Epistemology and Karla Kelsey

Upon reading Mathias Svalina's review of Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary the philosophical nature of Karla Kelsey grows and develops in ways which intrigued me. Svalina jumps right into Kelsey's work with what she calls "poetic epistemology." Moreover Kelsey's work grapples with philosophical questions of how knowledge is acquired and "possessed" through the poetic vehicle of language. By taking language, harnessed with the accumulation of connotation and subliminal messages, and bringing us into its essence Kelsey creates a profound sense of awareness.

Svalina especially notes that "[Kelsey's] poetry arrives at meaning through a participatory process." We are indeed her parts, as Kelsey's poem, "I Was Working the Free Radicals" implicitly states. The reviewer comes to enlightening point that "not only are we entering the poetry media res, but that we will never be able to enter the full lyric experience." Here Svalina bring us into the incessant philosophical problem of infinite regression. Let us take knowledge as the product of truths and beliefs, in purely philosophical terms. As justifications are based on beliefs, one must ask for justification of the belief, leading to a never ending sequence of justifications and beliefs. Yet Kelsey circumnavigates this problem. She both immerses us in her emotions and metaphor, and attacks the possession of knowledge. As we noted in class Kelsey enacts her emotion, moving beyond the sticky, wax of time and relationship. Here shown in Aperture 2:

rich orange

inflourescence portends

making way back from

the Atlantic---symbol

of the flower after

blooming

Here Kelsey's deliberate questioning of language also appears in her augmented word "inflourescent," the certainty of its definition remaining poignantly ambiguous. Svalina also notes Kelsey's use of metaphor over sensory data. This point follows tandem with Kelsey's disruption of possession. How well do our senses really pick up the world around us? How do we make our assumptions based on them? Possession seems weakened at the end of Aperture 2:

coda of the olive tree, pure, pointed under radio frequency we can hear meteors and that

abandoned city wasting in the valley of white sands, fed under the flares gone tracing

another life, held here, tied, the kite string to metal elements rusting

Slavina gives us a review which encompasses the philosophical power of Kelsey's work through the lens and focus of her poetic discovery. Kelsey brings us to a more heightened sense of awareness by opening us up and throwing us against the brick walls of possession. Nevertheless she leaves us with a sense of security, "I breathe, and I assure you / something happens."

Kelsey's Dismantling and Reinterpretation of Accumulation

In Karla Kelsey's Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary our notions of knowledge, recollection and experience find themselves liberated from "soft" entrapment, from passively accepting their accumulation. Kelsey begins her onerous journey with a quote from Plato, most importantly "will [the possessor of knowledge] describe the 'catching' of [knowledge] and the original 'possession' in the same words?" The answer is a resounding no. Kelsey's work again and again articulates the need for a "re-catching" of knowledge, that knowledge is always in flux. In addition she harkens to pre-Socratic philosophy which breaks down and complicates our conceptions of identity and existence to their core.

Furthermore she inherits Plato's metaphor of the "aviary" where "man" keeps the (once) "wild birds" of knowledge. Thus in the bird's lack of wildness alone the aviary already seems incapable of providing a meaningful idea of knowledge. Kelsey's poem "Of Under Ash And So" shows the weakness in simply holding knowledge:

Then paler blue then something approaching

white or nothing, the page, the bone gone back to the originary plan of

an aviary built with mesh siding, illusioning the possibility of flight. Soft

walls, soft keeping us here

Here she draws clearly the limitations of the aviary while showing the change and flux inherent in language. Kelsey's use of "originary" and "illusioning" show that language will always undercut the dexterity of the aviary, that words will constantly shift (they are indeed wild) and rearrange. Kelsey's poem "I Was Working the Free Radicals" moves this idea further and shows us the beauty of reinterpretation and openness:

Allowing a "her" into

the abstraction arrests it for a moment. This abstraction has been arrested

as a form of grace, light in ash-dense air gilds trees.

The abstraction, perhaps an "aviary," is not open enough to encompass ideas such as feminism. In the second stanza Kelsey gives us the beauty and joy which comes out of dismantling abstractions.

For if earth is the center of the body, heaven in the center of the

soul, with its planned moving, mutability conceded for the pattern, for

a constant assurance of species and parts. Orange-red. We are her

species. We are her parts. The abstraction loses its arrest and we wake

to the story of the flying bird, now held in her hand and slit down the

middle.

Here we are amidst the workings of knowledge, the wild bird is open to us. Thus in the interdependent "we" Kelsey often employs she works with the plurality of our existence, strings of reference and attachment, codas echoing the familiar fugue. Yet she weaves between the walls of our associations, cutting off the certainty of definition so that certain echoes never truly have the same language (Aperture 3). Kelsey challenges our assumptions in one of the most philosophical, complex, enriching and beautiful ways we have seen.

More Conversation and Discussion on Greenfield

Both in the roundtable discussion and from reviews by Andy Frazee and Joshua Corey Greenfield's move away from the autobiographical mode of A Carnage in the Lovetrees is apparent. Moreover Greenfield's Tracer works tirelessly with notions of self-effacement while employing content rooted in the description and metaphor of weapons and war. In Tracer Greenfield immediately begins this dialogue. As in our roundtable he said in a draft he deleted all of the "I"s in his poem, the aptly named first poem "Speaking For" complicates both the authority of the "I" and even the role of the reader:

I am the reader there, reading aloud, deploying a plan as a voice as

an imagined moral presence in the listening devices and oscillating

sprinklers that automate into shadows, because

Here Greenfield critiques the traditional reader, using militaristic language present throughout this book, as a "planned" "imagined moral presence." He moves on to work with the notion of self:

Already I am we,

the small rectangles of all the backyards of all of us, our washed

sidewalks, our sweeper nozzles--our detritus colludes at the ends of

the driveways, the leaves in the neighbor trees glisten, the utilities

hung high in the air between houses.

