I have an ongoing literary dialogue with a friend I cannot name, although he posts comments here frequently, though he has forbidden me to quote him. I reason therefore that if I quote him without attribution I am not quoting him.
It also occurs to me that when I am blogging about literary matters, I am likely not depressed--which makes many disinterested, and though I thank you all for your support during my depression, you should take my new ability to write about things other than myself as a sign of relative health.
I have cared about poetry since a very early age; perhaps it's being the second born son that makes me feel unappreciated; perhaps it's my very lack of talent; perhaps it's the current culture; but I can't get the monkey of poetry off my back at this late stage of my life. I want to flush it, return to medicine and be "a useful engine" as Thomas the Tank advises; on the other hand, Shelley said "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the universe." I think in this regard that philosophy, from Plato to Marx, has been much more important in legislating the universe, that Shelley obviously overestimated the importance of poets because he, too, was a manic-depressive in a fairly manic state when he wrote his essay, "In Defence of Poetry" [Poesy].
Without further ado, then, I give you a dialogue between me and one persistent literary correspondent:
Anon: The Newtonian world of Rube Goldberg contraptions, self-contained
well-oiled machines is gone, so too the closed deductive approach.
CE: I would disagree. From quantum mechanics to Ptolemy the level at which truth is perceived is not invalidated by another level; there is no more truth in quantum theory than Newton; it is just a finer representation of physics. In fact, to the average reader of poetry, there is more truth in Newton.
Anon: Every observer is a creator. After all, there is no world absent the
observer. Therefore every reader must be invited to co-create --or co-write-- the poem. If you wish to evoke a universe, you must invite
others along. The age of teachers-and-pupils is gone.
CE: Subject-object is unavoidable, despite Eliot's argument, which you endorse above, from "Tradition and the Individual Talent." But Auden threw this to the wind, as did Richard Wilbur and many others, with a narrator speaking to an audience. I would opine that no matter how much fusion is sought, a fundamental gap exists between author and reader, that the reader cannot help trying to understand what the artist intends, even if the artist claims he intends nothing. From "The Waste Land," even: "Give, sympathize, control."
Anon: If you want to 'people' your universe and seek some kind of endorsement or public imprimatur, you must attract people. To attract people, you must offer a
participatory environment. This is not currying as you say, or even laziness.
CE: All great poetry invites participation, even Milton, whose epic I will never like. When we see Eve in the garden, for instance, our sexuality is aroused, despite his Puritan profession.
Anon: By the way, you can't quote me.
CE: LOL! You have no power over this other than honor. Can I post this conversation at my blog (without attribution)?
And so I have.
Until later,
CE
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Poem: Aubade
Five-Finger Exercise: Aubade
Somedays you wake up
and your stomach's not right,
your head is heavy,
there's a burning at the tip of your esophagus
and too much mucous in your throat
(mucous is protective, you know)
and your skin is on fire but you don't know why--
maybe it's all the medications.
You have an urge to move your bowels
though not strong enough to push;
you are not sick or hungover
just feeling limp, inauthentic
as the time you shook hands
with someone you no longer cared about
who still cared about you--duplicitous,
trapped like a stone in a Japanese garden
whose grand design you don't believe in.
You can't see it without a helicopter
but the fumes make you sick;
you lean out the flimsy door
far above the garden and perceive no design,
wonder if a few trolls might westernize it
then discard the idea.
The mucous in your throat rises,
your esophagus burns.
You ask the pilot to land
and he lands right in the garden
next to the stone you are.
A deductive, confessional, closed poem--rough, rough first draft.
Until tomorrow (hope I'm feeling better),
CE
Somedays you wake up
and your stomach's not right,
your head is heavy,
there's a burning at the tip of your esophagus
and too much mucous in your throat
(mucous is protective, you know)
and your skin is on fire but you don't know why--
maybe it's all the medications.
You have an urge to move your bowels
though not strong enough to push;
you are not sick or hungover
just feeling limp, inauthentic
as the time you shook hands
with someone you no longer cared about
who still cared about you--duplicitous,
trapped like a stone in a Japanese garden
whose grand design you don't believe in.
You can't see it without a helicopter
but the fumes make you sick;
you lean out the flimsy door
far above the garden and perceive no design,
wonder if a few trolls might westernize it
then discard the idea.
The mucous in your throat rises,
your esophagus burns.
You ask the pilot to land
and he lands right in the garden
next to the stone you are.
A deductive, confessional, closed poem--rough, rough first draft.
Until tomorrow (hope I'm feeling better),
CE
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Sorry to Bore You....
I know my last post of 2500 some words on the intricacies of poetic theory repelled the average reader, though I doubt any of my readers are average. Yet the more I write for purpose, either publication or pay or both, the less I blog. Thus the frequency of my blogging, as my mood continues to be improved, must either fall or its matter more compress. I prefer the latter.
I don't like toilet paper so I use baby wipes for my business. But the title of the latest box I bought was too much to take: "Little Kisses." (I hope candy kisses are not implied, though they are at least hidden by tin foil, not visible through the translucent wipe.)
Kenyon the dog won't go out in the rain unless he really has to go. But in concert with the falling moisture, he will only go number one and not number two. If rain continues I'm confident that constipation will eventually be an adequate motivator, but he shall surely pay for the dereliction with increased straining and consequent pain to his hips. Hey, once you start potty talk it's hard to stop.
I hate brandy because I drink too much of it, while wine, which I like less, is more manageable. Samuel Johnson said, "No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures." That doesn't mean being honest about your pleasures makes you feel any better.
I'm going to undertake finishing the second half of my airport novel (thriller) in hopes of making money again. Sydney Sheldon recently died and needs a replacement, so I've heard from the angels.
I'm sorry I haven't visited more blogs lately. Reciprocity is good and good for one's narcissism. I'll get around to it. And if you have a blog you want me to check out, please write.
The art of writing is so outmoded by text communication and grammarless, breathless e-mail messages, know that in even reading my fairly literate blog that you are part of a diminishing minority. Fahrenheit 451.
I've been reading Walden Pond. Thoreau, in his way, is very funny, especially when satirizing the unnecessary "getting and spending" of the rich, or even modestly successful.
At 1 Kilobunny,
CE
I don't like toilet paper so I use baby wipes for my business. But the title of the latest box I bought was too much to take: "Little Kisses." (I hope candy kisses are not implied, though they are at least hidden by tin foil, not visible through the translucent wipe.)
Kenyon the dog won't go out in the rain unless he really has to go. But in concert with the falling moisture, he will only go number one and not number two. If rain continues I'm confident that constipation will eventually be an adequate motivator, but he shall surely pay for the dereliction with increased straining and consequent pain to his hips. Hey, once you start potty talk it's hard to stop.
I hate brandy because I drink too much of it, while wine, which I like less, is more manageable. Samuel Johnson said, "No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures." That doesn't mean being honest about your pleasures makes you feel any better.
I'm going to undertake finishing the second half of my airport novel (thriller) in hopes of making money again. Sydney Sheldon recently died and needs a replacement, so I've heard from the angels.
I'm sorry I haven't visited more blogs lately. Reciprocity is good and good for one's narcissism. I'll get around to it. And if you have a blog you want me to check out, please write.
The art of writing is so outmoded by text communication and grammarless, breathless e-mail messages, know that in even reading my fairly literate blog that you are part of a diminishing minority. Fahrenheit 451.
I've been reading Walden Pond. Thoreau, in his way, is very funny, especially when satirizing the unnecessary "getting and spending" of the rich, or even modestly successful.
At 1 Kilobunny,
CE
Friday, February 23, 2007
Inducitve, Deductive, Open and Closed Poetics
I can't believe it's been almost a week since I last posted. If I cared about stats, it would not doubt show a great drop-off in readership. Computer difficulties and other project have intervened. But now, for those interested, I publish my unpublished essay on the title above. Any editor interested in pubishing the essay officially is hereby invited to query me. That's role change, yes?
Inductive and Deductive Poetry
Upon recent reflection, I have discovered another analytic Mandala for poetry. Previously, in my Logopoetry essays, I made the following mandala, to introduce how the Logos (unattainable artistic ideal) might best be approximated through language, represented by logos, the means by which we interpret an experience of language.
To quote “Logopoetry III”: “One can readily see from this construction that my idea of logos as reason is not some mummified reductionism but a dynamic balance between complimentary qualities — the Aristotelian mean, in other words . . .
“The mandala is in the form of a quincunx, the Logos/logos duality being the center, where logos is the interpreting principle that connects the ideal (Logos) with the real (Art). For each of the four poles there exists an opposite quality — but not the quality it faces. Apathy, not meaning, is the opposite of feeling. And nonsense, not feeling, is the opposite of meaning. Form is not the opposite of substance. The opposite of form is formlessness or chaos. And the opposite of substance is lack of substance, or superficiality and confusion. All four qualities can be both competitive and complimentary, depending on the poem. Each of the four poles embodies a positive value and logos symbolizes the dynamic mean between these values, the balance that should best succeed at realizing the Logos, or artistic ideal.
“The danger inherent in this schema is . . . not opposition but imbalance: music at the expense of substance; feeling at the expense of meaning; meaning at the expense of feeling; substance at the expense of form, and so forth. Good poetry should more often come near the cross-hairs than not. And I don't mean by this optimal intersection of qualities some homogenized mixture with exactly 25% of each. Good poetry journeys from pole to pole in the course of a narrative but without losing its balance — just as Eliot can be by turns pedantic or lyrical in his “Four Quartets.” Furthermore, there are poems that succeed with imbalance, but in such cases the dominant pole is supported by the other qualities: it does not abandon them. I don't want to argue for an orthodox requirement of balance or anything else; my theories are meant only to be a general guide and should be discarded if ever they stand in the way of good writing. But good writing is more often balanced than not.”
My chief aim in my essays on Logopoetry was to elucidate the obvious and unavoidable truth that poetry imposes a meaning on us because of the brain’s long habit of trying to make sense of words. As I put it in the conclusion of “Logopoetry II”:
“Intelligibility, the acknowledged cooperation of the brain's hemispheres, man's need for meaning, and the idea that language is first a vehicle for communication — these constitute the introductory principles of logopoetry.”
