Whew, so a combination of knowing no one's probably reading this and general business has kept me away, but I thought I'd try to get back on the train.
The first poem in Elizabeth Bishop's Collected Works is "The Map," which is this interesting frontispiece, really, because it sets up two important motifs: travel and this ever-present-post-modern chasm between signifier and signified. In this poem, it's a map. A map that is supposed to represent the islands, waters, etc. it presents but is also it's own thing, a created, artistic thing, nonetheless, and is never quite what it tries to represent. So we get this distance, which is kind of cool considering the "Distance" involved in the travel motif and in Bishop's more biographical life in which she lived mostly abroad and really had most of her interaction with other poets via correspondence.
If you're out there, chime in, disagree, agree, propose new thoughts, propose a new poem and I'll chew it up as best I can!
When caffeine and reading poetry collide...close reads of poems and other poetic/literary moments
Monday, March 11, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Iowa
So, I'm currently taking a virtual poetry seminar through Iowa's International Writing Program, taught by Margaret Ross. It's pretty fun so far.
I know that sometimes some writers need prompts, just to do the work of sitting down and engaging with words on a daily basis, so here's one I found enjoyable, and it works well for teaching, too, because you can do it as a sort of round robin group poem:
Write one line (if you're really stuck, take it from an old journal or poem), then start the next line or phrase with the last word of that line. Keep stitching like this until the end, or at least until you can takeoff into something more organic.
I know that sometimes some writers need prompts, just to do the work of sitting down and engaging with words on a daily basis, so here's one I found enjoyable, and it works well for teaching, too, because you can do it as a sort of round robin group poem:
Write one line (if you're really stuck, take it from an old journal or poem), then start the next line or phrase with the last word of that line. Keep stitching like this until the end, or at least until you can takeoff into something more organic.
Back to Work
So, I'm back to work today, which hopefully means I can find, finish, and post my read of "The Map."
I'm hopeful that once folks start to stop, they'll post their own takes on these poems, maybe correct some of mine or ask questions, post their reads of other poems, and maybe even request troubling/terrific poems that they'd like someone else to comment on.
I'm hopeful that once folks start to stop, they'll post their own takes on these poems, maybe correct some of mine or ask questions, post their reads of other poems, and maybe even request troubling/terrific poems that they'd like someone else to comment on.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Elizabeth Bishop's "The Imaginary Iceberg" Part One
Here is a link to the poem online: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-imaginary-iceberg/
“The Imaginary Iceberg” Part One
Ok, so my first poem to absorb was the first in Elizabeth Bishop’s collected works, “The Map,” but my notes are at work, so I’ve moved on to the second poem in the collection, “The Imaginary Iceberg.” This isn’t meant to be a thesis on the poem or a final commentary; it is simply meant to be a record of my thoughts, questions, observations, concerns, admirations, connections, and insights [or failures at insight] on first encountering the poem [usually three or four reads]. My hope is that if anyone else has insights to share, what can accrue will be a useful tool for anyone teaching or reading or thinking through the poem, at least as an entry point and discussion starter. Here goes nothing.
Starting in the first line (I’m going with the assumption that you can follow the link to the poem to read along, or that you can get ahold of a hardcopy), who is the we? Travelers in general? The speaker and a partner (friend of romantic partner)? Why is this choice between icebergs and ships set up?
“breathing plain of snow” begins this characterization of the iceberg, the snow, the sea, the natural as being more alive than the sailors, the ship, the viewer (the writer?). This vivification seems to be preferable to the ship and its “artlessly rhetorical” treaders. That phrase “stock-still” seems cliché to me, and I never realized that it comes from “stalk” still, as in the stalk or trunk of a plant. It dates back to the fifteenth century.
In “The Map” Bishop puns on the word “lies,” and this seems possible here in line 8, as the snow is situated upon the sea, resting there, but also is a sort of fabrication in that it dissolves and returns and in that it covers things up.
---
Why would the sailor give his eyes for this scene? That would prevent him from seeing. Maybe there’s something here about a different kind of vision, the vision of the imagination, as this iceberg is imaginary. I find the lines, “its glassy pinnacles / correct elliptics in the sky” confusing but important. First off, I can’t find “elliptics” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. There’s “elliptical” which either means shaped like an ellipse or deliberate obscurity or extreme economy. The latter seems more fitting, and if the glassy pinnacle are correcting elliptics in this sense, I suppose they could be clearing up confusions. What are these elliptics and why do they need correcting?
---
The opening seems to suggest that we’d rather have our own destruction than safe predictability, as icebergs are commonly pernicious to ships and safety. But they are also commonly symbolic because of the fact that most of their substance exists below the surface of the water.
