Extra blog- Erin Belieu

This week I chose Erin Belieu to write a few lines about. In her poem entitled “Of the Poet’s Youth”, she is speaking about her past, tries to recollect her past memories, events and friends. She is talking to Sandy, who used to be “the deluxe doll, modish and pert”, and she calls their past “our halcyon days”. Were these days really so special and unique? We get to know that they were eating hash brownies; they were having sex all the time, so their life was similar to that of the hippies in the 60s. Interestingly, El Camino, this very religious way of pilgrims is mentioned. It is strangely connected to their dissolute life, where no one was looking for the possibility of a purer heart and soul—as it would be expected during a pilgrimage. Compared to the present, “Those were immortal times, Sandy! Coke wasn’t addictive yet, condoms prevented herpes / and men were only a form of practice for the Russian novel / we foolishly hoped our lives would become.” So her present must be very bad and annoying if she wants to get back these old days, where nothing was real, even hopes were fakes, obviously Coke was addictive that time as well, and men did not just die as they do in Russian novels. After the description of the past, we have some present day situations, and we know that sixteen years have passed since the good old days. “My estranged husband house-sits for a spoiled cockatoo while saving to buy his own place. My lover’s gone back / to his gin and the farm-team fiancée he keeps in New York.” So after sixteen years, she has an estranged husband, who wants to be separated from her and at the same time, she has a lover who has a fiancée. Her life is not much better than it used to be in the past, but the worst thing is that now she is emotionally alone, no one is willing to be with her forever, and presumably her lover is going to leave her, this is just the matter of time. The next line tells us she is a mom, and strangely she reads Frank O’Hara to her three-year old child before he goes to bed. Why O’Hara? He is not supposed to be read for little children like hers, I think he would rather listen to some fairy tales and not O’Hara. This may express that his mother does not believe in fairy tales anymore, her life is in ruins, everything is against her, so she does not want her son to believe in miracles and fairies, as they do not exist and will never help him in his life. She does not want her son to have the same kind of life she has now. The next lines say “Tonight, I find you in a box I once marked ‘The Past’. Well, / therapy’s good for some things, Sandy…” Putting our past in an imaginary box and not dealing with it for a while is sometimes suggested by psychologists, but she is not sure if this method really works, as the last line says: “I don’t know anything.” And also, she does not expect anything from her life, things will not change.

Make up blog

This week we had an interesting survey on multicultural poetry and we had authors coming from many different countries, bringing their differences, belief and hopes to the US. It was interesting when you were talking about the “constraint” which “forces” immigrants to learn English to be able to communicate with others and have a better life. Sometimes, I think, this is not the case. I can easily imagine Chinese or Mexican immigrants in big cities who cannot speak English, simply because they are surrounded by other Chinese or Mexican people, they have their own newspapers, TV channels, and even schools. This way they do not have to assimilate, to learn English and they are not forced to lose one part of their selves. Of course, this is the result of the second part of the 20th century which made the US (and the world as well) more multicultural, in the past immigrants really had to assimilate (just think of Polish or German immigrants who became real Americans in the course of one generation). And this is what Lorna Dee Cervantes is talking about in her poem entitled “Refugee Ship”. Although born in California, she is like an outsider; her family is not part of the dominant English-speaking Anglo-Saxon society. She is forced to learn English, and unlike her grandmother, she is going to assimilate into the dominant culture. Her grandmother still reads the Bible- religion is a very important part of the lives of Mexican Americans. She has to notice that, although she speaks English, her appearance is different from that of the other English speakers: “bronzed skin, black hair”. In other words, she is a typical Mexican (a “Chicana”- with all the discrimination and disadvantages of this origin); everyone can notice that from a mile. She feels a captive on a refugee ship maybe because of her low-class Mexican origin, her mother tongue or her “barrio” in which her family lives. The fact that the last line is written in Spanish just strengthens her bilingual origins and her inability (or impossibility) to decide between the two competing cultures. The poetry of Li-Young Lee has of course, similar features. In his poetry, we can even witness his struggle with the English language, like in the poem entitled “Persimmons”. I can easily imagine that struggle, not because I am not a native speaker of English, but because Asian people are coming from a really different world. Their languages (even their names) are very different from English, they grew up reading Eastern philosophers, their languages are not full of Latin (or Greek) borrowings, and this makes their language learning process much more difficult. This is recorded in “Persimmons”, the struggle with the new language, with the new culture (just think of Mrs. Walker who brought an unripe persimmon to class calling it “Chinese apple”, he knew the difference but could not say it). Towards the end of the poem we can see the importance of art; maybe that could help the father survive his first times in the US and brought back the nostalgic days spent in his native country.

