Some thoughts on recent reading
While I enjoy the poems of Bob Hicok I've read, I haven't felt deeply moved by his poetry. That is, until a few days ago when I found a poem of his I really, really like here.
I've been leery of writing love poetry for fear of being overly trite or sentimental, so I really admire a love poem that can be tender without being maudlin, and I think he manages it beautifully.
***
Been struggling to write poetry. Reading a lot and scribbling in my journal but poems aren't emerging clearly yet. But today I had the chance to read a copy of the November 1920 issue of Poetry, part of a bequest by Amy Lowell. Most of the pages were uncut, so I had the somewhat fearsome pleasure of opening up the quarto pages along the perforation--I was terrified of accidentally tearing the delicate pages. Apparently a huge stack of them have been sitting in the Woodberry Poetry Room curator's office, perhaps for decades. An Amy Lowell poem was actually the opening piece in the issue, though I can't remember the title...also enjoyed some modern Greek songs (not so modern now!). I only read a little bit before handing it back to the librarian--they are finally going to be processed and put into the Woodberry Special Collection. Also immensely entertaining was the last page ad; nowadays the back pages of literary magazines are full of other literary magazine ads, conferences, competitions, etc. The November 1920 issue, however, had an advertisement for Horlicks, which I love...hadn't realized it was such an old product. And the ad copy was absolutely charming. I'll have to request the issue to peruse the whole thing slowly once processing is finished.
I also realized that although Amy Lowell owned plenty of Poetry, she didn't seem to read them. I don't feel so bad about finding three issues of Poetry still in their plastic covering under different piles of papers, knowing someone like Lowell also had unread literary magazines. Amy Lowell emerging like that is quite an odd coincidence; recently I've been studying her poem "Patterns"(click title for link) as a possible model for something I'm working on.
The other fascinating publication I looked at today was a volume of Hopkins' journals and papers. I opened the book up to an odd passage from April 27, 1871:
Mesmerized a duck with chalk lines drawn from her beak sometimes level and sometimes forwards on a black table. They explain that the bird keeping the abiding offscape of the hand grasping her neck fancies she is still held down and cannot lift her head as long as she looks at the chalk line, which she associates with the power that holds her. This duck lifted her head at once when I put it down on the table without chalk. But this seems inadequate. It is most likely the fascinating instress of the straight white stroke. (Need to check source)
Instress is the force, the energy that comes from and sustains a thing's inscape, which has been variously defined as "external design," "intrinsic beauty," "a form perceived in nature" "the essential code of thing's being" and more (Dennis Sobolev, "Inscape Revisited," first page here) I'm not entirely sure what offscape is supposed to be--the standard definition of a distant view doesn't seem to apply here. It seems to be the external radiation of force from the hand...maybe an outward exertion of the hand's inscape? But it's interesting that Hopkins rejects the hypothesis that the power of a hand's offscape is rejected in favor of the chalk line's instress. Instress is clearly a more powerful, mesmerizing force than the outward strength of a hand.
But these thoughts aside, I couldn't help laughing when I read "mesmerized a duck"--it's not at all what I thought I'd read, though the passage quickly shifts to the tenor and kind of language I expected in a Hopkins journal.
Hopkins is one of my early poetry loves. I was re-reading "No worst, there is none" as another guiding poem, and I had to look at "Pied Beauty" and "The Windhover" as well. I love the music of his poems as well as their intense, lyrical quality.
Herbert, Donne, Keats, Poe and Lorca are other poets I fell in love with during high school...something to write about another time.
I've been leery of writing love poetry for fear of being overly trite or sentimental, so I really admire a love poem that can be tender without being maudlin, and I think he manages it beautifully.
***
Been struggling to write poetry. Reading a lot and scribbling in my journal but poems aren't emerging clearly yet. But today I had the chance to read a copy of the November 1920 issue of Poetry, part of a bequest by Amy Lowell. Most of the pages were uncut, so I had the somewhat fearsome pleasure of opening up the quarto pages along the perforation--I was terrified of accidentally tearing the delicate pages. Apparently a huge stack of them have been sitting in the Woodberry Poetry Room curator's office, perhaps for decades. An Amy Lowell poem was actually the opening piece in the issue, though I can't remember the title...also enjoyed some modern Greek songs (not so modern now!). I only read a little bit before handing it back to the librarian--they are finally going to be processed and put into the Woodberry Special Collection. Also immensely entertaining was the last page ad; nowadays the back pages of literary magazines are full of other literary magazine ads, conferences, competitions, etc. The November 1920 issue, however, had an advertisement for Horlicks, which I love...hadn't realized it was such an old product. And the ad copy was absolutely charming. I'll have to request the issue to peruse the whole thing slowly once processing is finished.
I also realized that although Amy Lowell owned plenty of Poetry, she didn't seem to read them. I don't feel so bad about finding three issues of Poetry still in their plastic covering under different piles of papers, knowing someone like Lowell also had unread literary magazines. Amy Lowell emerging like that is quite an odd coincidence; recently I've been studying her poem "Patterns"(click title for link) as a possible model for something I'm working on.
The other fascinating publication I looked at today was a volume of Hopkins' journals and papers. I opened the book up to an odd passage from April 27, 1871:
Mesmerized a duck with chalk lines drawn from her beak sometimes level and sometimes forwards on a black table. They explain that the bird keeping the abiding offscape of the hand grasping her neck fancies she is still held down and cannot lift her head as long as she looks at the chalk line, which she associates with the power that holds her. This duck lifted her head at once when I put it down on the table without chalk. But this seems inadequate. It is most likely the fascinating instress of the straight white stroke. (Need to check source)
Instress is the force, the energy that comes from and sustains a thing's inscape, which has been variously defined as "external design," "intrinsic beauty," "a form perceived in nature" "the essential code of thing's being" and more (Dennis Sobolev, "Inscape Revisited," first page here) I'm not entirely sure what offscape is supposed to be--the standard definition of a distant view doesn't seem to apply here. It seems to be the external radiation of force from the hand...maybe an outward exertion of the hand's inscape? But it's interesting that Hopkins rejects the hypothesis that the power of a hand's offscape is rejected in favor of the chalk line's instress. Instress is clearly a more powerful, mesmerizing force than the outward strength of a hand.
But these thoughts aside, I couldn't help laughing when I read "mesmerized a duck"--it's not at all what I thought I'd read, though the passage quickly shifts to the tenor and kind of language I expected in a Hopkins journal.
Hopkins is one of my early poetry loves. I was re-reading "No worst, there is none" as another guiding poem, and I had to look at "Pied Beauty" and "The Windhover" as well. I love the music of his poems as well as their intense, lyrical quality.
Herbert, Donne, Keats, Poe and Lorca are other poets I fell in love with during high school...something to write about another time.