Sometimes it strikes me as superfluous to have made these points, but for the 20th and 21st centuries I found it a necessity in understanding why I found some poetry enjoyable and some inscrutable. Of the latter I decided it was not a question of my intelligence but often intentional obscurity on the poet’s part, as if he were writing only for himself. Although the whole misdirection may have been started by Eliot, he later abandoned his allusive method in the interests of communication, as in “The Hollow Men” and “Four Quartets.” I don’t think he could have foreseen Olson’s “Maximus” poems or Deconstructionism when he penned “The Waste Land” in a sanatorium, working through his depression by way of a disconnected psychological epic, made worse by its allusions, adding pretension to its sin of obscurity.
This is all old news. But it recently came to me that there was a very simple way to classify how poems are constructed, not only in this age but in all ages. If that boast seems excessive, allow me to explain the simplicity of this approach, which does not conflict with Logopoetry at all, since the two are concerned with different types of knowledge.
Simply put, poems can be either deductive or inductive and open or closed.
Deductive poems use figures of speech to support their assertions and observations, however far-fetched. In other words, the writer does not start in a real experience but uses experiences to advance the poem and its theme. Therefore he does not begin with, “The desert wind came up and scorched the rocks”—an actual scene—rather uses the scene to elaborate something else: “Her voice was like a desert wind that scorched the rocks.” The former line implies an inductive poem, the latter a deductive poem. Inductive poems spring from an actual experience that generates elaboration. Deductive poems mold experience for their own purposes.
In addition, deductive and inductive poems can be either open or closed. Open poems invite the reader to join the author in his journey, avoiding easy conclusions, while in a closed poem the author does most of the work for us. Open poems often end in ambiguity, not certainty. They tease more than inform the reader. Closed poems usually end with a summarizing statement, however disguised by technique. In closed poems the poet tries to make his own sense of the narrative, usually near the end, with little room for negotiation with the reader.
In all ages, and I suspect, all languages, these four constructions have been extant: open, inductive poems; closed, inductive poems; open, deductive poems, and closed, deductive poems. Our present age seems to favor inductive poems in general, while the Elizabethans favored deductive poems. One need only read Shakespeare’s sonnets to be assured of this. Each one strives for a resolution (often the weakest part of the poem) because he felt compelled by both the form and the culture to reach an accessible conclusion. In his early work, Wordsworth is likely the most famous practitioner of inductive poems, signaling a departure from the past—but even he, in his dotage, returned to deductive poems, such as the rightly maligned “Ecclesiastical Sonnets.”
Here is my Mandala for these concepts, unfortunately unaided by the artists who refined my mandala for Logopoetry, so it will appear linear on this page:
Inductive
Closed X Open
Deductive
It is much easier to provide examples than persist in explanations. So let’s have a look at a poem by Robinson Jeffers. Overall he prefers deductive poems, but we can easily find all four types in his work.
October Evening
Male-throated under the shallow sea-fog
Moaned a ship's horn quivering the shorelong granite.
Coyotes toward the valley made answer,
Their little wolf-pads in the dead grass by the stream
Wet with the young season's first rain,
Their jagged wail trespassing among the steep stars.
What stars? Aldebaran under the dove-leash
Pleiades. I thought, in an hour Orion will be risen,
Be glad for summer is dead and the sky
Turns over to darkness, good storms, few guests, glad rivers.
Here is an open, inductive poem. Notice how it builds from actual experience, from the ship’s horn to the coyote’s wail. Next comes a description of October stars, and finally two lines of lingering thought about the experience, but inconclusive. They do not tell us what to think about the experience nor do they say exactly what the author thought. We learn that “summer is dead” and the days will be shorter, with “good storms, few guests, glad rivers.” Thus we think about the change in weather, the reduction in social activity, the rain that swells the rivers—but not about what we ought to feel or what this should mean to us. The ending is loose and invitational and invites further reverie.
Now let’s turn to a closed, inductive poem by Frost:
Once By The Pacific
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last “Put out the Light” was spoken.
Notice that the first six lines are inductive; he is describing a scene. Lines seven to 12 elaborate on the natural scene, with the introduction of apocalyptic overtones. The last couplet nicely summarizes this dark sentiment, telling us that we should be prepared for even more darkness and havoc before the end of the world. The ending is a prophecy, and provokes wonder at a future imagined by the poet, but the ending is also an epitaph, emphasized by the strong, feminine, trochaic rhyme. It does not leave much wiggling room. The prophet has spoken. Inductive but closed.
My next example is an open, deductive poem. Nearly all of Yeats’ poems are deductive, not all of them are open. He had a gift for ending deductive poems with a question, a choice, an ambiguity. Although this example is longer than I’d like, it pains me to eliminate any stanzas, so here is the thing entire:
Sailing to Byzantium
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
--Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
The essence of this poem does not differ greatly from many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, where he endorses the tradition of striving for eternity not through the vicissitudes of human love, but through his art. The difference here is that Yeats does not ask for his poetry to be a claim on the everlasting, rather a gateway to eternal perfection, “Into the artifice of eternity.” So much is obvious. And that the poem is deductive also is obvious, since the first line is an assertion not based on immediate experience: “That is no country for old men.” In spite of the artifice of the poem, its beauty and philosophical implications, the ending nevertheless remains open: “Or [if I am] set upon a golden bough to sing / To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”
In the context of the poem, a seeking after the eternal artifice of art, is it not ironic that the artificial bird set upon a golden bough sings of “what is past, or passing, or to come”? Certainly the temporal preoccupations implied make a nice foil to eternity; on the other hand, the bird is burdened with informing the ageless emperor and his retinue about the changing influence of time. In other words, someone needs to read the daily paper to God, even if he knows what it contains. The ending thus leaves the poem open, not only by its irony, but by the implication that despite the deliverance provided by perfect artifice, part of that artifice must continue to sing about the past, present, and future—things that should not concern the beings of Byzantium, who are beyond the strictures of time.
Lastly there are a plethora of examples in the history of closed, deductive poems. In contrast to most of her work, it pleases me to select one by Emily Dickinson, whose open poems far outnumber the closed, though nearly all her poems are deductive.
288
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!
How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one's name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!
Here, uncharacteristically, Dickinson closes a deductive poem with comic derision. And given her anonymity during her lifetime (and today’s preoccupation with celebrity, which is not new but only amplified by the instantaneous media), it is heartening to find such a cheerful antidote to ambition. For her to tell us outright how dreary it is to be a “Somebody” is hardly the norm for her verse; but it supports my earlier contention that most poets use all four constructions, though many favor a particular one.
Most of the poetry written before 1920 was closed and deductive. Even Keats concludes his inductive “Ode to a Grecian Urn” with a conclusion, “Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty”—something that would be out of style today. In surveying the journals that supposedly carry quality poetry nowadays, I think the reader will agree with me that editors’ favoritism extends to open, inductive poems. In the most recent issue of The New Yorker (February 19/26) there are two open, inductive poems (Sharon Olds and W. D. Snodgrass) and one deductive poem mixed with inductive elements—with a more direct conclusion (and certainly more depth) (Charles Wright). Except in the hands of the Classical Chinese poets, open, inductive poems tend to be superficial, more fleetingly impressionistic, rather than having that property of depth which makes us return to poems repeatedly. A poem we never return to is not a great poem. It is only dust on a hieroglyph, a barnacle on a sea-carved rock. What I seek in poetry is the hieroglyph and the rock, the art with staying power, alluded to by Yeats’ in his “Sailing to Byzantium,” with this difference: it is not lifeless.
Inductive poems simulate life more particularly and therefore may deceive us into thinking that they possess more life than deductive poems, but this is only a passing illusion. There have been far more deductive poems of quality written in the history of English than other types of poems, even if it was once tradition to end poems with rather neat pronouncements. This was only a requirement of current culture, however, and does not speak to their quality.
The post-modern tendency toward open, inductive poems may be a shift toward a restless audience with a reduced attention span who want their poems like films, revealing themselves in immediate scenes. Perhaps readers no longer want to have to think their way into a poem without a palpable, visual introduction. Maybe this is an advancement in art, but I don’t think so; I think it is evidence of laziness in readers and an eagerness in the more popular poets to please their diminishing audience. This latter strategy is a mistake, as the more the audience shrinks, the more poets in search of an audience will reflect whatever is vulgar enough to retain a shrinking audience. The open inductive poem may resemble a reality show in this regard, particularly if it is also confessional. Such an appeal to present cultural sensibilities is almost guaranteed to relegate a presently popular poet to future obscurity. The term “artistic whore” comes to mind—not to imply by any means that popular poetry cannot be excellent poetry. The greatest poetry is unique and universal.
Certainly William Carlos Williams and Frank O’Hara must be considered lions of the open, inductive poem. “The Red Wheelbarrow” is a perfect example of the genre, and indeed, a very fine poem. But in embracing the immediate as a basis for poems there is a great risk: first in trying to attach profundity to common experience where it may not be warranted and second, to deliver no more than the experience. Poetry has always been about what is derived from experience, not just experience itself, though this never need be stated didactically within a work. But such a view is unpopular nowadays, especially if one includes the impact of performance poetry on the craft of written poetry, an interbreeding that subverts the written form by too much conversational diction.
The distinctions I put forth in this essay are serendipitous. I did not spend any time dreaming them up; they descended on me of their own. But I have since had difficulty recalling a poem that does not easily lend itself to one of the aforementioned categories.
What help are these distinctions, then? At the least they will help poets to be more conscious of how they write; at the most, when the history of poetry is scrutinized, they will expose our anachronistic prejudices.
Inductive and Deductive Poetry
Upon recent reflection, I have discovered another analytic Mandala for poetry. Previously, in my Logopoetry essays, I made the following mandala, to introduce how the Logos (unattainable artistic ideal) might best be approximated through language, represented by logos, the means by which we interpret an experience of language.
To quote “Logopoetry III”: “One can readily see from this construction that my idea of logos as reason is not some mummified reductionism but a dynamic balance between complimentary qualities — the Aristotelian mean, in other words . . .
“The mandala is in the form of a quincunx, the Logos/logos duality being the center, where logos is the interpreting principle that connects the ideal (Logos) with the real (Art). For each of the four poles there exists an opposite quality — but not the quality it faces. Apathy, not meaning, is the opposite of feeling. And nonsense, not feeling, is the opposite of meaning. Form is not the opposite of substance. The opposite of form is formlessness or chaos. And the opposite of substance is lack of substance, or superficiality and confusion. All four qualities can be both competitive and complimentary, depending on the poem. Each of the four poles embodies a positive value and logos symbolizes the dynamic mean between these values, the balance that should best succeed at realizing the Logos, or artistic ideal.
