An Attempt At Combining Dis-association and Narrative

This piece is  based on a series of events and people I encountered at the recent AWP conference in Washington DC.  So it is kind of narrative.  But also not strictly.  Something I'm trying.

My Winter Vacation

There seems to be always the young woman with a pillow, re-defining casual dress wherever she goes.  An old black mans asks you to push his wheel chair down M street, he’s going the same way, gives the advice to never give-up.  Advice that is really too late. You and I have no explanation. My friend who could die any moment shows up. The other friend too, the one who committed suicide. Both conjuring nothing.  The alive one is staying where he is now, his heart and its electrical restart just a fact. The dead one is still shifting, never quite right. You wade into a demonstration, the house covered in fencing, they ask you politely to step to the side. It’s from us that secret service agent refuses a proffered mint, expected but a disappointment none the less.  There are lessons in all this, mostly your planning brain can’t handle the permutations yet you love it or it is too damned hard. You have always wanted to be full deputized, in the pursuit of justice but the drumming never stops. You have paid your debt in airplane waiting rooms, you’d think a pardon would be at hand. But the hard truth is a plastic bag around a face, fogging up.  Looseness on purpose though a saviour.  Sameer the Uber driver drove right past you but you still gave him five stars, you know it's a hard knock life and why make it harder. That was a salute to the last century, if you think Annie or Jay-Z. But still true isn’t it. Ghosting the nicht away, same as it ever was.   Can it be true and not true at the same time. It appears so, you seem to live that way.  Not judging but you are a liar. Okay, judging. Muncie directly below the aircraft you imagined during the plenary session. And real life re-enacts the imaginary act, you knot your tiling memory. You, the planning mind, yes you.  Fall into the deep end of the uncurious swill I keep for dreaming.  

Arisa White Workshop Week #2: The Heroic Clarion Call

This form of this poem is taken from my interpretation of what CD Wright was doing in her poem Shallcross.  I see it as a kind of pseudo renga development where one line follows the next but does not necessarily relate to the line two previous (vs the same thing with stanzas in a renga), so a kind of winding associative development with some material re-appearing throughout in different context.  The idea of hero and clarion call which show up in this poem relates to an Arisa White writing prompt based on a Toni Morrison essay from the early 1980's suggesting writers band together to fight forces that were working against the development of literature at the time. 

Heroically Speaking

We are running along the bend

All the humans witness to us

Slingshot the bend

Without us not within us

Newton’s First Law of Motion

A body at rest will remain

Outside forces are acting

As our bodies are transported

The rapidly rising tide

Floating us higher

Above the wide open doors

An airport hanger now empty

Of all thought of all speech

In a kingdom of no horses

In a fiefdom of no promises

All men are stone blind

The snake on the beach

Neither sedulous nor incubus

Can beat the resistance

Formulated answers are not received

Formulated receptions the exceptions

A clarion call if we’ve ever heard one

Winter rain din on this early morning

Would you name this a call to arms?

We see your face across the park

Naming what a hero would say

Is not our job or yours

A competitive place this

Running with scissors a best practice

Some would call an apocalypse 

This too shall pass

Single family dwellings out of reach

All of us with cell phones and HBO

Bricks and mortar dying slowly

Taxi cabs who don’t take visa

The collapse of the old order

Within and without any regard 

Hoagland On Narrative Poetry

A friend passed this link on an article by Tony Hoagland talking about what he says is a distrust of narrative today, especially he says among young MFA's who are more into experimental disassociated modes. One of the reasons he "blames" for this trend is a distrust of the confessional as well, mainly due to what he seems to say was way too much narcissism in the past.

It's an interesting discussion I think.   For my own work, I'm interesting in both narrative and disassociation.   In either cast it seems to me that it is important to make the poem interesting, which means not purely narrative or completely dissociative.  Of course interesting is subjective, but the first thing is to at least make it interesting to yourself I would suggest. Perhaps it is is important to have an appreciation for both modes in order to appreciate good poetry in either category.

I also wonder if this is some of the normal pendulum swinging of fads and trends.  That some of what he says may already be out dated as the newest young MFA's react against the recent trends, perhaps embracing the narrative in new and fresh ways.  Perhaps the two first examples in Hoagland's article are more harbingers of a coming trend rather than being exceptions as Hoagland seems to indicate.

Arisa White Workshop Week 1 - Tamara's Form

This form is driven by two initiating lines, the first row and the left column. There were also five words supplied to drive the tone of the poem: iron, prison, rigidity, resigned (original prompt was resignation), elevation.  The poem can be read both horizontally and vertically.  The trick was to attempt to get meaning in all lines though not necessarily through traditional syntax.  

It Really Is As Tough As You Think It Is

I	walked	the	rail	lines at	night
want	is	always	iron	never	rigidity
to	air	human	clang	never	blurs
find	a	centre	against	never	smudges
the	centre	of	my	never	shifts
way	too	many	opportunities	never	elevate
out	inherited	fights		never	finds
of	problems	resigned		never	no
this	problem?	of		never	way
prison	no!	stars	no light	in	ever

A Poetic Statement by Me

Who am I as a Poet?  That is something that is ever changing, every reading, every lecture, every workshop, every poem read, every poem written.

How did I come to Poetry? Poetry came to me.  Literally. I was in class called Transforming Life Into Literature for the continuing ed creative writing program at McMaster University.  We were told to take two books from the front table and write an essay on how the authors had used their life experiences to produce these pieces of literature.  Randomly they were both books of poetry.  I couldn't believe how great the books were. In particular the Canadian poet Patrick Lanes's book The Bare Plum Of Winter Rain.  I immediately started writing poetry and put aside prose. That was almost fifteen years ago.

If I think about what was this appeal of poetry for me it is encapsulated in this statement by the poet Marie Howe where she defines poetry as “a cup of language to hold what can’t be said.” Poetry at its best seems for me to elevate beyond the narrative experience of simple prose to accomplish this extraordinary thing.

What things am I thinking about poetically, challenges and goals? I am thinking about how to get at the best poem from the initial first blurt, how to carve out the true poem.  In terms of goals, my main goal is to write interesting work, in particular work that will keep me interested, I don't want to bore myself.

My philosophy on poetry...Something I've learned in the last few years, especially at SMC, is that rules I've assumed are valid often aren't.  I have learned to begin questioning the rules I use for writing and also use for editing others. So my philosophy is to look at whether poems work not based on some set of rules, but the effects of the poem itself.