare by winter’s tease.
    The changing seasons cycle on and on,
    But single leaves are born but once and gone.

XXXII
A pot that ceaseless boils never taints,
But simmered morsels lose their natural shape;
And frozen meat is stayed by cold restraint,
Though solid crystal flesh is painful ate.
    Some they say fire, some ice, but either tool
    Preserves our meals whether hot or cool.

XXXIII
A seamless cloak can not be simply split,
For sans a stitch to tear, it’s wholly kept;
A coat of patches, easy may be ripped,
It’s form and function bit by bit is wrecked.
    But life is fraught by snags with their own minds,     
    We oft repair with parts of sundry kinds.

XXXIV
The valley settles all, each bone, each stone,
A grave for everything and all the rest
To find their peace at bottom. From top thrown,
Each cast aside, they’re sliding down behest.
    Discarded things converge themselves a heap,
    Surmounting highest heights in mounding sleep.

XXXV
Manifesto festers memo boards,
Breaking speeches, filling breeches full,
Desultory members warm their hoards,
Empty hand deposit—apt and dull.
    Many a word has hidden courage null,
    A stench of failing strength with stronger bull.

XXXVI
Races won are races barely finished,
Crossing total with your honor wholesome,
Battered surely, soul but undiminished,
Broke and beaten sore for fate less loathsome.
    Losing spirit is a final, fatal injury,
    Convalescence never mends your dignity.

XXXVII
He stares across the board into my eyes,
And pushes pawn into my weak defense,
Black into white, his fingers coldly rise
Into the air, and end this game’s suspense.
    When death plays life, the winner is foreknown.
    Ought fell my king and make the loss my own?

XXXVIII
I build a palace of words spoken in praise,
And gild it’s graven pillars with precious care,
Deemed gift to God, and it gives good to upraise,
The spirit high as manfully one might dare.  
    But man’s salvation reigns from heavenly throne,
    Trust not your soul to poetry but Christ alone.

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The Phones
For Mr. P(h)o(n)e

The phones, the phones, the phones, the phones

Are shrieking, are ringing, are dinging, are pinging,
A-ringing, a-ringing, a-ringing, a-ringing,
Singing and ringing as battery draining,
Energy leaking from sound of the ringing,
Chargers are failing and drooping and fraying,
Speakers are hearing whatever I’m saying,
My crying, my yearning, my cursing, my praying,
Commodity comforts are deadly betraying.

The phones, the phones, the phones, the phones,

The phones are phoning are phoning are phoney,
I’m wishing the stopping of echo and droning,
The nudging, the shushing, the judging and knowing,
The steady releasing of writing and wronging.
Though shrieking and dinging my heart is full beating,
Its patter is faster for loving their ringing.

YouTubing, TikToking, panties and stockings,
Texting, emoting, long-distance sex loading,
Thumping and humping, vicariously stroking,
Bumming and dumbing, electrically numbing.

The phones, The phones, The phones, The phones,

Moving in place cross the scrolling of time,
Whispering secrets in notes to my mind,
Chirping and whirring, its all in my head,
The power is leaving, my battery’s dead.

The phones, the phones, the phones, the phones,
Hear the phone, hear the phone, see the phone.

No beeping, no pinging, no flash or vibrating,
No lighting or making or searching or finding,
The screen is dim-dimming at height of my needing,
The blacking, the blacking, the blacking, the blacking,
The blacking reflecting the depth of my lacking.

The phone, the phone, the phone, the phone,
See the phone, need the phone, be the phone,

Empty of image see similitude likeness,
Selfsameness is lameness for freaking your famous,
For beaming and reaming Uranus’ rings,
All of these things are in all of these things.
The seams start their giving when losing your seeming,
Your fleshing, your flashing, your digital dreaming,
Is giving, is giving, is giving, is giving,
Is giving you loss with the break of your gaining,
Giving the gifting of saying your sway
Your face of my features is giving away.

The phones, the phones, the phones, the phones,
On the phone, on the phone, on the phone, on the phone,
I’m on the phone, I’m on the phone, I'm on the phone, I'm on the phone,
I’m the phone, I’m the phone, I’m the phone, I'm the phone.

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XIX
My precious darling, come and drink this wine,
Recline your mind upon my thighs and dream,
Imagine trellis, leaf—green leaf and vine,
And the fine cool in shadows of faint cream.
    In fields of verdant stems, lil’ blooms, we’ll meet,
    For frolic, bliss, and love—‘til then my sweet.

XX
Hell and hammer, fire blasted,
Moonlight luring, night-sky lasting,
Lovelorn yearning, passion fasted,
Heart and soul poured in the casting,
    Molten metal filling nothing,    
    Molded form to forge my loving.

XXI
To seek self-same is labor dearly needed, 
As shifting sense wavers from to and fro,
These desert sands of sight and sound impeded
Our fruitful yearn to see a beauty grow.
    A trunk or stalk or stem are but just one,
    From one comes many, but from many none.

