Rickey Laurentiis' "Study in Black"

In the current issue of Poetry, I read Rickey Laurentiis poems, among which "Study in Black" is particularly striking.

The epigraph," Tu Fu, 'Thoughts While Traveling at Night,'" prepares us for the nature imagery. But Laurentiis' use of unusual line lengths, line breaks, appositives, double dashes, alternating long and short lines and indentation take us into the meditative space of not just Tu Fu but this particular speaker who sees his words as limiting. Not just that. But the speaker calls himself a "spook bird" a violent image of poet and bird roped and alone, rotting.

Ironically, the whole poem has a lightness to it like the "wind in the grass" we are introduced to in the opening line--the lightness is maintianed in phrases like "there here," and the amazing number of internal rhymes--"down"-"ground," "wonder"-"plainer," "injuries"-"me," "know"-"solo"-"roped;" off-rhymes as in "boat"-"mast"-"night," "moon"-"skin," and assonance as in "fame"-"age," "injuries."

 

Although the poet tries not to be dark in the beginning, the poem inevitably arrives there. The sky is a solemn witness. Is this what we feel like when we cannot produce art?

Janet Krauss' "The Lamppost," selected by the Wickford Art Association for their poetry/art event

The Lamppost

Nothing can go wrong tonight---

the lamppost keeps watch,

a yeoman of the guard

making sure we won't stumble,

lighting up the fresh snow

along the sidewalk, the stage

where the snowcapped posts

of the fence stand ready

to dance as the tree lifts

its white gloved branches

toward the light in silent song.
--Janet Krauss 

Janet Krauss' poem packs in much emotion in a few lines. Beginning with the opening line with its firm tone, "Nothing can go wrong tonight," we are made ready to receive the beauty of the world, not pain or sorrow. The lamppost has a role to play here--it is witness to the dance of nature mirroring the joy of the speaker whose inner life is shaped by the beauty around her. The poem invites us to be selective about what brings us happiness--snow capped fence posts ready to dance, the tree lifting its white gloved branches, fresh snow on the sidewalk, and the silent song behind these images. 

Note the quiet tread of the syllables--so many single syllable words like "watch," guard," "snow," "posts" at every line break--as if the words were walking the snow-covered page of the poem, leaving their prints! And on this wintery stage of the poem, the words are spoken in a single sentence. Will a fresh snowfall cover these words?

W.S. Merwin's unpunctuated lines

I am indeed intrigued by the flow of Merwin's poems. The lack of punctuation does not hinder us from reading his poems. In fact the absence of punctuation creates a natural flow of breath that is calming. Each poem feels like a wind that has gently swept around you.
How does he do this? If we look at his poem, "The Latest Thing," the main clause in the first line that runs to the middle of the second, is followed by two subordinate clauses, which ends I imagine with a colon, because what follows is a list. This is followed by a complete sentence. And there are no punctuation marks to indicate any of this, but the absence of punctuation does not hinder our understanding of the poem.
The opening lines are intriguing: In the cities the birds are forgotten /among other things but then one could say /that the cities are made of absences / of what disappeared..."
We catch are breath a little before the end of the poem in "one white note plays on to prevent memory",
then the final line, "naturally forgetting its own song".

Vijay Seshadri's "Imaginary Number"

I was pleasantly surprised when I heard last month that Vijay Sashadri won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his book Three Sections. I have ordered the book and am waiting eagerly for it to arrive. In the meanwhile, I am reading some of his poems on the web. One poem that is included in Three Sections and was published a few years ago in Poetry, is "Imaginary Number." It reminds me of poems by Dickinson and Anna Swir, the ease with which they talked about the soul, as if it was their best friend out taking a walk or a child that was up to some mischief. "Imaginary Number" begins with a planetary devastation that leaves only a mountain standing, which therefore challenges the idea of comparisons--big/small, since the there is nothing to compare the mountain to, resulting in the soul feeling appeased. But the poet is not satisfied at voicing this profound philosophical truth that comparisons are relative, they create stress for human beings, and the disappearance of comparisons spells relief. The poet's insight occurs in the turn of the poem:

"The soul,

like the square root of minus 1,

is an impossibility that has its uses."

We are left contemplating the following questions: What is the square root of minus 1? Is the soul an impossibility? Is it an impossibility because it is intangible? Is the soul useless or useful? When does the soul become useful? What are the instances of its uselessness? 

 I like to think that poetry is refreshingly useless.  But poetry could have its uses--such as diverting you from suicide (as happens in The Hours when Laura upon reading Mrs. Dalloway changes her mind about committing suicide). The soul--unlike poetry--is intangible, impossible, has no this-ness, no substance, but keeps us together despite our near-devastating experience of being flung between our largeness and our smallness, between what-a-piece-of-work-is-man and a-tale-told-by-an-idiot-signifying-nothing.

Walt Whitman's Wheeling Eagles

I came across a poem of Whitman I had not read earlier, "The Dalliance of the Eagles." I had somehow missed it in my hurry to flip through the pages to "Song of Myself." Whitman captures the swift movement of eagles, the height of their soaring, and their descent. The lines are long, the verbs capturing the intricacies of the dance of these aerial bodies.  Today when I read this poem at Benner's Farm, I felt involved with the lines. The sparkling blue skies, the tall trees, sunlight streaming down, a slight chill in the air making us hug our coats around us tighter, and cattle lowing in the background--all these made this poem special. I kept peering up at the sky to spot an eagle. Perhaps Whitman's eagle would soar from the poem!

Dunya Mikhail

Dunya Mikhail
I heard Dunya read at the Dodge Festival in 2010 and found her poems stunning. She wrote about the war, about life in Iraq, about how writers met in coffee houses, about her love for language. She told us the amazing story of being separated from her lover during the war for 10 years and how they found each other, magically. And now reading her poem, "Tablets," published in the March issue of Poetry, I see once again the sparkle in the lines when she takes us to the heart of separation and longing. The land cries on the lap of the one that has left. Families want to hear more than what they are told. Language can only reveal so much, we are told in the poem. And Dunya's poem etches suffering and love in tablets so they will stand like edicts or landmarks on our path.