dublinka

You can now stop looking. Here it is. Your Beatnik Poetry Soap formula as created by Wendy, (a fan of Howl it seems) on soap naturally...

A recent conference on game design, tried to get developers to reveal their thought processes to a curious audience. Unlikely theme? Emily D.

Clint Hocking's proposal: If Emily gets all the inspirations on her poem recipe list, then the player is treated to a visual montage of the poem. Special symbols, like Anguish, would be unlocked as the player progresses. Collecting the symbols fatigues Emily; therefore, the player must steer Emily in the most economical path to collect all her inspirations.

Personally I think phones are quite useful for the odd haiku. Nice stencil though (from Oz).

Dave Morris, brought out an animated anthology of poetry called Poetry Comics in 1981, followed, a few years later in 1994 by a sequel More Poetry Comics. This page features The Red Wheelbarrow, a poem by William Carlos Williams. Although confined to classic poems, it remains a fascinating and wonderful little book. As both artforms share economy of expression, it's unsurprising that they make natural bedfellows. But it is surprising, that there isn't more of it. Encore!

The literary guide to the Bible, edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, has a nice little essay in it, about the characteristics of ancient Hebrew poetry. It was written by Alter himself, and discusses a clever system of parallelism used by Hebrew poets, which allows a growing crescendo of images, meaning and complexity, to slowly gather force and intensity as the poem develops. As Alter warns us however, it is not merely saying the same thing twice in different words, but the subtle extension and progression of the idea/sound/image/metaphor. I like it. It's one of those useful techniques, which when done well, masks itself. In fact, if you look carefully, you'll see that it's also used in soaps quite frequently. The rest of the book is full of fascinating commentary on the structure of the Bible and is dense with references to poetry. A nice guide for the lost sheep.

Although he is more widely known today for his cyclical theory of history (from rise, development, acme [the highest point], to decline and fall), Giovanni Vico's earliest publications were in poetry rather than philosophy; he authored the Lucretian poem "Affetti di un disperato" ("The Feelings of One in Despair") (composed in 1692) and "Canzone in morte di Antonio" ("Ode on the Death of Antonio Carafa")- both published in 1693. As such he left us a number of interesting ideas on poetry and its function, in his masterpiece The New Science including the idea of a transition from a poetic consciousness to a rational consciousness of humankind. It's worth a look if you have the time.

Clickable poems, is a nice little hypertext space, coded and fronted by Eric Pihel and designed by Ana Monaldi. Song ,by Pihel, is a wonderful piece of work, allowing you to take control and bend and grow a poem. Also have a look out for Mary Hedger's patienCe, and some other cool stuff.

I've been reading Mairead Byrne's Heaven Blog today. It's full of quirky stardust poems, that make your heart beat better. Love it. Here's a sample verse from:

RELIGIOUS POEM, WITH HOLES

for Kenny Goldsmith

I will rise up
I will plug in the heat
I will wake Zeynep
I will lay out her clothes
I will put Zeynep's lunch in her backpack
I will make Zeynep'’s breakfast
I will feed Vincent
I will feed Juno
I will clean Vincent'’s box
I will make tea

I just finished Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander, the first in a series of twenty novels following the adventures at sea of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. Lauded as the greatest historical novelist of all time by The Times, O'Brian had also previously translated, one of my favourite writers, Simone De Beauvoir, so I was determined to give him the once over. Of interest to Dublinka, he introduces the chirpy character of Mowett, one of the ships crew, and aspiring poet, who is given to spontaneous bursts of verse:

O're the ship the gallant bosun flies,
Like a hoarse mastiff through the storm he cries,
Prompt to direct th'unskilful appears,
The expert he praises and the timid cheers

Two or three other snippets can be found in the Master and Commander, which though not exactly addictive, holds some promise, and may stir your curiosity - if poetry and sea faring is your thing. Mowett appears in more of the novels, so it could be fun to track him. But be warned, as a minor character, he if of course at risk from the whim of the God with the pen. As for the book itself, such is its historical accuracy that having read it, you are unlikely to walk past any kind of sailing ship, ever again, without naming every mast and sail.