“The danger inherent in this schema is . . . not opposition but imbalance: music at the expense of substance; feeling at the expense of meaning; meaning at the expense of feeling; substance at the expense of form, and so forth. Good poetry should more often come near the cross-hairs than not. And I don't mean by this optimal intersection of qualities some homogenized mixture with exactly 25% of each. Good poetry journeys from pole to pole in the course of a narrative but without losing its balance — just as Eliot can be by turns pedantic or lyrical in his “Four Quartets.” Furthermore, there are poems that succeed with imbalance, but in such cases the dominant pole is supported by the other qualities: it does not abandon them. I don't want to argue for an orthodox requirement of balance or anything else; my theories are meant only to be a general guide and should be discarded if ever they stand in the way of good writing. But good writing is more often balanced than not.”
My chief aim in my essays on Logopoetry was to elucidate the obvious and unavoidable truth that poetry imposes a meaning on us because of the brain’s long habit of trying to make sense of words. As I put it in the conclusion of “Logopoetry II”:
“Intelligibility, the acknowledged cooperation of the brain's hemispheres, man's need for meaning, and the idea that language is first a vehicle for communication — these constitute the introductory principles of logopoetry.”
Sometimes it strikes me as superfluous to have made these points, but for the 20th and 21st centuries I found it a necessity in understanding why I found some poetry enjoyable and some inscrutable. Of the latter I decided it was not a question of my intelligence but often intentional obscurity on the poet’s part, as if he were writing only for himself. Although the whole misdirection may have been started by Eliot, he later abandoned his allusive method in the interests of communication, as in “The Hollow Men” and “Four Quartets.” I don’t think he could have foreseen Olson’s “Maximus” poems or Deconstructionism when he penned “The Waste Land” in a sanatorium, working through his depression by way of a disconnected psychological epic, made worse by its allusions, adding pretension to its sin of obscurity.
This is all old news. But it recently came to me that there was a very simple way to classify how poems are constructed, not only in this age but in all ages. If that boast seems excessive, allow me to explain the simplicity of this approach, which does not conflict with Logopoetry at all, since the two are concerned with different types of knowledge.
Simply put, poems can be either deductive or inductive and open or closed.
Deductive poems use figures of speech to support their assertions and observations, however far-fetched. In other words, the writer does not start in a real experience but uses experiences to advance the poem and its theme. Therefore he does not begin with, “The desert wind came up and scorched the rocks”—an actual scene—rather uses the scene to elaborate something else: “Her voice was like a desert wind that scorched the rocks.” The former line implies an inductive poem, the latter a deductive poem. Inductive poems spring from an actual experience that generates elaboration. Deductive poems mold experience for their own purposes.
In addition, deductive and inductive poems can be either open or closed. Open poems invite the reader to join the author in his journey, avoiding easy conclusions, while in a closed poem the author does most of the work for us. Open poems often end in ambiguity, not certainty. They tease more than inform the reader. Closed poems usually end with a summarizing statement, however disguised by technique. In closed poems the poet tries to make his own sense of the narrative, usually near the end, with little room for negotiation with the reader.
In all ages, and I suspect, all languages, these four constructions have been extant: open, inductive poems; closed, inductive poems; open, deductive poems, and closed, deductive poems. Our present age seems to favor inductive poems in general, while the Elizabethans favored deductive poems. One need only read Shakespeare’s sonnets to be assured of this. Each one strives for a resolution (often the weakest part of the poem) because he felt compelled by both the form and the culture to reach an accessible conclusion. In his early work, Wordsworth is likely the most famous practitioner of inductive poems, signaling a departure from the past—but even he, in his dotage, returned to deductive poems, such as the rightly maligned “Ecclesiastical Sonnets.”
Here is my Mandala for these concepts, unfortunately unaided by the artists who refined my mandala for Logopoetry, so it will appear linear on this page:
Inductive
Closed X Open
Deductive
It is much easier to provide examples than persist in explanations. So let’s have a look at a poem by Robinson Jeffers. Overall he prefers deductive poems, but we can easily find all four types in his work.
October Evening
Male-throated under the shallow sea-fog
Moaned a ship's horn quivering the shorelong granite.
Coyotes toward the valley made answer,
Their little wolf-pads in the dead grass by the stream
Wet with the young season's first rain,
Their jagged wail trespassing among the steep stars.
What stars? Aldebaran under the dove-leash
Pleiades. I thought, in an hour Orion will be risen,
Be glad for summer is dead and the sky
Turns over to darkness, good storms, few guests, glad rivers.
Here is an open, inductive poem. Notice how it builds from actual experience, from the ship’s horn to the coyote’s wail. Next comes a description of October stars, and finally two lines of lingering thought about the experience, but inconclusive. They do not tell us what to think about the experience nor do they say exactly what the author thought. We learn that “summer is dead” and the days will be shorter, with “good storms, few guests, glad rivers.” Thus we think about the change in weather, the reduction in social activity, the rain that swells the rivers—but not about what we ought to feel or what this should mean to us. The ending is loose and invitational and invites further reverie.
Now let’s turn to a closed, inductive poem by Frost:
Once By The Pacific
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last “Put out the Light” was spoken.
Notice that the first six lines are inductive; he is describing a scene. Lines seven to 12 elaborate on the natural scene, with the introduction of apocalyptic overtones. The last couplet nicely summarizes this dark sentiment, telling us that we should be prepared for even more darkness and havoc before the end of the world. The ending is a prophecy, and provokes wonder at a future imagined by the poet, but the ending is also an epitaph, emphasized by the strong, feminine, trochaic rhyme. It does not leave much wiggling room. The prophet has spoken. Inductive but closed.
My next example is an open, deductive poem. Nearly all of Yeats’ poems are deductive, not all of them are open. He had a gift for ending deductive poems with a question, a choice, an ambiguity. Although this example is longer than I’d like, it pains me to eliminate any stanzas, so here is the thing entire:
Sailing to Byzantium
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
--Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
The essence of this poem does not differ greatly from many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, where he endorses the tradition of striving for eternity not through the vicissitudes of human love, but through his art. The difference here is that Yeats does not ask for his poetry to be a claim on the everlasting, rather a gateway to eternal perfection, “Into the artifice of eternity.” So much is obvious. And that the poem is deductive also is obvious, since the first line is an assertion not based on immediate experience: “That is no country for old men.” In spite of the artifice of the poem, its beauty and philosophical implications, the ending nevertheless remains open: “Or [if I am] set upon a golden bough to sing / To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”
In the context of the poem, a seeking after the eternal artifice of art, is it not ironic that the artificial bird set upon a golden bough sings of “what is past, or passing, or to come”? Certainly the temporal preoccupations implied make a nice foil to eternity; on the other hand, the bird is burdened with informing the ageless emperor and his retinue about the changing influence of time. In other words, someone needs to read the daily paper to God, even if he knows what it contains. The ending thus leaves the poem open, not only by its irony, but by the implication that despite the deliverance provided by perfect artifice, part of that artifice must continue to sing about the past, present, and future—things that should not concern the beings of Byzantium, who are beyond the strictures of time.
Lastly there are a plethora of examples in the history of closed, deductive poems. In contrast to most of her work, it pleases me to select one by Emily Dickinson, whose open poems far outnumber the closed, though nearly all her poems are deductive.
288
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!
How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one's name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!
Here, uncharacteristically, Dickinson closes a deductive poem with comic derision. And given her anonymity during her lifetime (and today’s preoccupation with celebrity, which is not new but only amplified by the instantaneous media), it is heartening to find such a cheerful antidote to ambition. For her to tell us outright how dreary it is to be a “Somebody” is hardly the norm for her verse; but it supports my earlier contention that most poets use all four constructions, though many favor a particular one.
Most of the poetry written before 1920 was closed and deductive. Even Keats concludes his inductive “Ode to a Grecian Urn” with a conclusion, “Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty”—something that would be out of style today. In surveying the journals that supposedly carry quality poetry nowadays, I think the reader will agree with me that editors’ favoritism extends to open, inductive poems. In the most recent issue of The New Yorker (February 19/26) there are two open, inductive poems (Sharon Olds and W. D. Snodgrass) and one deductive poem mixed with inductive elements—with a more direct conclusion (and certainly more depth) (Charles Wright). Except in the hands of the Classical Chinese poets, open, inductive poems tend to be superficial, more fleetingly impressionistic, rather than having that property of depth which makes us return to poems repeatedly. A poem we never return to is not a great poem. It is only dust on a hieroglyph, a barnacle on a sea-carved rock. What I seek in poetry is the hieroglyph and the rock, the art with staying power, alluded to by Yeats’ in his “Sailing to Byzantium,” with this difference: it is not lifeless.
Inductive poems simulate life more particularly and therefore may deceive us into thinking that they possess more life than deductive poems, but this is only a passing illusion. There have been far more deductive poems of quality written in the history of English than other types of poems, even if it was once tradition to end poems with rather neat pronouncements. This was only a requirement of current culture, however, and does not speak to their quality.
The post-modern tendency toward open, inductive poems may be a shift toward a restless audience with a reduced attention span who want their poems like films, revealing themselves in immediate scenes. Perhaps readers no longer want to have to think their way into a poem without a palpable, visual introduction. Maybe this is an advancement in art, but I don’t think so; I think it is evidence of laziness in readers and an eagerness in the more popular poets to please their diminishing audience. This latter strategy is a mistake, as the more the audience shrinks, the more poets in search of an audience will reflect whatever is vulgar enough to retain a shrinking audience. The open inductive poem may resemble a reality show in this regard, particularly if it is also confessional. Such an appeal to present cultural sensibilities is almost guaranteed to relegate a presently popular poet to future obscurity. The term “artistic whore” comes to mind—not to imply by any means that popular poetry cannot be excellent poetry. The greatest poetry is unique and universal.
Certainly William Carlos Williams and Frank O’Hara must be considered lions of the open, inductive poem. “The Red Wheelbarrow” is a perfect example of the genre, and indeed, a very fine poem. But in embracing the immediate as a basis for poems there is a great risk: first in trying to attach profundity to common experience where it may not be warranted and second, to deliver no more than the experience. Poetry has always been about what is derived from experience, not just experience itself, though this never need be stated didactically within a work. But such a view is unpopular nowadays, especially if one includes the impact of performance poetry on the craft of written poetry, an interbreeding that subverts the written form by too much conversational diction.