Thus here the I is no more the I. In our current complex, connected existence the I is part of a collective "detritus." The I can no longer (or maybe never could) speak for the whole of America.

In addition Greenfield works with the intersection of the public and private spheres. For instance his poem "Bastion" especially details this. As he spoke earlier this afternoon, Greenfield seems struck by our current connection, that we are connected to the war through the internet and CNN yet have no real feeling of it. Therefore his seepage of the public into the private forces us to look more closely at the world around us:

inscribing one's name in the unfeasible

thrall of the moment, no one is

so real, judgement is its own prison:

now we pay to get into the public space;

Similarly Greenfield makes his militaristic description depict the everyday. Poems such as "Rapier/Ravine" and "Maverick" (the name of a weapons system) find their way into the public sphere.

Tracer moves Greenfield's work into discourse more concerned with poetry in its complication of the self and dialogue into the complex nature of our current "connected" existence, perhaps setting Greenfield's work on a stronger path towards meaning.

Thoughts and Questions for Colie Collen

As our knowledge of Collen pertains to her role in Fence I think my questions would arise from the poets and themes we gathered from the magazine. In addition perhaps more logistical mechanical questions pertaining to the publishing process might come up at the roundtable. I would first ask her about the role of the past in the issue of Fence:

The artwork here superimposes the surreal or Dada onto the lithograph. Does this juxtaposition of earlier artistic ideas with modernist ones perhaps work into the idea of challenging assumptions which moves throughout Fence?

I would follow this past/present/challenging assumptions question with one about the abrasiveness of content and attack on decorum. Moreover, how such an abrasive quality works to reinterpret language and its connection with meaning, or present lack thereof.

The Challenging Nature of Fence Magazine

As Fence Magazine's attention to detail is remarkable, one can see even from the cover the juxtaposition of the new and old, attacking assumptions with new poetic tools, and the critique of current society through comparison to the old. The cover and the few similar pieces which unfortunately only span the magazine with regularity until page twelve, are spin offs of lithographs with the addition of certain surrealist and Dadaist influences. One such lithograph/collage pictures a hand with soap written on it in the sky.

In this way the poetry of Fence's second magazine in their twelfth volume stems from an irreverence and utilization of the past to question the current status quo, most notably through the reinterpretation of language. Catherine Wagner and Lara Glenum attack and play with the confines of language. In fact Wagner's irreverence and disregard for decorum almost turns into gibberish in her poem "Coming and I Did Not Run Away:"

Brand spankin hanky pankin

new periodical

in my uterus

yest I cried

thought I was going

NUTSO

Yet Wagner's work represents gibberish in the most constructive way possible, a gibberish which forces one to think about the everyday language they use. Her last stanza "I saw the 'usual turn of phrase' / coming and I did not run away / I lay around" embodies this irreverence for the "usual" and the need to seek stronger definitions for language.

Working in Wagner's vein of reinterpretation and investigation, Lara Glenum works to reclaim and debase demeaning language. For instance in her poem "Hypnic Jerk" she writes:

or so I told Mino

while taking pipe

My cunt grew all sing-songy

amid his pettifogging miracles

& coughed out a deer head

Here Glenum ropes in a classical reference to "Mino" and the unusual word "pettifogging, while bringing the harmful word "cunt" out into the open. This juxtaposition creates a jarring image for the reader, one where "usual turns of phrase" are turned upside down and then chopped with a hatchet.

Yet this call for reinterpretation of social norms is not limited to language. Christine Herzer and Jose Perez Beduya show us that a reinterpretation of identity is also necessary. For instance Beduya's line "An ethical relation among things / He was completely gone / The Absolute / Propped up by a broomstick" shows how the "he" and the "absolute," no longer find secure footing, precipitating further personal exploration. Herzer's work seems to follow in Beduya's message concerning the absence of an ethical relationship. Moreover Herzer represents her "narrator" as many separate, non linear and paradoxical themes. Her poem "Please Erase as Many Lines as You Need" displays this:

i come from a non-verbal background

...

i dont have to break my privacy to be honest

...

people like you need to fuck people like me

Such an illogical development shows the conflict inherent in self and the need to reinterpret identity on less divisive, exclusionary terms.

Fence's latest issue captivates the reader through meaningful insight into language and identity, utilizing the framework of the past to jar our present notions and assumptions.

Wish I Could've Been Back Home...

The annual Split This Rock Poetry Festival was held this week in DC. The Nation has a great article on the event pertaining to our definition of language and its need for reinterpretation. Mullen would be pleased.

The festival also examined contemporary poetry and the declining printed sphere.

http://live.thenation.com/doc/20100315/miller

Here's a good excerpt on language:

Words are luggage for our politics, and those of us who are writers have a special responsibility to prevent the erosion of their value and meaning. I want to compose poems with words that can wear pants and shirts without creases.

