"Young Poets, Please Read Everything"

There is much to be said for the autodidact. A well-read individual is analogous to a contemporary Renaissance Man of knowledge. There are professional fields (Law and Medicine come to mind) that produce diversified specialties of focus that require extensive work in one particular area. Poetry, however, requires its practitioners to be well-versed (sorry) in the works of many different schools. Adam Zagajewski, the Polish-born poet, argues for the merits of the young poet reading as widely and omnivorously as possible.

Zagajewski--discussed in this blog HERE (and also HERE and HERE)--lays out his argument for scattershot reading in his succinct essay "Young Poets Please Read Everything", from his collection "A Defense of Ardor". I think that "scattershot" is appropriate in describing his method, which, with the thematic ardor that links this book's essays, the author emphatically refers to as "Reading chaotically!" The poet could not be more ardent in his advocacy for voracious and widespread reading--consumption, really--of whatever one can get one's hands on. His advocacy of autodidacticism is evident when he contrasts Brodsky, who left school at the age of 15 and is famous for his endless thirst for more poetry and knowledge, with the average American that has a P.H.D.: the latter might have achieved the same as the former, but "while rarely setting foot outside the Ivy League's safe precincts". Zagajewski notices that American poets tend to read only poetry, which he says

"suggests that there's something rigid and isolated about the nature of contemporary poetic practice, that poetry has become separated from philosophy's central questions, from the historians anxieties, the painter's quandaries, the qualms of an honest politician, e.g., from the deep, common source of culture."

For Zagajewski, poets read for two different, but converging reasons: the thrill of ecstasy, and the power and grounding notion of memory. These motives are not only dependent on each other in that "Ecstasy requires a little knowledge and memory loses nothing when colored by strong emotions", but also symbiotic, in that one purely serves to enhance the other. He argues to

"Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition... Read your enemies and your friends, read those who reinforce your sense of what's evolving in poetry, and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are."

Zagajewski is easily one of the greatest, and most-approachable, poets at work today. This book of essays reveals him to be a sagely teacher; a trusted one to go to when looking to broaden one's scope.

Highly recommended.

--Charles

Jill Bolte Taylor's "Stroke of Insight"

This video comes from one of the greatest websites in the history of the Internet. In it, Bolte Taylor (a brain scientist) describes what it was like when she had a stroke, and what it revealed to her about her work. This piece is informative, inspiring, and simply fascinating.

Click the "Play" icon on the video above.

If, for some reason (I, or you, have failed), and you can't see the above video, then click on THIS LINK.

That is all.

--Charles

Edward Snow's "The Poetry of Rilke"

This book is out now. It's one of the greatest purchases you can make this year. I mentioned it HERE. It has an informative, great introduction by Adam Zagajewski. This is one of the best ways that you can spend your money right now.

That is all.

--Charles

"If God Existed, He'd be a Solid Midfielder"

The Autumn 2009 issue (Issue 108, with a focus on Chicago) of Granta has a fine short piece written by Aleksandar Hemon about playing football as an immigrant in the United States. Hemon is from Sarajevo, and was due to fly back on the day the siege commenced; he has been in Chicago ever since. In his early days there, he fell in with a passel of other immigrants whose common link was the sport. They came from all over (Hemon lists 29+ countries), uniting and finding fellowship in a game that was as foreign to America as they were. Hemon, a self-described atheist, befriends an elderly playboy--a Fiorentina fan from Florence--who, in his unwillingness to tacitly acknowledge his age by quitting the game, gives the author a fleeting glimpse of a higher power:

"Whoever created Lido ought to be satisfied: Lido is perfectly complete. The rest of us must roll in the dirt, get weather-beaten, collect the patina, earn our right to simply, unconditionally be. And whenever I pass the ball to Lido--fully aware that it's going to be miskicked and wasted--I have the pleasant, tingling sensation of being with something bigger and better than me, the sensation wholly inaccessible to those who think soccer is about exercise."

As stated, it's lark of a piece--and even though it's only eight pages, Hemon captures something of the Divine in the everyday escapes of a collective group of discrete nationalities.

Also, here's Hemon's famous novel, "The Lazarus Project".

Special thanks to Xerxes in Bombay for creating the image for this entry.

