Slant Self-Portrait (#3)

Self-Portrait At 28

David Berman

I know it's a bad title but I'm giving it to myself as a gift on a day nearly canceled by sunlight when the entire hill is approaching the ideal of Virginia brochured with goldenrod and loblolly and I think "at least I have not woken up with a bloody knife in my hand" by then having absently wandered one hundred yards from the house while still seated in this chair with my eyes closed. It is a certain hill the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill" and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown if our five billion minds collapse at once well I'd call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful a place I wouldn't mind dying alone or with you. I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty. You see there is a window by my desk I stare out when I am stuck though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write and I don't know why I keep staring at it. My childhood hasn't made good material either mostly being a mulch of white minutes with a few stand out moments, popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer a certain amount of pride at school everytime they called it "our sun" and playing football when the only play was "go out long" are what stand out now. If squeezed for more information I can remember old clock radios with flipping metal numbers and an entree called Surf and Turf. As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it. II two I can't remember being born and no one else can remember it either even the doctor who I met years later at a cocktail party. It's one of the little disappointments that makes you think about getting away going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables and taking a room on the square with a landlady whose hands are scored by disinfectant, telling the people you meet that you are from Alaska, and listen to what they have to say about Alaska until you have learned much more about Alaska than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables. Sometimes I am buying a newspaper in a strange city and think "I am about to learn what it's like to live here." Oftentimes there is a news item about the complaints of homeowners who live beside the airport and I realize that I read an article on this subject nearly once a year and always receive the same image. I am in bed late at night in my house near the airport listening to the jets fly overhead a strange wife sleeping beside me. In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation of various cold medicine commercial sets (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand). I know these recurring news articles are clues, flaws in the design though I haven't figured out how to string them together yet, but I've begun to notice that the same people are dying over and over again, for instance Minnie Pearl who died this year for the fourth time in four years. III three Today is the first day of Lent and once again I'm not really sure what it is. How many more years will I let pass before I take the trouble to ask someone? It reminds of this morning when you were getting ready for work. I was sitting by the space heater numbly watching you dress and when you asked why I never wear a robe I had so many good reasons I didn't know where to begin. If you were cool in high school you didn't ask too many questions. You could tell who'd been to last night's big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway. You didn't have to ask and that's what cool was: the ability to deduct to know without asking. And the pressure to simulate coolness means not asking when you don't know, which is why kids grow ever more stupid. A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying for a letter from the class stoner ten years on but... Do you remember the way the girls would call out "love you!" conveniently leaving out the "I" as if they didn't want to commit to their own declarations. I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept and hope you won't get uncomfortable if I should go into some deeper stuff here. IV four There are things I've given up on like recording funny answering machine messages. It's part of growing older and the human race as a group has matured along the same lines. It seems our comedy dates the quickest. If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes I hope you won't be insulted if I say you're trying too hard. Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live seem slow-witted and obvious now. It's just that our advances are irrepressible. Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands. It makes people too self-conscious about the past, though try explaining that to a kid. I'm not saying it should be this way. All this new technology will eventually give us new feelings that will never completely displace the old ones leaving everyone feeling quite nervous and split in two. We will travel to Mars even as folks on Earth are still ripping open potato chip bags with their teeth. Why? I don't have the time or intelligence to make all the connections like my friend Gordon (this is a true story) who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree until I brought it up. He'd never broken the name down to its parts. By then it was too late. He had moved to Coral Gables. V five The hill out my window is still looking beautiful suffused in a kind of gold national park light and it seems to say, I'm sorry the world could not possibly use another poem about Orpheus but I'm available if you're not working on a self-portrait or anything. I'm watching my dog have nightmares, twitching and whining on the office floor and I try to imagine what beast has cornered him in the meadow where his dreams are set. I'm just letting the day be what it is: a place for a large number of things to gather and interact -- not even a place but an occasion a reality for real things. Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic or religious with this piece: "They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic or religious," but these are valid topics and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor possibly dreaming of me that part of me that would beat a dog for no good reason no reason that a dog could see. I am trying to get at something so simple that I have to talk plainly so the words don't disfigure it and if it turns out that what I say is untrue then at least let it be harmless like a leaky boat in the reeds that is bothering no one. VI six I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories, many of them having blended with sentimental telephone and margarine commercials plainly ruined by Madison Avenue though no one seems to call the advertising world "Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved? Let's get an update on this. But first I have some business to take care of. I walked out to the hill behind our house which looks positively Alaskan today and it would be easier to explain this if I had a picture to show you but I was with our young dog and he was running through the tall grass like running through the tall grass is all of life together until a bird calls or he finds a beer can and that thing fills all the space in his head. You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and cocks his head and for a single moment my voice is everything: Self-portrait at 28.