The distinctions I put forth in this essay are serendipitous. I did not spend any time dreaming them up; they descended on me of their own. But I have since had difficulty recalling a poem that does not easily lend itself to one of the aforementioned categories.
What help are these distinctions, then? At the least they will help poets to be more conscious of how they write; at the most, when the history of poetry is scrutinized, they will expose our anachronistic prejudices.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
A New Mandala for Poetry....
In my Logopoetry essays I divided poetry into a Mandala of Form, Substance, Meaning, and Feeling--with the intersection of the four being the center of artistic excellence. Now I have been visited with a second Mandala, whose four corners are Inductive, Deductive, Open, and Closed.
I don't know how to reproduce it here in the blog, but just imagine that the following five elements are spread at 90 degrees from each other with 'X' in the middle for the intersection of the Mandala.
Deductive
Closed
X
Open
Inductive
Deductive poems use figures of speech to support their assertions, however surreal.
Inductive poems spring from an actual experience that generates elaboration.
Open poems invite the reader to join the author in his journey, avoiding easy conclusions.
Closed poems end with a summarizing statement, however disguised by technique, wrapping the work in a nice red bow. Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn" is proof that closed poems can be great and ought not to be despised, even in our present relativistic culture.
Yeats writes many closed poems, like "Byzantium."
There is likely no poet more open in English than Emily Dickinson, whose insights are so subtle and stuttering you feel like you're dancing with a shy wallflower--until you see her great heart and intelligence.
Eliot's early work, like "Prufrock," is more open, though certainly deductive. His later work is more closed, especially "Four Quartets."
Shakespeare's sonnets are almost entirely deductive, using figures of speech instead of surrendering to the experience of the moment, and mainly closed as well. And Spenser and Johnson are in the same club, while Donne can be more inductive, as in "The Flea." Closed and deductive were the expectation of those times.
Wordsworth could be inductive or deductive, though his early work strives to be inductive, as in "Tintern Abbey," and especially "The Prelude," while the Lucy poems, for instance, are deductive.
Coleridge was more deductive, even in natural settings as in "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison."
Elizabeth Bishop was best when inductive, as in "The Moose," or "Fish Houses," or "The Fish."
Strand is mainly deductive, though often disguised. But his settings are mainly created like stage scenery.
Wallace Stevens is mainly deductive as well. But is he open or closed? I think more open in his uncertainty.
Matthew Arnold is closed and deductive, a combination that puts his poetry out of favor in this age. Same for Pope, Dryden and Johnson. Same for Milton.
Shelley often transformed the inductive into the deductive, by exalting an experience, especially of nature, into an epiphany that exceeds the experience ("Ode to the West Wind.")
Blake is almost purely deductive. But is he closed? I think his childlikeness makes him open even when a poem, like "The Sick Rose," tells us the entire story. We want to leap into childhood with him and his diction. Despite his rhetoric, he is more open than closed; he wants us to believe in his world, and it shows.
Zymborska is mainly open, though she can be inductive and deductive, like most poets, though I think if we analyzed all poets, most would tilt towards one quality or the other.
Rilke was mainly deductive in his "Sonnets for Orpheus," but more inductive in his "Duino Elegies."
Neruda, without reviewing him in detail, strikes me as beyond these classifications in general, but later in his career, as a dogmatic Communist, he wrote more closed and deductive poems. His best work is open.
I will stop here. Perhaps I'll write an essay about these four corners, perhaps not. If an editor wants it, I'll likely do it. But that requires a query letter, which I find tedious and am loathe to write. Any editor who visits these pages need only drop me a note and I will flesh out my theories for her pleasure.
Anyway, I wanted to share this alternative approach in understanding poetry which is complimentary to my Logopoetry essays, still available in the Melic Archives
Food for thought. I'd like to hear your thoughts!
CE
I don't know how to reproduce it here in the blog, but just imagine that the following five elements are spread at 90 degrees from each other with 'X' in the middle for the intersection of the Mandala.
Deductive
Closed
X
Open
Inductive
Deductive poems use figures of speech to support their assertions, however surreal.
Inductive poems spring from an actual experience that generates elaboration.
Open poems invite the reader to join the author in his journey, avoiding easy conclusions.
Closed poems end with a summarizing statement, however disguised by technique, wrapping the work in a nice red bow. Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn" is proof that closed poems can be great and ought not to be despised, even in our present relativistic culture.
Yeats writes many closed poems, like "Byzantium."
There is likely no poet more open in English than Emily Dickinson, whose insights are so subtle and stuttering you feel like you're dancing with a shy wallflower--until you see her great heart and intelligence.
Eliot's early work, like "Prufrock," is more open, though certainly deductive. His later work is more closed, especially "Four Quartets."
Shakespeare's sonnets are almost entirely deductive, using figures of speech instead of surrendering to the experience of the moment, and mainly closed as well. And Spenser and Johnson are in the same club, while Donne can be more inductive, as in "The Flea." Closed and deductive were the expectation of those times.
Wordsworth could be inductive or deductive, though his early work strives to be inductive, as in "Tintern Abbey," and especially "The Prelude," while the Lucy poems, for instance, are deductive.
Coleridge was more deductive, even in natural settings as in "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison."
Elizabeth Bishop was best when inductive, as in "The Moose," or "Fish Houses," or "The Fish."
Strand is mainly deductive, though often disguised. But his settings are mainly created like stage scenery.
Wallace Stevens is mainly deductive as well. But is he open or closed? I think more open in his uncertainty.
Matthew Arnold is closed and deductive, a combination that puts his poetry out of favor in this age. Same for Pope, Dryden and Johnson. Same for Milton.
Shelley often transformed the inductive into the deductive, by exalting an experience, especially of nature, into an epiphany that exceeds the experience ("Ode to the West Wind.")
Blake is almost purely deductive. But is he closed? I think his childlikeness makes him open even when a poem, like "The Sick Rose," tells us the entire story. We want to leap into childhood with him and his diction. Despite his rhetoric, he is more open than closed; he wants us to believe in his world, and it shows.
Zymborska is mainly open, though she can be inductive and deductive, like most poets, though I think if we analyzed all poets, most would tilt towards one quality or the other.
Rilke was mainly deductive in his "Sonnets for Orpheus," but more inductive in his "Duino Elegies."
Neruda, without reviewing him in detail, strikes me as beyond these classifications in general, but later in his career, as a dogmatic Communist, he wrote more closed and deductive poems. His best work is open.
I will stop here. Perhaps I'll write an essay about these four corners, perhaps not. If an editor wants it, I'll likely do it. But that requires a query letter, which I find tedious and am loathe to write. Any editor who visits these pages need only drop me a note and I will flesh out my theories for her pleasure.
Anyway, I wanted to share this alternative approach in understanding poetry which is complimentary to my Logopoetry essays, still available in the Melic Archives
Food for thought. I'd like to hear your thoughts!
CE
Favorite Films; Seeking a Human Poem
Sam Rasnake tagged me for favorite films. I feel a little sheepish because I am not a videophile and also because movies are so much a part of pop culture. With that disclaimer, and in no particular order, I proceed:
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
Maltese Falcon
African Queen
Batman
As Good as it Gets
Duck Soup
A Night at the Opera
Altered States
American Beauty
The Graduate
Apocalypse Now
2001
Dune
Starship Troopers
Mulholland Drive
Blue Velvet
Wizard of Oz
Gone with the Wind
Lord of the Rings
Pink Panther
Magic Christian
Othello (Welles)
Dances with Wolves
In the Name of the Father
My Left Foot
Sophie's Choice
Catch 22
Mash
Carnal Knowledge
Fantasia
The Exorcist
Alien
Frankenstein (Karloff)
A Hard Day's Night
The Disorderly Orderly
High Anxiety
Vertigo
Psycho
Meet John Doe
Das Boot
The Deer Hunter
Platoon
The Ten Commandments
And many, many, more...but my mind blocks here.
In addition, in my continuing quest to understand the limitations of my verse, I post a poem, below, about which I would like to know whether I transcended the neatness of my usual compositions, having more of an open, communal feeling, as my good critic advised.
No Bottle
All I have are these words, finally,
to convince you that I mattered.
I am not convinced.
David said it best:
“My tears have been my food day and night.”
Poetry doesn’t get much better.
He also wrote,
“Are not my tears in your bottle?”
He thought suffering redemptive.
My tears are without object,
my grief without circumference.
My God has no bottle.
Thine, at 1 Kilobunny! (shh!)
CE
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
Maltese Falcon
African Queen
Batman
As Good as it Gets
Duck Soup
A Night at the Opera
Altered States
American Beauty
The Graduate
Apocalypse Now
2001
Dune
Starship Troopers
Mulholland Drive
Blue Velvet
Wizard of Oz
Gone with the Wind
Lord of the Rings
Pink Panther
Magic Christian
Othello (Welles)
Dances with Wolves
In the Name of the Father
My Left Foot
Sophie's Choice
Catch 22
Mash
Carnal Knowledge
Fantasia
The Exorcist
Alien
Frankenstein (Karloff)
A Hard Day's Night
The Disorderly Orderly
High Anxiety
Vertigo
Psycho
Meet John Doe
Das Boot
The Deer Hunter
Platoon
The Ten Commandments
And many, many, more...but my mind blocks here.
In addition, in my continuing quest to understand the limitations of my verse, I post a poem, below, about which I would like to know whether I transcended the neatness of my usual compositions, having more of an open, communal feeling, as my good critic advised.
No Bottle
All I have are these words, finally,
to convince you that I mattered.
I am not convinced.
David said it best:
“My tears have been my food day and night.”
Poetry doesn’t get much better.
He also wrote,
“Are not my tears in your bottle?”
He thought suffering redemptive.
My tears are without object,
my grief without circumference.
My God has no bottle.
Thine, at 1 Kilobunny! (shh!)
CE
Friday, February 16, 2007
Is My Poetry Too Inhuman?
After my rant on literary narcissism, I feel impelled to follow my own dictum: suspect yourself first.
Regarding the defects of my poetry, I have had critics say it was "inhuman" or unapproachable, had it compared to "stainless steal." After my last post a good friend wrote me with some insightful comments I would like to excerpt:
"If you're trafficking in authentic mysteries, truly the sublime,
then the intellect can only pretend a sort of false-mastery. So there is
perhaps a tendency towards smugness that you should perennially be on
guard against.