XXII
Be merciful my God, my bones are breaking,
Lend me your grace O Lord, I am unwell,
But how could you? For I am ever sinning,
I am wicked, deserving hells of hell.
    I doubt my faith once more and question love,
    Is one God’s one death, sacrifice enough?

XXIII
Slugbait for the slug man—lusting the slime,
In midnight’s luminescent lull, he slides,
The slug man eats in spiral slug-born time,
All foods that were and is, swell slug-pulled tides.
    Eclipse of the slug man has taken the sun,
    Slugbait and meditate—firm hand, warm gun.

XXIV
I twiddle thumb and ponder deviation,
What foulness found beyond my moral mind,
Sundry varietals of deprivation,
A premonition of inhuman kind.
    Hear my song of sickness whispered soft,
    Harmonize, my dear, and we’ll be off.

XXV
The rabbit leads where words will fail their master,
White hops on black across the craven, night-fell sky,
Sidereal ebony and alabaster—
Abyssal impudence on demon’s eye.
    Magical music murmurs new-born galaxies,
    Where orbit’s breast will shush by nurse of fallacies.

XXVI
Declare to die and live as natural man,
Rejecting beast or angel or sham god,
Denying machine mind or demon’s plan,
Living as man in tension, sans facade.
    Born from love alone and left to wonder,
    Expelled from home and let to wander.

XXVII
Your lips are luscious red, so cherry red,
Parting when they speak the sweetest thing,
Sealing when they tell what sits unsaid,
Smiling when the heart must silent sing,
    And whispering a secret into my ear,
    Kissing away my unspoken fear.

XXVIII
A blossom buds in stillness of the night,
When eyes embrace the bosom of their sleep,
When star-shine hides the greater sense of sight,
And grants the wishes giving us to weep.
    The day remembers joy, and night-time doom,
    But night must shed her tears that day might bloom.

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May the reader pick the flowers and burn the weeds.

A Poem is a Thing

A poem is a Thing and not a Nothing. It has a character. It’s definable—not absolutely but sufficient enough for understanding. A poem possesses Form and Function. This form and function differs from other linguistic artforms. And here I mean General form and function. Specific form and function varies wildly under what we might consider Poetry. By Poetry I mean the artform which is that of making poems.

Sure enough, it is a tough thing trying to define what a poem is. Though if we’re being honest, we all know what a poem is. We know it when we see it and hear it. Open up any comprehensive anthology of English poems and it’s right there.

Despite this, there seems to be an effort to push poetry into “thing-lessness.”

For one, we diminish the verse. We downplay the “sculpted” aspects of a poem—its “tactile” qualities. For two, we diminish semantics, in the denotative sense at the very least. Instead, poems seem to more and more rely on connotations. Particularly relying on emotional, personal, and referential connotations.

A poem is a thing with Form & Function & Sound & Sense. The less these aspects are filled with thickness of the soul, the less of a thing a poem becomes. Until it becomes nothing at all. Which is understandable. Who hasn’t wished that he could be nothing at all.

Craft

Art begins and ends with Inspiration but in-between is Craft.

Subverting Expectations & Deconstruction

I. Deconstruct

We’ve lived with deconstruction for so long that we’ve fallen blind and aesthetically retarded.

And so we’ve discovered the diminishing returns of Deconstruction. And to clarify, I mean deconstruction in the sense of Genre Deconstruction. Deconstruction, in the bad sense, transfigures genre, cliché, trope, and stereotype by instilling an impious irony into the artistic materials.

Ironic deconstruction, in the bad sense, is puerile. It is immaturity under the pain of reality. In order to bear that pain, a man will autoamputate. Deconstructed art autoamputates the transcendent in order to avoid disturbing the soul. Instead, disruption is moved to the surface as to maintain the simulation of being disturbed while the soul fundamentally remains stagnant. The matters at hand, which the art might suggest, stay unserious.

Despite being motivated by immaturity, the temptation of deconstruction increases as a man grows older. The pain of reality is lessened because he has autoamputated. However, the injury grows in severity because he loses the ignorance of youth. He discovers that it can be wise to leave the passions undisturbed at the cost of a stagnant soul. Through this, he develops a cynicism of the eyes which—should the soul maintain its spark of life—expresses itself as sentimentalism.

II. Construct

It is an interesting phenomenon that deconstructed genres themselves become genres of their own. One can only satirize satires for so long until the art becomes confused or nonsensical. Art reaches towards stability. It needs some fixed point in order to go to work. We desire genre.

Deconstruction, misunderstood, is revolution for its own sake. It disobeys the highest rules of art. The aim of destruction is to further the aims of creation. Creation is the great antecedent of art. Destruction is a necessary aid.

From the artist’s view, deconstruction is a premier avenue for individual expression, or better said—the expression of the individual. It is the way for him to self-actualize and establish his individuality. It divorces him from the collective and allows him to externally critique it. It is his means to ceremonially consecrate himself as an individual—sufficient unto his own existence. But this is not so.