“The Imaginary Iceberg” Part One
Ok, so my first poem to absorb was the first in Elizabeth Bishop’s collected works, “The Map,” but my notes are at work, so I’ve moved on to the second poem in the collection, “The Imaginary Iceberg.” This isn’t meant to be a thesis on the poem or a final commentary; it is simply meant to be a record of my thoughts, questions, observations, concerns, admirations, connections, and insights [or failures at insight] on first encountering the poem [usually three or four reads]. My hope is that if anyone else has insights to share, what can accrue will be a useful tool for anyone teaching or reading or thinking through the poem, at least as an entry point and discussion starter. Here goes nothing.
Starting in the first line (I’m going with the assumption that you can follow the link to the poem to read along, or that you can get ahold of a hardcopy), who is the we? Travelers in general? The speaker and a partner (friend of romantic partner)? Why is this choice between icebergs and ships set up?
“breathing plain of snow” begins this characterization of the iceberg, the snow, the sea, the natural as being more alive than the sailors, the ship, the viewer (the writer?). This vivification seems to be preferable to the ship and its “artlessly rhetorical” treaders. That phrase “stock-still” seems cliché to me, and I never realized that it comes from “stalk” still, as in the stalk or trunk of a plant. It dates back to the fifteenth century.
In “The Map” Bishop puns on the word “lies,” and this seems possible here in line 8, as the snow is situated upon the sea, resting there, but also is a sort of fabrication in that it dissolves and returns and in that it covers things up.
---
Why would the sailor give his eyes for this scene? That would prevent him from seeing. Maybe there’s something here about a different kind of vision, the vision of the imagination, as this iceberg is imaginary. I find the lines, “its glassy pinnacles / correct elliptics in the sky” confusing but important. First off, I can’t find “elliptics” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. There’s “elliptical” which either means shaped like an ellipse or deliberate obscurity or extreme economy. The latter seems more fitting, and if the glassy pinnacle are correcting elliptics in this sense, I suppose they could be clearing up confusions. What are these elliptics and why do they need correcting?
---
The opening seems to suggest that we’d rather have our own destruction than safe predictability, as icebergs are commonly pernicious to ships and safety. But they are also commonly symbolic because of the fact that most of their substance exists below the surface of the water.
Intro to Elizabeth Bishop's Collected Poems
Intro to Elizabeth Bishop's Collected Poems [cobbled together from a few sources]: ---
Bishop’s first book of poems, North & South, is teeming with poems that emanate from her prodigious travels in France, Spain, Africa, Ireland, and Italy. Her Father died when she was young, and her mother was committed to a mental institution, so she lived with her grandparents in Nova Scotia. Her poetry avoids confessionalism and focuses on her interpretations of the physical world. For many years, she lived in Brazil and communicated to friends in America only by letter. She wrote slowly and published sparingly, but she was possessed of technical brilliance and formal variety. She taught at Harvard for seven years.
Bishop’s first book of poems, North & South, is teeming with poems that emanate from her prodigious travels in France, Spain, Africa, Ireland, and Italy. Her Father died when she was young, and her mother was committed to a mental institution, so she lived with her grandparents in Nova Scotia. Her poetry avoids confessionalism and focuses on her interpretations of the physical world. For many years, she lived in Brazil and communicated to friends in America only by letter. She wrote slowly and published sparingly, but she was possessed of technical brilliance and formal variety. She taught at Harvard for seven years.
Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons: Glazed Glitter
Tender Buttons continued..."Glazed Glitter" Part One:
---
Glazed Glitter: This is so oblique it seems, at first, to be nonsensical. It starts with a one-sentence paragraph about nickel—the metal? The coin? There does seem to be some sort of effort to define, as the first sentence reads, “Nickel, what is nickel, it is originally rid of a cover.” The question mark, of course, is omitted, and the sentence finished by sort of answering its own question, if “it is originally rid of a cover” can be said to define nickel. These entries make me think of Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary or Francis Ponge’s Things. Except, of course, while Bierce’s definitions were jaded parodies of definitions, Stein’s are not ostensibly funny; they are simply oblique and difficult to apprehend. What is glazed glitter, anyway? How would one glaze glitter?
---
The second paragraph ends with “Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing.” Is glitter just a stand-in for hollow décor? For symbol without substance? If this is a motif, then it could help explain the definitions that don’t really define, as they could be taken as in some sense equal to the decorations that don’t become anything, but this seems like a cheap parlor game, a whining or musing that doesn’t stand well as a poem to offer the reader. The second sentence reads, “The change in that is that red weakens an hour.” The first “that” seems to be a pronoun referring to an antecedent in the first sentence, I suppose, but I’m not sure what. The change in the nickel? The change in nickel getting rid of its cover? The change in the glazed glitter? The glazing of the glitter? And once we place that, if we ever do, why does this change weaken an hour? How can an hour be weakened? I suppose if an hour can be extended to mean time, and time can be said to be an enemy to a mortal, ephemeral creature such as ourselves, then witnessing glazed glitter or any beautiful metamorphosis could weaken time’s advantage over us by creating the sort of stillness art provides, by deepening the life of the viewer and thereby making the product we buy with our time more worth the price. I guess.