Gregory Corso seems to have managed to get his face in with the Italian postal service. Good for him. But I've always like his poetry more than I can understand why. It opens and closes to me at its own whim. Perhaps because he was one of the first I encountered. I'm not sure.

Russell Simmons presents, an interesting TV show on HBO, called Def Poetry. Lots of cool tv poets, showing how performance can be. You can buy it on DVD if you don't have the channel.

I picked up a collection of Hungarian writing this morning, and was taken by some lines from Ottó Orbán's Ginsberg in Budapest (translated by Eric Mottram.)

mister ginsberg what's the poet's task
must we be New York buddhists or aggressive fags
ride our broomstick obsessions
to a sabbath of angelic dreamspeech
or the opposite
keep our finger on the pulse of events
know more or less what the ordinary man thinks
under specific conditions
do minor repair jobs around the house

It's an interesting dilemma presented to all poets: To take the high road or the low road. The bacchanale or the banal. The choice seems like something that is well worth thinking through, because it appears largely irreversible - unless you are capable of radically restructuring your mind and what you perceive of as freedoms. Otherwise the transition from one to the other is interpretated by dilgent observers as, nothing other than, a belated and desperate attempt to flee chosen paths, to refashion constraints, to fake a self. Nothing wrong with this in principal I suppose, but a step backward for those pressing on with conviction.

You can catch the rest of the poem in Today An anthology of Contemporary Hungarian Literature, to see how Otto resolves the question.

I discovered this interesting snippet on wikipedia the other day. It's about codes broadcast by the BBC for the French Resistance.

A few days before D-Day, the commanding officers of the Resistance heard the first line of Verlaine's poem , Chanson d'Automne, "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne" (Long sobs of autumn violins) which meant that the "day" was imminent. When the second line "Blessent mon cœur d'une langueur monotone" (wound my heart with a montonous langour) was heard, the Resistance knew that the invasion would take place within the next 48 hours. They then knew it was time to go about their respective pre-assigned missions.

Blue wizard is about to Die got trashed by BookSlutwhen it came out in 2004. But despite that, for some reason, there is something about video games, that makes all nostalgic references to them inherently sublime. Perhaps it is because you realise in retrospect, that the game you wasted so much of your life on, was even more pixalated and crap than you could ever, in your wildest nightmares, have dream of. And, as such, all nostalgia towards them can be equally crap and kitsch and still keep the faith. Hence the brilliance of a line like ”I have no idea what I am doing, but I am doing it very fast". So despite BookSlut's fretting, Blue wizard is about to die will remain a cult collectible long after literacy has ceased to be.

Blue Wizard Is About to Die: Prose, Poems, and Emoto-Versatronic Expressionist Pieces About Video Games 1980-2003
Rusty Immelman Press
ISBN: 0974100005

In 2002, Neil Mc Carthy climbed Vinson Massif the highest mountain of Antarctica. He intoned the following quotation from Blake:

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.

A nice choice I think you'll agree. But more interesting still is the fact that he's part of a fantastic gang of mountain poets, who together have notched up readings on over 21 vertigo inducing mountains worldwide. Their site Poetry on the Peaks hasn't been updated for some time (avalanche?), but it's well worth a look as they've documented each reading, and posted some breathtaking photos too.

It's a slow, clunky, badly recorded video link, but I think some of you out there might be interested in seeing this guy called stargazer, performing some standup deaf poetry. There's some witty sign language you can pick up in the comic poems, and a nice short piece at the beginning if you bear with it.

It is not widely known, even in Ireland, that when Russell Crow had a poem cut at the 2002 BAFTAs, that the short poem in question, Sanctity, belonged to Patrick Kavanagh.




To be a poet and not know the trade
To be a lover and repel all women
Twin ironies by which great saints are made
The agonising pincer-jaws of Heaven


As you'll notice, the poem is very short. And it's deletion from the broadcast, apparently had nothing to do with an abhorrence of poetry itself, but rather it seemed the easiest, and most logical way for TV producers, to snip a few seconds from a long speech. Nonetheless, Russell, who composes poetry himself, was right to feel aggrieved for having these particular lines cut: Sanctity, is the quality or condition of being considered sacred or inviolable.