--Charles

Vincent Lamouroux:

"Pentacycle"

French artist Vincent Lamouroux has taken an abandoned stretch for the prototype Aerotrain--an idea the French government abandoned in favor of the T.G.V.--and realized a new use for it. "Pentacycle" is rideable. What I like about it is that it takes a disused monstrosity of industrial/government waste, and turns it from a blight on the countryside into something that can actually be ridden again. It's great when people look beyond what something is, or what it's become, and see new possibilities for it. Beyond artists such as Lamouroux, I see this quality in many graffiti artists (Banksy entry HERE), and even skateboarders. That is all.

--Charles

Liu Bolin: "Camouflage"

A repressive society has driven an unusually-talented artist to come up with a new way to express his frustration over censorship. The Chinese photographer Liu Bolin, whose studio was shut down by Beijing authorities in 2005, creates intriguing photographs in which he is both visible and "invisible"--a downplayed but earnest attempt to illustrate his government's irreverence and ignorance toward art and artists. Liu will find a scene, and then with help from an assistant, he will "paint himself" into his surroundings. This is a painstaking process that not only holds a mirror up to Chinese repression and indifference to its citizens, but also, in my opinion, illustrates his feelings about the attitude of far too many people in this world: that art is negligible.

HERE is a gallery of his photos.

HERE is a write-up in which he talks about his work.

--Charles

Il Moto Poeta

The November issue of Harper's has an excellent memoir of sorts written by Frederick Seidel (discussed on this blog HERE) about his long love affair/addiction to fast motorcycles, and extremely fast custom-made Ducati superbikes in particular. These bikes often appear in Seidel's verse, and are treated by the poet with reverence for their power as well as their deadliness. By a poet's standard especially, Seidel is an extraordinarily rich man; thus, he has always taken the "only the best for me. Always I wanted the Best" attitude, and coupled it with an insatiable need for the thrill of speed that borders on Lust at its most elementary. For him, it's simple: "One wants to go faster".

First, there are the "halcyon" days of riding helmetless in New York, evading cops as he rides his first bike--a custom-built blue "chopper"--to work. This thrill becomes a Need for him, and he realizes, like a true addict, that he needs said thrill, only on a higher plane. He describes an early acquaintance that owned a Lamborghini Miura, and died in it at the age of 25: "Simone, who roared around on little streets at horrific speeds, knew that driving a race-car was asking for death. Simone loved life". Seidel finds something of the Romantic in the pursuit of operating machines that can kill you. In both the poems "Fog" and "Racer", from his collection "Ooga-Booga", Seidel writes:

"I spend most of my time not dying.

That's what living is for.

I climb on a motorcycle.

I climb on a cloud and rain.

I climb on a woman I love.

I repeat my themes.

(...)

Tonight, Bologna is fog.

This afternoon, there it was,

With all the mechanics who are making it around it.

It stood on a sort of altar.

I stood in a sort of fog,

Taking digital photographs of my death."

Seidel writes eloquently about eloquent things; as is his wont. At the Ducati factory in Bologna, where his bike was being custom-built (the workers referred to it lovingly as "Moto Poeta"), he offers us this cold assessment of flirtation with Death. Its precise simplicity makes it one of the best descriptions of this pre-occupation--or affliction--that I have ever seen. Elsewhere, from the Harper's piece:

"And there is something else in this. There is a way in which feigning nearness to death risks death. Faking it all well imitates real danger too faithfully and brings danger... Motorcycling is full of bravado and posing and the nearness of death. You pretend to be calmly, even coldly focused, when you ride, eyes everywhere, eyes on the job and immune to thoughts about risk. That is how one describes riding these fast motorcycles, except of course there is in addition the pleasure. You are riding beauty and you are riding speed and you are riding death. And it is a pleasure. But you offer yourself as a dashing devotee. You realize you are performing the role of yourself, and may be maimed out of existence as part of the act, as part of the character you are playing."

It's the speed, first and foremost, that attracts Seidel to his first MV Agusta, and later his stable of custom Ducatis. But he also has an appreciation for the aesthetic and craftsmanship of well-made things: "The street bikes were treasured, brilliant Italian products, meaning designed, designed with love and verve, bikes that went fast with style."