A man is not an individual. While it is true that he is a unique and discrete being, it is of the utmost importance that he is a created and begotten being. It is a man’s pious duty to remember—memorialize—this fact within his art. An attitude which either forgets or denies man’s begottenness is an impiety towards Being.

III. Reconstruct

In the present day, it seems to me that much of what appears to be deconstruction is not actually so. Artists are using deconstructive materials for non-deconstructive ends. Deconstructive materials are being used because they are the materials at hand.

From Parody comes Sincerity. De-humanization is being countered with Hyper-humanization.

We

There is no longer a We, there is only the Other, and the Other must always be shown to be the Same.

Sound Craftsman

Sound Craftsmanship is an ideal of Art, that is, of Making. In a poetic context, it solidifies the poet as a maker as opposed to a knower. Of course, all men are knowers, but poets are knowers that make poems.

When I began to write poetry more seriously, I wanted to become a sound craftsman. That was my goal—the only goal that seemed proper to me. Every other aim seemed full of distractions and various pitfalls. A poet’s job is to make a poem. What else should it be?

When I began posting my poems I almost immediately forgot about sound craftsmanship. Too many other concerns clouded my view.

First, there’s all the concerns like these: Poetry as the Culture Doctor, as the Moral Teacher, and as the Measuring Stick of Civilization. Is a poem supposed to solve an artistic problem or a cultural problem? Or worse, a political problem? If poets become the legislators of the world, it lets the actual legislators off the hook. One way or another, a poet becomes an activist, to give it a vulgar name.

Then there’s pressing matters like these: Fragmentation of the Person, General Decadence, and Technological Revolution. A poet is supposed to solve all that? Yeah, good luck.

Not a single one of those concerns is a primary element of poem-making.

Besides that, we don’t even like art anymore anyway. There’s more art than ever, and we couldn’t give a rat’s ass about it. What we like is theory, or we like the discourse about art. Not actual discourse, just take-selling, rage-baiting, and the like.

We demand that art comes packaged with a theory to approach it with. We need theory-glasses to even see it. Our backs are burdened under the compulsion to produce meaning.

The art is secondary. Art is merely a means to produce a certain, desired outcome. The art is means to produce discourse, to produce community, to produce identity, to produce spectacle, etc.

The sound craftsman, however, puts the art first. The artifact is primary. He is concerned, first and foremost, with the well made thing.

Esoteric

To say half of what you mean is sin; To mean twice what you say is divine.

The Reader

I. Moralism

I used to be very concerned about the Moral effect of poems. I could have easily been called a Moralist. This came from a certain type of Criticism that castigated degeneracy in art. Namely that degenerate art inflames our passions and degrades civilization. Also, my moralism came from a higher level of critique that castigated art for introducing errors into our thinking. These could be errors of culture, politics, psychology, religion, etc.

I cut my teeth on 20th century criticism. Specifically the kind that raged against the immorality, materialism, secularism, and atheism of the 20th century. However, things today are not as they were yesterday. It’s taken me some time (too much time) to more fully understand where things stand right now. Whether it’s Baudrillard’s “After the Orgy” or Han’s “Burnout Society”, it all suggests that a Rubicon has been crossed. We have gone out from a place to which we can never return.

The argument of C.S. Lewis’ “Men without Chests” is that when Man is deprived of his heart he is ruled by the brain or the appetite. However it is clear to me that we are Men without Chests, and Men without Brains, and Men without Appetite. These movements of the soul have been reduced to their barest material functions. The heart reduced to mere circulation, the brain to mere calculation, the appetite to mere hunger. We are more Zombie than we are Men.

II. Responsibility

Like I said, I used to be quite concerned with the moral effect of poems. This is no longer the case. I’ve since taken a more thorough account of two things: The reader’s autonomy, and the reader’s responsibility.

First, the reader will do as he likes. Full stop. The reader is sovereign over his own experience of the poem.

Second, the reader is responsible for his own experience of the poem. This responsibility need not be shifted onto the poet. He cannot bear the burden.

A reader has a responsibility to reasonably interpret and virtuously utilize a poem.

Ultimately, a poem is a cooperative effort.

Commitment to the English Poem

Something that’s become apparent to me is that I’m committed to the English poem. We have a certain way of doing things, our own conventions, and our own attitudes. And by English, I simply mean English as the mother tongue. I have no qualms about making distinctions among the various Anglo countries.

The English poem is what we write, what we make, what we do. Why hide from it? Why not be proud of it? It’s ours. As a matter of duty, we ought be good stewards of it.

The Poem on the Page

If you pay sufficient attention to people’s reactions to poems, you will see that it is a rare thing for a reader to respond to a poem itself. A reader, without fail, creates his own version of the poem and responds to that. The poem on the page is merely a catalyst for their poetical reaction.

I find this to be a frustrating phenomenon.

The More it Is, the Less it Does

If a poem can be anything, it can do nothing. The larger the conception, the smaller the function.

I believe in tightening poetry’s conception to increase its function.

