Poetry Reading @ Weeks Footbridge, Cambridge, 8/31/09

Pictures from the celebratory reading capping off Your Best Beach Body, the 100 day poetry challenge my friend Sarah Green put together. Readers were: me, Leora Silverman, Sarah, and Thom McCaffrey. We read on the Eliot Foot Bridge crossing the Charles in Cambridge on a lovely late summer evening as the sun set in the background. There was a crowd of maybe 30 or so -- & a few curious passersby who stopped to check it out, as well.

“What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were, and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for.”
-Philip Roth, American Pastoral

Smugglers' Notch

Got back Saturday from a week at a cottage on Vermont's Champlain Islands. With grandparents eagerly taking care of Teddy, Nikki & I got to spend a lot of time kayaking & cycling. I did a climb in the Green Mountains on Wednesday--the Smugglers' Notch loop around Mount Mansfield & through the ski town Stowe. At almost 70 miles & with over 5000 total feet of climbing, this was both the longest & steepest ride I had ever attempted. I was very pleased because I managed to complete the first 40 miles, including the climb & part of the decent, in 2.5 hours. During the last leg of the ride, long after the climbs, I hit a nasty bunch of headwinds on a road the ran parallel to a highway for about 5 miles. This wind was almost as tough as the climb! But I felt very strong all the way to the finish & felt like I could have kept going.

Mt. Mansfield

Near the summit.

The summit of Smugglers' Notch.

Nikki, Teddy & my Mom met me at a deli about 5 miles after the summit. I had a corn beef hash, cheddar & BBQ sauce sandwich & it was delicious!

We really needed this vacation as life has gotten infinitely more complicated in the last month. We found out our lease would not be renewed, so had to scramble to find an apartment. We're in the middle of a hunt for a nanny--and just found out today that the family we thought we'd do a nanny-share with may be backing out! Maddening. I thought summer was supposed to be relaxing.

soon to be a life of boxes

The rhythm of the dishwasher

The laugh track is on repeat.

Poetry aims to escape the logic of discourse.

Excellent Video Poem

Your Limbs Will Be Torn Off in a Farm Accident from Zachary Schomburg on Vimeo.

The New Things

In his newest essay in the Boston Review Stephen Burt describes what he sees as a new enclave in American poetry. I like his attempt to carve out a third way, and I really like a lot of the poets he groups together under these common features:

The new poetry, the new thing, seeks, as Williams did, well-made, attentive, unornamented things. It is equally at home (as he was) in portraits and still lifes, in epigram and quoted speech; and it is at home (as he was not) in articulating sometimes harsh judgments, and in casting backward looks. The new poets pursue compression, compact description, humility, restricted diction, and—despite their frequent skepticism—fidelity to a material and social world. They follow Williams’s “demand,” as the critic Douglas Mao put it, “both that poetry be faithful to the thing represented and that it be a thing in itself.”

However, I don't think any of these features are all that "new," and what I really object to is this ridiculous outmoded turn to objective representation. I'm not sure it's fair to unite the poets he reviews (or any poets) under this banner of fidelity "to the thing in itself." First, all poets as artists necessarily treat the poem as a thing--this stance is implied in any craft, so it should be a foregone conclusion. But then what's the deal with this turn toward naive mimesis*? I distrust the notions of "thingness," documentary accuracy and objectivity in poetry and in language in general. Faith in the representational function of language seems to entirely overlook the rift between language and the so-called objects in the world (our knowledge of which is highly problematic to begin with--i.e. how can we know the thing itself?--or are we all reverting to naive empiricism?). A sentence is not a moving picture. A noun is not a thing. Syntax does not convey the sense of being there. A verb does not perform a historical action. Language is a system overlaid on reality. Yes, it influences perception. Yes, it can provide reference points to the objective world--but as a poet and as a frequently confounded human, I for one find the "objective" world an utter mystery. This yellow wall in front of me: how its shade of yellow depends on the lamp I turn on or the time of day. How I can't look at it if I'm slightly nauseous. I can't impose a system as arbitrary as language over my experience with the wall and expect it to accurately communicate its existence in any phenomenological way. And the expectation that poetry should do such a thing is completely absurd. The existence of apparently "accurate" imagery in a poem does not make the poem any more faithful to material or social reality than surrealist juxtaposition. Imagery and accuracy are rhetorical & tonal devices just like sarcasm, irony, metaphor, etc. They just mask themselves in the invisible cloak of immediacy.