---
The paragraph continues, “The change has come. There is no search.” Well, the change of the nickel ridding itself of a cover, or the change of glitter becoming glazed makes sense, although it seems like a grandiose statement to not extend beyond that literal. The search for what? Meaning? What lies on the other side of the symbol/metaphor equation? Perhaps this exercise I’m performing right now is the search in question, and perhaps this line is begging me not to treat the poem like this. If that’s the case, I apologize to Stein, but I don’t much care for her game, anyway. The paragraph corrects itself in the next sentence, “But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation.” The hope that language represents something? That there is a Meaning with a capital M? “and sometime, surely any is unwelcome.” There’s something here about an analytical dissection of the poem as being unwelcome, I think. “sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure.” A sinecure is a position that requires little or no work while providing an income, or, archaically, an ecclesiastical benefice without cure of souls. It comes from the Latin for “without cure.”
---
The sentence continues, “and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing.” I’m not sure what to make of this idea of clean—clean of interpretations, as if they somehow soil the art? Charming, as in a patronizing way to refer to the hope and the interpretation? Maybe a sweeter intention, yet still condescending?
---
The second paragraph begins, “There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine.” There are several spots like this where a small word, an article, a preposition, in this case the conjunction “and” seems out of place. I expect to see “in mercy or in medicine” just as I expect “a system of pointing” when Stein gives us “a system to pointing.” What to make of this? Simply a confounding of readerly expectation to reinforce the instability of trying to search for an expected set of symbols and representations and meaning? This first sentence seems, at first, untrue. I feel like I’m pretty grateful for medicine. Perhaps mercy can often go unthanked, but I think it often is repaid with gratitude. Could this connect to an idea of the speaker anticipating the reader’s frustrations with the request that he or she not try to interpret the poem? Meaning, the speaker sets up a poem that confounds the readerly impulse to interpret for the purpose of edifying the reader, offering him or her the mercy and medicine of not interpreting, but the speaker already expects ingratitude for the gesture? Well, it’s a providential expectation, because I don’t care for the game still, and therefore this reader doesn’t have much gratitude.
---
“There can be breakages in Japanese.” Does this refer to Japanese forms, like haiku, etc.? I don’t actually remember any, other than haiku. Breakages? In that haiku are less about interpreting a meaning than simply pairing an image from nature with, what, an aphorism? I don’t think I know enough about Japanese forms to take this anywhere. Or maybe it’s not about poetic forms at all. Maybe it’s simply about the Japanese language? I don’t know much about that either.
---
“That is no programme. That is no color chosen.” Hmmm. What is the act of creating a programme or choosing a color? Choose a color as in choose a color, say, to paint a room? To paint one’s perspective or reading of a poem by interpreting a meaning and thereby reducing the poem to details that support said meaning? Again, if this is what’s going on, I don’t care for the game. If it’s not too lame to call upon Frost’s “a poem should begin in delight and end in wisdom,” I’m not feeling the delight, and the knowledge doesn’t feel like wisdom; it feels more like more conspiracy theory (hey, man…what if language doesn’t mean anything? What if we’re just a big, foolish experiment for aliens?).
---
Glazed Glitter: This is so oblique it seems, at first, to be nonsensical. It starts with a one-sentence paragraph about nickel—the metal? The coin? There does seem to be some sort of effort to define, as the first sentence reads, “Nickel, what is nickel, it is originally rid of a cover.” The question mark, of course, is omitted, and the sentence finished by sort of answering its own question, if “it is originally rid of a cover” can be said to define nickel. These entries make me think of Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary or Francis Ponge’s Things. Except, of course, while Bierce’s definitions were jaded parodies of definitions, Stein’s are not ostensibly funny; they are simply oblique and difficult to apprehend. What is glazed glitter, anyway? How would one glaze glitter?
---
The second paragraph ends with “Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing.” Is glitter just a stand-in for hollow décor? For symbol without substance? If this is a motif, then it could help explain the definitions that don’t really define, as they could be taken as in some sense equal to the decorations that don’t become anything, but this seems like a cheap parlor game, a whining or musing that doesn’t stand well as a poem to offer the reader. The second sentence reads, “The change in that is that red weakens an hour.” The first “that” seems to be a pronoun referring to an antecedent in the first sentence, I suppose, but I’m not sure what. The change in the nickel? The change in nickel getting rid of its cover? The change in the glazed glitter? The glazing of the glitter? And once we place that, if we ever do, why does this change weaken an hour? How can an hour be weakened? I suppose if an hour can be extended to mean time, and time can be said to be an enemy to a mortal, ephemeral creature such as ourselves, then witnessing glazed glitter or any beautiful metamorphosis could weaken time’s advantage over us by creating the sort of stillness art provides, by deepening the life of the viewer and thereby making the product we buy with our time more worth the price. I guess.