Magee's Means of Reinterpretation: What is the End?

Reinterpretation and rethinking convention must always be moved forward in the contemporary sphere of poetry. Yet Michael Magee's My Angie Dickinson finds disparity in its correlation of "flarf" and reverence for iconoclasm. Magee sets out to honor the powerful, unconventional, and most importantly impious nature of Emily Dickinson, as he states in his foreword, "I was cognizant of the fact that Dickinson's poems, both in form and content, remain surprisingly volatile despite the various historical attempts to keep them more placid." Perhaps a good example of Dickinson's, indeed unconventional form would be, "It was not death; for I stood up:"

It was not death, for I stood up, And all the dead lie down; It was not night, for all the bells Put out their tongues, for noon.  It was not frost, for on my flesh I felt siroccos crawl,-- Nor fire, for just my marble feet Could keep a chancel cool.
Dickinson treats death with surreal closeness and strength, while cutting up the traditional stanza with caesura. Yet Magee's work most resurrects this refreshing volatility through, "a process of disorientation and orientation." This process is clearly evidenced in Magee's poem "003:"
Poetry should be happy, NOT                                                                                                                               all gloomy like ANGIE Dickinson                                                                                        her "deer-in-the-headlights" gaze                                                                                                            as---model---after---model                                                                                                                      walk down three times a year                                                                                                                  the magical image---of the winter---                                                                                                   fairyland---of a class---                                                                                                                              Kate Miller pleasures herself...
Magee deftly disrupts his first line, repeatedly questioning our assumptions of the poem's content and form, determined to strike caesuras into the heart of piety. Thus an attack on piety provides strong ground for a description of Magee's work, his juxtaposition of Dickinson with "ANGIE" Dickinson leading the charge. Magee states just that in his foreword. 
Yet in Magee's work his poems seem to sink into a quagmire of means without reaching his end, which we might assume to be the elevation of Dickinson's iconoclasm. Magee desires to generate reverence through "flarf". His poems themselves are even organized like the google search engine which birthed them. Yet the inherent unintentional quality of flarf, in some ways its strength, seems to fall short when matched with such an intentional goal, for instance in poem "095:" 
mainstream cinema gravitated                                                                                                                    from "people" ---like, Keanu Reeves---                                                                                                  and "By the River" ---Styx again---                                                                                                          the loneliness creeps---
The idea of the unintentional manifesting itself in the complex, interconnected world of communication we use today can find some legitimacy. Yet volleys of pop culture references seem inherently inept at garnering praise for Emily Dickinson. The idea of the terrible, woven into flarf, may find its place in poetry yet, but the seriousness of Magee's endeavor trivializes whatever productive poetic vehicle would emanate from such a dialogue between high and low brow culture. 
The rupture of the literary canon through lines like "The Hitler-loathing skipper/ In the---Dick Oasis--- (038)" may still provide some worth in their representation of our world, yet become too enamored at their own conception that they fail to see the ends of their existence. 
          

Praise and Critique for Mullen's Sleeping with Dictionary

Response to Harryette Mullen provides worthy praise of the transforming power her poems contain. Both Christine Hume and Reginald Harris describe well Mullen's reinterpretation and confrontation of the status quo while remarking poignantly on the purpose of word play.
Hume argues for Mullen's use of wordplay as a serious poetic tool, as opposed to its current place "when it isn't simply an attention getting device...something to be brushed away...before the company gets here." In this way she elevates Mullen's use of play into a valuable discussion on the human condition, stating that her comedy, "[flays] our nature to the bone."Although Hume's focus on the erotic play of Mullen's work does much to explain the nature of Sleeping with the Dictionary the fact that her article does cement her praise in this comedic framework can somewhat restrict the power of Mullen's transformation and reinterpretation. Hume writes of Mullen's own structural upheavals as calling for a greater social one, her use of rearrangement to rhetorically condemn and question convention. She quotes Mullen:
If you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way. . . . It’s not our fault you were born wearing a gang color. It is not our obligation to inform you of your rights. Step aside, please while our officer inspects your bad attitude. You have no rights that we are bound to respect. Please remain calm, or we can’t be held responsible for what happens to you.
Here Mullen cleverly throws the rhetoric of the establishment right back in its face. Yet as Hume focuses so strongly on the play of Mullen this approach somehow weakens her praise of Mullen's work. While it is "serious play" indeed, when we draw such a line where does the play end and the true power of transforming social oppression begin?
In this way Reginald Harris focuses almost entirely on the playful cleverness of Mullen's poetry, the use of games to reinterpret and question the hierarchy around us. Harris' acknowledgment of Mullen's political and social ideas merely states that they have not disappeared.
Thus I don't believe these reviews give credit to the existential nature of Mullen's work. Mullen breaks down the very notion and existence of language, questioning its connections and rhetorical power to come out with verses rich in their reinterpretation of the status quo. For instance her poem "Denigration" piercingly illuminates the power of connotation and the "denigration" it promotes. Moreover does Mullen simply contain the political power and action of her older work or is she challenging and recasting language in powerful new ways?