Self Portrait at 28 Prompt

• Your title might be “Self Portrait at [your age]”.
• Write a self portrait using plain, conversational language in a stream of consciousness manner; in other words, let your words follow your mind’s work.
• What should your mind work on? Reflect on the past. Reflect on reflecting on the past. Reflect on the past in relation to the present. These are things Berman does in his poem.
• Berman also includes descriptions of what he can see from where he is when he is writing the poem. What do you see now? Mix that together with your reflections on the past and the past’s relationship to the present.
• Break the lines where ever it feels right or sounds right to you. Push yourself to write more than a page.

Slant Poetry #2

Choose one of these exercises.

1.        Thinking about a place or thing

·         Write down the name of a specific place or object that you know well and for which you have a fondness. (Please don’t write about the beach.)

·         Write a poem in which you include at least five sensory images (using at least three different senses).

·         The poem should end with a personal realization of some kind like “I have wasted my life” (from James Wright’s poem “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farmin Pine Island, Minnesota”).

2.        Using your subconscious

·         Stream of consciousness. Take five minutes to write everything that comes into your mind. Don’t stop writing for the entire five minutes.

·         Select ten words from the stream of consciousness.

·         In ten minutes write a ten line poem. At least one of the ten words must be used in each line and all ten words must be used.

3.        Recover product words

·         Take three minutes to write down product names that are also English words. “Joy,” “Dawn” “Tide,” “Mountain Dew,” etc.

·         Write a poem using at least ten of these words or phrases. Do not refer to the products, instead use the original meanings of the worlds.

4.        Inspiration from another poem

·         Pick a poem you like, that intrigues you. (Here you can search for poems by subject.) Read it several times.

·         Now write a poem in response to that poem. You may choose to write in a like style or use words/phrases from the poem in your response. Or you may answer "questions" that the poem poses (real ones or suggested ones).

Reflecting on Fiction Final Drafts

1. Make sure you've shared your "Fiction Final Draft" Google document with me.

2. At the end of the document reflect upon your revision experience.
Tell me about all of the revisions you made. Explain why.

3. Read the fiction writing advice found here. Pick three comments you agree with strongly, two you disagree with, and one that you're not sure about.

Slant Apology

William Carlos Williams

This is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

***

Click here for 100 variations of this poem by Stephen Wentworth Arndt

***

Write your own ambivalent apology for something you really enjoyed. Write in short, rhythmic lines with simple, direct, vivid language. Try to maintain a matter-of-fact tone. (Any other ideas? Or, are any of these ideas odious?)

What is Poetry?

What is Poetry anyway?

A Mosaic of Responses

Ezra Pound, early twentieth century USAmerican poet

Here’s my paraphrase of what Ez sez:

It’s useful to think about all poetry as having three aspects though some poems emphasize one aspect more so than others:

Phanopoeia = description = the poem throws images on the mind

Melopoeia = musicality = the poem’s sounds & rhythms evoke emotional correlations

Logopoeia = mindfulness = the poem stimulates thought (and feeling) in relation to the poem’s words & word groups

W’ei T’ai, 11^th century Chinese poet

Whaddya say W’ei?

“Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeling shows in the words.

“This is how poetry enters deeply into us. If the poet presents directly feelings which overwhelm him and keeps nothing back to linger as an aftertaste, he stirs us superficially; he cannot start the hands and feet involuntarily waving and tapping in time, far less strengthen morality and refine culture, set heaven and earth in motion and call up the spirits.”

