[lit-ideas] Re: another really old poem
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:35:32 EDT
Okay, Erin, let me explain this to you. My whole house looks like a war
zone. It needs a bull-dozer. But there are two places; my back bathroom and
my
kitchen, which look like a maid lives there. Flowers, plants, pristine, you
could eat off any surface. The rest of the house? Should be condemned.
Isolated perfection is the most some of us can hope for. General mediocrity
doesn't cut it. Does that help your paper? I can send you photos of the
Martha Stewart worthy two rooms and the other trailer-trash rooms. Actually,
I
was trying to make my living room work today but the TV was 4" too tall for
the
entertainment center space and I can't cut the TV down and I'm looking on
the internet for carpentry advice for adjusting shelves to which hinged doors
are attached. Have I mentioned that I would rather be reading Candide than
sorting ancient books like "The Modern Woman's Health", written in 1945? How
do you get rid of books? I will not burn or trash them. You wouldn't believe
the diagrams of a foetus in 1945. Or what it says about masturbation. Or
sexual responsibility. Dear God in Heaven. And then there's the book I
found on Etiquette, from 1937. I'm forcing my children to read the chapter on
Childrens' table manners. Why are these things in my house??? Did I ask them
here? Did I call them? Did I purchase them? Did they follow me home one
day, insidiously? What about the autobiography of Neil Young, which largely
details his swimming naked on acid? Why do I have this? There's only one
answer. Someone broke into my house one day and planted tons of junk, just to
make me think I'm crazy. It's working. There's even a book on Interior
Decorating from the 1950's which would scare anyone on this list. I can scan
photos in colour, if requested......(put your sunglasses on).
And those are the innocuous things I've been finding.
Julie Krueger
finally knowing Fear
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: another really
old poem Date: 4/11/05 11:17:35 P.M. Central Daylight Time From:
_erin.holder@xxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:erin.holder@xxxxxxxxxxx) To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
I can see my paper now... "The Psychology of System Writing"
Erin
TO
----- Original Message -----
From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 12:14 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: another really old poem
Cuz anal-retentive OCD rebellious anti-authoritarian types really, really
hate randomness, unless it's of their own making. And then they're
compelled
to fix it. Just so they have something to create chaos out of again.
Don't
ask. Just don't ask.
Julie Krueger
alternating between Total Order and Total Chaos
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: another really
old
poem Date: 4/11/05 9:25:21 P.M. Central Daylight Time From:
_erin.holder@xxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:erin.holder@xxxxxxxxxxx) To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
Why do things need a common thread? Are you sure you're not from the 19th
century?
Erin
Toronto
----- Original Message -----
From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 10:04 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: another really old poem
I've wondered myself at what the common thread is that ties together the
poetry that compels me. Usually it's contemporary, but not always.
Usually
it's edgy, but not always. What commonality do Sharon Olds, Naomi Shiab
Nye
(god, I'd forgotten about her!), James Wright, Paz, Neruda, Cummings,
Sexton
(NOT Plath!), Eliot, Rilke, Celan have? Somehow I think all my poets
manage to
communicate the spiritual, sometimes entirely abstractly, and sometimes
via
the entirely quotidian and mundane. Btw, would anyone here consider
Edmund
Jabes to be a poet? There is certainly poetry in some of his books ....
Levinas? I do know that I have an aversion to the Robert Frostian poets.
They
strike me as saccharine and soft, pablum. Does that make me cynical?
Jaded?
Simply ignorant? Probably all three.
Julie Krueger
always trying to quantify & organize and it doesn't work ....there ain't
no
unified field theory.
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: another really
old poem Date: 4/11/05 12:50:45 A.M. Central Daylight Time From:
_atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
Old poems by a young poet. Poetry as documentary. That's what I'd like
to
investigate. Picking up any collected work, I'm always intrigued whether
I'll like the young passionate poet (sometimes the young pretentious
poet),
the ironic middleaged one (sometimes the besotted one) or the old,
crochety,
dispassionate, wise one (sometimes the passionate one). I wish I had kept
better notes. But in fact, I've kept none at all. I'm guessing that my
preferences probably varied with my own stage of life at the moment. But
I
don't know that. I know that much of the very early Merwin I dislike -- I
think he was trying to prove he could write what everyone else was writing
at the time, but then he suddenly went his own way, nevertheless, his way
has continued to change. How he writes now is very different from pieces
like Departure's Girlfriend, which I posted earlier. I love that poem and
chose it because the images are so vivid but the theme and its emotional
content are not so readily analyzable, you're not exactly sure what's
going
on. Even the title itself is more complex than I like to get on an
average
day. I wish I had the time to sit down and really go through his works
and
trace the aesthetic and psychological development in him -- but who would
take care of all these air conditioning problems if I did that? Choices,
choices, choices. Err on the side of comfort, I always say. And no
doubt,
some day some dissertation-hungry English major will pick up the collected
works of Eric Yost and do just such a tracing out of his life. And
perhaps
in his research he'll uncover this post wherein I confess to much
fellow-feeliing and kinship with these two poems. Remembering how I too
once would release bugs back into the world where they belonged -- which
sure as hell wasn't my world! -- rather than annihilate them. They have
as
much right to be here as I do, after all. But now, I'm more like William
Stafford:
Travelling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
the road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason --
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I coud hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all -- my only swerving --
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
***
And though your soul screams No! in thunder, there you are, always the
prisonier of choices. So Eric like I, like so many lovers of life saved
countless millipedes for the epicurean delight of shrews, frogs, lizards,
bettles and birds. But our hearts were in the right place. I'm sure of
that. Spiders though, I'll kill without thinking.
Twenty years ago I used to love to watch The Young Ones -- a BBC comedy
series if you're not familiar with it. Four college guys living together
(in England). A hippy, a lady's man, an anarchist and a punk rocker. It
was quite absurd and hopelessly silly, but I loved it wildly. Nevermind
that I was 42 years old then and cracking up like a teenager. I should
have
been embarrassed. Arrested development and all that. But I wasn't. I
chose to believe that when something comes alive in you, it's its own
justification -- there's no need to explain anything. You just go with
it,
goddamnit. That's what poetry can be, I think. You can love a poem that
you know you don't understand, but still feel it speaking to you at some
level, rhythm, euphony, perhaps only in an image that grabs you by the
shirt
front and shakes you, something there in the language that shouts Listen
up.
The late Victorians thought that poetry would one day replace religion.
What a terrible thing that would be. There's no claim of truth in poetry,
no grounding, no ethical/moral prescriptions, just fascination and wonder
and fun and enormous sorrow.
OK, Sunday's over now. No more sermonizing. Sorry.
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Yost" <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2005 10:31 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] another really old poem
> One Idea
>
> No ideas but in things like ideas;
> no things but in ideas of things.
> The millipede climbing a lemon peel
> on a dusty red carpet is a thing
> without ideas, but an idea
> of a thing gives me the idea
> to crush the thing, outlined,
> as it is, by the soft white pulp
> of the lemon peel, outlined as
> the idea of something out of place,
> its legs flexing, eyelash thin, reckoning
> between yellow rind and white pulp.
> The idea of the millipede touches
> my idea of myself. I grab lemon peel
> and millipede with a paper towel,
> carry it outside into a night of crickets
> and stars. I place them on a flower bed
> and go back inside. My idea was
> to be a person who returned both things
> to their proper place with respect.
> I see the lemon peel next morning.
> I never understand the millipede.
> Has it found a home? Have I?
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
