Sunday, May 7, 2006

Driving to a protest

Driving to a protest march in Washington DC
especially for Jack_Dallas


there are throngs of
singers with songs
about guitars
unstrung and
love gone wrong
worse than wrong turns
on New Jersey turnpikes
on your way to Virginia,
you raise your sign
because it's time
to dine at the table
of the fat cats who
malign our honor
and are able
to make us all goners
'cuz cops and Crusaders
don't give a starvation
wage over our rights
or in what language
they're in
nor read them
on the precise page,
i am tired
is all i say
and take the turn
into the gas station
while a rain
hits the windshield
and garish clouds
hang over the fields,
TV antennas
are bent
on pitched roofs,
bolted to crumbling
chimneys,
life is unfair
and these rhymes
suck significant
lengths of bad tasting
flesh is what i say
fuckin' A,
right now
the Bozo cartoons must
be filled with lines
and fluttering pictures,
damn
that is so unfair...

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

The genius of Dan Bogen

Don Bogen writes with a cracked, dry Prairie voice and suggests to some that he’s a latter day Carl Sandburg. Perhaps, but the comparison deals an unfair hand to a good poet, since the late poet’s name evokes certain qualities that are carved in the soft clay of consciousness; should the contrast stick, Bogen will never get fair reading for his own work. He’s obviously influenced by Sandburg, but like any writer with a style he or she can rightly claims is theirs, he's developed a voice wholly his own. He has a particular mastery of negative capability, assuming a guise hardly his own and not of human form at all and manages without winking irony or obnoxious purple passages to describe the construction of a house from the house's point of view . We see this in his poem “House”, recently posted by poetry editor Robert Pinsky at Slate.com.A neat trick, a hard one to pull off, since it requires keeping so many things in balance and a great many potential bad writing habits in check. Interestingly, it is a poem about something being built, an architecture that is coming into being rather than the easier ploy of composing a poem to mark the degradation of a landscape, a house, a whole town; writers write so much about things in decline simply because the worse and gamiest things of existence are the easiest to imagine. The final effect of this, we know, is reader weariness over reading yet another poem writ in fits of routine despair or template-constructed ennui. All the polarized words , the sad similes, the morose metaphors about aging, decline, failing eyesight, death blur into one another not unlike one Bill O'Reilly self-deconstruction after another, a sheer babble of grief , and despondency that moves the reader only to turn the page, or close the book they thought might give them a spark. Bogen achieves his problematic task with an efficient set of divisions that has the house quite literally describing the progress of his construction by declaring what it was he was at each stage , with the addition of planks, floor boards, the whirl and grind of band saws and slamming of nails with appropriate hammers,I was plaster, I was rubber and glassMy joists, my iron ligaments grew invisibleI took on angles, gable and dormer and plumb back doorI blocked the wind, I was rooms each linked to anotherDucts and vents gave me unityWomen came, their hands on my wallsI was whitewash and would be paint and would wear clothEqual parts pain and anticipation, the silent yet aware intelligence of the house narrates its own becoming, speaking of said Schmidt only as his builder, his principle designer, assigning him, it might be suggested, the position of an archetypal God , suggesting a culture of houses, created among themselves, a shared cosmology this house shares with "my brothers" who all "stood up in the field". Sandburg wrote the haunted "I Am The Grass" where the obvious message was that all things that come from the earth will, in time, return to the dust from which they symbiotically sprang, and Bogen's poem is a response to this famous ode, giving the reader the message that death is always eternal is and unforgiving, then creation and construction and the embrace of life with all imaginative force is constant and unstoppable. Bogen masterfully embeds that passion to live and create community within the houses we build for ourselves to live in. I am envious of his language, with its sparing use of adjective and overactive metaphor, and I quite admirable at the poetic resonance he provides--the suggestions of qualities and significances that fall just outside the sentence content--using this sweetly idealized plain speak. One of the best poems I've read in this series in a long while.Sandburg is the crisp realist that rob says, but the style, evoking curling paint, eternal autumn and hills full of leafless trees and occasional farm ho uses very often lends itself to greeting card sentiment. The dark side is there, yes, and therein lays his genius, but often times his scenes of Americana reduce themselves to Norman Rockwell paintings. Technical mastery, a huge popularity, an undeniable brilliance, and a conspicuous streak of the corny.

The interesting thing about good stage set design is that the two- dimensionality of the props, when done well, make the theater attending to consider the context deeper than had the scenery been ruthlessly "realistic". The abstracted, simplified and stylized look of the scenery, the props works with the text and brings about a theatrical result. Bogen does this rather well; giving the house human speech and having it tell us of its construction, its "birth". All consideration of this being a "real" house go out the window, and we suspend our disbelief long enough to gather some impressions about houses and what we call homes in another way, a perspective not previously available.
The Williams is good, great in fact, and he's one of those who can discourse at length about something and not allow himself to get weighed down with the sheer bulk of his details or to get stalled in a tangential cul-de-sac. There is a discourse going on here, the work of a noticing eye that can bring description to a more discerning level; the relations of the things in the world man has created them for are revealed and surprise us.