He writes about how he tried to "cure" his addiction to bikes by taking flying lessons, in the hope that he would become equally enamored of flight; to no avail. There was no cure. His need for extreme speed reached its apogee, and he was on his way to Bologna to have his newest machine built.

At the end of the piece, he goes to visit his Desmosedeci RR, which is in storage. He then walks over to, or confronts, his 999 F05, the "Moto Poeta". But it won't start; the battery is dead. It's a somber moment of resignation for Seidel, and in the winter of his life, a quiet and appreciative one. It's as if he's realized that he's taken a lifetime of passion in one area as far as it would go. After all, "The point is if you are afraid you ought not to be doing it."

--Charles

Another Apology

I've been quite busy lately with work that I don't want to do, and work that I do. I have been unable to allot any time to properly update my blog. For my loyal readers, I am sorry, and I will try to remedy this is the next couple of days. Please: bear with me (again). Thank you.

--Charles

John Ashbery

On December 1st, Harper Collins will publish the millionth book of poems by John Ashbery (Wiki entry HERE). The book is entitled "Planisphere". Is it just me, or does it seem to others that this man writes more than any other poet (and is that a good thing)? Ashbery is an intriguing poet for me because, with his later work especially, I either like it, or it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Moreover, often with the poems of his that I like, I have difficulty pinpointing exactly why I like them; I can't figure out what it is about them that makes them appeal to me. I remember reading that wonderful profile in The New Yorker from a few years back. In it, he talked about how each of his poems is essentially a polaroid of what's going on in his mind at any given time. That's a nice image, but it doesn't really give much of an explanation.

Without a doubt, though, Ashbery is one of the most-influential poets of our time, spawning schools that swim the seas that he created. He has already been published by the Library of America. Keep in mind that it wasn't until a few years ago that that house would publish anything by a living writer, until they published Eudora Welty--and since then Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. This "Collected Poems 1956-1987" is a beautiful book, and it contains the early work for which I think the poet will best be remembered by. "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (here it is) is undoubtedly one of the poetic milestones of the second half of the Twentieth Century. I have a Caedmon cassette version, with him narrating, somewhere lying around (I think it was released under their "Voice of the Poet" series). It's one of my favorite long poems, and the ideas and images that Ashbery developed in it are breathtaking in their revelation. The early Ashbery was a master of form when he wanted to be as well: here is a sestina called "The Painter":

"Sitting between the sea and the buildings

He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.

But just as children imagine a prayer

Is merely silence, he expected his subject

To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,

Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas

Until the people who lived in the buildings

Put him to work: “Try using the brush

As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,

Something less angry and large, and more subject

To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

How could he explain to them his prayer

That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?

He chose his wife for a new subject,

Making her vast, like ruined buildings,

As if, forgetting itself, the portrait

Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush

In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:

“My soul, when I paint this next portrait

Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”

The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:

He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

Too exhausted even to lift his brush,

He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings

To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer

Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,

Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

Others declared it a self-portrait.

Finally all indications of a subject

Began to fade, leaving the canvas

Perfectly white. He put down the brush.

At once a howl, that was also a prayer,

Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;

And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush

As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer."

Robert Frost once remarked that he found the poetry of Wallace Stevens to be "bric-a-brac". We all know how ridiculous that statement was. The funny thing was that some people believed it at the time. Critics have recently leveled similar claims about Ashbery: that he's a trickster whose best work is in his past. The estimable Meghan O'Rourke wrote a great piece about Ashbery back in 2005 for Slate.

It will be interesting to read this book when it comes out.

More Ashbery Links:

The Poetry Foundation page

Poets.org page

"The Ashbery Resource Center"

EPC/Asbery home page

--Charles

Poetry vs. the Infinite

One of the poems from Adam Zagajewski's (discussed on this blog HERE) latest book, "Eternal Enemies", that struck me the hardest is a poem entitled "Subject: Brodsky":

"Please note: born in May,

in a damp city (hence the motif: water),

soon to be surrounded by an army

whose officers kept Hölderlin

in their backpacks, but, alas, they had

no time for reading. Too much to do.

Tone—sardonic, despair—authentic.

Always en route, from Mexico to Venice,

lover and crusader, who campaigned

ceaselessly for his unlikely party

(name: Poetry versus the Infinite,

or PVI, if you prefer abbreviations).