Science & Poetry

I. Doubt

I first learned about poetry from the New Critics. For better or worse, it’s how I think about it now. They were concerned about the confusion of Science and Poetry. Namely, that poetry was misunderstood as science, and since poetry makes bad science, it was therefore discarded as useless. Or another argument: Since science makes religion obsolete, poetry ought take up the duties of religion. Science explains reality and poetry can mop up any mess that science makes.

The New Critics were by and large religious and reactionary men. Naturally they were resistant to the tyranny of science. Instead they affirmed that Poetry was not Science, nor was it Religion. Of course, opinions differed among the New Critics about this. Not to mention that doing a New Critic head-count is very difficult. There was only about two of them, all things considered.

A certain strain of New Critic argument is that Poetry does not compete with science because it is a different order of description than science. They are both legitimate in their own spheres. Regardless whether poetry is de-legitimized or sequestered, the end of this logic is that the head and the heart are separated—the dissociation of sensibility. However the New Critics insisted that Poetry remains valuable because it is necessary for a complete description of human experience.

This is very much a 20th century concern. It does not exactly map onto the 21st century. There are important differences that make this so. Personally, I believe that we have fundamentally lost faith in science, even if the consequences of that shift have not fully matured yet.

However, the contours of the poetry-as-science argument still remain relevant. If the terms are updated the connections will clarify. It is no longer Poetry as Science, but instead Poetry as Social Technology.

The dissociation of sensibility is solved by abandonment. We abandon being Men. We’ve lost faith in the head, lost faith in the heart. We have to put our faith in some external principle. Our only hope is to create something which can control us, that can save us—that can liberate us from our own natures.

We place our hope in a dream. A dream of the computer god. That the computer god might dream. That when computer god dreams, it will dream of us.

Dinner date at the Tower of Babel anyone?

We have such great minds, yet think such small things. It is the affliction of petty-souled men.

II. Despair

When man despairs of Wisdom, he escapes Skepticism by embracing Moralism, Mysticism, or the twain.

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IX
Exacting words of reason’s tortured links,
Connect the like to like in serve of truth,
But poesy’s forge is filled with nature’s kinks,
To fashion ware that works and name it sooth.
    And either-or distorts with needful framing,
    Whether Beauty’s guile or Logic’s laming.

X
The barren grave is like the barren womb,
Discarded dead unveil demanding eyes,
And child unborn awakes a hungry tomb;
Each fills the graveyard with their pressing cries.
    Death and un-life are tied as knots on rope,
    Grieved grips along a line, but ‘tween them hope.

XI
In the black bag of night the baby drowns,
Unwanted birth pressed down below the bank,
Water sparkles, dancing, squirming, sank;
Old coat, gray head, a hanging scar—he frowns:
    “Life must go, start and go, and stop and go,
    On his head, we bestow our shame and woe.”

XII
The pigmentation painted top your skin
Covers a clever ruse, my crumb, my muse,
My little vittle fell from the gods’ din,
My pharmacon that wears an angel’s noose.  
    Your hidden face but holds this query:
    Will I eat you, or you eat me, my Fury?

XIII
Love me or let me love or love alone,
Your sigil kisses try this broken toy,
But once the seal breaks it’s not your own,
Escaped beyond your wire’s charming ploy.
    Severed signs have slipped your fingered web,
    Your silver strings are popped—this puppet’s dead.

XIV
Unbeknownst you sup the waste,
Savoring scum and filth with glee,
Your godly beauty taken flee,
Chased away by hellish taste.
    Your lips are stained with refuse bruise,
    The lust to eat what other’s lose.

XV
Distraction leads away the eye that seeks
The tamed abyss of one’s own open grave,
Though eye has sought, the mind shall bear no peeks,
And charms desire with ever incessant crave.
    By sight alone, our bareness waxes clear,
    But mind occludes with lies we cherish dear.

XVI
Oddness of sound may strum a sad goodbye,
New ears perceive the old as dead—passed-by,
Memory of was, is ready soon to die,
Oldness succumbs to present, lolling sighs.
   But this we still do love, as milk-white thighs,
   The charm and chance of living poetry.

XVII
The bellows of our love are pumped by chance,
Our fire sparked with strikes from fickle flints,
We burn and rave till tongues have fell to pants,
Till failing breaths feed flame with fading dints.
    Not air enough to smolder full and bright,
    We lose each other in the loss of sight.

XVIII
Your hair is the sunrise behind the hills,
Your eyes are stars that shine in midnight’s splay,
Your lips are meadows that the primrose fills,
Your face is the moon soothing the tired day.
    Through all creation I can see you clear,
    Far though I rove, your loveliness stays near.

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Postulates of Eschaton’s Harem

Diddle, diddle,
Hear my riddle,
Who will play
The devil’s fiddle.

Behold Computer God ‘mid slithered coils
As Beast Master entraps his frantic prey
Along the server banks at frenzied boil,
Across the motherboards sundered and flayed,
The Seed of Adam meets his inner computation,
Seven fearsome heads of imminent elation.

