Only a Blockhead

1 Review of 101 Modern Japanese Poems

When a new anthology of American poetry appears — The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove is just one of the recent examples — voices are inevitably raised over the editor’s selections and rejections, and sometimes over whether a new anthology of poetry from a period already well-surveyed is necessary at all. These arguments inspire some fiery polemics, and one can see why. Such questions — whether poet A is deserving of space when poet B gets none; whether the collection as a whole tells a story about the work surveyed that is compelling and new — are eminently worth debating, and one imagines that such discussions took place when Makoto Ooka edited the Japanese version of this anthology in the late 1990s.

That's from my review of 101 Modern Japanese Poems, translated by Paul McCarthy.  Read the rest here.

Haiku: A tweet with pretensions

Late Sunday morning;

Drifting in and out of sleep

in my lover's arms

 

--Julian

Tropical Mildewy Decayed Architecture, For Julian

--David

Poem Found in an ESL Classroom

absence absence absence    acceptance acceptance acceptance

adjustment adjustment adjustment

all

(anonymous)

--David

Geoffrey Hill on Difficulty

Let’s take difficulty first. We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when if such simplification were applied to a description of our own inner selves we would find it demeaning? I think art has a right—not an obligation—to be difficult if it wishes. And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic. And that tyranny requires simplification. This thought does not originate with me, it’s been far better expressed by others. I think immediately of the German classicist and Kierkegaardian scholar Theodor Haecker, who went into what was called “inner exile” in the Nazi period, and kept a very fine notebook throughout that period, which miraculously survived, though his house was destroyed by Allied bombing. Haecker argues, with specific reference to the Nazis, that one of the things the tyrant most cunningly engineers is the gross oversimplification of language, because propaganda requires that the minds of the collective respond primitively to slogans of incitement. And any complexity of language, any ambiguity, any ambivalence implies intelligence. Maybe an intelligence under threat, maybe an intelligence that is afraid of consequences, but nonetheless an intelligence working in qualifications and revelations . . . resisting, therefore, tyrannical simplification.

That's from an interview in the Paris Review.

--David

Reading 2011

The only New Year's resolution I ever make is not to make any New Year's resolutions.  I did, however, begin 2011 with an ambitious project in mind.  I decided that, other than books I was compelled to read, I would read only books by women.  As I'm told happens with most resolutions, this one fell by the wayside pretty early for lots of not very good reasons. I was, for example, taking a trip to Finland, so I had to read a history of Finland, and a couple of thrillers set in Finland, and the first volume of Väinö Linna's national epic; the authors of all these were male, and once I'd fallen off the wagon, I never quite climbed back on.

Actually, I didn't read very many books by men or women this year: only about sixty in total, though there were some mega-tomes among them.  That more than a third of the sixty I made it through were written or edited by a woman--twenty-three to be exact--, a proportion higher than it would otherwise have been, suggests that my resolution was not all for naught.

My non-resolution for 2012 is to read more poetry.  (And in fact I read more poetry than is evident from my booklist.  Because I only list books I've finished, all the odd dipping into collections and selecteds that I do is unaccounted for.)

Looking forward to reading more in 2012.

--David

The poetry of photographs

I got mail from my brother, together with photographs of a current holiday on the Isle of Wight. The one below (old farm buildings near Quarr Abbey) might have been taken a century ago. It brought to mind Milan Kundera saying that “the purpose of poetry is… to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.” In those terms, a photograph can be poetry.

As, indeed, the casual, spur of the moment image in the previous post already has the stab of poetry if we imagine it viewed in the years to come.

--Julian

"All sparks are counted"

Zack de la Rocha on Occupy Wall Street: 

The beginning spills through city veins 
Into the arteries 
And under powers poison clouds 
We move like the shadows 
Through the alley ways 
Through nightmares bought and sold as dreams 
Through barren factories 
Through boarded schools 
Through rotting fields 
Through the burning doors of the past 

The rest is here.

--Julian

"the cloud-flower blossoms"

I’d been thinking about David’s recent “City Life” post, and missing the richness of the city.

Which was probably why, when I stepped out of the back door early this autumn morning (to carry the recyclables to the pick up point) and looked up at the pink wisps of cloud, I wondered if the symphony he heard had evoked the natural world, and if Snyder had read of susuki grass and bamboo groves.

And why, as I passed a tree backlit by the sunrise, the flock of sparrows flitting on the bare branches looked like an animated music score.

--Julian

City Life

"City" and "Civilization" have the same etymological root. 

Last week, because I live close to a great metropolis and frequently pass through it, I was able to hear John Adams's Dr. Atomic Symphony performed, to hear Gary Snyder and Shuntaro Tanikawa read and talk, to pick up (and read), on a whim, a short book by Samuel Beckett, to engage in lively conversation over ramen and beer in a back-street dive with a street musician who looked like an early Rolling Stone a bit the worse for wear and an older man, impeccably turned out, who he called "Sensei."  Another week might also have included an exquisite meal at a French, Indian, Thai, or Japanese restaurant, and would certainly feature social encounters, unpredictable and exciting, of the kind that only great cities can offer.

I am always amazed to hear people deplore urbanization and talk about how much they hate cities.

Different strokes, I guess.

—David