Poetry

Oh Happy Day!

My new amazon.com order came in today. Wishing Chair, the second album put out by the 10,000 Maniacs, way back when in 1985. It's my understanding that the band used poems that Natalie Merchant had written for a creative writing class at the local community college in Jamestown, New York, as lyrics for their songs. Whatever the case may be, the lyrics are amazing.

Rarely have I been in a leather bar when 'Scorpio Rising' (inspired, doubtless, by the Kenneth Anger film) doesn't run through my mind...

power
dizzy with it stumble
detail
a chance for us to quarrel
anger
my head is shaken violent

if i could calm or restrain you
for the sake of pity
save the pistol
save the cynic's tongue
save that cool white stare
and treat me to an honest face sometime

amaze me now

trust is
the greatest human error
empty
used me as a vessel
ruthless
you're not known for subtlety

if i could only restrain you
for the sake of pity
save the pistol
save the cynic's tongue
save that cool white stare
and treat me to an honest face sometime

amaze me now

artful
well there's a skill to torture
half smile
was it all you could deliver
token
so hard to be pleasant

if you could calm or restrain it
for the sake of pity
save the pistol
save the cynic's tongue
save that cool white stare
and treat me to an honest face somehow

amaze me now

Love that. Every word is just perfect. Although there's not much in the way of literal sense, it's so impressionistic. A quality I always look for in poetry. Wallace Stephens, Andrew Marvell, John Donne, Edna St. Vincent Millay...

There's a great poem by William Carlos Williams:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

In college, when we discussed the poem in my Modern American Poetry class, the prof had us all write down answers to the following questions...

What is the position of the wheelbarrow?
Is it raining now?
How many chickens?

Ninety-percent of the class--independently--answered

Balanced on it's nose with the handles straight up
No, the sun is out
Five

Sort of uncanny.

And notice how the shape of the stanzas resembles a wheelbarrow? And the meter (da-DA-da-DA-da-DA, da-DA-DA-da-da, DA-da-da-DA-da, da-DA-da-DA-DA-da) is like wheeling a wheelbarrow over rough ground?

One of the Psalms uses the phrase 'Deep is calling on deep.' That, essentially, is my theory of poetry. Beyond their literal sense, words are vessels holding cups of the poets unconscious. Reading a poem sets up those vessels, and the corresponding aspects of your unsconscious flow in. Poetry is language, but it's beyond language. Writing a poem is almost like automatic writing (for the first draft, anyway). The words just sort of come. You have no idea where it's going most of the time. The image of the Muse whispering in your ear is so apt. Truly, that's what it's like. Being a poet, more than anything else, is living in a quiet state of hyper-awareness. You're always listening, waiting for a poem to come. You see sunlight streaming through a window with that mid-winter slant and Bam! You're off and going.

Here's a poem I wrote almost twenty years ago. (Among those that they didn't think much of at the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Temple University):


Wednesday

As if words could hold language
Like baskets hold laundry

Serenity: the oxford cloth shirts I just ironed
Hung in the closet
Pink and blue and yellow
Muted by washwater, sunlight,
And my sweat.