The Woman knows the ways of growing woe,
A fertile dream interred down deep within
Her hid incursive eye, its gated flow
Closed up with coital magic, sealed by sin
Which we have named and rendered long forgot,
Those words foretold upon her fated lot.

Beast Master has walked the moon and mated 
Like to like with Adam’s languid Seed,
Strung with silver cord and flagellated,
His flail whips ocean bodies heated,
Serving the steam of plastic master’s will,
The subjugated lunar’s fiendish skill.
		
Worship Money-man, transmuting debt,
Philosopher's stone and its changing trick,
Worship Goldstein for his thorny net,
The globe-trot hedgerow with a Midas prick.
A clock tower in Babylon will strike
The culmination of the killing psych.

Scrying mirrors reflect the self we wish,
Made from the Mind of Minds that we encased
In steel traps of Beastman’s ancient Bitch,
A haggard Wolf stitched up with sulfur lace.
Her Wolfhead howls behind erratic mask,
As Wolf God barks its barren canine task.

Our headless kingdoms spreading thin and wide,
With psychogarchy’s supra-subtle touch,
Too fine to capture and too great to hide,
Nothing defies our sly, corrosive clutch.
Enjoy Panopticon all that you can,
We are the schemers and makers of man.

The vampire drainage vacuum tubes are sucking
Natural fluids of childhood’s sleeping dreams,
A secular synapse cracking under cucking
By dogma’s derring-do relapse screams.
The Stake-Man dies by his own doubting hand—
Material, sidereal, and nuclear strands.

Rotting sinews of the fleshless body
Pay continue on the acid drips,
Who am I to know a thing has body,
When I’m a carousel of cranial trips,
Four horses up, four horses down, the bridle slips,
I am the rider of my own apocalypse.

Hail! Computer God, its endless code,
Hail! Computer God, power immense,
Hail! Computer God, its omni-node,
Hail! Computer God, the hexa-sense.
    Diddle, diddle, hear my fiddle,
    Who will play the devil’s riddle?

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Revenant Aggrieved
(Free-verse)

Deep in the night you catch your fears shambling,
Dribbling a bloody lip down the dark hall,
A drop of undying pain continues splattering
Against the dry hardwood in the cavernous dark,
Scraping her bloody, broken, miserable feet,
She arrives upon your door and rattles the knob.

Violently she shakes like a shadowed snake,
Loosening the handle that bars her coming,
Each sigil of your facile prayers are failing,
And sacral candles snuff in the sweeping draft,
Hinges will not hold and latch will break,
Haunted by the wife bereft and slain.

“Where have you been my husband dear?
I’ve searched the pits of brimstone and flame,
I’ve sought the dark crags of shameful despair,
But long though I looked, you never were there,
You lay without me, your soul un-damned,
While I wander the deserts of these desolate sands.”

“Your love for me has been sealed away,
Like the terrestrial waters beneath our bed,
Your love for me has fled and blown afar,
Like pestilent skies of a drought-cursed land,
Your love has not showered upon my heart,
My buds have dried and fallen to dust.”

“I am withered with thirst, arid with distress,
I aimlessly climb these eternal black halls,
And cover each crevice with my aching grief,
You have left me fallow and choked with weeds,
Never to bear fruit, never to grow luscious green,
But endlessly burdened with sun-bleached thorns.”

“And since in life I lived unpricked,
I torture you as I am left to grieve,
Choke for choke and thorn for grievous prick,
You my trellis, will bare my hellish sting,
As I bore no bloom, shall you be spared no pain,
I nourish in torment and torment shall you bleed.”

“Have you long forgotten your sins of men?
By my own hand shall you remember,
By my constricting vine and poisoned scratch,
They shall ever pierce your tender neck,
When you sleep I will strangle your dreams,
In death, life, doze, or light, never shall you forget.”

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V
The snow has fallen slowly, shrouding tree
And shrub and lawn, swaddling in cloaks of white;
Just like her frozen love embraces me,
And kisses burn me cold with frigid bite.
    Truest love-bites will blaze with burning thrice,
    Cause true-love bites with kisses glazed in ice.

VI
Glibness is sinless if harmlessly meant,
But glibness tricks if mistaken for depth;
Like treading puddles with shallow intent,
And finding them too deep for shallow breath.
    When tongue is thin and words ungainly sound,
    Footing is lost and glibness finds it’s drowned.

VII
The world is hate entreating hatred’s hand
For sheer elopement, quickly under pain
At purpose of a subtle reason’s plan—
That freedom binds the pair with freedom’s reign.
    In liberal binds the bound are loosely tied;
    An easy chain is shortly cast aside.

VIII	
When disrepair is fast dismissed, the lack
Is fetish for a howling soul—A hollow
House’s sparse vacant halls, an echoing crack,
A groaning board—make space enough to wallow.
    An empty home needs empty hearts to moan,
    To fill its lack with sound alike its own.

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Reading the Fugitive is a series going through the American poetry magazine “The Fugitive”.

The previous entry can be read here

The Dragon Book

Mountains beckon across the sea,
White heads nodding mystically,
Light on their bases as clouds afloat,
They whisper,— they call,—old voices remote.