The difference between this poem and Bogen's, though, is that "House" is not merely a detailing of how comes to stand on a particular hillside alongside other homes. The house, in fact, is the narrating persona, a consciousness of a sort that Bogen presents, subtly, as recounting its "birth" and, perhaps, retelling a creation myth. What is implied here--a community of buildings with shared purpose, culture, familial bonding, mythology--are large but smartly kept off stage, conspicuous by their absence.
The description of the house in the various states of creation all give indication that there is a fulfilling of a fate here, a sense of predestination the house, in this imagining, is aware of and both accepts and looks forward to.

Let's not generalize too much about the difference in tastes between men and women. The language contains those references that could handily appeal to both sexes, touching lightly on gender stereotypes; the talk of materials, tools, techniques for the men, and the declaration of what kind of home it would be for women. A house, a home more specifically, is made of many elements, and the house's persona speaks to those distinctions.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Sidney Bechet Deserves Better Than This


Poems evoking the names of jazz greats is one of the favorite gimmicks of writers who are stuck for an honest opening line; the mention of an improvisor's name from the early days of recorded music gives you an instant atmosphere of the old and serious sort, and gives the writer a fast entrance to the expressway of half-realized musings. Most often, as I've read them, the ploy , the name dropping does not working. Irony is still something that needs to be worked for. A seeming homage Sidney Bechet and to the ease and perfection of his playing becomes a tale of envy, a dwelling on the ideal of form of women that reveals itself to true artistic masters, becoming, in the end, a dual edge cry of resentment against better , more masculine artists able to coax the "burnt sugar" from their metaphorically female muse, and against women in general by way of a not so subtly implied extension of his thinking.Moss has some issues here, I guess, but there's nothing I can read that suggests he's working them out in an interesting way. It's one thing to be enthralled by Bechet's reed work as he improvises and whirls like Nijinsky over the band's rapid changes, and it's admirable that it inspires to write a poem in inspiration.

It's admirable, that is, if the inspired work equals and even surpasses the wonder and awe Bechet might have stirred in Moss's observer Michaelangelo.Even a nasty, power loving grouch like Pound believed that art was supposed to galvanize every creative and aspiring force in a human being and deliver him or here to a state of transcendent creativity, a higher plain of perception from which to alter the world.One may disagree whether that goal, in itself, is a plus or a minus so far as poetic intent goes, but the point is that Moss's narrator is evidently disillusioned with the whole process of art, of creating and finding new ways of seeing the world. It's implied that he feels his own work is inferior to those he isolates as untouchable geniuses, and then complicates his ambivalence further by casting a specious erotic edge to his musing; inspiration, lyricism, heightened perception were a sexualized essence from the feminine muse that it was their duty to attain through coaxing, seduction, or force. The implied picture with Moss's last few lines is as unattractive as the mood that seems to have motivated this poem:The sunrise bitch was never mine.He brought her down. In twelve bars of burnt sugar,she was his if he wanted her.This is not a poet sitting under a tree on a spring afternoon contemplating clouds and heavenly wonders; rather it's a guy at the end of the bar slugging away at beer as he broods and gets angrier about a universe of smarter men and unattainable women conspiring to make he feel like scum. It's an ugly creation here, and I'm convinced that Moss is being ironic or creating a character not himself.

This is less a poem than an outburst you wish an associate hadn't blurted. But there it is, out in the open, a snake pit exposed.I think it's simply a failed attempt at an ironic gesture. What's complicated--as opposed to complex-- about the work is stuff that's not in the work and still in Moss's head. What he manages, his protests to the side, is to write a piece that envies violence, metaphorical or otherwise, to achieve gratification. He travels periloulsy close to endorsing rape as an unspoken yet viable option for the Walter Mittys among us to use.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The Boss



Where the trend had been for old rock stars to attempt to give their careers a third act with the issuing of albums wherein they croak their way The Great American Songbook, aging Blue Collar Hero Bruce Springsteen goes the other way and releases an album of old folk songs. The search for authenticity continues, and the plain-spoken Springsteen--remember when each of his lyrics was interminable operas of intemperate desire?--sings it plainly, clearly,
simply. No swelling melodies here, no subtle segues or seducing counterpoint.The new folk album, some have said, is suitable for Bruce, as he was never a great melodist anyway when he was doing the songwriting. I'm not a huge fan of The Boss--it takes too much work to reissue the same objections, and after twenty-something years of bitching and groaning, I'm willing to maintain he's done music I've liked without embarrassment.