Louis Zukofsky, twentieth century US American poet

What’s the news, Lou?

“I'll tell you. / About my poetics— / music / speech / An integral / Lower limit speech / Upper limit music.”

(from “A12” a poem)

Like this:

     Music

     Speech

In a poem called “City Midnight Junk Strains” Allen Ginsberg, twentieth century USAmerican poet, says that Frank O’Hara, another twentieth century USAmerican poet, has a “a common ear for our deep gossip.”

In a book called Quote Poet Unquote someone named Liam Rector is credited with the statement “Poetry is deep gossip.” Sadly neither Ginsberg nor O’Hara is mentioned by Rector or the book’s editor, Dennis O’Driscoll.

Here are several more statements about what poetry is from Quote Poet Unquote book:

DAVID GASCOYNE, Stand, Spring 1992

Poetry is like a substance, the words stick together as though they were magnetized to each other.

SEAMUS HEANEY, Sunday Independent, 25 September 1994

Poetry is language in orbit.

YVES BONNEFOY, Times Literary Supplement, 12 August 2005

Poetry is an act by which the relation of words to reality is renewed.

MARK DOTY, The Cortland Review, October 2000

Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know.

LEONARD COHEN, The Sunday Times

Poetry is a verdict that others give to language that is charged with music and rhythm and authority.

UMBERTO ECO, The Independent, 6 October 1995

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON, PN Review, March-April 1993

Poetry is language wrought by feeling and imagination to such a pitch that it enacts and embodies the thing it says.

DAVE SMITH, Local Assays, 1985

Poetry is a dialect of the language we speak, possessed of metaphorical density, coded with resonant meaning, engaging us with narrative's pleasures, enhancing and sustaining our pleasure with enlarged awareness.

JOSEPH BRODSKY, The New Yorker, 26 September 1994

Poetry is a dame with a huge pedigree, and every word comes practically barnacled with allusions and associations.

CAL BEDIENT, Denver Quarterly 39, no. 2, 2004

Poetry is the eroticization of thought—psychic vitality.

MATTHEW HOLLIS, Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Spring 2004

Poetry is... a kind of leaving of notes for another to find, and a willingness to have them fall into the wrong hands.

CHARLES WRIGHT, Quarter Notes, 1995

Poetry is language that sounds better and means more.

ANNE ROUSE, The Sunday Times, 28 January 2001

Poetry is about the intensity at the centre of life, and about intricacy of expression. Without any appreciation of those, people are condemned to simplistic emotions and crude expressions.

FRIEDA HUGHES, The Guardian, 3 October 2001

Poetry is a way of communicating a vast array of thoughts and feelings by concentrating them into minimal, or even single, points which describe the whole.

JOHN SIMON, Dreamers of Dreams, 2001

Poetry is the meeting point of parallel lines—in infinity, but also in the here and now. It is where the patent and incontrovertible intersects with the ineffable and incommensurable.

DON McKAY, The Toronto Star, 4 June 2007

Poetry is language pointing beyond its own capacities.

HAROLD BLOOM, The Art of Reading Poetry, 2006

Poetry essentially is figurative language, concentrated so that its form is both expressive and evocative.

PETER FALLON, The Poetry Paper, no. 3, 2006

A poem is words at work, on us and for us.

ÁGNES NEMES NAGY, A Hungarian Perspective, 1998

A poem is partly grace, partly discovery, and partly a struggle to squeeze out a little bit more, to conquer another foot of territory from the unconscious.

P.J. KAVANAGH, BBC Radio 3, December 1990

A poem is an attempt to find the music in the words describing an intuition.

NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL, RTÉ I television, July 1995

A poem is a smuggling of something back from the otherworld, a prime bit of shoplifting where you get something out the door before the buzzer goes off.

WILLIAM H. GASS, The Georgia Review, Spring 2004

A poem is like a ghost seeking substantiality, a soul in search of body more appealing than the bare bones mere verses rattle.