"A challenge for you I would think is how to strike a communion with your
audience that is earnest and authentic without lapsing into condescension.
[I'm sure you] grasp.. the perils of cerebral poetry in this subjective age."
I went through some poems trying to find one that exhibited more room for "communion" with the audience, an "open" poem if you will, as opposed to a "closed" or internally completed poem. It took me some time to settle on one I thought would qualify. Here it is:
Jacob
My grandson’s cry tonight
is a buzz saw on aluminum,
a kickstand scraping concrete—
Reminding me of Beckett’s last play,
where a heap of post-apocalyptic trash appears,
then a baby’s cry, then darkness.
I can’t rid these prickles from my heart,
resentment at his shrieking intransigence—
the fuse of a child abuser?
Holding him is best because
I feel as if I’m doing something.
He is mine and I can’t stand it.
(unpublished)
Mood holding, thanks be to God and medications and an understanding wife,
CE
Regarding the defects of my poetry, I have had critics say it was "inhuman" or unapproachable, had it compared to "stainless steal." After my last post a good friend wrote me with some insightful comments I would like to excerpt:
"If you're trafficking in authentic mysteries, truly the sublime,
then the intellect can only pretend a sort of false-mastery. So there is
perhaps a tendency towards smugness that you should perennially be on
guard against.
"A challenge for you I would think is how to strike a communion with your
audience that is earnest and authentic without lapsing into condescension.
[I'm sure you] grasp.. the perils of cerebral poetry in this subjective age."
I went through some poems trying to find one that exhibited more room for "communion" with the audience, an "open" poem if you will, as opposed to a "closed" or internally completed poem. It took me some time to settle on one I thought would qualify. Here it is:
Jacob
My grandson’s cry tonight
is a buzz saw on aluminum,
a kickstand scraping concrete—
Reminding me of Beckett’s last play,
where a heap of post-apocalyptic trash appears,
then a baby’s cry, then darkness.
I can’t rid these prickles from my heart,
resentment at his shrieking intransigence—
the fuse of a child abuser?
Holding him is best because
I feel as if I’m doing something.
He is mine and I can’t stand it.
(unpublished)
Mood holding, thanks be to God and medications and an understanding wife,
CE
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
My Struggle with Literary Narcissism, Revised
I revised my spontaneous post of the 12th. But first another poem from my archives:
Marigolds
These giant marigolds are orange torches,
heavy with radiance.
A breeze touches them,
the whole bush quivers
beneath the weight of blooms.
They are a short, furious life:
They call to the sun and cry to the stars,
flame forward and decay,
spit dry seeds like ash and vanish.
We bloom on the stems of our ancestors,
wishing to explode like these marigolds
but fear if we flower too brightly
someone might snap our necks,
or worse, the central stem collapse
from the weight of insane glory.
So we run from our own immolation
and the peppery smell of death.
(published and now de-published in Free Cuisenart)
My Struggle with Literary Narcissism, Revised
"Jealousy is the essence of narcissism."
The tenth commandment forbids coveting; that's the point where the follower must realize morality is more than an outward observance (though the Pharisees later forgot that point). Coveting is not far from jealousy. One covets things; one is jealous of persons. And the three most famous tales of brothers in the Bible involve jealousy. You know them: Cain killed Abel because he was jealous of God’s preference for Abel’s offering. Jacob coveted Esau’s birthright and stole it through subterfuge and afterwards fled out of fear. He was jealous of Esau’s standing as the firstborn. Joseph's brothers left him for dead because of their jealousy; he was their father's favorite and spoke of his dreams of greatness (which later came true). In all these cases one thing stands out: God plays favorites. He did not not love Cain, but it seems Cain had good reason to believe Abel’s sacrifice was preferred, which was purely unfair— unless you get into Christological excuses that Abel’s offering of a lamb was prophetic—but theological hindsight doesn’t help Cain much. So he murdered Abel out of jealousy. And deep down, with all defenses stripped, isn’t that what we would all do if we could get away with it? To murder the person we think is unfairly preferred above us, to rid the world of an inferior writer who won a Pulitzer and give ourselves the prize? Because it just isn’t fair, is it? It’s quite a cautionary tale, this first murder in the Bible. The motive is “the green-eyed monster.”
It was prophesied of Jacob and Esau that the older should serve the younger. And despite Jacob's scheming and hardly admirable nature, so it came to pass. "Jacob I loved but Esau I hated," Jehovah says. Can you imagine anything so patently unfair? What did Esau do to deserve such treatment? Contrary to God, Isaac seemed to favor Esau because he was a hunter who would bring home wild game. And though we know Esau was hairy, a hunter, and impulsive, Jacob was a liar and a cheat. One can again take refuge in theology, that the promised one, whether David or Christ, needed to come through a specific genetic line. Again, such hindsight does little to help Esau’s despite.
Joseph was favored by his father and by God. Why? Was there something in his nature that more recommended him? Who's to know? His father rubbed it in by giving him “a coat of many colors.” Given this favoritism, weren't his brothers justified in their jealousy, if not their deed? They left him in a pit in the desert to die, but enjoying God’s favor, he was rescued by some camel traders. Later he became the salvation of Egypt and his family, but such utilitarian reasons as these later results won’t wash in the name of an almighty God. He could have saved Joseph’s family and Egypt by any number of other means—he’s God, after all.
All this is ancient history, but here's my point: Some people are luckier, indeed seem to be more favored, than others. As has been well said, it's better to be lucky than good. So here's my dilemma: my success as a writer, commercially speaking, and from the point of public reputation, has been dismal. I have myriad publications in obscure magazines with less than a thousand dollars earned; I am a ghost in the machine of the Net (where several of my former students enjoy more success than I).
Now I cannot be trusted with an opinion of myself, but I honestly think I'm a better poet than the late Robert Creeley, and he received a Pulitzer as well as the $100,000 Lenore Marshall prize. My feelings for him (for other reasons as well) go beyond jealousy to a prideful condescension. I think sometimes that if I truly humble myself, perhaps I can see more value in his work. So far I’ve not succeeded. As it is, though he walks among the dead, I still feel a sense of injustice when I think of him as his acclaim. (I could say the same the same about a number of other poets both living and dead.)
Why should I be jealous of other writers? Why should I torture myself with the unfounded belief that the universe is fair when even the Bible confirms cosmic favoritism? My mother preached success through merit, and the academic system does the same, but these illusions, bestowed by a controlled environment, have nothing to do with the real world in any field of endeavor.
To be jealous of another is to be cruel to myself. It makes me the self-appointed center of the universe. Since this isn’t true, it warps me and eats at my self-esteem. I tell myself I should not be jealous. Yet my frustration with successful artists whom I believe (and some others agree) are my inferiors, itches like sand under the skin of a rhinoceros.
I know success has a lot to do with connections; I have virtually none. I sometimes think I should have gone to an MFA program to rub shoulders with poets of reputation who teach because they can’t otherwise make a living. They in turn have to justify their teaching by promoting their students.
Success also has to do with persistence, and I know I don’t submit to the quality journals enough. In trying I have recently received a string of seven rejections, my longest string of bad luck in a long time, though it can mainly be ascribed to the quality of journals I chose, all top flight, paying journals. Strangely, after I receive a rejection I suddenly, in a flash of insight, notice everything that’s wrong with my poems and usually agree with the editors. Yet it is often hard to distinguish between bad luck and mediocrity. I try not to send mediocre work out, but who am I to judge?
Should I admit to myself I am a journeyman, destined only to entertain myself and a few others with my poetry, condemned to the underworld of "I could have been a contender?" Should I turn critic like William Logan and macerate the anointed in vengeful sweetness? Should I blow off poetry altogether and concentrate on paying non-fiction?
Here's the problem re-stated: I feel I ought to be more recognized as a poet, given the competition extant. But I suppose I should face reality;: it’s simply not true. It could be my work is slightly anachronistic, so style works against me, but that’s no excuse; I should change my style if I want to be successful, even at this late date.
Acceptance is what I need. Sometimes by reading other poets of current renown I can see their virtues and better accept my place, but when I read a poem in the New Yorker that simply sucks, it does irritate me. Then who am I to judge? They don't want my poems and often publish good ones.
How many of my fellow writers experience this dilemma? How do they solve it? I always tell my students that the only reason to write a poem is for its own sake. But that admonition sometimes sound hollow to one with hundreds of publications and little to show for it.
I suppose my mantra should be: "Work harder and don't worry about the other guy. Follow your own vision, and if it does not find favor in the world, at least comfort yourself with artistic integrity."
This is a noble and Parnassian view, but in my flawed humanity I cannot embrace it. On the other hand, jealousy won’t help my art. What I wish is to be delivered from the feeling that I deserve better. I should think more on Cain, Esau, and Joseph’s brothers. Yet how does one wait in peace hoping to get lucky? How would Yeats have felt if he were completely ignored?
Old, unlucky poets should not give in to bitterness. Their curse must certainly be that they can’t give up writing. Whoever discovered Emily Dickinson gave us false reason to hope. The best reason to hope is to assume one’s art has yet to mature to the point where it will be recognized, avoiding comparisons in the interest of improvement. The best antidote to jealousy, or if you wish, a sense of unfairness, is to lose yourself in the poetry of others. Yet at 50, with a few glaring exceptions, most poets’ best work is behind them. Still, let the band play on. The soloist is not always the best player.
Marigolds
These giant marigolds are orange torches,
heavy with radiance.
A breeze touches them,
the whole bush quivers
beneath the weight of blooms.
They are a short, furious life:
They call to the sun and cry to the stars,
flame forward and decay,
spit dry seeds like ash and vanish.
We bloom on the stems of our ancestors,
wishing to explode like these marigolds
but fear if we flower too brightly
someone might snap our necks,
or worse, the central stem collapse
from the weight of insane glory.
So we run from our own immolation
and the peppery smell of death.
(published and now de-published in Free Cuisenart)
My Struggle with Literary Narcissism, Revised
"Jealousy is the essence of narcissism."