Mullen's Call for the Reinterpretation of Language

In Haryette Mullen's collection, self-consciously titled, "Sleeping with the Dictionary" our convictions about language and its use as a poetic device are transformed and recast. Mullen works to break up the connections made through words and investigate their use and power. Perhaps drawing from her African American heritage and the vernacular, Mullen is able to piece apart the hierarchy of language to find a greater meaning in its dissolution and reinterpretation.
One manner in which Mullen reinterprets language is the prose poem. As prose poems by their nature question the power of poetic verse, Mullen utilizes their ability to harness the power of natural speech and play with its presence in poetry. Her poem "Bleeding Hearts" emphasizes this inherent beauty of prose:

This
ramshackle stack of shotguns I'm holding in my scope. I'm
beady-eyed as a bug. Slippery as a sardine. Salty as a kipper.
You could rehash me for breakfast. Find my shrinking awe, or
share your wink. I'll get a rash wench.

Thus even in a form such as prose assonance, alliteration and cacophony still abound. Mullen continues this dialogue with the inherent beauty of speech in "Wino Rhino," "My heart quivers as arrows on street maps target/ me for urban renewal."
In addition to her work with prose, Mullen digs deeper into her dissolution of poetic connectivity with language. While the prose poem confronts the existence of language in poetry, her further "elliptical" movement seeks to confront our convictions of language itself. Her poem, conveniently titled, "Elliptical" attacks this connection by deleting words and replacing them with ellipses.

They just cant seem too...They should try harder to...They
ought to be more...We all wish they weren't so...

Therefore through this omission Mullen parallels the fact that language is inherently elliptical, that meaning is never as concrete as it seems. We have no idea what words should go in those spaces. Thus it is the poet's power to create which gives poetry its beauty. Mullen's poem "Coo/Slur" follows this discussion over the connection of language, here moving to connection so basic as the linking of letters to form words, "da red/ yell ow/ bro won t/ an orange you/ bay jaun/ pure people."
Moreover, Mullen shows that in today's world of entropy we cannot be certain of the suspicious connection between words and letters. Thus in a method of beauty and play, Mullen breaks down our assumptions to the roots of what is poetically essential.

Responses to Zirconia

While Cole Swensen and Arielle Greenberg approach Zirconia from seemingly different angles both, though Swensen seems more guarded in her praise, both are struck by Chelsea Minnis' inventive poetic work.

Swensen remarks on Minnis' form from the start giving her "'hyper' ellipsis" a "hypnotic quality," one which leads to suspense. Yet as Swensen moves on to her description of Minnis' work as a response to violence against women in today's culture, her reading notes a sort of emotionless nature. This point can find secure footing, as she describes Minnis' "veiled ferocity." Minnis is putting these jarring images of rape, "...I desire to be pushed or shoved down...in a grassy area," out in the open to elicit a response. While there is much truth to this Swensen takes this dialogue of "emotionless fact" and expands it to call Minnis' work innocent. Is her innocence not self-mocking? Is she being emotionless when she wants her dress to be "shucked off" as in the poem "Uh"? How is not sardonic? As Swensen works cumbersomely with fact to detail "Primrose" as "the poem of [Minnis'] mother's rape," she seems to describe what I believed one of Minnis' loudest and jarring poems as containing, "such calm intimacy in this tone and very little anger, moving in a dream of emotionless fact."

Even Swensen's last point seems unstable, that Minnis refuses moral judgments and makes the reader, and Minnis, seek them out. This point certainly could find grounding, in the fact that overbearing moral agenda can overbear the art form, yet Minnis' powerful tone and the response to violence which Cole herself points out makes such an argument weak. I would love to embrace Minnis' potential "courage to accept the raw," yet Swensen's idea of Minnis' emotionless work seems unfounded to me.

Moving away from Swensen's piece, Greenfield acknowledges the more rich and vibrant language from which Minnis' seems to more poignantly garner her strength. Instead of jumping right to Minnis' form, Greenfield dives into a description of the "gurlesque," one which seems to move closer to an understanding of Minnis' work. Greenfield states that Minnis' utilization of the "gurlesque" aesthetic is the, "feminist incorporating of the grotesque and cruel with the spangled and dreamy." Thus in Greenfield's argument she describes Minnis' poem "Sectional" as "an iron glove cast in velvet." This description seemed to better pinpoint and acknowledge the presence of Minnis' power. Therefore as we, like Greenfield, look at the "hyper ellipsis" as, "glittering currents of lines" this gives Minnis more power to overcome the violence and "rape fairy tales" that both Swensen and Greenfield acknowledge.

Greenfield's review seemed to capture more of Minnis' voice, its power from all things "gurly," and sardonic strength which begs the reader to respond to violence.

A-Live

context is futile

The Flammable Connective Strength of Zirconium

Upon reading Chelsea Zinnis’ Zirconia one must pinch themselves and ask, did she really just do that? Or maybe rub their eyes a few times just to make sure. Yet above the aesthetic richness the surface of Minnis’ poems provides she creates a strong, connected, conscious web which reverberates through her poems while never mired in confession.

From the minute one looks at Zinnis’ work, the form is remarkable. She weaves together images and emotion using threads of periods, perhaps gems but containing greater strength, which bind her imagery together, building up fantastic description. As in “Shockwave,”

......................................................struck by translucent lightning.....................

.............................................................................................................or...........

...................kneeling in milk near frayed wire...................................................

.....................................................................................an icing white force.......

..............bursts from your brow..........................................................................