CAROL ANN DUFFY, Out of Fashion, 2004

A poem... is the attire of feeling: the literary form where words seem tailor-made for memory or desire.

JAMIE McKENDRICK, The South Bank Show, October 1994

Every poem is an answer to the question what poetry is for.

After I thought I’d finished this collection I found this statement from Audre Lorde’s Power, Oppression and the Politics of Culture: a lesbian/feminist perspective:

“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”

Paul Celan*

“The poem is the detour from you

to you; it is the route. It is also the

route of language toward itself, 

its becoming visible and 

mortal: wherewith the poem 

becomes the raison d’être of language.”

*Celan was a German-speaking Jew in Eastern Europe. He survived World War II. His town in a place called Burkovina that was then Romanian and now Ukrainian was first occupied by the Soviets and later by the Nazis. He spent much of the war in Nazi-run labor camp. His parents were handed over to the Germans and killed.

Fiction Reflection

Share the following with me.
* Seven (7) completed fiction exercises.
* Two (2) typed, revised, proofread exercises. (Highlight one story in yellow, so I know which one you want to workshop.
* Answer the reflection questions below:
1. Reflect on which exercises worked well for you. Be specific. Give details. Think about why they worked.
2. Reflect on which exercises did not work as well for you. Be specific. Give details. Think about why they didn't work.
3. Reflect on the two stories you've revised and shared. What do you like about them? What needs work? What would you like feedback on?
Share your reflections with me in paper or electronic (Google Doc) form.

#7 "Continuity of Parks" by Julio Cortázar

Continuity of Parks

Julio Cortázar

                He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it down because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by train; he permitted himself a slowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations. That afternoon, after writing a letter giving his power of attorney and discussing a matter of joint ownership with the manager of his estate, he returned to the book in the tranquility of his study which looked out upon the park with its oaks. Sprawled in his favorite armchair, its back toward the door—even the possibility of an intrusion would have irritated him, had he thought of it—he let his left hand caress repeatedly the green velvet upholstery and set to reading the final chapters. He remembered effortlessly the names and his mental image of the characters; the novel spread its glamour over him almost at once. He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him, and at the same time feeling his head rest comfortably on the green velvet of the chair with its high back, sensing that the cigarettes rested within reach of his hand, that beyond the great windows the air of afternoon danced under the oak trees in the park. Word by word, licked up by the sordid dilemma of the hero and heroine, letting himself be absorbed to the point where the images settled down and took on color and movement, he was witness to the final encounter in the mountain cabin. The woman arrived first, apprehensive; now the lover came in, his face cut by the backlash of a branch. Admirably, she stanched the blood with her kisses, but he rebuffed her caresses, he had not come to perform again the ceremonies of a secret passion, protected by a world of dry leaves and furtive paths through the forest. The dagger warmed itself against his chest, and underneath liberty pounded, hidden close. A lustful, panting dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it had all been decided from eternity. Even to those caresses which writhed about the lover’s body, as though wishing to keep him there, to dissuade him from it; they sketched abominably the frame of that other body it was necessary to destroy. Nothing had been forgotten: alibis, unforeseen hazards, possible mistakes. From this hour on, each instant had its use minutely assigned. The cold-blooded, twice-gone-over re-examination of the details was barely broken off so that a hand could caress a cheek. It was beginning to get dark.

                Not looking at one another now, rigidly fixed upon the task which awaited them, they separated at the cabin door. She was to follow the trail that led north. On the path leading in the opposite direction, he turned for a moment to watch her running, her hair loosened and flying. He ran in turn, crouching among the trees and hedges until, in the yellowish fog of dusk, he could distinguish the avenue of trees which led up to the house. The dogs were not supposed to bark, they did not bark. The estate manager would not be there at this hour, and he was not there. He went up the three porch steps and entered. The woman’s words reached him over the thudding of blood in his ears: first a blue chamber, then a hall, then a carpeted stairway. At the top, two doors. No one in the first room, no one in the second. The door of the salon, and then, the knife in hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of an armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel.