David Ferry scratches his head

I remember reading David Ferry's poem The Intention of Things online and was somewhat bemused when other readers commented that the piece reminded them of Wallace Stevens'  wondering of what it must be l pass through the membrane separating our existence of mere representation and enter into the realm of Platonic Ideas, where the real things actually exist. Heady stuff for a poem to plow its way through, but there is at least an elegance in Stevens' ruminations on these fixed landscapes, things-in-themselves-unsullied or spoiled by human vanities.I had concluded some years ago that Stevens had stopped his search for intrinsic and immutable meaning in the nature of things and concluded that his imagination and his gift for scrupulous composition would be put to better use re-framing the texture and position of things among those palm-lined shores abutting the fabulous terraces and columned cabanas, thus investing his language with a further power to evoke the mystery of things that seem, to him, to collude amongst themselves to keep us guessing to what end our days serves. For most, this results in periodic bouts of being dumbfounded, a chronic state of WTF; the pratfalls we have at the point when we assume we've discovered our path results in arguments with the results. Stevens fairly much admits that he'd be baffled if he thought he could define anything in this world of appearances and realized he would be guessing. Fortunately,  the guesses were inspirations in themselves and that he had the genius to transform his speculative method into poems that would inspire the intrigued reader to ask better questions. Ferry, though, hasn't the elegance or eloquence Stevens, and his poem The Intention of Things is a rudderless mess. One might have fun chasing pronouns and such things as they try to follow these elliptical couplets, but this reminds not so much as a poem of phenomenological speculation linked with the secret purpose of objects than it resembles a stoned rap a group of dopers would wander into once the smoke took hold and the world around them became an unreal cartoon they'd been dropped into. The worse part of it is that it reads further as if one of the zonked participants actually remembered the disparate topics of the ganja fueled rap and wrote it all down, trying attempting to make it a serious inquiry into the sequestered nature of things and events. It is humorless, it is overdone, it is sophomore metaphysics, it is dull and very pretentious; the narrator seems to think he's Hamlet, standing apart and on high, ruminating on human folly, the inevitability of death despite all in-genius plots. But that's a speech that's already been delivered, an unsurpassed achievement. David Ferry's dry verse here seems more a typing exercise committed while he paraphrased a seeming half dozen ideas already infinitely paraphrased.

Soul

David Ferry is among the least interesting poets I can think of. He does, though, come with an interesting premise on occasion, although the result is predictably disappointing; what you thought me might capitalize on he instead fumbles, makes dull witted. "Soul", a poem  now on Slate,  is his  attempt here to convey the worries and woes of getting older through the persona of a lobster is flat, humorless conceit that is not helped not at all by the poet's hurried pacing. The punchline seems to be a variation of an old  12 step group cliche about wanting one's insides to match other's outsides,that one wanted the ease and comfort others appeared to have for themselves. Ferry's monologist feels his body falling apart and changing for the worse and  desires a hard shell, something that both protects what is left and which also hides.

All thought, and all digestion, and pornographic
Inquiry, and getting about, and bewilderment,
And fear, avoidance of trouble, belief in what,
God knows, vague memories of friends, and what
They said last night, and seeing, outside of myself,
From here inside myself, my waving claws
Inconsequential, waving, and my feelers
Preternatural, trembling, with their amazing
Troubling sensitivity to threat.

Ferry isn't addressing anything , isn't discussing any points of contradiction, is not attempting to embrace a dialectic in his experience, that is, witnessing conflicting reactions to what his life has come to and witnessing the facts that result from the conflict, the new ground he'll be standing upon. This is  a man reciting a list of talking points  which hastily connects a crustacean attribute with an elderly human foible .  This reminds me  of nothing less than someone reciting aloud key points of an exam they are about to take or an address they are give.  This is not a lobster speaking, but instead a narrator who is musing why a lobster's body would be better for him than the one he actually has. The metaphor, as I said, is an interesting one and has potential, but Ferry doesn't make it work. The tragedies and set backs and declining physical prowess make the poem poignant, but do not, of themselves, make them poetic.

David Ferry hasn't engaged his idea--this is the writing of someone trying to describe in detail the things they see from a moving car's passenger window, the result being a series of quick summaries and ad libs that cannot avoid their essential inanity. Kerouac had written that the first thought was the best thought ,that one ought not refine their "ah-ha!" with refinement, an attractive premise that has , in fact, ruined countless poems. The poet's job, I think, is to put in the work, apply the craft and, like good actors with a superb director guiding them, don't let anyone see you sweating the technique.Empathy is easy for all things related to getting older and feeling less vim and vigor ; I understand Ferry's interest in the topic. Empathy, though, does not by itself grant quality. He had an interesting at the start when he suggested that lobster's body is better suited to a human one since he is feeling less human the older he gets. It 's just too bad that Ferry's resulting poem doesn't rise above a rambling list of aches and frustrations.