Bruce Springsteen isn't Duke Ellington or even Burt Bacharach as a melodist, but that was never the point of his work since his sound is big, brash and in-your-face rather than, catchy, seductive or otherwise subdued with subtler chord selection. His music is equal parts rhythm and blues, Phil Spector, British Invasion and folk rock, with generous portions of Kerouac, Dylan and a wee tram of Whitman stirred into the mix. For the sort of blue-collar exhorting he does about love, death, being broke and struggling for a better future, Springsteen's melodies are exactly as they need to be; at their best, they work as well as anything a popular pop-poet has managed to do. When his work is contained and crafted, sufficiently edited, he's easily as good as Dylan as a melodist, the equal of Seger, the equal of John Lennon.I have found too much of his music overworked, grandiose and cluttered with the kind of business indicative of someone who hasn't found the central theme of what they're writing about; we see this in poets who compose at length, leaving no trace of a parse-able idea behind them, and one can witness it as well in novelists--Franzen, DF Wallace--who haven't in them to cut away the excess so the art may show. Springsteen has this problem as well, a habit of overwriting, and the effect in his longer, louder pieces tends to be a little Maileresque, circa the mid to late Sixties, where he keeps preparing to say something profound and yet the message is deferred. I prefer the punchier, grabbier, riff-based rockers he puts forth, or the terser, grainier ballads. The big band material he comes up sinks as fast as any Jethro Tull concept album has in the past. It's about songs, not the arrangements.

Springsteen singing old folk songs and protest songs interests me not in the least, although it might be a means for him to ease into the writing decent material for his next great period. Dylan landed into a profound late period, as did the Stones and certainly the quizzical Neil Young. Bruce would be a dandy addition to the grand pantheon of old guys,\ Productivity isn't, by default, a desirable trait. Talented artists can dilute their impact and lessen the esteem they've held in with the rapid issuing of mediocre, substandard or half-baked albums. Costello and Dylan are prime examples of this, although both songwriters frequently rebound with strong albums after some artistic lagging. There's an appeal for artists who aren't in a hurry to release product--I am a fan of Paul Simon's solo career (not crazy about Simon and Garfunkel music, which hasn't worn well) who has released albums at a snail's pace over the last thirty plus years; he's a careful writer, and his body of work is therefore rich with strong, moving, intelligently evolving music. His musical ideas work more often than not. The same may be said for Steely Dan, a band I've always admired for their consistent excellence for melody, production, oddball melodies and especially well-crafted lyrics. Being slow to release albums of late places Springsteen in honorable company.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

The Enduring Relevance of "Howl"


The real paradox of "Howl" is that it's a poem, a great poem that addressed the great unwashed elements of American culture and their plight outside the mainstream which is now very much part of the Establishment it railed against and, in some sense, sought to disassemble.

Only truly great pieces of writing do that, and regardless of what one thinks of the later Ginsberg work where he abandoned Blakean visions and allegory in favor of a relentless and largely inane species of self-reporting , "Howl" is the inspired and wonderfully sustained work of a young in full control of the language and rhetoric he was using.


It's a masterpiece by every criteria, and it remains a powerful indictment against repression, censorship, the closing off of the soul against experience and vision.


Even as its been absorbed into the American canon, it continues to transgress against expectations of conservative decorum and other constructions of serene and apathetic community relations; it continues to howl, quite literally, over the fifty years since it's publications.

In the increasingly control-freak environment of that pits paranoid nationalism against civil liberties , "Howl" and it's piercing message is perhaps more relevant than ever.

The fact that one still finds room to discuss the poem's politics and philosophical biases seriously attests to the quality and originality of Ginsberg's writing; mere political tracts, like Baraka's "Someone Blew Up America", will grind you down with polemic and are rapidly, gratefully forgotten.

"Howl", poem, vision, political screed, confession and testament in one, is read and debated over and over again, its choicest lines cited, each quote resonating and stinging as great work ought to. A great poem.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Henri Cole's peachy poem



The latest Robert Pinsky offering on Slate is Henri Cole's "Eating A Peach", which made me feel as if I was undergoing a gruesome regime of aversion therapy.I read some Henri Cole a few years ago and remember that his work left a bad taste in my mouth. There's nothing I remembered specifically that put me off Cole's work, only that minor, creeping dread that goes up your spine in a chilling rush as you come across a dreadful totem. Now it comes back to me, and here we have a compression of bad habits and awful writing that lends you the momentary urge to fall back into deep, restorative sleep, or swear off sleep altogether.The problem here is tone , which is arch, Gothic, over generalizing in reach and utterly unconvincing in how the epiphanies and moral connections are unleashed. Cole writes as if he were a racing dog who has no mind or use for the residential build up to a point and instead chases after profundity mechanical rabbit from the get go.