I've been gorging on The Methuen Book of Theatre Verse today. As the name suggests, it's an anthology, covering all aspects of theatre: actors, audiences, backstage, critics, playwrights and so forth. It's a small pleasure really, with a host of familiar actors and critics variously lampooned and praised. And its editors, Jonathan and Moira Field have dug up some really captivating verse, which is often simultaneously descriptive, amusing, and instructive of its subject matter. The never disappointing Don Marquis has this to say, from archy confesses, about Shakespeare:

coarse
jocosity
catches the crowd
shakespeare
and i
are often
low browed

And Humbert Wolf this about scenery:

S is for scenery. Gorden Craig and the rest,
just hang up a duster and hope for the best

Finally, among a feast of other interesting light hearted poems, there's also a selection of more serious verse, including a beautifully sad piece about Nijinsky's mad period, by Jonathan Field himself. Recommended.

This is a nice example of kinetic poetry by Ilse and Pierre Garnier, from PrototypesTextes pour une Architecture. The poem reels and runs, varying its speed as your mind attentively but hopelessly tries to adjust its settings. Read more about the wonderful world of Ilse and Pierre here.

Seymour Hoffman deservedly won the Best Actor Oscar, for his recent portrayal of Truman Capote. Interestingly, the real Capote, as a result of having published In Cold Blood, ended up reading poetry and prose to a 15,000 strong audience who had turned up, at a football field, to hear him speak. (a large audience to be sure, but not the biggest ever poetry audience for a football field). Understandably this is not in the movie though, because the film narrative pretty much ends before the reading. But more interestingly still, is the fact that also absent from the film, is the short poem, handed to him, before the execution, by murderer Perry Smith. It is unclear if Capote ever read the poem at the football field, but it perhaps encapsulates the mindset of a man, who in real life, remained what forensic psychiatry would call, an unrepentant psychopath. (Thanks Maebh.)


Perry Smith,

Oh would that I might raise my eyes above these walls
To cast my hopes to freedom's skies
And go on my merry way

The limitations of poetry dice or cubes are obvious, but the idea is interesting. It's probably more fun to make your own though. Use a blank or wildcard cube face, for inserting your own words...

Looking for a Chinese poetry vase? In Tenmoku Pottery? Not even for your Kitsch-en? Thought as much.

You'll find this short poem, from Moses Schulstein, at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. , and all over the net.

We are the shoes, We are the last witnesses
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers.
From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam
And because we are only made of fabric and leather
And not of blood and flesh,
Each one of us avoided the Hellfire

Moses Schulstein


Part of its power stems from the personification of shoes - objects which possess a peculiar ability to draw empathy from humans. (Perhaps as children, we love them, in an animistic way, and as adults, simply move away from them -literally; but not emotionally?) The poet knows of our empathy, and so the poem carries the implicit recognition, via its very construction, that many people are only able to relate to the victims, via an intermediary: the personified shoe. The second part of its power lies in its abrupt, and ferocious ending in the word Hellfire. Beyond this word, with all its attendant meaning, nothing including poetry can pass, except, perhaps, for silence. One to memorise.

Mark Awody and company, at minimalpress, used to create poetry vending machines out of old cigarette vending machines. Kind of cool, but I'm not sure if they still make them. And if not, perhaps it doesn't bother them. From their manifesto:
POETRY MACHINES will remain mysterious until the World has been blanketed by them, or at least- by the idea of them

Ingeborg Bachmann's star is still on the up. There was a reading in Venice recently to discuss her work. Unfortunately I had just arrived and missed it. A pity. As a leading voice in post-war German literature, her poetry is often dark cold and serious, but frosted with beauty:

Great Bear, come down, shaggy night,
cloud-coated beast with the old eyes, star eyes.
Through the thickets your paws break
shimmering with their claws,
star claws.

(from Anrufung des Großen Bären, 1956)

The talented Julian Grey of Headgear has animated the well known Billy Collins poem, forgetfulness. It's an elegant and deft piece of work. You can obtain it here from google video.