SOME POEMS NEED TO BE TARRED AND FEATHERED

There are some poems I read that put me in a bad mood and keep me there; the insidious thing about that experience is that the mood isn't bad, it's mean, and a host of my anti-social impulses awaken and demand their satisfaction. "The White Skunk" by the lead-footed David Ferry is such a poem, offered up on Slate. Think of the Drama Club ham who treated every gesture or half sentence of dialogue into an audition in front of imagined producers, every poli-sci blowhard who couldn't jargonize obvious facts fast enough, a movie so long that sometimes you think you're still watching it. Ferry is one thing, a bore, a never ending cold potato.
White Skunk" , ironically, caused to remember a Little Rascals episode I watched when I was a grade schooler, specifically an arresting image among the usual film hi-jinx of one a young black five year old chasing a skunk into a the gang's club house, saying "HERE KITTY KITTY KITTY". The skunk darts into the building and, of course, everyone inside comes flying out of the windows. My memory, of course, is a bit hazy on the exact details of the scene, but the scenario is correct, and it's an apt metaphor for someone who gets fixed on a bad idea and labors until the end, the result a busy and messy assemblage.
David Ferry chased a skunk thinking he had a brilliant idea on his hand; the metaphor gets extended here, in that this poem stinks as badly as the maligned animal would if sufficiently provoked. The poet might as well have been a drunk lout at a party , pants around his knees, lampshade on his head, spelling "Mississippi" with the rich raspberry-tuned gases he could squeeze from between his cheeks. Musical he might have though this poem was, but with all the useless padding, the buffering qualifiers, the allusions to Homer seeming no less than a moneypit home addition that knows no end, Ferry's attempt to turn an interesting scene into a moment of dimension ripping revelation gives a wordy disaster, whole stanzas composed for a unifying theme that does not come.
Ferry makes the familiar mistake when things aren't clicking , which is to overwrite in determined fashion to compensate for inspiration. Too soon it's more than squeaking gases the poet is passing our way. Thinking of a groaning man inside a men's room stall who's sat on what's he's consumed for too long, straining for release. Ferry, though, was straining for effect, but the poem , not flushed with success, still has an odor one would normally remove themselves from.
 Ferryis a noted translator with some poetic instincts and precision when he brings his skill to reanimating Homer, should offer up this unedited mess as a finished work. The project would have worked if he made only the most oblique and distanced references to the classical poem he was paraphrasing and drawing parallels from. He needed to ennoble the skunk less with mythological freight and bring the interaction between animal and human down to a more plausible point. Similarly he would have done well to make the imperiled father and daughter less melodramatic; as it goes , it has the pitch of excited overwriting, an athletic effort to put words in place when narrative layering isn't working out.  Had this my poem, I would have pared this back to the point where the allegories all but disappeared and the reader would have instead a poem that could be read for it's own merits. Those astute enough to recognize the borrowing from Homer, well, good on them.  

Ferry wanted to do fine things with the overlays of this poem--a contemporary scene of animal v human tension segueing into an ancient Greek tale--but the result is ham handed and displays the unwieldy amateurishness of a writer unwilling to rid a work of particulars that don't enhance but only clutter and clog. There is a way to make this idea vivid and emphatic, and the first thing would be to de-emphasise the classical references; as is, it merely seems like the cultural window dressing that has more to do with bragging rights than usefulness. Second, the action should be sparer, mirroring Ferry's enamored tale, but making little or no reference to it. Third, the language can be cut back within an inch of its ideal intent. Ferry needs to spend less time telling us what's happening and more showing us.

Dullness of Intentions

This week's poem has been compared to Wallace Stevens and his regimented wonderings of what it must be like to permeate the membrane separating our existence of mere representation and enter into the realm of Platonic ideas, where the real things actually exist. Heady stuff for a poem to plough its way through, but there is at least an elegance in Stevens' ruminations on these fixed landscapes, things-in-themselves-unsullied or spoiled by human vanities.

I had concluded some years ago that Stevens had stopped his search for intrinsic and immutable meaning in the nature of things and concluded that his imagination and his gift for scrupulous composition would be put to better use re-framing the texture and position of things among those palm lined shores abutting the fabulous terraces and columned cabanas, thus investing his language with a further power to evoke the mystery of things that seem, to him, to collude amongst themselves to keep us guessing to what end our days serves. For most of us this results in periodic bouts of being dumbfounded , a chronic state of WTF; the pratfalls we have at the point when we assume we've discovered our path results in arguments with the results. Stevens fairly much admits that he'd be baffled if he thought he could define anything in this world of appearances, and realized he would be guessing. Fortunate for us the guesses were inspirations in themselves and that he had the genius to transform his speculative method into poems that would inspire the intrigued reader to ask better questions.

Ferry, though, hasn't the elegance or eloquence Stevens, and his poem The Intention of Things is a rudderless mess. One might have fun chasing pronouns and such things as they try to follow these elliptical couplets, but this reminds not so much as a poem of phenomenological speculation linked with the secret purpose of objects than it resembles a stoned rap a group of dopers would wander into once the smoke took hold and the world around them became an unreal cartoon they'd been dropped into. The worse part of it is that it reads further as if one of the zonked participants actually remembered the disparate topics of the ganja fueled rap and wrote it all down, trying attempting to make it a serious inquiry into the sequestered nature of things and events. It is humorless, it is over done, it is sophomore metaphysics, it is dull and very pretentious ; the narrator seems to think he's Hamlet , standing apart and on high, ruminating on human folly , the inevitability of death dispite all in-genius plots. But that's a speech that's already been delivered, an unsurpassable achievement. David Ferry's dry verse here seems more a typing exercise committed while he paraphrased a seeming half dozen ideas already infinitely paraphrased .

I