From this explosion she can go forth to blast right through “the beard of an old man,” or “a glass candy dish of semen.” In this connected manner, in which Minnis’ work seems to resemble Stephen Burt’s idea of the elliptical, her poems foster an attachment and a web-like strength which reverberates through the pain she details. Perhaps her poem, “Primrose,” best shows this undaunted beautiful strength. Here she takes the fairly confessional “when my mother/was raped/a harpsichord began to play...there was blood in the courtyard,” and breaks free with “as I beat gentleman rapists/with bronze statuettes/so that the blood...oozes down their handsome sideburns.” Thus she does not leave her poetry hinged on pathos, but instead uses it to attack the “gentleman rapists,” with “corsages and corsages of gunshot.”

In this way Minnis’ work falls into Arielle Greenberg’s theory of the “gurlesque.” Minnis conveys both tenderness and toughness while crafting a glimmering world of beauty. Greenberg also talks of the frank attitude towards sexuality present in the gurlesque. Here Minnis’ “Uh” embodies this notion, “Uh...I want to wear hot pants.../and rest my boot on the back of a man’s neck.” Here Minnis’ mockery allows her to keep her metallic strong exterior.

Even Minnis’ title works itself into this dialogue in somewhat meta-poetic and self-conscious ways. The word “zirconia” is derived from an element in the periodic table, which resists very strongly to corrosion and is highly volatile and flammable. It is also quite metallic and shiny, giving it great aesthetic appeal. In addition, Minnis adds a nice touch to this word, changing its “ium” ending to the feminine “ia.” This correlation between the title and Minnis’ work makes itself quite apparent. The fiery, shimmery, powerful nature of Chelsea Minnis’ work despite its plunge into the dark recesses of exploitation and degradation weaves itself into a web of human emotion with an omnipresent connected sense of fantastic vitality.

Questions for EB

As Approaching Ice seemed to incorporate the feeling of experience, how do you see experience in its relation to poetry as a whole?

How do you see the constant reference to source material as a development of human identity or self?

In some of your poems such as "Matthew Henson" and "Against Solitude" you seem to almost embody the characters and write from their perspective, how does this relate or complicate contemporary postmodern issues and methods of narration?

I enjoyed your remark in the Persea interview to the strange nature of humanity, how do you see this idea in Approaching Ice?

Further Thoughts on Bradfield

While looking at Bradfield's own explanation of her work provides reiteration of ideas well documented in Approaching Ice, her own ideas of the weirdness and, I might argue, the fluctuating motion of identity. In her interview with Persea she makes the point that, "the poems are a conversation between fact and interpretation." This statement goes a long way to describe the nature of Ice, constantly blending source material with personal reflection.

In this way she goes on to describe the desire to seek out contemporary issues and ideas from this juxtaposition, "how our ideas of sexuality, gender, race, environmental responsibility would set against [the explorer's] motivations." Indeed her point has been made, as poems such as, "Polar Explorer Matthew Henson," detail race,

What will he look like frostbit? Son

of the tropics, how will his dark blood

fare?

while others such as, "Against Solitude" discuss the possibility of homosexuality among these explorers,

I'd not thought

how soft a man's hip would be, how curved the flesh above the backs

of his thighs-listen.

Yet as she states, "they were human and therefore linked to my experience of the world," I feel the poignancy of her ties to such human ideas of identity wane through their rigidity, the rigidity of the historical sources themselves. For me the human identity which I see Bradfield viewing as strange or alien in her work, rightly so, becomes alien to the icy nature of the history it so heavily relies upon.

Neverthless, Bradfield's point, "we are strange creatures and the world is richer than we could have ever invented it to be," reflects an accurate manifestation of our existence. The poem I felt most exemplified this feeling was not in Ice but in the poem, "Creation Myth: Periosteum and Self." Here the reference to antlers and identity gave me a greater sense of the human element inherent in self through its more visceral, powerful, personal imagery and form,

Hormonally imbalanced females of all deer species

have been known to grow antlers.

This is what I choose. Periosteum rampant on my brow

and testosterone to activate it at the pedicle.

When Bradfield's poems escape the icy clutches that the historical source material the arctic entails her poems seem to bound forth looking at issues of gender and identity in ways not bound by the tedious reference of dead explorers.

Disappearing into Ice

Throughout poetry metaphor has been wrung-out, extracted, mined and now lies fallow, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Poetry has been forever moving towards greater vehicles of expressing emotion and existence, and as a result risen above the banal nature of metaphor as a novel poetic device. This is not to say it is not utilized, for contemporary poets find power in the juxtaposition of the surreal or subconscious as a poetic agent. Yet metaphor, in its lyric sense and history cannot stand alone.

To me, Elizabeth Bradfield's Approaching Ice could not free itself from the omnipresent and overexposed use of ice as a poetic metaphor. The most unrelenting metaphor can be seen in her series of poems spread throughout the book titled, "Notes on Ice in Bodwitch." In what was at first a refreshing utilization of unconventional text, using the glossary of terms from Nathanial Bodwitch's The American Practical Navigator,Bradfield used these terms in weak reference to her personal life. For instance:

ice bridge. 1. Surface river of ice of sufficient thickness to impede

or prevent navigation. 2. An area of fast ice between the mainland and

nearby inhabited islands used in winter as a means of travel.

Barrier and pathway. It's love that makes me so full of fury, so

unable to be tender.

Here, Bradfield's description of a thing of fury could break free from convention but instead it is tied to this overarching theme of ice. This furious love, a material rich with poetic potential is indelibly linked to the tiresome metaphor of an "ice bridge." The poems themselves don't seem to run away from this entrapment.