This rant has nothing to do with the poets themselves. I admire much of Armentrout's work. I absolutely love Graham Foust's books. Woodward, Massey and Johnston are all excellent poets. The thing in itself just strikes a nerve in me in myself.

*By the way, this simplification of WCW as the poet of things in themselves drives me crazy. Sure, he had a dictum about imagery (which is probably more in line with the workshop craft cliché "show don't tell"), but let's not let a slogan stand for an entire body of work that is is so diverse in tone and manner. "To Elsie" anyone? "Kora in Hell"? Even Patterson is more complicated than things in themselves...

I just found out that a poem I contributed to an Ars Poetica web project (not pictured) will be included in the print anthology Paper Kite Press is publishing.

Tour de France Pénitentiaire

So the French have a Tour de France for prisoners. Giving a convict four months of endurance training and a bicycle: Brilliant! If only Kafka were around to write this penal colony.

Writing Every Day

For the past three weeks I've been trying to write a poem every day in the spirit of the challenge that my friend Sarah put together. I've never felt the need to make writing so ritualistic. Even when I was working on my MFA, I was not committed to the idea of writing as a daily habit. Don't all habits seem like bad habits? I've only made it a priority to write every day during the residencies that I've had. At those times it just seemed like the obvious thing to do, & I've found the experience over the past three weeks totally different than working during a residency. I like the way this daily writing forces me into moves of desperation. No words flowing? Find something & repeat it over & over again. I really have to work to eke out a few lines. I also find that I'm less inclined to "write like what I'm reading" because I'm always reading something different. Or I'm busy with other things (i.e. work, fathering, etc) & not reading. My normal modus operandi is that I tend to write clusters or batches of poems that operate in a similar manner. If I'm lucky a couple of poems per cluster will be decent. But writing every day doesn't afford me the chance to dwell in the same language zone the way I do when I'm working in clusters. After three weeks of writing daily, I find that day to day my writing is more disjointed.

Attack of the Allergens

So I raced this morning. It was a points race rather than a straight crit, which means the winner isn't necessarily who comes in first at the end, but who accumulates the most points. You accumulate a point for each lap you win, & extra points on particular bonus laps. I managed to garner a whopping 2 points, but with a large field (35-40 riders?) that was enough for a tie for 3rd place. I won one lap outright & can't remember if I got the other point winning another lap or placing 3rd on a bonus lap (maybe the last?). Anyhow, this was a tough race because every lap was contested. It was also warm & sunny. I was nearly bonked after about 10 laps, so I decided to shut it down to try to recoup for the final sprint (where I could possibly win 3 points). I actually dropped to the very back of the pack for a lap & could barely hold on. I fought & fought & finally managed to sit on a wheel for a while, then worked my way back up to the front of the pack. I was in pretty good position for the final sprint & was in a 5-6 man sprint at the very end. I may have placed 3rd there, which would be where I got my 2nd point, but it was very close and I didn't bother to check with the official afterward. I guess I was kind of out of it.

The lap I won.

The sprint finish (I'm in blue on the right).

I was totally zapped at the end of this race & was a little disappointed by my conditioning, but still had an absolutely great time & that's all that matters. The best part was, Nikki, Teddy & my mom came to watch.

Now I'm in the middle of a severe allergy attack. I've been coughing & blowing my schnoz like crazy.

2 Month Check Up

We took T Bone to his 2 month check up this morning. He took the vaccinations like a champ. He was chomping on his pacifier when the first needle struck. He started to turn beet red, but by the time he was ready to let out a scream the doc had finished with the other two shots (she's good!). He let out a loud yelp/wail, but then he calmed right down. He clearly takes after his Mom in the department of tough! (i.e. 42 hour labor w/out pain meds! that's right, I brag about you, Flo).

We deliberated quite a bit about whether or not he should get all the recommended vaccinations in one fell swoop on today's visit--there is the possibility of doing an alternative schedule. In the end, after reading a bit & talking to the doctor, we decided since we're traveling par avion next week it would be safest to go ahead & fortify the little dude.

Par avion: how pretentious is that?!?!?!

Pedaling Revolution

I love David Byrne & I love bikes! Thanks, Jared, for pointing me to this review.

From Mapes' book:

...motorists are learning to share the streets with a very different kind of traveler, one who often perplexes and angers them.

Ha! seriously...

Bicycling, once largely seen as a simple pleasure from childhood, has become a political act.

Word!