“We still believe what we hear.”

For this month’s Music poem, I point you to Seamus Heaney’s “The Singer’s House”

Like all great Heaney poems, and especially appropriate for a poem engaging with music, it is delicious to read/hear aloud. The give and take of the alliterative/echoing sounds, “a hint of the clip of the pick / in your winnowing climb and attack” to “Raise it again, man. We still believe what we hear” —oh, delicious. And the salt imagery builds more the more you read it. (There are a million more things to say about how this poem is built from a form and structure perspective which I might come back to in future, but this’ll just be a short post this month.)

In an interview in the Paris Review the late Heaney says this poem is about “the poet’s and the poem’s right to a tune in spite of the tunelessness of the world around them” and has more to say about the situations from which it arose, and of course there’s information about Carrickfergus and its salt mines and Gweebarra you can find online worth poking about in, but, as with all the best poems, that’s all not strictly necessary for an enjoyable first reading.

 

 

 

Almost time for “A Time to Write”

The next Saturday “A Time to Write” group at the Attic Institute starts April 12th—I’ve got a slew of great generative prompts designed to get your pen moving (I love coming up with prompts), revision exercises to nudge your brain into seeing an old piece in a new light, and you can also use the time as just a designated work session to work on whatever it is you’re itching to work on.

It runs for 5 weeks, Saturday mornings, 10am – Noon, April 12 – May 10. More details and registration. It’s a great opportunity for writers of all genres and levels to be proactive about being productive, to have fun, and of course to meet other writers. Spread the word to friends who might be interested, would you? After all, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” (Mary Heaton Vorse)

 

William Matthews’ Janis Joplin

February’s Music post: William Matthews’ “The Penalty for Bigamy is Two Wives”

William Matthews’ prose poem “The Penalty for Bigamy is Two Wives” has so many great descriptions of music it almost makes you forget how hard it can be to describe music. Joplin’s voice breaks out “in hives of feeling.” Music, in the words of the speaker’s friend, “throws you back into your body, like organic food or heroin.” Then there’s the image of the pain in his friend’s singing voice “like the silhouette of a dog baying at the moon, almost liver-shaped, a bell hung from a rope of its own pure yearning.” And then, back to Janis again, her voice running up and down the body “like a fire that has learned to live on itself” and then, there comes the amazing description of listening to dead Janis sing as being “Grief’s beautiful blowjob.” Now that is one hell of a line.Continue reading “William Matthews’ Janis Joplin”

Briefly Reviewed: Satan is Real and Suzy Zeus Gets Organized

I picked up Satan is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers by Charlie Louvin (and Benjamin Whitmer) off a random shelf because of the totally amazing cover, was intrigued by the blurbs even though I didn’t know who Charlie Louvin was, started reading and then realized I totally should have known who he was because I know his songs, which folks like Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and Alison Krauss have covered (“I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby,” “If I Could Only Win Your Love” etc.). The Louvin Brothers’ swooping, interchanging harmony inspired the Everly Brothers and others, and they were reportedly Elvis Presley’s favorite gospel duo (and the reason why Presley, despite this, never covered them is herein explained).Continue reading “Briefly Reviewed: Satan is Real and Suzy Zeus Gets Organized”

“Country Song”

This year’s monthly series focus will be on music poems (2012 was Months poems and 2013 was Animals). First up, the incomparable A.E. Stallings’ “Country Song” from her collection Olives.

“Death was something that hadn’t happened yet,” is how it starts, one of the many lines which does many things at once. Death was something that hadn’t happened yet, in the song? to the speaker? The answer to both being yes. Another line that does similar multitasking comes just a few later, “It seeped up through the dashboard’s oubliette.” What does, the “hour of broken luck” in the line just before? Death from the first line? The country song? All of the above, even though grammatically of course the subject of that sentence Continue reading ““Country Song””

Class Registration and Film Reviews

Just a quick reminder for Portland folks that registration is still open (but the cut-off date looms!) for The Attic Institute’s Saturday morning Time to Write writing group, which I’ll be leading. Saturdays, 10am – noon, Jan 18 – Feb 15. Open to all genres and all writers. Details here.

Attic logo

And, my Film Reviews for 2014 have begun! New format this year, question and answer reviews (totally stolen from Boob Tube Dude TV critic Ryan McGee’s 5 Questions and 500 words TV pilot reviews, because it looked like a really fun form). (Last year’s reviews are archived here.)

2013

2013 ends on a great note, with another poem of mine published in online journal  The Broken City‘s music-themed issue, just posted today! (My poem, “At the Bardot,” is on page 9). 13 was a bit my lucky number this year — I had work in Beatdom‘s #13 issue too, and (though it was doesn’t work for a number-13 trifecta) I was terribly excited to be in issue #89 of FIELD this fall.

And now, after a quick reminder that you can sign up to receive an email alert when there’s a new post in the new year towards the bottom of the page (the “Yes Please” button on the lower left under where it says “Be Alerted To New Posts”), here’s my traditional quick look back at what I read and watched this year… first the books:Continue reading “2013”

Death of a Naturalist & The Skunk

For this month’s animal poems post, it is with great pleasure I direct your attention to two by the late, great Seamus Heaney.

“Death of a Naturalist” is one of those poems you pretty much just have to call perfect. It’s evocative, its language is wonderful and trips off the tongue, its images are vibrant, the line breaks thrill with their little tensions, the combination of sentimental nostalgia and gross realism delights — you know, perfect.  The love of words underlying it all, and the personality that comes through, the humor and respect for the place and time under discussion. I love especially the words, love saying out loud lines like “I would fill jampots full of the jellied / Specks to range on the window-sills at home” and “All the year the flax-dam festered in the heart / Of the townland; green and heavy headed” and oh I could go on.Continue reading “Death of a Naturalist & The Skunk”

FIELD #89 arrives in the mail

FIELD #89 has arrived! I’m so happy to say you can find my poem “Spider Plant Boulevard” on page 92, in addition to a symposium on Gerald Stern and poems by one of my grad school profs, Sandy McPherson, plus Dennis Schmitz and Bob Hicok who I’ve talked about here before, and lots of other fine folks whose company I’m so delighted to be keeping. You can get ahold of FIELD at some bookstores and through Oberlin College Press, and, for your various iDevices, on LitRagger.com.

FIELD89 Fall 2013

My proto-dream-house, my crypto-dream-house

Because it was my birthday last week, I want to talk about “The End of March” by Elizabeth Bishop. I always respond to it, even more so than any of her other poems which I also love, with that sort of delight you get when someone gives you a gift that is totally “you” (i.e. unexpected but perfect).

“The End of March” begins “It was cold and windy, scarcely the day / to take a walk on that long beach” (don’t you just love to do that too, take walks on the beach when it’s too cold to do so, and so no one else is?).

The first stanza continues with description of the beach, Bishop’s typical noticing eye comment on the initial description to further precision: “Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, / indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, / seabirds in ones or twos” etc. She speaks of the wind, well not just the wind it’s “The rackety, icy, offshore wind” blowing back “the low, inaudible rollers” and let’s pause a moment there to savor the rhythm/sound/mouth shape of saying that phrase aloud, “the low, inaudible rollers” Continue reading “My proto-dream-house, my crypto-dream-house”