The tenth commandment forbids coveting; that's the point where the follower must realize morality is more than an outward observance (though the Pharisees later forgot that point). Coveting is not far from jealousy. One covets things; one is jealous of persons. And the three most famous tales of brothers in the Bible involve jealousy. You know them: Cain killed Abel because he was jealous of God’s preference for Abel’s offering. Jacob coveted Esau’s birthright and stole it through subterfuge and afterwards fled out of fear. He was jealous of Esau’s standing as the firstborn. Joseph's brothers left him for dead because of their jealousy; he was their father's favorite and spoke of his dreams of greatness (which later came true). In all these cases one thing stands out: God plays favorites. He did not not love Cain, but it seems Cain had good reason to believe Abel’s sacrifice was preferred, which was purely unfair— unless you get into Christological excuses that Abel’s offering of a lamb was prophetic—but theological hindsight doesn’t help Cain much. So he murdered Abel out of jealousy. And deep down, with all defenses stripped, isn’t that what we would all do if we could get away with it? To murder the person we think is unfairly preferred above us, to rid the world of an inferior writer who won a Pulitzer and give ourselves the prize? Because it just isn’t fair, is it? It’s quite a cautionary tale, this first murder in the Bible. The motive is “the green-eyed monster.”
It was prophesied of Jacob and Esau that the older should serve the younger. And despite Jacob's scheming and hardly admirable nature, so it came to pass. "Jacob I loved but Esau I hated," Jehovah says. Can you imagine anything so patently unfair? What did Esau do to deserve such treatment? Contrary to God, Isaac seemed to favor Esau because he was a hunter who would bring home wild game. And though we know Esau was hairy, a hunter, and impulsive, Jacob was a liar and a cheat. One can again take refuge in theology, that the promised one, whether David or Christ, needed to come through a specific genetic line. Again, such hindsight does little to help Esau’s despite.
Joseph was favored by his father and by God. Why? Was there something in his nature that more recommended him? Who's to know? His father rubbed it in by giving him “a coat of many colors.” Given this favoritism, weren't his brothers justified in their jealousy, if not their deed? They left him in a pit in the desert to die, but enjoying God’s favor, he was rescued by some camel traders. Later he became the salvation of Egypt and his family, but such utilitarian reasons as these later results won’t wash in the name of an almighty God. He could have saved Joseph’s family and Egypt by any number of other means—he’s God, after all.
All this is ancient history, but here's my point: Some people are luckier, indeed seem to be more favored, than others. As has been well said, it's better to be lucky than good. So here's my dilemma: my success as a writer, commercially speaking, and from the point of public reputation, has been dismal. I have myriad publications in obscure magazines with less than a thousand dollars earned; I am a ghost in the machine of the Net (where several of my former students enjoy more success than I).
Now I cannot be trusted with an opinion of myself, but I honestly think I'm a better poet than the late Robert Creeley, and he received a Pulitzer as well as the $100,000 Lenore Marshall prize. My feelings for him (for other reasons as well) go beyond jealousy to a prideful condescension. I think sometimes that if I truly humble myself, perhaps I can see more value in his work. So far I’ve not succeeded. As it is, though he walks among the dead, I still feel a sense of injustice when I think of him as his acclaim. (I could say the same the same about a number of other poets both living and dead.)
Why should I be jealous of other writers? Why should I torture myself with the unfounded belief that the universe is fair when even the Bible confirms cosmic favoritism? My mother preached success through merit, and the academic system does the same, but these illusions, bestowed by a controlled environment, have nothing to do with the real world in any field of endeavor.
To be jealous of another is to be cruel to myself. It makes me the self-appointed center of the universe. Since this isn’t true, it warps me and eats at my self-esteem. I tell myself I should not be jealous. Yet my frustration with successful artists whom I believe (and some others agree) are my inferiors, itches like sand under the skin of a rhinoceros.
I know success has a lot to do with connections; I have virtually none. I sometimes think I should have gone to an MFA program to rub shoulders with poets of reputation who teach because they can’t otherwise make a living. They in turn have to justify their teaching by promoting their students.
Success also has to do with persistence, and I know I don’t submit to the quality journals enough. In trying I have recently received a string of seven rejections, my longest string of bad luck in a long time, though it can mainly be ascribed to the quality of journals I chose, all top flight, paying journals. Strangely, after I receive a rejection I suddenly, in a flash of insight, notice everything that’s wrong with my poems and usually agree with the editors. Yet it is often hard to distinguish between bad luck and mediocrity. I try not to send mediocre work out, but who am I to judge?
Should I admit to myself I am a journeyman, destined only to entertain myself and a few others with my poetry, condemned to the underworld of "I could have been a contender?" Should I turn critic like William Logan and macerate the anointed in vengeful sweetness? Should I blow off poetry altogether and concentrate on paying non-fiction?
Here's the problem re-stated: I feel I ought to be more recognized as a poet, given the competition extant. But I suppose I should face reality;: it’s simply not true. It could be my work is slightly anachronistic, so style works against me, but that’s no excuse; I should change my style if I want to be successful, even at this late date.
Acceptance is what I need. Sometimes by reading other poets of current renown I can see their virtues and better accept my place, but when I read a poem in the New Yorker that simply sucks, it does irritate me. Then who am I to judge? They don't want my poems and often publish good ones.
How many of my fellow writers experience this dilemma? How do they solve it? I always tell my students that the only reason to write a poem is for its own sake. But that admonition sometimes sound hollow to one with hundreds of publications and little to show for it.
I suppose my mantra should be: "Work harder and don't worry about the other guy. Follow your own vision, and if it does not find favor in the world, at least comfort yourself with artistic integrity."
This is a noble and Parnassian view, but in my flawed humanity I cannot embrace it. On the other hand, jealousy won’t help my art. What I wish is to be delivered from the feeling that I deserve better. I should think more on Cain, Esau, and Joseph’s brothers. Yet how does one wait in peace hoping to get lucky? How would Yeats have felt if he were completely ignored?
Old, unlucky poets should not give in to bitterness. Their curse must certainly be that they can’t give up writing. Whoever discovered Emily Dickinson gave us false reason to hope. The best reason to hope is to assume one’s art has yet to mature to the point where it will be recognized, avoiding comparisons in the interest of improvement. The best antidote to jealousy, or if you wish, a sense of unfairness, is to lose yourself in the poetry of others. Yet at 50, with a few glaring exceptions, most poets’ best work is behind them. Still, let the band play on. The soloist is not always the best player.
Monday, February 12, 2007
My Struggle with Literary Narcissism
I thought that by writing about each circular obsession that afflicts me during depression I might get some closure for my own protection.
I have before written that "jealousy is the essence of narcissism."
The tenth commandment forbids coveting; that's the point where the follower must realize morality is more than an outward observance, though the Pharisees forgot that point. And the three most famous tales of brothers in the Bible involve jealousy. You know them: Cain killed Abel because he was jealous of his offering, which God preferred. Jacob stole Esau's birthright through subterfuge and afterwards fled out of fear. Joseph's brothers left him for dead because of their jealousy; he was their father's favorite and suffered from delusions of grandeur (which later came true).
In all these cases one thing stands out: God plays favorites. He did not not love Cain, but it seems Cain had reason to believe that Abel was preferred, which was purely unfair.
It was prophesied of Jacob and Esau that the older should serve the younger. And despite Jacob's scheming nature, so it came to pass. "Jacob I loved but Esau I hated." What did Esau ever do to deserve such treatment? Contrary to God, Isaac seemed to favor Esau because he was a hunter who would bring home wild game.
Joseph was favored by his father and by God. Why? Was there something in his nature that more recommended him? Who's to know? But weren't his brothers justified in their jealousy, if not their deeds?
This is all ancient history, but here's my point: Some people are luckier, indeed seem to be more favored, than others. As has been well said, it's better to be lucky than good. So here's my dilemma: my success as a writer, commercially speaking, and from the point of public reputation, has been dismal. I have myriad publications in obscure magazines with less than a thousand dollars earned; I am a ghost in the machine of the Net (where several of my former students enjoy more success than I).
Now I cannot be trusted with an opinion of myself, but I honestly think I'm a better poet than the late Robert Creeley, by any standard, and he received a Pulitzer as well as the $100,000 Lenore Marshall prize before his death. Is he lucky or is he better? I'm jealous of him. He also had three poems and two essays taken out of a magazine he was to appear in because he disliked my essays and poems. I had never met him, but the editors of the Cortland Review admitted to me privately that they capitulated to his demands, so I was de-published, a fate that often afflicts me simply by the attrition of literary journals on the net.
I've published close to 100 columns on the Net, but three of the four magazines I wrote for went bust with no archives. Is this my fault? I don't post my best poems in this blog, most of which have been published, since I've been on a formalist tear for my mental health. I need the structure when I'm depressed. But I would offer proof to any interested with some of my best work, if requested in this space or by e-mail.
The question that dogs me: Why should I be jealous of other writers? Why should I torture myself with the unfounded belief that the universe is fair when even the Bible confirms cosmic favoritism?
To be jealous of another is to be cruel to myself. It eats at my self-esteem. Yet the frustration with "successful" artists whom, at least some besides myself agree are my inferiors, gets irritating.
I know success has a lot to do with connections; I have virtually none. I should have gone to an MFA program. It also has to do with persistence; I don't submit enough to the quality journals to generate a buzz, indeed have had seven rejections in a row recently, my longest string of "bad luck" to date. The hard part is distinguishing between luck and mediocre work.
Should I admit to myself I am a journeyman, destined only to entertain himself and a few others with his poetry, condemned to the underworld of the "could have been contenders?" Should I turn critic like William Logan and macerate the anointed to my heart's content?
Here's the problem re-stated: I feel I ought to be recognized more, given the competition extant. But I suppose I should face reality; that's simply not true. It could be my work is slightly anachronistic, so style works against me; well tough, I should change my style if I want to be successful (at 52!).
Acceptance is what I need, but when I read a poem in the New Yorker that simply sucks (and Kathleen agrees), it does irritate me. Then who am I to judge? They won't take my poems, and they have published good ones.
How many of you fellow writers experience this dilemma? How do you solve it? I always tell my students that the only reason to write a poem is to try to achieve excellence, to strive for a good poem. But that sometimes sounds hollow to someone with hundreds of publications and no reputation.
I suppose this should be my mantra: "Work harder and don't worry about the other guy. Follow your own vision, and if it does not find favor in the world, at least comfort yourself with your integrity."
I wish I could actually embrace this mantra. I suffer from writer's envy, pure and simple, and I am not proud of it.
Mood is mixed; irritable and bored.
