[New-Poetry] 8. Re: Bly, the Fierce, Wright, the Strange (David Bircumshaw)

elemenope at icubed.com elemenope at icubed.com
Wed Nov 22 23:01:31 EST 2006 

Here is the poem in question.  I'm sure you'll appreciate the Marvell
echo, Dave.  It was written in 1963.  Therefore, Bly was not actually
astonished when Wright recited it that night in the late 1960s.

Richard

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses,
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over,
Looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

--

James Wright
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 04:27:48 -0000
> From: "David Bircumshaw" <david.bircumshaw at ntlworld.com>
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] RE: Bly, the Fierce, Wright, the Strange
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;	Views"
> 	<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Message-ID: <000501c70b93$133c1070$95c10556 at rayuv8pcloxi9v>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Dear Serious Richard
>
> you're Wrong, it isn't Wright!
>
> (hoi, what I'm really interested in au moment is finding out how to get a
> clockwork Laurel and Hardy, I have my agents commissioned on the quest,
> grin)
>
> All the Best
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <elemenope at icubed.com>
> To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 11:19 PM
> Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Bly, the Fierce, Wright, the Strange
>
>
>> Birc -
>>
>> Jealous of me?  It's been my little business to bear witness to many.
>> But, that's not the point.
>> It's Wright.  Are you jealous of Wright?
>>
>> Me?  Frankly, I was not jealous of him.  Terrified, rather.
>>
>> R - -
>>
>>
>>
>> > Message: 3
>> > Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 06:24:58 -0000
>> > From: "David Bircumshaw" <david.bircumshaw at ntlworld.com>
>> > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Bly, the Fierce, Wright, the Strange
>> > To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
>> > <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> > Message-ID: <000901c70a11$1c907720$95c10556 at rayuv8pcloxi9v>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>> >
>> > Richard
>> >
>> > I'm jealous: that you saw Wright read. I'm a fan (but not of Bly)
>> >
>> > Best
>> >
>> > Dave
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: <elemenope at icubed.com>
>> > To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> > Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 4:46 AM
>> > Subject: [New-Poetry] Bly, the Fierce, Wright, the Strange
>> >
>> >
>> >> Cris,
>> >>
>> >> When this happened, i.e., when Wright spoke that line, I remember
>> >> distinctly that a strange mad truth had been uttered.  Everybody in
>> the
>> >> hall was looking at him, including Bly.  Wright's eyes were black
> ovals,
>> >> fierce, and he was SEATED, at a remove, a distance from everybody,
>> >> including Bly.  Bly loomed in his Indian poncho across the stage,
> turned
>> >> 90 degrees from the audience toward this man in arctic white shirt,
>> >> straight dropped down black tie.  There wasn't anything one could do
>> >> about
>> >> this man's dilemma, leaning out from our seats unable to touch him.
>> >> Wright was a serious character, an electric aura surrounded him like
>> a
>> >> photographic negative.  Bly had introduced him as the most
>> significant
>> >> living poet.  I remember thinking, "I wonder if Dabney Stuart is here
>> >> witnessing this?"  I can't prove it but I believe that Bly had never
>> >> heard
>> >> the poem before this moment, although he was Wright's champion and
>> >> publisher in his magazine, "The Sixties."   Bly had explained part of
>> >> his
>> >> theory regarding  "Leaping Poetry."   Upon the stage watched by all
>> >> those
>> >> aristocratic Southern women was a potent, defiant demonstration of
>> this
>> >> theory, hanging in the air like a smoke ring of dry ice.  Caught Bly
>> >> flatfooted.
>> >>
>> >> It was an intense night.  Bly also hit us with: "Johnson's Cabinet
>> >> Watched
>> >> By Ants."  As we say these days, a student of literature might be
>> able
>> >> to
>> >> get their head around one of these figures, but the two of them out
>> up
>> >> there in the spotlights staring at the stage lights hitting them was
>> >> simply out of mental reach.
>> >>
>> >> I just remembered (perhaps) the title of Wright's poem:
>> >>
>> >> "Lying In A Hammock On William Duffy's Farm"
>> >>
>> >> RD
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Message: 6
>> >> Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 10:44:12 -0500
>> >> From: cheekc <cheekc at muohio.edu>
>> >> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Bly, the Fierce, Wright, the Strange
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> indeed Richard,
>> >>
>> >> but what a way to waste it;)
>> >>
>> >> love and love
>> >> cris
>> >>
>> >> On Nov 7, 2006, at 4:58 PM, elemenope at icubed.com wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > I remember when Bly and Wright appeared on the same stage at