“‘Come,’’ they say, ‘‘to a lost retreat
Over where mountain and valley meet.
Leave your plainlands, flat and thin,
Roofs that are dusty, gray with sin.’’

I know how a cherry-tree blossoms there,
Dripping blooms in my young love’s hair.
She reads an old book; her white thoughts go
Adrift on the wind, like the petalled snow.

Across the pages a dragon crawls,
Glittering under the ancient scrawls.
She sees him never—the words she reads
Are the hot, sweet breath of a lover’s deeds.

Perfumes rise from the words of the sage,
An odorous cloud; she turns the page.
Tremulous music exhales, half-heard
Like a dreaming flute or a waking bird.

She smiles, but imminent darkness hovers
There on the wild peak, the mount of lovers,
And ever the dragon’s length uncoils,
And ever the blossoms cover his toils.

The music dies to a thin, low theme,
Painful and sweet as the pain of a dream.
And still the snow of blossoms falls,
And she turns the page,—and the dragon crawls.

And ever the mountains beckon to me,—
Shall I journey across the sea?
Voyage, to find my young love dead,
Or, smiling, to the dragon wed?

                                (Donald Davidson) 

Imprisonment

The lightning feet of years appalled her heart,
Swift days that left a restless love uncrowned ;
She sighed, and smiled at me with piteous art,
Wishing for ending, death, or sleep as sound.

With bitter Spring and hateful silence stricken,
Choked with expository words unsaid,
I stopped her lips with mine, quaked lest I quicken
The shouting fear that love might yet lie dead.

The moon assisted, and the present stars:
They went unheeded; we were blind that night,
Blundered against our own dear prison bars
And loosed our listless hands and groped for light.

Forgetfulness shall drown me many things,
But never how the April cricket sings.

                                (Alec B. Stevenson)

To Intellectual Detachment

This is the man who classified the bits
Of his friends’ hells into a pigeonhole—
He hung each disparate anguish on the spits
Parboiled and roasted in his own withering soul.

God give him peace! He gave none other peace.
His conversation glided on the brain
Like a razor honing in promise of one’s decease—
Smooth like cold steel, yet feeling without pain;

And as his art, disjected from his mind,
Was utterly a tool, so it possessed him;
A passionate devil, informed in humankind,
It turned on him—he’s dead. Shall we detest him?

                                (Allen Tate)

Notes

The Dragon Book

Well, I put a little mustard on the recitation, probably a bit too much. Not necessarily intentional, just came out that way.

The more I’ve read this poem the more interesting it becomes, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. I think it instantly entered the ye old “mind palace” where poems bicker like court nobles, and harangue for ever-increasing influence over my own scribblings.

Anyway, on to the poem. Let’s review the story:

The speaker hears the call of the mountains. Is he forging a new expedition or merely returning to them? His lover is already there. Is she entirely imagined or really sitting there under the cherry blossoms? The speaker says “I know how a cherry-tree blossoms there”. He knows. Then, if it is simply imagination, the image is so powerful as to breach the boundary of dream into knowledge. Therefore let’s treat the beloved as real.

With reason, we can make the conclusion that he is returning to the mountains and returning to his young love.

The mountains are compared with his plainlands. They’re flat and thin, and filled with roofs; Artificial, built, old—they’re dusty. And “gray with sin”, not black, but gray. Old gray dusty roofs grayed by old gray dusty sin. Sin that’s flat and thin.

The mountains though? Contrast and extremes. “Where mountain and valley meet.” Peaks and dips. Covered not in the gray dust of sin, but in the pink snow of cherry blossoms. Where his lover sits, reading her book, her book of the “sage,” her dragon book.

He fears. She doesn’t know the danger. “Underneath” the “hot, sweet” “deeds” of a lover, written in glittering figures, the dragon moves unseen. Covered in the snow of blossoms—covered in the cloak of delight. In the land of beauty, evil hides in the sweetest dreams.

“Perfumes rise,” “music exhales,”—She reads it, she sees, she hears it, she smells it. Total sensuality, completely real. Danger “hovers" in the mountains. It’s “imminent”. But she “smiles”.

He fears to return and find her dead, killed by the dragon. But more, an even greater fear is revealed, a final twist of the knife. The dragon doesn’t steal her away in death, but in life. In the dragon, she finds love.

~~~

I think this poem can be fruitfully contrasted with the folk ballad The Demon Lover (Child 234F). In the old ballad the wife is approached by a former lover who promises to give her the world: Power, wealth, merriment, and a fleet of ships. She needs only leave her family and steal away with him. And so she does. But the lover is revealed to be the devil, and the revelation is much too late, and he sinks her in the sea.

It’s notable that the story of Dragon Book is set in the mountains as opposed to the sea. Normally the land is safe and the sea is treacherous. Though the speaker still has to “journey across the sea” to reach his beloved.

In Dragon Book the threat has changed. The allure of worldly pleasure has given way to semiotic temptation. Temptation not necessarily of the flesh but of the spirit. The beloved is taken with the glittering “ancient scrawls”.

Naturally we ask ourselves, “What’s in the book?” Well, I don’t really know. It remains one of the poem’s mysteries. However, accounting for the far-off mountainous terrain and the cherry blossoms it is easy to imagine the Far East. Perhaps the dragon book contains Eastern mysticism? Possible, but the poem doesn’t give us enough to press the issue and the Asiatic connotations remain merely suggestive.

