“What is strange,” the poet-critic J. D. McClatchy writes, “is how her influence . . . has been felt in the literary culture. John Ashbery, James Merrill and Mark Strand, for instance, have each claimed [Elizabeth] Bishop as his favorite poet. . . . Since each of them couldn’t be more different from one another, how is it possible?”
It’s possible in the same way that other “great” artists have inspired diverse sets of peers and progeny.
There’s the old story about the Velvet Underground, that not many people actually heard them, but nearly everyone who did went and started a band. Were they great? I think some of their songs are — the droning “All Tomorrow’s Parties” has been a favorite of mine since I was twelve or thirteen. Detractors grumble about them playing out of tune, the unevenness of their rhythm section, the sloppy mixing, or the chaotic performances.
But beyond those petty complaints, what better legacy could you ask for than seeding an entire generation that grew in so many different directions?
“No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves. As a matter of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker. His heart may overflow with high thoughts and sparkling fancies, but if he cannot convey them to his reader by means of written word he has no claim to be considered a poet. A workman may be pardoned, therefore, for spending a few moments to explain and describe the technique of his trade. A work of beauty which cannot stand an intimate examination is a poor and jerry-built thing.”
“A drop of rain dripping from the clouds
Felt ashamed when it saw the vastness of the sea:
‘Where there is a sea, what am I!
If it is there, then I am nowhere.’
When it saw itself with humility
An oyster adopted it and nourished it with heart:
Fate carried on its work to such an extent
That it became a celebrated pearl, befitting a king.
It attained sublimeness when it humbled itself;
Knocking at the door of non-existence, it became
existent.”
– Saadi (Translated by Mirza Aqil-Husain) from Persian Poets
they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.
That is how they burned him.
That is how he died,
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry–
(we’d all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)– poetry
I didn’t want to copy the entire poem here, but I suggest taking a look at the whole thing. That link has an audio clip of McHugh reading the poem, too.
Emily Dickinson’s poems can seem inscrutable at times, even after multiple readings. A modern dictionary can help with words like periphrasis and pinnace, but what about those more esoteric words and people? What (or who) are Jessamines? Who’s Dollie? Who’s Carlo?
A few days ago, while I was trying to determine precisely what Dickinson might have meant by the word “haply”, Google revealed a new source: the Emily Dickinson Lexicon. It’s online and searchable:
The Emily Dickinson Lexicon is a dictionary of alphabetized headword entries for all of the words in Emily Dickinson’s collected poems (Johnson 1955 and Franklin 1998 editions). The scope of the Dickinson lexicon is comprehensive. A team of lexicographers and reviewers has examined almost 100,000 individual word occurrences to create approximately 9,275 headword entries. The EDL includes proper nouns, person names, and place names that are not usually listed in general dictionaries of the English language. Because high-frequency function words such as a, of, and the are important for Dickinson studies, the EDL includes basic definitions for 168 words that were omitted from Rosenbaum’s concordance (xi) with their 38,235 occurrences.
It is a work-in-progress, but it’s certainly complete and polished enough for the casual reader.
Also available: a digitization of the last edition of the American Dictionary of the English Language that Noah Webster made before his death — the same edition that Edward Dickinson bought for the family library in 1844.
To mark its 70th issue, Kyoto Journal has turned inward, examining 21st-century Kyoto in a special issue entitled Kyoto Lives. The deliberate ambiguity of the title refers to the lives of the forty-one Kyoto residents interviewed, and also affirms that Kyoto, in its latest incarnation, is still very much alive.
Kyoto Journal #70
Among the numerous highlights are Sugihara Iona:
“There is a more humble feeling about Kyoto; a sense that she was built by hands, not money.”
Edith Shiffert’s poetry, including this haiku:
Those flower petals
from roots in earth, stems in light
Self too roots and lifts
And Christian Orton’s photos of the Kamo river at night. (Four images are included in the magazine. Many more are featured on his website.)
The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. But the poet names the thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than any other. This expression or naming is not art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree.
From “Note on the Lessons of Antipoetry” by Nicanor Parra:
…
7. Read in good faith if you want to partake, and don’t ever find your satisfaction in the author’s name.
8. Ask your questions openly and listen without argument to the poets’ words; don’t be impatient with the pronouncements of the elders — they don’t make them by accident.
…
The full poem is available in the original Spanish and English on Google Books.
I sell myths not poems. With each poem goes a little myth. This myth is not in the poem. It’s in my mind. And when the editors of magazines ask me for poems I make them pay for my work by passing along these little myths which I make up. These myths appear at the end of the magazine under the heading ABOUT CONTRIBUTORS or above my poem in italics. Very soon there are as many myths are there are poems and ultimately this is good because each poem does, this way, bring another poet into the world. With this secret method of defying birth controls I populate the world with poets.
I’ve quoted the entire work here, which may be a stretch of fair use. But really, how could I take scissors to a piece like this? As a mea culpa, let me point you directly to the page where you can buy Mr. Codrescu’s books and encourage you to support his work.