Of course you may feel that the whole thing is tainted, by the fact that Julian Grey has also worked for the darkside: american express, coke india, nestle etc. Your choice. (Thanks D).

A Howard Hodgkin exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art is shortly on it's way to Tate London. Unfortunately it doesn't have In Paris with you, a work inspired by the eponymous poem by James Fenton. A strange inexplicable sensuality pervades both creations. I can't track down an image of the painting yet, but here's a snippet from Fenton:

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There’s that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I’m in Paris with you.

I've covered football poetry elsewhere on Dublinka, and now I present a shrine to baseball poetry. It's an interesting thematic collection, not exclusively aimed at fans, but it probably helps if you are one.

Look out for a great baseball parody by Garrison Keillor: Casey at the bat (Road game).

There was pride in Casey's visage as he strode onto the grass,
There was scorn in his demeanor as he calmly scratched his ass.
Ten thousand people booed him when he stepped into the box,
And they made the sound of farting when he bent to fix his socks.

In the Spring Issue of Stinging Fly Nick Laird alludes in passing, in the poem Number 8, to an interesting chapter in the history of humanity. The reference is as follows:


Odd that he made eight, Evagrius,
favoured adherent of Basil the Great,
counsellor to Nectarius, Evargrius of Pontus,

the first to itemise the list for us,
of original deadly sins,...

concluding:
can catch and take like all diseases
including sadness number eight.

Laird's shrewd observation draws our google to the fact that the 4th century Greek monastic theologian Evagrius of Pontus, originally drew up a list of eight not seven deadly sins. These were, in order of increasing seriousness: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia (from the Greek "akedia," or "not to care"), vainglory, and pride. In the 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great retained sadness, but reduced the list to seven items, and in the 17th century the canonical list emerged, with sadness being replaced by sloth. If you reinsert sadness though, and view the original list through a secular lens, then we see it as a step by step enumeration of what some would call our current malaise: the increasing fixation with the self. It's a nice, if partially obscure reference, and as such illustrates just why we should ignore the herd that bemoan obscurity in poetry. Obscurity, is nothing other than something forgotten. And something forgotten, sometimes, deserves to be revived. For Laird, this aspect of fixation with the self, may not always be something we can control; it may be as aspect of our nature. As such, he concludes by classifying sadness as a disease.

Richard Goldstein always has something interesting to say. In 1969 he published a collection of rock lyrics, which he thought possessed some poetic qualities. In doing so, he distinguished the rock lyric from the poem - cautioning that the awkwardness which is unforgiveable in verse, may be charming in rock, and, crucially, that the distinction that rhythm in rock is not a matter of meter, but propulsion. The writing is particularly interesting, because it is criticism of it's time, and as such, the reputations of the people, and bands, he writes about, have not yet petrified in their fame. Of the Door's The End, he writes 'it renders holy what is simply unrestrained'. Of Aretha Franklin's version of Otis Redding's Respect, "she adds a sultry vagueness, and in the process, retransforms this lyric from a jocular spiel about marital rights to a curvaceous sermon on sexual reciprocity." He also credits Chuck Berry as being America's first Rock Poet and that "Johnny cash is Dylan without metaphor". It is criticism that poets can learn from, gutsy but without overkill; hungry and curious enough to consider the most poetically unlikely lyrics:

"who put the ram
in the ram a lam a ding dong
who put the bop
in the bop sh-bop sh-bop"

This week, I found an barely readable 1930 copy of Eric Linklater's Poet's pub, in a dowdy bookstore in town. It opens with the poet Saturday Keith, dismissing a damning review of his latest work. "No serious poet can today afford to work without a theory". (It sounds like an advertisement, he thought. Equip your library with our special rot-and-blot proof theories. Warmly recommended by the leading poets. Easy payments arranged. You can earn while you learn.)It's not quite the flashing wit illuminating every page that the blurb promises but there are flashes of insight, particularly about bars, to be found for those who make the effort, such as when, he states "I'm a bad publican and a bad poet too, for a good publican ought to be a little above life, a little bit enthroned, and a good poet ought, I think, to be just a step or two below life; polite I mean..." For those or you too lazy, they even made a movie out of it