Similarly to her attachment of metaphor, Bradfield's use of history becomes equally sedentary and flat. The poems, which required a great deal of historical research on polar explorers seem so rooted in the past that when applied to more current, pressing emotion, they fall back and lose their strength. The fact that they are indeed not Bradfield's makes such a correlation between historical account and personal emotion weakens the poignancy of Bradfield's own reflections. For example her poem, "The Third Reich Claims Neu Schwabenland" juxtaposes an account of Nazi Germany "claiming" Antarctica and a personal diatribe on "claiming." While on the exterior both serve to address the pertinent question of identity and possession, by placing such emphasis on the historical the humanity within Bradfield's personal conflict loses its foundation. Here is the Nazi description of "possession":

Ice is not land, so how to claim it?

...

The planes Passat and Boreas were catapulted

from the chill deck of the Schwabenland

into the frigid, uncharted air.

Shouldered with Bradfield's:

Is this dog mine? She has begun.

some nights, to growl, low and defiant,

when I move her from the couch, hers.

I recognize Bradfield's argument, in the same vein as the Native Americans, that land, or identity, cannot be owned. However her method for detailing it loses some humanity in its correlation to history.

Throughout Bradfield's channeling of polar explorers I yearned for a new search for self and came up empty-handed, holding onto barren metaphor and icy humanity. While Bradfield scours the historical ice and elements of the antarctic her poetry becomes more detached from exploration itself. To be frank, how far can an allegorical poem of Ernest Shackleton take the discovery and articulation of our current existence?

Tony Hoaglund

I saw this review in the Times Book Review. Out of Gallaher's snarky yet insightful article I became interested in what Hoaglund actually has to say. That last poem the author quotes reminds me slightly of Bukowski. It looks like a great book.

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty Tony Hoaglund

90 pp. Graywolf Press

Grappling with Dean Young

When talking of Dean Young his use of the surreal in combination with the traditional breaks his poetry forth, as if its wild nature is trying to break free of containment and succeeding. Thus Young's poetry flows out in a style that shows the non-linearity of life, and the illogical existence we find ourselves in. As in the way the surrealists saw the horrors of World War I and the inability for old methods of art to produce meaning, Young seeks to show the inability of narrative and tradition to convey "reason."

In this way, reviewers such as David Sewell, see that the resulting, "idiosyncratic babel is not trash." Yet Sewell does help to point out where Young, "entrusts the not serious or not really interesting with a seriousness/prominence/presence it doesn't really deserve." Thus poems such as, "Ode to Hangover" might very well fall into this category. While the poem accurately portrays the inability of an ode to capture modern day existence, it focuses on the elation of the mundane with questioning importance, "After her I could eat a car but here's/a pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake/ yum but Hangover, you make me aspire/ to a saltine." As if the humor and importance of such an act of defying traditional poetics grows weary with every line.

Yet Sewell does well to point out the imagination and riskiness of Young's work, "Lives of the Surge Protectors" emerges for me as beautiful obliteration, flying through an ambiguity of narration, plot, grammar that ends in the beauty of the new. In fact to quote it does away with its ravenous pace and fluidity, regardless I present its first "sentence."

When she said what she said I

get out change the locks get

drunk fucked out detach drum

whocome howwhich no so I go

program the robot like I always do

in a loud den of panged sentinels

highlit and lifting off the page like

little wolves of italics orchestrating

the ephemeral, eflorescent As if

with blutzed butanes and all you hear

is snow, false as only facts can be.

Young presents an incredibly innovative and albeit beautiful description of anger, as if the words themselves lose their ability to grapple with their content, "drunk fucked" "whocome" "howwhich," ending with the powerful line, "false as only facts can be." Indeed nothing is factual in Young's work. It is the very essence of the surreal, in its attempt to come to terms with the world around it in new more meaningful ways. In this way Sewell's final point finds some commonality, "The poems always seem to be flying away--from easy sense making, from themselves, from us." Their break from tradition explores the heart of its inability and displays the non-linear, non-sensical ways in which existence presents itself.

Dean Young's Magical Mock-Ode

Upon reading Dean Young, the presence of tradition immediately presents itself, the use of standard form to structure verse. Yet, in an elliptical way, Young's utilization lets his painting of modern existence in all crazy, incoherency ring out. In The Elliptical Poets, Stephen Burt states, "elliptical poets treat literary history with an irreverent involvement. They create inversions, homages, takeoffs on old...poems: they also also adapt old subgenres...elegy...especially ode. (p. 48)" This quote leads us towards a greater understanding of Young's work. Young "inverts" the archaic world of the ode to incorporate the non-linearity and craziness inherent in today's search for meaning. For instance in the aptly titled, "Ash Ode" Young uses traditional language to portray ridiculous events.

Since I've /

Been incinerated, I've oft returned to this though,

that all things loved are pursued and never caught,

even as you slept beside me you were flying off.

Here the apparent description of incineration is juxtaposed with assonance and rhyme scheme, in "oft,"' "caught" "off," which are then disrupted by the words, "flying off."

While "Ash Ode" blatantly refers to its tradition irreverence, poems such as "Centrifuge" employ different characteristics of tradition to the same affect, here, using clear quatrain stanzas.

mistaken for clerks with gum on our shoes. I'm

trying not to panic. I'm trying to find the center,

drive a nail through it like a mercy killing.

