[New-Poetry] Capps, style, etc.

[Mccall, Steven NAVAIR]

Why doe the enjambment get so screwed up when we send these??? 

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Mccall, Steven
NAVAIR
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 14:06
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Capps, style, etc.

David,

Nice Strand poem.  I've been rereading James Longenbach's "Threshold"
this week, such dexterous poems, like this one:

BURGLARY

It's not the violation but the weight
Of everything left behind: dark clouds
Reciprocate the nothing in your eyes
With the suspicion there's nothing missing
Under surfaces.  A finch abandons
What she built in the ailanthus and if
You were a bird you'd leave here too-
Leave all the things not yet accumulated,
One white ribbon dangling from the nest.
Consult the memory for a scene more
Welcoming than this: dawn so scarlet
Off the island, once, you prayed although
You hadn't said a prayer since childhood.
Whatever can't be stolen can't be owned
But even thoughts like these are miserly
And what remains may never be accounted for.
A wine glass found weeks later in the woods.
The telephone, dead when you pick it up,
Sky a thousand different shades of gray-
Hello?  Hello?  Who measures out the value
Of accumulation, who can tell
You when it's gone?  Broken window or
A blur of wings above empty mouths:
Please make a list of everything you own.

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of David Graham
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 12:55
To: NewPoetry & Views
Subject: [New-Poetry] Capps, style, etc.

Jim Finnegan's take on Ashley Capps's poem is close to mine:  it was a
nice bit of fun, I thought, by a poet I'd not heard till very recently.
Frisky stuff, taking some interesting swerves with figure and diction.  

But I've been reflecting a bit lately on one of the many fault lines
that occurs in poetry, contemporary or otherwise.  I'm thinking of the
distinction between plain style poetry and that which is more
rhetorically charged--"The Red Wheelbarrow," say, versus "A Refusal to
Mourn."  I suppose that the downside and upside of each style are well
enough known.  And it's not as if we need to pledge allegiance to one or
the other.  Certainly I am not willing to abandon either style, myself;
depending on my mood, I reach for Williams or Thomas, often in the same
hour, and in my writing life I wander this way and that ad lib.  

But I will say that, as someone who reads a great deal of contemporary
poetry, I am probably a bit of  a sucker for the high-voltage style when
encountering new voices.  Maybe I am too easily seduced by friskiness,
or too often.  That's one of my weaknesses as reader, probably.

But when I wade through page after page (or screen after screen) of
decorous, even-keeled diction, poems that are perfectly unified tonally
and well managed in their movements, I often find myself yearning for
some rough edges, bad behavior, and even flirtation with all the usual
no-nos (sentimentality, purple rhetoric, incoherence, etc.).  I've
always liked Hugo's (?) remark that any poem not risking sentimentality
wasn't doing its job.  Of course, I don't want the poem to *succumb* to
incoherence, etc., just to do enough of a fly-over to raise my pulse
rate above Jaded.

I've seen enough of Ashley Capps's work recently to know that she's
someone I want to keep my eye on.  Whether or not she'll enter my
pantheon, I don't know or care at this point.  

Anyway, here's what I would propose as a good solid poem from the other
end of the stylistic spectrum, which, after my little Capps fest, I
found myself really savoring.  

Fiction

 

I think of the innocent lives
Of people in novels who know they'll die But not that the novel will
end. How different they are From us. Here, the moon stares dumbly down,
Through scattered clouds, onto the sleeping town, And the wind rounds up
the fallen leaves, And somebody-namely me-deep in his chair, Riffles the
pages left, knowing there's not Much time for the man and woman in the
rented room, For the red light over the door, for the iris Tossing its
shadow against the wall; not much time For the soldiers under the trees
that line The river, for the wounded being hauled away To the cities of
the interior where they will stay; The war that raged for years will
come to a close, And so will everything else, except for a presence Hard
to define, a trace, like the scent of grass After a night of rain or the
remains of a voice That lets us know without spelling it out Not to
despair; if the end is come, it too will pass.

 

--Mark Strand.  The Continuous Life.  Knopf, 1990.

 




========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
==========================================




_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry