on jessea's question about how one reads a poem...
i know she wants some deep answer. but i realized this winter when i taught a workshop at goddard, a master poetry workshop that i hate to teach b/c i hate the idea of master poetry, i realized that i read a huge amount into the shape of poem on page. everyone had submitted these one page poems that went half way across the page and then they had a similar tone and it was annoying to me.
and then last weekend i opened this book that joel kuszai had and saw it was all poems of 12-20 lines that went half way across the page and i put it down and said this is not for me.
ron silliman had this thing on his blog about a year ago where he was reading Wesleyan U P in the early days, the days when he said it really mattered, which to him is in the negative sense. and he said this about a list of about 30 books: “The form was relatively simple – maybe one ‘major’ poem of as much as twelve pages, surrounded by a series of one-page pieces, coming to anywhere between 60 & 100 pages total &, if you were part of the ‘core’ group, one such book every three or so years.” i imagine Ron’s reading is not totally fair. but i have to admit that i often read with more interest when i see a book whose page breaks this form.
in the other class, jessea was asking of yedda, something like what if the ambiguity is too ambigious. what if we read this book and can't get the politics. and as we were talking about this i was thinking about how the fragmented form has become a certain shorthand for a certain politics. so the form would hold those who read in the tradition to a certain assumption of politics. but it might not if you don't read in the tradition.
which made me think some about what assumptions we atrophy into. i think i've atrophied against the one page poem. and then too quickly forgiven anything that does the opposite.
i know she wants some deep answer. but i realized this winter when i taught a workshop at goddard, a master poetry workshop that i hate to teach b/c i hate the idea of master poetry, i realized that i read a huge amount into the shape of poem on page. everyone had submitted these one page poems that went half way across the page and then they had a similar tone and it was annoying to me.
and then last weekend i opened this book that joel kuszai had and saw it was all poems of 12-20 lines that went half way across the page and i put it down and said this is not for me.
ron silliman had this thing on his blog about a year ago where he was reading Wesleyan U P in the early days, the days when he said it really mattered, which to him is in the negative sense. and he said this about a list of about 30 books: “The form was relatively simple – maybe one ‘major’ poem of as much as twelve pages, surrounded by a series of one-page pieces, coming to anywhere between 60 & 100 pages total &, if you were part of the ‘core’ group, one such book every three or so years.” i imagine Ron’s reading is not totally fair. but i have to admit that i often read with more interest when i see a book whose page breaks this form.
in the other class, jessea was asking of yedda, something like what if the ambiguity is too ambigious. what if we read this book and can't get the politics. and as we were talking about this i was thinking about how the fragmented form has become a certain shorthand for a certain politics. so the form would hold those who read in the tradition to a certain assumption of politics. but it might not if you don't read in the tradition.
which made me think some about what assumptions we atrophy into. i think i've atrophied against the one page poem. and then too quickly forgiven anything that does the opposite.
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