Imagists & Objectivists & Jack & Gertrude & The Black Mountain
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Today, boys and girls, we’re going to look at ‘Song of the Chinchilla’ by Lisa Jarnot*. I liked the poem immediately – and I’ve given it to ...
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April Fool?
6 comments:
Wow. It's like a glimpse into the treasure-trove! I see things I have -- & things I haven't -- surely a collection of great worth, lovingly assembled over many years. Brilliant.
Walrus
Hmmm ... my wife has a rather different take on the collection. However, as I tell her, there are worse ways to spend one's money - gambling, fast cars, booze .... Three cheers for Peter Riley (sadly missed), Amazon & SPD I say!
Did you spot the interloper in the British collection?
(And I suppose I'm opening myself up for all sorts of attacks concerning Maggie O'Sullivan being placed under such a category !)
Cd it be Jonathan Williams by any chance? Yes, huzzah for Amazon, I say, & any of the obscure US bookstores I've ordered stuff from that I wd never find in the UK even if I spent a lifetime looking.
The Zukofsky post looks great -- will give it proper consideration later, but any help with Z is always appreciated...
Forgot to ask if any sonnets materialised on yr hols, although I imagine RIDDLES took up much of yr time/headspace. It's looking good.
Walrus
Yes - well spotted! Still some signs of the holiday shuffle.
Believe it or not but several of the most cherished vols - Raworth's 'Big Green Day' & 'Daybook', Creeley essays and interviews, etc - came from a 2nd hand dealer in Brussels. A Dutch translator was selling off his book collection due to a divorce. I couldn't believe my luck!
As for other writing - there is something in the pipeline from France. I'm kind of using the Riddles of Form as a way to clarify my ideas about how a poem can work to then look carefully at what I've been doing. I'll revise the Sonnets and tackle various bits and pieces that have been shelved. My hope is that one will inform the other. It's as good a way of working as any other, I suppose! That said, I am painfully aware of a gap between what I can theoretically formulate and actually shape for myself.
I'm not sure the LZ post is very clear. I'm also aware that - from another angle - I would argue for an 'inadequacy' at the heart of poetic language (Blanchot etc.). I suppose I'm really on a big sound kick and seeing that grammatical-syntactic logics have a poetic potential in themselves.
I remember feeling very intimidated by Parataxis articles on LZ which suggested that had you not read Marx & Russian Formalists you'd might as well forget it. I think LZ is much more available than that - if you actually read what's there. And, incidentally, for all his supposed abstraction, so much of his work seems to be a celebration of domestic family life. Given my circ's you'll understand why that appeals.
Off to put a chicken in the oven.
Bye!
The C
I feel unqualified to discuss Z right now, but I will mention the fact that while you were away I read around the Beats a little.
The brief pen-portrait of WCW in Desolation Angels, for instance (and of Robert Duncan, who appears as Geoffrey Donald). I also got into Bob Dylan as never before -- oddly enough, because Ginsberg mentions 'Angelic Dylan' in Wichita Vortex Sutra and quotes from 'Queen Jane Approximately', which I'd never heard.
So then I got Highway 61 Revisited & The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan & Blonde on Blonde & Blood on the Tracks & it has helped to set the mood for the poetry, as it were.
Incidentally, I can't listen to 'Ballad of a Thin Man' without thinking of you. Any thoughts on the matter? Do you have contacts among the lumberjacks? (I always wanted to be a lumberjack...) I suspect Bob is right about F. Scott Fitzgerald, though.
Walrus
Dylan ... yes, Mr Jones ... I'd thought of putting the lyric up on the door of my classroom & then thought it wasn't the best calling card!
I've never got the Dylan bug - probably a good thing as it would mean even greater CD shelf space. He seems to be one of those people you can explore further and further into official and unofficial bootlegs etc.
I really like the film 'Don't Look Back' - I admire Dylan's absolute focus and lean image and attitude. And, for me, 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' is the key album - from the cover on into the songs ('Hard Rain', 'Corrina, Corrina' and 'Talkin' World War III Blues' being favourites).
Other albums are tainted by people and places I once knew and so don't get much of an outing these days.
In fact, to be honest, I can rarely get through an entire album. While we were driving in France one of his songs came over the radio - 'Two Soldiers' - and I noted it down. That's the thing: I hear a song in isolation and think it's got something. However, the combination of the voice, backing, harmonica ... a little goes a long way for me.
I suppose it's a Zappa thing, too. I 'get' FZ musically and conceptually where I don't 'get' Dylan.
I was interested in the documentary that came out recently - especially where Dylan talks about hearing songs on the radio - voices coming down out of the ether. That has to chime with Jack Spicer & Martians etc. And isn't there also the claim for a pact with the devil similar to Robert Johnson where Dylan is 'given' the key to the blues?
Do you know the Dylan DJ programmes? A colleague recorded some for me and I liked Dylan's humour - a particularly good jibe about Elvis & Nixon.
Lisa Jarnot is a massive fan & as part of my admiration for her poems I've tried to get more out of Her Man. However, I run out of energy fairly quickly.
The colleague mentioned above - who's American - assures me it's all to do with being American. Basically Dylan is The Voice of America's Conscience. And I can buy into that. I just don't get the music under my skin.
I think I'm right in saying that the BBC used an identical piece of footage for the Frank O'Hara programme as a piece on Dylan. It's in the Cedar Bar and for the one film they freeze frame on F O'H and for the other they freeze on Dylan. It had never occurred to me that the two of them could inhabit the same space and time - which is, of course, perfectly possible. There's a case to be made for 'The Freewheelin' BD' being a 'New York Poet' album - yes?
Who's the singer Berrigan talks about ... Woody Guthrie - he seemed to be another key figure for some of the NY poets.
As for Chris. Ricks' attempts to claim Dylan for Poetry - I don't see the need. I think he writes damn fine songs and that should be respected in itself.
So, that's where I stand on Bob. Joni Mitchell - who could be placed in the same general category - offers me more musically ('Blue', 'Hejira', 'Mingus') - probably because she's jazzier.
A bientot
The C
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