[New-Poetry] Deborah Garrison

[David Graham]

It's easy to romanticize behavior and attitudes in poetry that we would
typically shy away from in life, isn't it?  In any case, there's often a
difference between what we like on the page and what we like in "reality."

The challenges of domestic poetry like Garrison's are clear enough, I think.
At some point a poem hewing close to mundane experience risks becoming
merely a mundane poem.  That said, I like the effort, and am temperamentally
in favor of what Garrison is up to, even if she doesn't always score.  The
poetry of extremity (e.g. Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath) lost most of its
glamor for me long ago.

Philip Larkin is typically sharp on this theme:


 
Poetry of Departures
 
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move. 
 
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
Its specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said 
 
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me stay
Sober and industrious,
But I'd go today, 
 
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

--Philip Larkin


On 4/3/07 10:55 AM, "Suzanne Burns" <queenmouse at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 4/1/07, Linda Sue Grimes <suelin7184 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'll take the "sweet one" over the "strange mother" even in writing.  Sorry,
>> Emily--your preference for the bi-polar goddess is weird and a tad
>> unbelievable. (No pun intended.)
> 
> Call me weird then.  I will always vote for the strange mother-- and yes even
> the bi-polar goddess, especially in art and writing.  Sweet ones with their
> doilies and cookies-- feh.  I'll eat the cookies but I don't want to read
> their poems. 
> 
> Suzanne
>  
> 
> 
> 
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====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/academics/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/academics/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================



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