In every city and in every port

he had his agents; he sometimes sang his poems

before an avid crowd that didn't catch

a word. Afterwards, exhausted, he'd smoke a Gauloise

on a cement embankment, gulls circling overhead,

as if above the Baltic, back home.

Vast intelligence. Favorite topic: time

versus thought, which chases phantoms,

revives Mary Stuart, Daedalus, Tiberius.

Poetry should be like horseracing;

wild horses, with jockeys made of marble,

an unseen finish line lies hidden in the clouds.

Please remember: irony and pain;

the pain had long lived inside his heart

and kept on growing—as though

each elegy he wrote adored him

obsessively and wanted

him alone to be its hero—

but ladies and gentlemen—your patience,

please, we're nearly through—I don't know

quite how to put it: something like tenderness,

the almost timid smile,

the momentary doubt, the hesitation,

the tiny pause in flawless arguments."

It's an elegant tribute to one of the great masters of contemporary Poetry. I bought Joseph Brodsky's "Collected Poems in English" when it was published in 2000, and it's been one of my favorite books of modern poetry ever since. English was his third language, after Russian and Polish; the book contains all the poems of Brodsky's that appeared in English under his supervision during his lifetime. They're either translated by others, translated by others with his collaboration, translated solely by Brodsky, or composed directly in English by the poet. The translation of poetry from Russian to English is extremely difficult. Seamus Heaney, in his wonderful essay written after Brodsky won the Nobel in 1987 elaborates on this:

"In other words, like other strong poets, Mr. Brodsky sets the reader's comfort below the poem's necessities, and in order further to impose upon English the strangeness and density of his imagining, he is now the official translator of his own lines. So, in spite of his manifest love for English verse, which amounts almost to a possessiveness, the dynamo of Russian supplies the energy, the metrics of the original will not be gainsaid and the Engish ear comes up against a phonetic element that is both animated and skewed. Sometimes it instinctively rebels at having its expectations denied in terms of both syntax and the velleities of stress. Or it panics and wonders if it is being taken for a ride when it had expected a rhythm. At other times, however, it yields with that unbounded assent that only the most triumphant art can conjure and allow"

One of my friends says that Brodsky's rhythm is jangling; that either the translation wasn't done as well as it could be, or the meter was just scattershot. While Brodsky is not a lyrical "singsong"-type poet for me, I don't necessarily pay much creedence to my friend's quip. When I read Brodsky, I luxuriate in his clarity of thought and erudition more than anything else. In his translation of "Sextet: for Mark Strand" (another tribute poem), Brodsky shows an eloquence of word choice and a clarity for thought and metaphor that verges on the sublime:

"Petulant is the soul begging mercy from

an invisible or dilated frame.

Still, if it comes to the point where the blue acrylic

dappled with cirrus suggests the Lord,

say, "Give me the strength to sustain the hurt,"

and learn it by heart like a decent lyric.

When you are no more, unlike the rest,

the latter may think of themselves as blessed

with the place so much safer thanks to the big withdrawal

of what your conscience indeed amassed.

And a fish that prophetically shines with rust

will splash in a pond and repeat your oval."

Brodsky was undoubtedly a natural-born poet. According to his friends, his memory was amazing; an endless store of poems of his own and others that he could recite at the drop of a hat. Poetry--whether it was the writing of, or the teaching of--practically occupied his every thought. He was exuberant about it, and wanted the world to care more for it. When he received the Nobel, he lamented in his speech that "In any event, the condition of society in which art in general, and literature in particular, are the property or prerogative of a minority appears to me unhealthy and dangerous". He proposed in another essay that poetry be made more available to the public by putting anthologies in supermarket checkout lines and in the desks of hotel rooms, right beside Bibles. Poetry meant more to Brodsky than anything: read THIS article from the Hoover Institution, as it deals with his arrest and trial in Soviet courts.

I realize that this is a rather disjointed entry, but for me, Brodsky is a poet for any time, or mood. I come to his poems to get lost; to escape from whatever I need to escape from. For this reason, he is one of the more accommodating poets occupying my top shelf.

Other links:

Brodsky's Poets.org page.

Heaney writing about him in The Times.

Brodsky's Nobel lecture (amazing).

--Charles