CE
p.s. Here's a poem that was published and is now open for publication because it was afterwards de-published. I think it may be a good poem. How terrifying it is to try to back up one's boast!
Leaf Sermon
I have been spiritually poisoned
by the unclean, in ignorance
blessed their springs.
In consequence I withered
and drifted down
from green crown to brown humus,
thinned to a fishbone pattern
of cellulose threads.
I washed into a stream
past stones squirming
with black question marks
of dragonfly larvae,
slid through reeds
into eddying pools
where I stalled until the rains
delivered me to the sea.
My last proteins fed the plankton
the humpback swallowed,
whose song woke me,
the ghost of a ghost of a leaf,
to the shocking green astral body
from which I speak:
You who seek
thrill without sustenance,
love without burden,
light without heat—
hollow, hollow men,
Tom O’ Bedlam slim:
Your greatest feat
each workaday morning
is to pull the sheet
from your own faces
to avoid being wheeled
to the refrigerated cases.
I have before written that "jealousy is the essence of narcissism."
The tenth commandment forbids coveting; that's the point where the follower must realize morality is more than an outward observance, though the Pharisees forgot that point. And the three most famous tales of brothers in the Bible involve jealousy. You know them: Cain killed Abel because he was jealous of his offering, which God preferred. Jacob stole Esau's birthright through subterfuge and afterwards fled out of fear. Joseph's brothers left him for dead because of their jealousy; he was their father's favorite and suffered from delusions of grandeur (which later came true).
In all these cases one thing stands out: God plays favorites. He did not not love Cain, but it seems Cain had reason to believe that Abel was preferred, which was purely unfair.
It was prophesied of Jacob and Esau that the older should serve the younger. And despite Jacob's scheming nature, so it came to pass. "Jacob I loved but Esau I hated." What did Esau ever do to deserve such treatment? Contrary to God, Isaac seemed to favor Esau because he was a hunter who would bring home wild game.
Joseph was favored by his father and by God. Why? Was there something in his nature that more recommended him? Who's to know? But weren't his brothers justified in their jealousy, if not their deeds?
This is all ancient history, but here's my point: Some people are luckier, indeed seem to be more favored, than others. As has been well said, it's better to be lucky than good. So here's my dilemma: my success as a writer, commercially speaking, and from the point of public reputation, has been dismal. I have myriad publications in obscure magazines with less than a thousand dollars earned; I am a ghost in the machine of the Net (where several of my former students enjoy more success than I).
Now I cannot be trusted with an opinion of myself, but I honestly think I'm a better poet than the late Robert Creeley, by any standard, and he received a Pulitzer as well as the $100,000 Lenore Marshall prize before his death. Is he lucky or is he better? I'm jealous of him. He also had three poems and two essays taken out of a magazine he was to appear in because he disliked my essays and poems. I had never met him, but the editors of the Cortland Review admitted to me privately that they capitulated to his demands, so I was de-published, a fate that often afflicts me simply by the attrition of literary journals on the net.
I've published close to 100 columns on the Net, but three of the four magazines I wrote for went bust with no archives. Is this my fault? I don't post my best poems in this blog, most of which have been published, since I've been on a formalist tear for my mental health. I need the structure when I'm depressed. But I would offer proof to any interested with some of my best work, if requested in this space or by e-mail.
The question that dogs me: Why should I be jealous of other writers? Why should I torture myself with the unfounded belief that the universe is fair when even the Bible confirms cosmic favoritism?
To be jealous of another is to be cruel to myself. It eats at my self-esteem. Yet the frustration with "successful" artists whom, at least some besides myself agree are my inferiors, gets irritating.
I know success has a lot to do with connections; I have virtually none. I should have gone to an MFA program. It also has to do with persistence; I don't submit enough to the quality journals to generate a buzz, indeed have had seven rejections in a row recently, my longest string of "bad luck" to date. The hard part is distinguishing between luck and mediocre work.
Should I admit to myself I am a journeyman, destined only to entertain himself and a few others with his poetry, condemned to the underworld of the "could have been contenders?" Should I turn critic like William Logan and macerate the anointed to my heart's content?
Here's the problem re-stated: I feel I ought to be recognized more, given the competition extant. But I suppose I should face reality; that's simply not true. It could be my work is slightly anachronistic, so style works against me; well tough, I should change my style if I want to be successful (at 52!).
Acceptance is what I need, but when I read a poem in the New Yorker that simply sucks (and Kathleen agrees), it does irritate me. Then who am I to judge? They won't take my poems, and they have published good ones.
How many of you fellow writers experience this dilemma? How do you solve it? I always tell my students that the only reason to write a poem is to try to achieve excellence, to strive for a good poem. But that sometimes sounds hollow to someone with hundreds of publications and no reputation.
I suppose this should be my mantra: "Work harder and don't worry about the other guy. Follow your own vision, and if it does not find favor in the world, at least comfort yourself with your integrity."
I wish I could actually embrace this mantra. I suffer from writer's envy, pure and simple, and I am not proud of it.
Mood is mixed; irritable and bored.
CE
p.s. Here's a poem that was published and is now open for publication because it was afterwards de-published. I think it may be a good poem. How terrifying it is to try to back up one's boast!
Leaf Sermon
I have been spiritually poisoned
by the unclean, in ignorance
blessed their springs.
In consequence I withered
and drifted down
from green crown to brown humus,
thinned to a fishbone pattern
of cellulose threads.
I washed into a stream
past stones squirming
with black question marks
of dragonfly larvae,
slid through reeds
into eddying pools
where I stalled until the rains
delivered me to the sea.
My last proteins fed the plankton
the humpback swallowed,
whose song woke me,
the ghost of a ghost of a leaf,
to the shocking green astral body
from which I speak:
You who seek
thrill without sustenance,
love without burden,
light without heat—
hollow, hollow men,
Tom O’ Bedlam slim:
Your greatest feat
each workaday morning
is to pull the sheet
from your own faces
to avoid being wheeled
to the refrigerated cases.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Triolet; What the Doctor Said
I don't want to slice it too fine, but I am feeling a tad better today. I haven't wept so far. As my grandson's favorite, "Thomas the Tank," is wont to say, I have tried to be a "useful engine." Kathleen dislikes this concept in the "Thomas the Tank" series (the toys originate from Britain) because she thinks it makes behavior the price for self-esteem. I argue that certainly, children need to be loved unconditionally, but they also need a sense of mastery. And striving for mastery is an important source of self-esteem. Achievement, work, mastery, striving, are part and parcel of our self-view, and I don't think this confined to the West. Mastery begins early and remains important, whether it involves dressing a doll or riding a bike. Of course the very question of self-esteem is ridiculous in depression, as a Nobel Prize wouldn't change one's opinion of oneself.
It's raining heavily today in spurts; I wanted to mulch my garden before the rains started but was caught short in my sloth. This year I plan only to have a flower garden as most vegetables did not fare well last year.
I cried through most of my appt. with my psychiatrist yesterday. He wants me to give up alcohol altogether, my last vice besides coffee, though that is not the reason I cried. I am desperate enough to comply with his advice, though I never saw alcohol consumption having any influence on my mood in the past; now comes the hard part, saying good-bye to a good friend. (I've quit drinking for long periods in the past, and could never see how it made my life either better or worse.)
Here's a little exercise for today:
Triolet
The madman lost his magic sequined hat
Whose tiny mirrors gave him the power to think.
Now his brain babbled "Jehoshophat."
The madman lost his magic sequined hat.
Without it he could not tie his cravat.
He needed silver moons to help him link.
The madman lost his magic sequined hat
Whose tiny mirrors gave him the power to think.
Unstably,
CE
It's raining heavily today in spurts; I wanted to mulch my garden before the rains started but was caught short in my sloth. This year I plan only to have a flower garden as most vegetables did not fare well last year.
I cried through most of my appt. with my psychiatrist yesterday. He wants me to give up alcohol altogether, my last vice besides coffee, though that is not the reason I cried. I am desperate enough to comply with his advice, though I never saw alcohol consumption having any influence on my mood in the past; now comes the hard part, saying good-bye to a good friend. (I've quit drinking for long periods in the past, and could never see how it made my life either better or worse.)
Here's a little exercise for today:
Triolet
The madman lost his magic sequined hat
Whose tiny mirrors gave him the power to think.
Now his brain babbled "Jehoshophat."
The madman lost his magic sequined hat.
Without it he could not tie his cravat.
He needed silver moons to help him link.
The madman lost his magic sequined hat
Whose tiny mirrors gave him the power to think.
Unstably,
CE
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Villanelle: Mulch
Mulch
Mulch would hide the light and smother weeds
Whose stemmed assault would quickly strangle flowers.
Green on green, sap for sap life feeds.
Man is a stranger animal. His deeds
Can light the living through their darkest hours.
Still mulch would hide the light and smother weeds.
Weeds can be prolific with their seeds.
They pack the earth with chances for their towers.
Green on green, sap for sap life feeds.
Who stamps on hope? Who buries all the needs
Of the downtrodden by monetary powers?
Their mulch would hide the light and smother weeds.
A weed is just a plant that can succeed
Where it should not, good only for the mowers.
Green on green, sap for sap life feeds.
How many, covered in darkness, how many plead
For just a pin of light before roots sour?
The mulch would hide the light and smother weeds.
Green on green, sap for sap life feeds.
A poem for the little guy.
Weltschmerz is self-indulgent, I think; it has a Romantic sweetness to it. Depression is merely an abyss.
I am greatly troubled today to see Kathleen depressed since yesterday, or "merely melancholy" as she puts it. Of course I blame myself. She was not depressed in NY. Coming home to me, she tanked. Depression can be contagious if one is prone to it. I'm trying to act more upbeat as a compensation. I think it was my relapse that troubled her most. She left me in a recovery mode and I blew it. Of all the people in the world, I least want to hurt Kathleen. Loving and being loved by her is the one great achievement of my life, even if it was a gift. I can always say, "I got the thing in life I most wanted--Kathleen." That is my ultimate fallback point when the hounds of perpetual failure savage my mind.
-4,
CE
Mulch would hide the light and smother weeds
Whose stemmed assault would quickly strangle flowers.
Green on green, sap for sap life feeds.
Man is a stranger animal. His deeds
Can light the living through their darkest hours.
Still mulch would hide the light and smother weeds.
Weeds can be prolific with their seeds.
They pack the earth with chances for their towers.
Green on green, sap for sap life feeds.