Here, the structure of the "classic" might actually find itself at the center of a "mercy killing," in a meta-poetic sense. Does Young's "irreverent" disruption of tradition not send tremors through exhausted quatrains? The description of gum, first person pseudo-confessionalism, and simile of driving nails through, a seemingly lost center, break the mold of tradition by their content alone, yet when placed inside such a regimented structure, their significance multiplies.

Yet Young's work does not seem as bent on destruction of tradition as other contemporary poets, such as Richard Greenfield. Where Greenfield's work takes some ideas of antiquity and drowns them in chaotic mire, albeit with beautiful success, Young's approach resembles more of a "inversion," to take a word from Burt's vocabulary. Young's placement of the magical within the constricting lens of tradition makes his view of the world jump out against its entrapment in a meaningful, powerful way.

You're All a Bunch of Phonies

perhaps the greatest picture of Salinger

Aspartame Spores

I have added another of my poems, again from this summer. There is something peculiar about warmth that spurs thought...Perhaps the ability to observe without having the body concerned with keeping warm. Anyways, I'm just thinking out loud. Take a look.

Commentary on Greenfield

Perhaps Joyelle McSweeney's description of the many readers who upon reading Richard Greenfield's A Carnage in the Lovetrees, "Gnash their teeth, pound their flagons and cry for 'content!'" most accurately portrays the goal of Greenfield's work, to juxtapose the romantic with the verse of pain and abstraction, to perhaps find a more well defined self from this tumultuous, beautiful, paradox. Although reviewers such as McSweeney may remark upon Greenfield's work as coming out of the confessionalist tradition, as his pseudo-autobiographical description of fractured parental relationships may presume, his work transcends this exhausted form. In fact the reviewer Jeff Menne describes Greenfield's work as playing off both the New Brutalist and Language poetry movements. As New Brutalism stems from the avoidance of polish and elegance Menne's argument holds some water.

Yet Greenfield creates a full on attack on traditional poetic forms perhaps more alike to a postmodern destruction of early definitions of self. In his piece together he mocks the Romantic, "Where piety kneeled piety prayed through the soft textured ceiling," while showing the inability of this language to grasp the world around it in his description of being beaten by his father, "Whipped with a belt/ until my back bled." In this way Menne's relation of Greenfield to Language poetry seems more solid. Language poetry places emphasis on the disjunction of the signifier. Thus the you, the self, made up of the signifier, has become increasingly lost.

In fact, the elliptical, Stephen Burt, commented as well on Greenfield's description of the memoir, a method of self-description, as disjointed and fractured, again harkening back to postmodern need to redefine self amidst its destruction. Continuing on in the sticky realm of postmodernism, McSweeney described Greenfield's self-concious use of the metapoetical as a richer development towards meaning. She quotes the line, "In a revision of the line, I walk along the electric ruin of/ memory." In A Carnage in the Lovetrees Greenfield beautifully employs the "revision" of self through his "ruin of" traditional and confessionalist methods of coping with "memory" and meaning.

Greenfield's Discovery Amidst Chaos

A Carnage in the Lovetrees shows from the title alone the chaos present in the world today. The Lovetrees, whether they be familial trees or a greater world tree have been ripped apart. In the aptly titled "Burn the Family tree" the narrator, a child we might assume to be Greenfield watches as a, "man at the spire of a tree was mutilating the scene." Greenfield's father, we might assume, apparently applauds this, "spectacle," thus spawning the narrator's pivotal line, "Heartbreak after ha ha heartbreak," painfully laughing off the destruction of his security.

Yet Greenfield goes beyond the recognition of such destruction. His blending of the visceral and the raw within a loose, streaming structure seeks to move poetry forward into a meaningful expression in the messy world he finds himself in. For instance the poem, "Piece Together" begins by acknowledging the shortcomings of early poetry and its, "hovering above the cries,/ above the bodies of pain," while mocking romanticism almost laughably, " Where piety kneeled piety prayed...to the king of kings in a heaven so in love/ with its own perfection." From here Greenfield juxtaposes this romantic jargon with, probably, his own torturous treatment, and subsequent release.

Whipped with a belt

Until my back bled. Father also put salt styptic into the cuts,

Came to me as I slept and held me down. Lyrical instructions.

Saint Theresa wept at seeing the marks. Kissed me hard and

Wrapped her arms about my neck. Lyrical intentions,

also a flower. She was sixteen, moaning I love you I love you in the

dimming.

Thus while Greenfield roots his work in the events of the past, he does so to illustrate how powerful poetry grounded in the events of this chaotic world are when compared to that perched above reality.

In addition, Greenfield uses form to catalyze this immersion into the, "bodies of pain." In his opening poem, "Schema" the use of abrupt dashes to chop up "beautiful" images, "after a window opened/ to air and the portioned stereo of love and grandeur, after--/ mother sews a fell-off button, heats a stew, sews at a factory." Greenfield also organizes his poems, such as, "Avatar in the shape of a wing," in clumped bunches of sentences, where the mess of their form matches the destruction of banal metaphor.

The engine knocked in its cavity. Beneath the hood, the coded

need for maintenance. In a field-burning haze, the midriff of the

sky provides neither ascendancy nor grounding. Between two

indifferent pressboards is our sovereignty, the smeared wreckage

of the cumuli.