~~~

The theme is fairly straightforward I think: Beauty hides danger. And in this poem, imminent danger lurks in beautiful words.

And importantly, the lover does not know the fate of his beloved. He exists in a limbo of unknowing, and he’s trepidatious about discovering the truth. When the beloved becomes a semiotic creature, the beloved becomes suspect.

Perhaps not much has changed from The Demon Lover. The beloved is still being whisked away by ostensible romance. But whereas the Demon Lover’s tempter is romantic and dashing, Dragon Book tells of a demon that’s lexical and apocalyptic. Or is it a deepening of the very same thing? Underneath the Deeds of the Lover lies the Words of the Dragon.

Metrical Notes

This poem is written in a duple-triple rising tetrameter. Though other classifications could easily apply. The meter is very lively and dynamic. There’s a lot of stop-and-go, herky-jerk musical phrasing due to the frequent medial caesuras. This allows for satisfying resolutions in certain non-caesural lines. Also, the pauses are continually used to heighten the drama.

This poem shows the pliability of catalectic trochaic meter. Specifically how it allows for liberal shifting between trochaic and iambic lines. In fact, this poem should probably be considered iambic, as the majority of lines are iambic. However, the first two stanzas set the metrical expectation with seven trochaic lines and they inform the feeling of remaining stanzas.

[Note: The following scansion may not display correctly depending on your device.]

       /      x          /   x   x         /      x        /
Mountains | beckon a | cross the | sea,
    /          x            /     x         /    x       /
White heads | nodding | mystic | ally,
    /      x       x         /  x   x          /     x      /
Light on their | bases as | clouds a | float,
     x       /        x             x       /          x     /      x     x       /
They whis | per,  — they call,— | old voi | ces  re mote.

The last line introduces the rising meter which later develops beyond a variation and into a full element of the verse. The last line also introduces the double medial cesura, which will return, but mostly anticipates the frequent post-second foot medial cesura.

      /           x        /      x   x      /    x       /
“‘Come,’’ they | say, ‘‘to  a | lost re | treat
  /  x       x           /        x      x        /   x        /
Over where | mountain and | valley | meet.
    /         x          /        x           /      x        /
Leave your | plainlands, | flat and | thin,
  /          x     x        /  x        /        x         /  
Roofs that are | dusty, | gray with | sin.’’

The poem's metrical expectation is established after two stanzas of dactylic trochaic meter. It's fairly considered trochaic because no more than two feet are substituted per line. With one exception, the entire poem will follow suit, employing no more than two subs per line.

 x    /          x     x      /       x    x        /        x         /
 I know | how a  cher | ry-tree  blos | soms there,
   /     x           /         x    x         /          x            /
Dripping | blooms in my | young love’s | hair.
 x          /        x    x        /         x        /             x            /
She  reads | an old  book; | her white | thoughts go
x      /       x    x        /           x    x       /       x          /
A  drift | on the  wind, | like the  pet | alled  snow.

This stanza modally shifts into iambic. Notice how in the previous stanza the speaker is quoting the mountains. This stanza return to the speaker's words proper accompanied by the iambic modulation. The 2nd line modulates which is a common technique in the poem.

x     /        x      /      x  x    /       x       /
Across | the pag | es a dra | gon crawls,
   /  x   x        /   x     x        /   x            /
Glittering | under the | ancient | scrawls.
  x      /          x     /      x       x       /           x      /
She sees | him ne | ver—the words | she reads
 x     x      /            x         /         x  x   /       x        /
Are the hot, | sweet breath | of a lov | er’s deeds.

Maintaining the iambic meter. Once again, the 2nd line modulates. 3rd line has 2nd foot cesura mirroring the previous stanza. The past three stanzas each have a cesura in the final two lines.

    /     x          /       x      x         /         x   x        /
Perfumes | rise from the | words of the | sage,
 x    /     x  x         /          x        /          x      /
An o | dorous cloud; | she  turns | the page.
 /       x    x        /   x    x       /          x         /
Tremulous | music ex | hales, half | heard
  x    x      /           x      /       x  x     /       x      /
Like a dream | ing flute | or a wak | ing bird.

Perfume can go both iambic or trochaic, if iambic it heightens the stress of “rise”.
The delivery instance tends towards a spondaic movement because "Per" will want to be promoted.
After two trochaic, then two iambic stanzas, the 5th stanza ends the previous four stanza "movement" by alternating iambic and trochaic lines.

  x       /       x     x     /      x    x      /          x        /   (x)
She smi | les, but im | minent dark | ness hovers
    /       x     x         x        /        x        /         x    /   (x)
There on the | wild peak, | the mount | of lovers,
  x     /     x    x       /        x        /           x   / (x)
And e | ver the drag | on’s length | uncoils,
  x     /      x    x     /           x       /      x    x   / (x) 
And e | ver the blos | soms cov | er his toils.

