National Poetry Month

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? That time of year when we stop for a moment and think about poetry, something most of us don't do. We think "Huh. Poetry. Yeah, I've read some." or "Poetry...yeesh. No thanks." or even "Pretentious poets. I'll go listen to Radio K instead."

I have been called a poet; sometimes I think I am, and I can be heard mumbling any of these on any given day.

The truth is, I find better poetry in the songs I hear on college radio than in the books of so-called popular poetry. Popular poetry seems so desparate in its attempt to be considered important or Poetic (in Zapf Chancery script) that it loses the balance needed to be...well, needed. It's like a friend who actually does pretty cool things, but is overshadowed by his incessant need to tell everyone that he does cool things, that he thinks deeply...a LOT.

This is what usually comes to mind when April rolls around. 

Usually.

But this year I'm trying something different. While I refuse to ignore the less palatable parts, I'm going to look on the sunny side. I'm going to look for what's good about poetry. I'm going to pitch in and try to do my part.

I was tapped at my place of employ, The Minnesota Humanities Center, to post on their blog on poetry for the month of April. Once a week I'll post something on some aspect of poetry, giving proper nods to the locals, in hopes of helping others get past the stereotypes (which are, indeed, rooted in reality) and find something about poetry that connects with them. The first post went up last week: http://blog.minnesotahumanities.org/2009/04/02/poetry-month-with-humanities-guest-blogger-michael-gause/. I encourage you to read it and leave a comment about what poetry means to you, about how you plan to celebrate National Poetry Month, or just about how you think its cool that your local humanities organization is featuring poetry on its blog. The second post should go up before week's end. Feel free to comment on all posts. If there is enough reaction, I may just get to keep doing it.

As the weather warms, let's take off our coats and do some stretches. Let's make things happen we've talked about forever. Let's do things we can raise a glass to this winter, when we're huddled around fires cursing the weather through chattering teeth. 

Let's at least be smiling through them.

m.

for Spring

If late autumn
pulls his eyes across sun rusted hills,
spring always returns him to the color of women.

Like now.
In the café a stranger's gaze moves slowly
above him to something he suddenly
wishes he were.

But turning he sees it is only the hills reborn,
so he smiles,
allows himself to begin,

Lucidity and Desire

"A.'s lucidity depends on a lack of desire. Mine is the result of an excess-undoubtedly it is also the only true lucidity. If it is only the negation of delerium, lucidity is not completely lucid, is still a bitt of the fear of going all the way-transposed into boredom, that is, into contempt for the object of an excessive desire. We reason with ourselves and we tell ourselves: this object doesn't have in itself the value that desire gives it. We don't see that mere lucidity, which we also attain, is still blind. We must see at the same time the delusion and the truth of the object. No doubt we have to know that we are deluding ourselves, that the object is first of all what is perceived by a desireless being, but it is also what a desire perceives in it. B. is also what is only attained by the extremity of delirium an dmy lucidity would not exist if my delirium were not so great. Just as it would not exist if the other, ridiculous sides of B. escaped me."

Georges Bataille
from The Impossible

On What Makes a Writer

In all the questioning about what makes a writer, and especially perhaps the personal essayist, I have seen little of reference to this fact; namely, that the brain has become a kind of unseen artist’s loft. There are pictures that hang askew, pictures with outlines barely chalked in, pictures torn, pictures, the artist has striven unsuccessfully to erase, pictures that only emerge and glow in a certain light. They have all been teleported, stolen, as it were, out of time. They represent no longer the sequential flow of ordinary memory. They can be pulled about on easels, examined within the mind itself. The act is not one of total recall like that of the professional mnemonist. Rather it is the use of the things extracted from their context in such a way that they have become the unique possession of a single life. The writer sees back to these transports alone, bare, perhaps few in number, but endowed with a symbolic life. He cannot obliterate them. He can only drag them about, magnify or reduce them as his artistic sense dictates, or juxtapose them in order to enhance a pattern. One thing he cannot do. He cannot destroy what will not be destroyed; he cannot determine in advance what will enter his mind.

Loren Eiseley
from All The Strange Hours

This Morning I Feel Like The Love Child of Stars of the Lid and Leon-Paul Fargue

..and now you can, too.

Listen to this: http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Stars%2520of%2520the%2520Lid/similarartists

and read this poem by Fargue. I have yet to meet someone who has not had a night like this one.



"Romance"
by Leon-Paul Fargue (1876-1947)
translated from the French by Louis Simpson

We certainly loved you,
Marie. You knew,
Didn't you? Do you remember?

One evening
We set off at night,
Artheme and I, going quietly to see you
Beneath the apse of the summer sky, as at church.

There was a light and you were reading.

We kept the drawings
With three crayons, and the birds in blue ink
That you make.

Ah, Marie, you sang so well!
It was during the time
When you were happy, at the Sisters' school,
When the procession of pale flowers
Sang in the desert of Sunday.
Trembling
I was near you, who were all in white.

The organ spoke of shadows...
On the altar the blue day hung.
Through wounds in stained glass, the call of the breeze
Fused with a loud hum of onyx, drove the fire
Of the candles toward you, tipsy
With light and sacred songs.

The Barrel Roller

The Barrel Roller*
for Buford Counts

The young ones try
it with numbers,

count revolutions across
yards of old and lofted planks until

the room is done
and the cork faces out.

But the old ones just laugh at the science,
know that there are no equations
for art.

You just get by doing,
the way knives are sharpened to put
chickens out of your misery.

But their time'll come.
We forget we used
to count the rings, too,
wasted good time looking for short cuts
to the future.


*Buford Counts was a barrel roller at Jack Daniel's Distillery for over 30 years. His ability to get filled barrels of whiskey from one end of the floor to the other without machinery is well documented by his few living peers. He was also my grandfather.

Dishevel'd Salon is on Facebook

...just like the sign says...

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=34392019641

Working on getting back to a regular posting here. Expect something new by next week.