Eating the peach, I feel like a murderer.Time and darkness mean nothing to me,moving forward and back with my white enameled teeth-and bloated tongue sating themselves on moist,pulpy flesh. When I suck at the pit that resembles a small mammal's skull, it erases all memory of trouble and strife, of loneliness and the blindings of erotic love, and of the blueprint of a world,


These are lines revealing a protagonist with Geiger Counter sensitivities who cannot so much as snack on fruit without the Ghosts of Significance wailing and carrying on and making so much racket in his head that he simple joys like fruit deserts cannot be enjoyed in themselves alone. Instead Cole's eater is beset with all sorts of confusions and conflations, feeling like a murderer but also probably not a little like a vampire and rapist as he violates "moist pulpy flesh", and considers the pit at the center of the orange as would a taxidermist, suddenly locked on a site erases the squalling mess of "erotic love" and all trace of the outer world's intricacies. There is the possibility, I suppose, that Cole intended this as a send up targeted at vegetarians and vegans with the archly phrased message that even eating fruit can involve you obsessively in the entrails of a once living thing one his consuming, but the humor, the punchline eludes me. (Which wouldn't be the first time obvious matters have eluded me). It depresses me to consider that Cole is dead serious with this poem, sober as a Mormon barn dance:

Eating the peach, I feel the long wandering, my human hand—once fin and paw reaching through and across the allegory of Eden,mud, boredom and disease, to bees, solitude and a thousand hairs of grass blowing by chill waters.


This eager wallow in vague supposition and preening dilettantes reminds me of the absurdly pretentious lyrics that decorated the album sleeves of Yes and Jethro Tull , or worse, Vandergraff Generator. Cole has managed something both unique and odious; for decades rock lyrics have been ruined as songwriters tried to sound like poets mulling over, contemplating and examining the heaviosity of existence, and now Cole returns the favor by writing bad poetry trying to sound like bad rock lyrics. Another post-modern moment, but one where there is no irony to what strands of high and low culture are being brought together and being given a gaudy coat of bright, speckled paint. Irony at least makes a point about the interpretative baggage one carries with them and demonstrates, through incident, the crucial information that intellection and systematic thinking donÂ’t alter the course of things.Cole's invention is absent any form, exists in  arenas that are liberated from a concern as to how one wants to sound when serious matters are discussed. Each trick and gizmo is used to make the unspectacular seem resolutely violent, dramatic, decisive. The endless renderings of metaphor riven reality wearies the imagination, exhausts all patience. It is too much foreplay. No one should have a life so persistently dramatic, nor should another have to read such over ripe accounting of clouded perception.Cole gives us the physical details and tactile elements that I would normally insist are crucial for a poet if he or she is to wander off into the language of near-philosophy and the attending subsets, but there is more to it, which is an ear, a sense of shape, a sense of proportion. This piece is an over stuffed suitcase, and our poet couldn't decide what to leave out, reasoning, perhaps that each little clause between commas, each writerly riff or pun on death and the food chain might come in handy should a smart remark be needed in his daily wallow in ersatz angst and tubercular tedium. He could have whittled this down to a sharp, pointed perception, a chiseled image and a powerful, understated idea, or he could have gone at greater length, perhaps fashioning a language and rhythm that would accommodate his Gothic metaphysics and save them from their current pomp. As is, he hasn't a poem but rather a humorless, droning groan of self-importance.
 

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

The Smartest Typist at the New York Times



Michiko Kakutani


Michiko Kakutani, who is celebrating twenty five years as the chief book reviewer for the New York Times this month, is a wonder of wonders, a case of the spectacularly uninteresting being rewarded for their chronically undernourished opinions with celebrity and, we assume , more pay. A shame that talent has little to do with the prominence of the most visible reviewer on the paper, as she reviews books like the smartest kid for a junior college bi-weekly student newspaper, which is to say that her insights, her scorn, her depth of field would be amazing for an eighteen year old in any decade.

This, of course, sets up those who continue to read her to have expectations that she will someday come into her own and develop the qualities one desires in a critic--real passion, a lively, unstrained prose style reflective of a personality that wants to talk to you, and, if it's not asking too much, insights, conclusions and judgements that break away from the cliches and tropes that often, too often pass for commentary. This blossoming is not forthcoming for Kakutani, who remains an extremely ordinary reviewer of other people's work. She does not sound as if she cares about the books she's tasked with giving an opinion on, and there is mechanical movement to her columns, a method she's seemingly developed in order to dispatch her obligations as soon as possible.Pauline Kael cared about the movies she wrote about, and though she faltered toward career's end with messy pronouncements and idol worship, at her best she convinced you that movies were importand and had you talking about the issues she's raised. Kakutani just makes you wonder again and again how any reviewer could make reading books or writing reviews about them seem like such a joyless way to spend one's time.