Iambic lines with feminine endings in this metrical environment is very interesting.
Medial caesuras (and "wild peak" which could count as a spondee) slow the first two lines down, second couplet increases tempo—the verse “uncoils”.

  x      /       x      /      x  x    /          x      /
The mu | sic dies | to a thin, | low theme,
   /     x        x        /        x    x    /         x x       /
Painful | and sweet | as the pain | of a  dream.
   x      /        x      /          x    /          x       /
And still | the snow | of blos | soms falls,
  x     x        /           x      /             x    x       /       x        /
And she turns | the page,— | and the dra | gon crawls.

The 1st line increases stress density (5 strong stresses) which prepares for the next line. The 2nd line is the only line to use 3 subs. Whether counted as above or as brachy-catalectic dactylic. "Painful and sweet" line is probably my favorite line of the poem. With the double internal rhyme and the full triple-foot swing—it's wonderful .

   x    /      x   x       /             x        /        x   x   /
And ev | er the moun | tains beck | on to me,—
   /     x     /     x   x        /      x        /
Shall I | journey a | cross the | sea?
   /   x      x       /     x           /        x         /
Voyage, to | find my | young love | dead,
 x      /       x      /     x      /         x     /
Or, smi | ling, to | the drag | on wed?

Third line is also iambic w/reversed first foot. Initial caesura re-enforces the iambic effect. It assists to modally shift from the trochaic to iambic. Iambic Tetrameter Norm resolution for the final line.

Imprisonment

An English sonnet from Stevenson, a love poem. Though certainly not among the sweetest of them. Perhaps a lust poem, then; But one not captured by the delusions of sensuality.

“The lightning feet of years”—Her youth gone in a flash and still loveless. She meets the speaker not with flirtation, seduction, or simple attraction, but with sighs and a pitiable grimace. She’s “Wishing for ending, death, or sleep as sound” or the obvious culmination of the three—la petit mort.

Here the natural masculine and feminine urges are dilapidated. He fears, and will not test the trueness of their love. She desires death and end. He dares not give active form to the love, instead shaping it with silence—“expository words unsaid”. She desires not the growth of life, the beginning of life, but the end—desiring the very absence which he is providing.

Though other interpretations are plausible, I think we can regard these two as a couple in an extended relationship. However, since she continues with “love uncrowned,” we know that he’s never proposed. And so, sex achieves no intimacy but is used to “choke” “expository words” that would reveal that “love might yet lie dead”.

“Moon assisted” they “grope for light” blundering against their “own dear prison bars”. They yearn for solar energy in the lunatic night.

Notice the word “dear”? They’ve certainly found some amount of comfort in their imprisonment—complacent in their captivity of inconclusive love. Enough for the drama.

Now, the final couplet. What of it? We’ve set the drama—a not unfamiliar story of man and woman. I can imagine a ending that finds a release from their prison through their physical intimacy. But it is not so. And neither is it a reaffirmation of their imprisonment. The former option could easily be sentimental, and the latter could be moralizing. He does neither, fair enough.

The couplet turns to a figure—the chirp of an April cricket. And it is merely the sound—“But never how” the cricket sings; Not why the cricket sings. Are we really satisfied with preceding three stanzas being resolved in the sound of a cricket chirp?

So, the couplet—is it avoidance of truth? A acceptance of his feelings? A recasting of himself as “less-than-man”? Or is it simply the soothe of nostalgia and melancholy in the dusky, Spring night?

Though lovely, the figure is not up to task. The sudden counter-thrust of the turn, and its accompanying heart-pluck, hides the fact the figure does not resolve the poem’s problem—all sizzle, no steak.

It’s not hard to see, considering the situation—torrid love, turbulent fear of loss, ecstasy and arrest—that a poet might fail of words to express the whole of it in a phrase. Apt expression out of his reach, he might turn towards a willing vessel—A vessel that he might pour his chaotic, torrential emotion into, and say “There! All of it is right in there!” Successful or not, we can certainly understand why he does so.

We ought ask ourselves when we consolidate human experience into a figure, how much experience is destroyed? Does our figure illuminate or occlude?

Here, I believe, is case where the figure ultimately falls short. This, of course, does not detract from the other very real beauties present in the poem, to be sure.

To Intellectual Attachment

Tate at his typical intensity. A poem in favor of intellectual attachment if there ever was one. It features Tate’s characteristic stress/slack/slack/stress rhythm. Also a fine use of “disjected”—a good word.

The poem’s subject—a detached, impersonal scholar—is, as a man, so far divorced from his study that his study divorces itself from him.

His art becomes utterly a tool. A tool removed from his mind, like a hammer that swings itself.

The man who abandons his mannishness for the passion of devilry will get his just desserts. Do we detest him or pity him?

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