>> >> > Sweetbriar
>> >> > College in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
>> >> > Bly in serape introduced Wright in white shirt black tie as the
>> >> > greatest
>> >> > living poet.
>> >> > Wright recalled the poem wherein he announces while musing on a
>> lawn
>> >> littered with whatnot that he because of poetry has wasted his life.
>> RD
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 09:56:42 +0000
> From: "Roger Day" <rog3r.day at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In our dark times we need poetry more than
> 	ever,	argues Adrienne Rich
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp,	Views"
> 	<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Message-ID:
> 	<fde503480611190156g414bb25fj8d67db94940f326f at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> For Americans and the West, true. But don't get too cosy in your
> duvet-covers - disease and genocide still stalk other bits of our
> planet. I hear they've some bad times in Iraq. So, for the Empire and
> it's allies, everything's jim-dandy, and I'm whistling while I work
> this unseasonable November. For those considered dangerous to the
> Imperial well-being, well, welcome to hard times.
>
> Roger
>
> On 11/19/06, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Gotcha.  Makes sense.  From that perspective, I agree.
>>
>>
>> Good grief, I'm not starting to make sense, am I?!
>>
>> --Bob
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> http://www.badstep.net/
> "Hello Cleveland! Hello Cleveland!"
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 10:43:54 -0600
> From: David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu>
> Subject: [New-Poetry] In our dark times
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp"
> 	<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Message-ID: <19D3535B-4E5C-4439-80FC-D0B13C574C10 at ripon.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I have great respect for Adrienne Rich and read her always with
> interest.  Her essay linked below is worth pondering, and is much
> more intelligent and subtle than any "we live in dark times" summary--
> the phrase is quoted from Brecht, in any event, and Rich's argument
> is not that we live in dark times so much as an apology for the value
> of poetry in any times.
>
> Here's a relevant paragraph from Rich:
>
> "I'm both a poet and one of the "everybodies" of my country. I live
> with manipulated fear, ignorance, cultural confusion and social
> antagonism huddling together on the faultline of an empire. I hope
> never to idealise poetry -- it has suffered enough from that. Poetry
> is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic
> aromatherapy. Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual,
> nor a billboard. There is no universal Poetry, anyway, only poetries
> and poetics, and the streaming, intertwining histories to which they
> belong. There is room, indeed necessity, for both Neruda and César
> Valléjo, for Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alfonsina Storni, for both Ezra
> Pound and Nelly Sachs. Poetries are no more pure and simple than
> human histories are pure and simple. And there are colonised poetics
> and resilient poetics, transmissions across frontiers not easily
> traced."
>
> Still, the idea that we live in particularly dire times, historically
> speaking, is so common that it does deserve a skeptical glance.  I
> agree with Bob Grumman on this, which I hope doesn't dismay him too
> much.
>
> I also hope that he doesn't mind agreeing with Robert Frost, who, way
> back in 1935, smack dab in the middle of that famously low, dishonest
> decade, expressed his own skepticism as follows:
>
> "But speaking of ages, you will often hear it said that the age of
> the world we live in is particularly bad.  I am impatient of such
> talk.   We have no way of knowing that this age is one of the worst
> in the world's history.  Arnold claimed the honor for the age before
> this.  Wordsworth claimed it for the last but one.  And so on back
> through literature.  I say they claimed the honor for their ages.
> They claimed it rather for themselves.  It is immodest of a man to
> think of himself as going down before the worst forces ever mobilized
> by God."
>   --Robert Frost.  "Letter to The Amherst Student."  25 March 1935.
> -----
>
> The risk of much self-consciously political poetry, as I believe Rich
> well knows, is just this:  it is immodest.  It makes a claim for the
> *poet* that overshadows other matters.
>
>
>
> On Nov 18, 2006, at 4:12 PM, <JforJames at aol.com> <JforJames at aol.com>
> wrote:
>
>> http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329635373-110738,00.html
>>
>> Legislators of the world
>> Commentary In our dark times we need poetry more than ever, argues
>> Adrienne Rich
>>
>> Adrienne Rich
>> Saturday November 18, 2006
>>
>
> ==========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ==========================================
>
>
>
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