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.
Wow, Conor, you have put your finger right on a number of key items-- and quite eloquently. You mention "destruction of the old" and of banal metaphor. When the smoke and ashes of this carnage clear, what do we find? To put it another way, if old ways of writing were the "thesis," and Greenfield lays down some "antithesis" as antidote, what is the resulting synthesis?
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post ~Robert
Conor- I really enjoyed reading your post especially after having our class discussion about Greenfield's book and reading the reviews on his poetry. I think it is really impressive that you noted many of the aspects discussed in the reviews prior to reading them. Specifically how you noticed that Greenfield juxtaposes "romantic jargon" with contemporary ideas, such as a painful past. When I first read A Carnage in the Lovetrees I recognized that while the content of his poems was unconventional there was also soemthing about them that made them traditional, but I could not pinpoint what that was. I thought perhaps it was the imagery he creates or his focus on nature, but I had not thought about his language and word choice. However, after reading your post and the reviews I definitely see the romantic traits hidden in the poems.
ReplyDeleteI also liked how you commented on the title of the book and what Greenfield might be referencing with Lovetrees, either familial or worldly.
Furthermore, your post helped me understand what Greenfield may try to be accomplishing in the form and strucutre of his poems. I thought it was really interesting to read your interpretation of Greenfield's use of dashes in "Schema." I often have a hard time understanding the purpose of varying forms because so often they seem random. However, this really helped me to see clearer.
Lastly, I loved your line "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." I think this sentence accurately sums up Greenfield's poetry in just a few words. In this one sentence you mention the content and language as well as the structure of the poems and how Greenfield uses these poems to further his own life. This one sentence encompasses his entire book.
Really intriguing post!