Here the world is being squeezed together and the beauty of nature, the cumuli, holds no more power as a poetic device.

Greenfield sees the world in the broken, chaotic, disjointed self that it has become. His verse finds solace in the destruction of the old and immersion in the cries of the self, as it becomes increasingly distant.

(New) Poem

Another summer poem, breaking out, after strep throat quarantine and collapse.

Reaction

As Flynn's Some Ether relives his traumatic past through the power of the elliptical, both Tony Hoagland and Calvin Bedient lend opinion which feels ungrounded. In Hoaglund's review, he conveys a strange ambiguity with the idea of confessionalism. He regards the term as a nice idea which will someday become antiquated, if it isn’t already, as Bedient accurately states. In this way the rest of his review struggles. Although he acknowledges the fact that Flynn's book doesn’t make any promises that confessionalism is a healing act, he seems to regard it with a familiar calming quality which damages his more center position in the end. Yet Bedient's review also presents problems. His argument is structured around Flynn's ties to his past and his inability to create the new. He combines the valid point that poetry comes from the now, "everything has yet to be done," with his description of Flynn’s work as a “banal narrative.”

If one does not realize the elliptical nature of Flynn’s work the fact that it is indeed rooted in the past is a very worthy criticism. In addition Hoaglund’s description ofEther as, “a snow globe in the hand of the dazed survivor of a battle,” does not give credit to Flynn’s shaping of the past into a disconnected world of elliptical allusion and residue. I would much rather compare Ether with Hoaglund’s phrase, “Dazed but curious, connected but detached,” instead of the whimsical connotations arising from “snow globe.” Flynn’s work shows that pure confessionalism brings no solace and instead finds meaning through its disjointed nature which provides an ether for dealing with grief.

I dreamt your suicide note

was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag,

& in the bag were six baby mice.

One can never find normality after loss. Flynn moves us towards a deeper understanding.

Ether Flow Chart |---------------Vehicle-ETHER-Radiation

| |

|-----SELF=--nothing |-----------|

|| |

Residual---LOSS======TRAUMA--Mom is an atom bomb. Dad is a

Feeling Finger-

| Print.:

Ringing--firsthand.

-Deafening of senses

-Overwhelming of sense

Read it from left

to right to left using gravity...nothing connects .

Some Ether

Nick Flynn’s Some Ether explores the depths of loss amidst this increasingly impersonal, inconsequential, complex and painful new millennium. In the opening of the chapter “Oceanic,” he compares the chaos and entropy around him to a coast guard description of the ocean, beautifully creating a means of description from unconventional allusion, “the ocean is always looking for a way into your boat.” In many ways this quote describes the relentless trauma that existence presses upon Flynn, through his loss of parents, self, and identity, and the residue that follows.

In the dialogue of contemporary poetry Flynn’s work involves elements of both the elliptical and the disillusioned. The author Stephen Burt identified these aspects as representing a cohesive school structure in his essay “The Elliptical Poets,” to strong criticism about the unity of such a school. Nevertheless Burt’s elements are evidenced in Ether. Although Flynn makes great use of allusion, he does so in an elliptical manner. Therefore references struggle for perfection. In the case of an ellipse, the mathematical shape, it verges on becoming a perfect circle, in poetry a perfect, ordinary allusion. Yet the ellipse can never be a circle. Let us now add Flynn’s world of loss and abandonment. Flynn’s mother committed suicide when he was twenty-two and he met his father for the first time at a homeless shelter he volunteered at. Thus how can Flynn find an expression of self in the wreckage of the world around him? The use of the elliptical allows allusion to express the disillusionment and loss present in the world around Flynn. For instance in “Bag of Mice” he writes, “I dreamt your suicide note/ was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag,/ & in the bag were six baby mice.” In terms of allusion, the fact that mice here represent suicide shows the crazy, incomprehensible, impossible nature of the act. Ether works tirelessly to find self where the two vehicles for his conception have been destroyed.

“My mother cut/ a hole in the air/ & vanished into it. The report hung &/ deafened followed by an over-whelming silence, a ringing/ in the ears. (p. 63)” In the quest for self Flynn also focuses on the affect trauma has on senses, its residue. Indeed the ringing of the ears shows the overwhelming affect of loss. Yet Flynn dives further. In “Residue” he quotes Rainier Maria Rilke, who states that the perfection of color is the absence of residue. As residue is forever inherent in Flynn’s self this perfection becomes impossible. In this later poem in Ether the book comes the a climax. The forces of elliptical allusion and a need for a medium of expression and self combine in the poem, “Some Ether,” “physicists were searching outerspace/ for some ether electromagnetic waves.” Indeed Flynn’s desire for ether finds credence. In a forever shrinking world of information the need to escape accessibility and the search for an avenue of real thought become prescient problems.

Notes:

Nick Flynn 2010 Academy of American Poets

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/758

Flynn, Nick Some Ether 2000 Nick Flynn Graywolf Press, Minnesota

Standing above Erosion

I have added one of my poems from this awakened summer, beauty amidst destruction of the unawakened, the chaos of our current existence.

Opening Remarks

Hello. This blog serves as a vehicle for commentary of current poets. I hope this resource becomes a meaningful tool for expression and opinion. I also have links to current magazines and authors in order to facilitate discussion. Enjoy.