[New-Poetry] Re: Ultra-Talk

Tue Jun 26 16:37:48 EDT 2007

David-

I should have read your essay in Valparaiso before asking a question. I am
looking forward to doing so shortly.

www.valpo.edu/English/vpr/grahamultra.html

-----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: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 3:24 PM
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Ultra-Talk

A few thoughts on a topic I'd love to linger more over, when there's time. .
. .

What lifts a poem to "ultra" level, as opposed to just "plain" talk is of
course a key question.  Not sure it can be defined, though, any more than
one can define "the lyric" or explain swing in jazz.  My method in my
Halliday essay was to try to approach the question via example--three poems
by Halliday that I would rate as sub-ultra, ultra, and super-ultra, as it
were.  

But honestly, I'm more interested in other questions these days, such as
what can an UT poem do that a more chiseled, understated lyric cannot?  I
came up through a workshop culture that prized, above all, the tightly
buttoned down lyric.  Partly I think that that's because it's usually
possible to suggest cutting in draft poems; it's a relatively easy workshop
approach, easy to master, and does improve most drafts.  And if one's
aesthetic centers around sprawl, then certainly the issue of how to tell
good blurt from bad blurt is crucial.

But are there positive virtues in the UT poem?  In what sense can it offer
not just random sprawl, but luxury, increased connectivity, layerings, and
so forth?  I think that Allen Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara, to pick two well
known poets, each wrote a great deal of boring, trivial, and pointless
verse.  But something happens when they hit their groove:  they can achieve
a certain quality that, for all their splendors, poets like Lowell or Plath
simply cannot.  

It's not a matter of better/worse, but different, as I see it.  Not
either/or but both/and.  I do love Dickinson's reticence, concision, and so
forth; but increasingly I also luxuriate in Whitman's sprawl.  And a number
of UT poets (Halliday, Kirby & Goldbarth, for three) strike me as among the
best going, offering both depth and entertainment in unusual measure.

I do think one can sprawl in shorter poems, and quoted an example or two in
my essay.  It also seems, though current UT poets are mainly arrayed at the
free-est end of the spectrum, that one can sprawl in rime & meter.  Think
Vikram Seth.  

All definitions break down if you push them too hard.  For example, I think
James Tate & Dean Young, poets I do admire, are up to something different
from Halliday & Kirby, for the most part, but of course there is some
definite affinity there, often in tone.  Hoagland is more like Halliday than
Young, I often think.  

Halliday in his essay on Kirby makes a distinction between "disjunctive" and
"hyperjunctive" that I find intriguing.

There was a panel a few years back at AWP on the New York School poets &
their influence.  Can't remember if it was Billy Collins or David Lehman,
but one of the panelists made much of Coleridge as precursor to poets like
O'Hara & Koch.  Makes a lot of sense to me.  I talk a bit about this in my
essay, adding poets like Whitman to the roster.

And just to clarify:  David Kirby's essay collection *Ultra-Talk* is
splendid indeed, but is not for the most part *about* UT poetry.  I just
felt like plugging it; and after all, Kirby is in his poems pretty much the
UT poster boy. . . .  I also highly recommend his new-and-selected, titled
*The House on Boulevard Street*.  

========================================

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

==========================================

On Jun 26, 2007, at 2:13 PM, jforjames at aol.com wrote:

David,
How about Marcia Southwick? 
http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/ncw/southsel.htm
Tony Hoagland and Dean Young?

The bigger question is: What gets the poem up to the level of ultra; what
raises it above some random ramblings on/about insignificant aspects of
one's life? (You didn't say what you thought of the example poem from the
chapbook prize winner?) 

Certainly there is generally an 'effusive' or a 'frenetic' quality about the
poetry, with lots of unexpected segues and digressions, and usually some
humorous/askance takes on the various things within the poet's wide-ranging
purview, and sometimes a heady mix diction.

Is 'ultra talk' always humorous or 'breezy'? Is there jaded or dour ultra
talk?

Is 'ultra talk' ever short? Or does it need a certain length to really get
itself revved up?

Finnegan
http://www.ursprache.blogspot.com/

On Jun 26, 2007, at 11:58 AM, jforjames at aol.com wrote:

I've overheard better poetry at Starbucks than this...

Someone coined that term 'ultra-talk' poetry, so maybe
we need a new classification, 'infra-talk' poetry.
Finnegan

=======================

Always happy to talk Ultra-Talk. . . .   Mark Halliday coined the term,
applying it to the poems of David Kirby in a review in *Parnassus*.  I wrote
an essay about the concept, centered around Halliday's work but meditating a
bit on a mode of poetry that seems particularly interesting these days.  It
appeared in Ed Byrne's wonderful *Valparaiso Poetry Review*, which I am also
always ready to plug:  

http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/grahamultra.html

>From my perspective, ultra-talkers would include poets such as Halliday,
Kirby, Barbara Hamby, Albert Goldbarth, David Lehman, Denise Duhamel, Billy
Collins sometimes, Bernadette Mayer, and many others.  Antecedents in Frank
O'Hara & Kenneth Koch, and before that, way back to Coleridge's conversation
poems.

Most recently, David Kirby adopted the term for his collection of essays,
*Ultra Talk:  Johnny Cash, The Mafia, Shakespeare, St. Teresa of Avila, and
17 Other Colossal Topics of Conversation* (U Georgia 2007).  I highly
recommend this book, which is not for the most part about ultra-talk, but is
the most entertaining and bright set of essays I've read in years.  One of
the best pieces on Whitman I've ever seen, among other delights.

Kirby is also at work on a forthcoming feature in *TriQuarterly* that will
present a spread of ultra-talk poems including a few by yours truly.

========================================

David Graham

grahamd at ripon.edu

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