---
The paragraph continues, “The change has come. There is no search.” Well, the change of the nickel ridding itself of a cover, or the change of glitter becoming glazed makes sense, although it seems like a grandiose statement to not extend beyond that literal. The search for what? Meaning? What lies on the other side of the symbol/metaphor equation? Perhaps this exercise I’m performing right now is the search in question, and perhaps this line is begging me not to treat the poem like this. If that’s the case, I apologize to Stein, but I don’t much care for her game, anyway. The paragraph corrects itself in the next sentence, “But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation.” The hope that language represents something? That there is a Meaning with a capital M? “and sometime, surely any is unwelcome.” There’s something here about an analytical dissection of the poem as being unwelcome, I think. “sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure.” A sinecure is a position that requires little or no work while providing an income, or, archaically, an ecclesiastical benefice without cure of souls. It comes from the Latin for “without cure.”
---
The sentence continues, “and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing.” I’m not sure what to make of this idea of clean—clean of interpretations, as if they somehow soil the art? Charming, as in a patronizing way to refer to the hope and the interpretation? Maybe a sweeter intention, yet still condescending?
---
The second paragraph begins, “There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine.” There are several spots like this where a small word, an article, a preposition, in this case the conjunction “and” seems out of place. I expect to see “in mercy or in medicine” just as I expect “a system of pointing” when Stein gives us “a system to pointing.” What to make of this? Simply a confounding of readerly expectation to reinforce the instability of trying to search for an expected set of symbols and representations and meaning? This first sentence seems, at first, untrue. I feel like I’m pretty grateful for medicine. Perhaps mercy can often go unthanked, but I think it often is repaid with gratitude. Could this connect to an idea of the speaker anticipating the reader’s frustrations with the request that he or she not try to interpret the poem? Meaning, the speaker sets up a poem that confounds the readerly impulse to interpret for the purpose of edifying the reader, offering him or her the mercy and medicine of not interpreting, but the speaker already expects ingratitude for the gesture? Well, it’s a providential expectation, because I don’t care for the game still, and therefore this reader doesn’t have much gratitude.
---
“There can be breakages in Japanese.” Does this refer to Japanese forms, like haiku, etc.? I don’t actually remember any, other than haiku. Breakages? In that haiku are less about interpreting a meaning than simply pairing an image from nature with, what, an aphorism? I don’t think I know enough about Japanese forms to take this anywhere. Or maybe it’s not about poetic forms at all. Maybe it’s simply about the Japanese language? I don’t know much about that either.
---
“That is no programme. That is no color chosen.” Hmmm. What is the act of creating a programme or choosing a color? Choose a color as in choose a color, say, to paint a room? To paint one’s perspective or reading of a poem by interpreting a meaning and thereby reducing the poem to details that support said meaning? Again, if this is what’s going on, I don’t care for the game. If it’s not too lame to call upon Frost’s “a poem should begin in delight and end in wisdom,” I’m not feeling the delight, and the knowledge doesn’t feel like wisdom; it feels more like more conspiracy theory (hey, man…what if language doesn’t mean anything? What if we’re just a big, foolish experiment for aliens?).
Yikes, this has taken a little bit longer to get started than I envisioned as I hadn't envisioned my daughter having three new molars come in! Anyway, here's a bit on Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, at least the first entry:
Tender Buttons First off, tender buttons? “Tender” is about as unexpected an adjective to pair with “buttons” as I can imagine. What’s the move? Buttons as indicative of meaningless, random objects? Minutiae? To make them tender is to make them cared about? To give them life.
Objects
A carafe, that is a blind glass: Brief, prose-poemesque. In form, an indented paragraph composed of, essentially, prose. But look at the language: “a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing (…) The difference is spreading.” This is clearly oblique language intended for something other than description. So, what exactly is going on? A system of pointing could be the system of representation, of symbol and metaphor, perhaps of language itself as trying to represent, to be the things it names.
Tender Buttons First off, tender buttons? “Tender” is about as unexpected an adjective to pair with “buttons” as I can imagine. What’s the move? Buttons as indicative of meaningless, random objects? Minutiae? To make them tender is to make them cared about? To give them life.
Objects
A carafe, that is a blind glass: Brief, prose-poemesque. In form, an indented paragraph composed of, essentially, prose. But look at the language: “a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing (…) The difference is spreading.” This is clearly oblique language intended for something other than description. So, what exactly is going on? A system of pointing could be the system of representation, of symbol and metaphor, perhaps of language itself as trying to represent, to be the things it names.
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