| |
 |
Wednesday, January 29, 2003 |
I'm playing out the next three nights, so there'll be a lull here after the last few days' frenzy. BTW, feel free to beat up on any poems of mine I post here. Most are early drafts, and I'm looking for some reaction. This, one, for example, though it is "about" things that happened more than a year ago, didn't reach this form till a few minutes ago:
Financial Analysis
It seems I have the kind of tic
That fascinated Freud,
For once again I've bought a house,
Then joined the unemployed.
He'd claim these walls that shelter me
Must mean my Mother's womb
From which my Father's banned by Death,
That I'm her guilty groom.
But I'm not blind--no matter how
Engrossingly complex,
Self-knowledge is no substitute
For earning steady checks.
That old ballad meter again. Better duck.
8:25:08 PM 
|
|
In emails and in comments, some readers of this blog have said things like I love the work of metrical masters like Anthony Hecht or Richard Wilbur or X. J. Kennedy or Donald Justice, but the New Formalists are stiff, uninspired, incompetent, blah, blah, blah... It's curious that Hecht and Wilbur and Justice and Kennedy themselves do not share this opinion. Here's a short collection from book jackets and prefaces:
Wilbur on Tim Murphy's Very Far North: "When he published his first collection, The Deed of Gift, Timothy Murphy was already a mature and greatly accomplished poet; but in Very Far North he has gone from strength to strength." Hecht wrote the preface.
Hecht on Charles Martin's Starting from Sleep: "Deft, witty, intelligent, and richly colloquial, this is a poetry of technical mastery and an easy freedom founded on well-earned assurance."
Kennedy on Rhina Espaillat's Where Horizon's Go: "Such developed skill and such mastery of rhyme and meter are certainly rare anymore; so is plainspeaking."
Justice on Greg Williamson's Errors in the Script: "I know of no one who writes with more wit and invention.... Verse turns to poetry before one's eyes--and in one's ears."
Wilbur on Sam Gwynn's No Word of Farewell: "His poems are based in the vernacular, yet haunted by the whole tradition of verse. This is a richly varied, highly accomplished collection from one of our best."
Maybe I've been picking bad examples--or maybe some of those comments are from folks who have a bias, perhaps unconscious, against contemporary metrical poetry. Try reading more of it. Jenny Factor's Unraveling at the Name might be a good place to start--or any of the books linked above. There's a review of Factor's book here.
7:28:46 PM
|
|
Here's Sam Gwynn's poem as it appeared in the Evansville Review:
9/12
He says: My daughter cries and asks last night
What she should do. I tell her, "Baby, look,
Your mom's from Panama, your friends are white
And black, we're baked potatoes--and that book
You dropped there says we all belong here too.
I've been here longer than the kids who buy
Their beer and smokes from me. And someday you
May have to tell your daughter not to cry.
Your papa was a student when the Shah
Went under, and they called me 'camel jock.'
Some of them were my friends. I don't know whether
They ever think of that. Pick up that sock
And do your homework. This is America.
This is our country. We're in this together."
Here are links to some others of his poems as they appear on the web:
Three Poems
Make Us an Offer
Two Poems
And here is a review with generous quotes from No Word of Farewell.
6:36:00 PM
|
|
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
2006 Michael Snider.
|
|
|
|
|