Who stamps on hope? Who buries all the needs
Of the downtrodden by monetary powers?
Their mulch would hide the light and smother weeds.
A weed is just a plant that can succeed
Where it should not, good only for the mowers.
Green on green, sap for sap life feeds.
How many, covered in darkness, how many plead
For just a pin of light before roots sour?
The mulch would hide the light and smother weeds.
Green on green, sap for sap life feeds.
A poem for the little guy.
Weltschmerz is self-indulgent, I think; it has a Romantic sweetness to it. Depression is merely an abyss.
I am greatly troubled today to see Kathleen depressed since yesterday, or "merely melancholy" as she puts it. Of course I blame myself. She was not depressed in NY. Coming home to me, she tanked. Depression can be contagious if one is prone to it. I'm trying to act more upbeat as a compensation. I think it was my relapse that troubled her most. She left me in a recovery mode and I blew it. Of all the people in the world, I least want to hurt Kathleen. Loving and being loved by her is the one great achievement of my life, even if it was a gift. I can always say, "I got the thing in life I most wanted--Kathleen." That is my ultimate fallback point when the hounds of perpetual failure savage my mind.
-4,
CE
Monday, February 05, 2007
Poem: Absence; More on Relapse
My rough draft of a poem, below, obviously owes something to one of my favorites by Mark Strand, though his is more cheerful:
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
-- Mark Strand
**********************
Absence
Seeing a house, you cry
because it is not your house.
You wish you could be as useful
as the men in orange vests
spearing trash along the road:
you are the absence of usefulness.
You cry because Diego divorced Frida;
You cry because they remarried.
You cry because the berries on the viburnum
have been exhausted by the birds.
You are the tree emptied of berries.
Whatever is is what you are not.
You are smaller than the tiniest fly.
No, you are the absence of the fly.
You weep for the loss
of not being something,
of not having anything.
(There are things you have
but they are not yours.)
You are without memory,
purpose or pleasure,
the imprint of a discarded doll
on the roadside dirt,
the doll long gone.
At best (and you cannot receive this)
you are the necessary contrast:
a black and starless heaven,
the desert leached of color,
the outline of the ocean
imagined and forgotten;
not the hollow of a clam
but the absence of the hollow.
You weep because you are not the sand.
You weep because your wife is deaf.
Yet if you could give your hearing to her
it would not be your hearing.
You are the loss of hearing,
the vacuum where dead nerves twine.
You are the loss of this poem.
My crying spells tend to come in the late morning or afternoon, though today I began crying early when someone called for Kathleen and I told them to e-mail her because she is deaf. I began to cry over her deafness.
It is not themes that make me cry; it is only my melancholy responding to something that touches it for a moment--I am ready to cry at the silliest things, so it is not that I cry for them, but find in them a sufficient nudge to weep. Most of all I feel such severe disappointment in myself that I can hardly bear it. I am reminded of the women with a persistent hemorrhage who touched the hem of Christ's robe and was healed; he noticed power go out from him and was greatly impressed by her faith. I would not have the courage to do that, not even to grab the heel of the woman's sandal as she reached. I would stand at the outskirts, unworthy of healing, unworthy of anything. This disease macerates self-esteem. Although I did much good on my recent trip to my daughters, that was just the familiar father role. I never let them see me cry.
Sometimes I get angry and "refuse to be depressed." But yesterday while swimming at the gym I was crying into my goggles. I thought that ironic, as swim goggles are supposed to keep the water out.
One thing: I am more comfortable in my weeping, at least at home or when not in view of others. I am better at accepting it. It hurts as deeply as any real loss, but if I allow it to proceed, it doesn't worsen my mood any. It's just a symptom of depression, like thirst is a symptom of diabetes. That my disease wreaks havoc with my emotions and world view is the difficult part; to view all that as symptoms is a difficult dance. But over the years I have gotten better at it.
I feel like apologizing to the reader that I have relapsed. I had almost two good weeks if nothing else. I do have a visit with my shrink tomorrow, luckily. What more he can do I don't know.
-4 (four kilorats),
CE
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
-- Mark Strand
**********************
Absence
Seeing a house, you cry
because it is not your house.
You wish you could be as useful
as the men in orange vests
spearing trash along the road:
you are the absence of usefulness.
You cry because Diego divorced Frida;
You cry because they remarried.
You cry because the berries on the viburnum
have been exhausted by the birds.
You are the tree emptied of berries.
Whatever is is what you are not.
You are smaller than the tiniest fly.
No, you are the absence of the fly.
You weep for the loss
of not being something,
of not having anything.
(There are things you have
but they are not yours.)
You are without memory,
purpose or pleasure,
the imprint of a discarded doll
on the roadside dirt,
the doll long gone.
At best (and you cannot receive this)
you are the necessary contrast:
a black and starless heaven,
the desert leached of color,
the outline of the ocean
imagined and forgotten;
not the hollow of a clam
but the absence of the hollow.
You weep because you are not the sand.
You weep because your wife is deaf.
Yet if you could give your hearing to her
it would not be your hearing.
You are the loss of hearing,
the vacuum where dead nerves twine.
You are the loss of this poem.
My crying spells tend to come in the late morning or afternoon, though today I began crying early when someone called for Kathleen and I told them to e-mail her because she is deaf. I began to cry over her deafness.
It is not themes that make me cry; it is only my melancholy responding to something that touches it for a moment--I am ready to cry at the silliest things, so it is not that I cry for them, but find in them a sufficient nudge to weep. Most of all I feel such severe disappointment in myself that I can hardly bear it. I am reminded of the women with a persistent hemorrhage who touched the hem of Christ's robe and was healed; he noticed power go out from him and was greatly impressed by her faith. I would not have the courage to do that, not even to grab the heel of the woman's sandal as she reached. I would stand at the outskirts, unworthy of healing, unworthy of anything. This disease macerates self-esteem. Although I did much good on my recent trip to my daughters, that was just the familiar father role. I never let them see me cry.
Sometimes I get angry and "refuse to be depressed." But yesterday while swimming at the gym I was crying into my goggles. I thought that ironic, as swim goggles are supposed to keep the water out.
One thing: I am more comfortable in my weeping, at least at home or when not in view of others. I am better at accepting it. It hurts as deeply as any real loss, but if I allow it to proceed, it doesn't worsen my mood any. It's just a symptom of depression, like thirst is a symptom of diabetes. That my disease wreaks havoc with my emotions and world view is the difficult part; to view all that as symptoms is a difficult dance. But over the years I have gotten better at it.
I feel like apologizing to the reader that I have relapsed. I had almost two good weeks if nothing else. I do have a visit with my shrink tomorrow, luckily. What more he can do I don't know.
-4 (four kilorats),
CE
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Superbowl
I had a dream about the Superbowl last night in which the Bears won despite a last-second touchdown by the Colts that was disallowed, and pandemonium ensued as sides warred over the trophy. As my chances of prediction are 50/50, my vision, even if true, means nothing statistically--unless the game ends as I saw.
I don't like watching football much, though I did catch the Colts vs. Patriots game, which was excellent. I think it's the grinding inevitability of football, only occasionally punctuated by a few great plays, that keeps me from it. Except for free throws and timeouts, I find basketball infinitely preferable.
Mood same as yesterday, but I had many dreams. We ate yellow coral mushrooms for the first time. Delicious. Whether they induce more dreaming I don't know.
Thine,
CE
I don't like watching football much, though I did catch the Colts vs. Patriots game, which was excellent. I think it's the grinding inevitability of football, only occasionally punctuated by a few great plays, that keeps me from it. Except for free throws and timeouts, I find basketball infinitely preferable.
Mood same as yesterday, but I had many dreams. We ate yellow coral mushrooms for the first time. Delicious. Whether they induce more dreaming I don't know.
Thine,
CE
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Relapse; Sonnet: Not Grief
This is a picture of my daughters and I, from left: Rachel, Sarah, (Papa), and Keturah. I only post this so one can visualize them and perhaps better understand, below, why I stressed myself out so much to see them all in a week, though they are divided by long distances.
Not Grief
Here I repeat myself, relapsed again.
My heart is broken, my limp limbs are lead.
My skull’s a rotten melon. I seek the dead
Whom I imagine are beyond such pain.
But who’s to know? The strangled spirit flies
Out in the ether, desperately alone—
Or joined by friends? Or by old enemies scorned?
Jesus came back but didn’t explain the skies.
I know I am not much. I know my tears
Come at eleven o’clock. I hide them well.
No need for my deaf wife to hear my bell
That cracks and tolls, rehearsing its arrears
To God and man inside a third-rate poem;
Depression is not grief. I have no home.
Before my relapse I knew better, even though I was feeling better. First I had been taking a mild dose of a pain medication from which, when I withdraw, I often lapse into depression. I was taking only half my usual dose and tapered off gently. Still the false endorphins it fed my brain were not replaced quickly enough to arrest a downward spiral.
Meanwhile, while Kathleen went to N.Y. to visit her mother, I drove some 1700 miles to see all three of my daughters and my grandson. My eldest daughter was depressed and in need of my help; my second daughter was in her first long-term relationship and I had yet to meet her beau; and my youngest had just turned 18 and I wanted to give her a gift and take her to dinner. While driving south to LA from the Sacramento area my crying spells returned. Throughout the trip I allowed no one to see that side of me. I refused to be depressed and acted normally. Even today, when the tears hit, I held them back until Kathleen went upstairs.
Complicating these facts was also a mild viral infection mainly expressed in donations to the plumbing.
So:
1) Stressful trip, much too much to take on in my fragile condition, though justified by my daughters’ needs, I thought.
2) Playing with the fire of pain medication, simply inexcusable—though when your mood improves, as mine had, you think you can risk things you shouldn’t.
3) A viral infection, which, though mild, can often re-awaken depression.
The overconfidence of euthymia, or normal mood, thus effectively threw me back into depression. Still there’s some anger about the recurrence, and the attitude that “I refuse to be depressed” seems of some utility because I am not as deep down as I could be. Anger is much better than sorrow in overcoming depression.
Naturally, my relapse interrupts my ambition to speak about poetry more broadly. And having had seven rejections in a row, including contests in which I did not even place, doesn’t help my opinion of my art. To be fair, my art is not best represented by the formal poems I write here as an act of sanity, but by free verse pieces you can find throughout the net.
At two kilorats (-2 on a scale of -10 to +10),
Thine,
CE
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