The poetry of Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg

I have a few thoughts about “Dog” written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. We may say that in this poem the dog stands for the author, as he passes through the streets of San Francisco and sees “things” that are bigger and smaller than he is and “things” that smells like he smells. This triple division is interesting, just like the recurring phrase, “The dog trots freely in the street”, which is like a refrain in the poem. We can easily imagine this freely trotting dog as he sees the city landmarks like Chinatown, the Meat Market, the Romeo Ravioli Factory and Coit’s Tower. Besides the usual cityscape (drunks in doorways, fish, ants, puddles, cats, cigars, babies) he can see many other, obviously more interesting, things as well. Just like policemen. Here we can see the poet’s opinion about policemen, he does not hate them, “He merely has no use for them”. After this allusion comes another, even more interesting one, referring to the atmosphere of the 50s in America, to the “Un-American Committee”, persecuting suspicious Communists in the country. Strangely, the dog is not afraid of the Committee (and of its leader, Congressman Doyle). This could show us the opinion of the poet as well; the counterculture supports revolutions and does not afraid of the power of the leaders. However, this dog is said to be “sad” and “serious” at the same time. These two adjectives may show us that the revolutionists are sad because of the bad conditions they have to live in, and they are serious as well in their decisions and revolutions. He is free and has his own life to live and his own fleas to eat (i.e. his own issues and problems) and “He will not be muzzled”, so he will not be silenced by the government or some “stronger” people. The most provocative part is coming up: “Congressman Doyle is just another/ fire hydrant/ to him”, i.e. he is not interested in him, and in his decisions or orders, he is just urinating him. I liked the pun with the homophonous words “tale” and “tail”, they just spiced the poem up. The next lines must be making fun of politics; I do not think the poet was interested in these things: the dog is democratic and “engaged in real free enterprise”.
My other choice is the famous “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg. The evocation of Walt Whitman in a California supermarket is very surprising, what would he do in a modern store full of people, where “whole families shopping at night!”? Federico García Lorca seems to be out of place as well, but we should know the only thing linking these three poets: they were all homosexual; I think this is the reason why Ginsberg puts them together. Whitman is said to be lonely and childless, he is eying the grocery boys- one more allusion to homosexuality. Then Ginsberg addresses Whitman, they should decide where to go, their journey is said to be an “odyssey”. Besides this classical allusion, we have one more in the closing lines, speaking about Charon and the Lethe.

Modeling Poem #3

66. Write a poem made up entirely of excuses

Funny excuses for being late for work

Do you know how long it takes to give a dollar to every Santa you see?
I had to show the new worker something.
Your watch must be fast.
I wasn’t late. I just failed to be on time.
Want to talk about it over a bite to eat?
I fell asleep in the shower.
I ran into a parade.
I was too busy sleeping to be on time.
I had a top level meeting with George Bush.
Could you please repeat the question?
I saw Elvis.
I had to catch a Pokemon.
I couldn’t find my clothes.
(Source: http://www.toddolivas.com/blog/48-Funny-Excuses-For-Being-Late-For-Work.asp,m, last visited Sun, November 16, 2008)

Funny school excuses

My alarm clock didn't go off because it was upset with me. It felt that I was ignoring it and that I didn't give it the time of day.
My foot went asleep this morning. It refused to wake up. I ended up hopping on one foot to get to school.
My son is under a doctor's care and should not take P.E. today. Please execute (sic!) him.
Dear School: Excuses
Please ekscuse (sic!) John being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and also 33 (!).
Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father's fault.
Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.
Sally won't be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.
My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.
I didn't come to school yesterday because I was feeling like I was going to be sick, but thankfully I wasn't!
Please excuse my daughter for being late. Her broom won't start so I had to send it back to Salem for repairs!
I'm sorry but my baby sitter flushed my homework down the toilet.
(Source: http://www.clown-ministry.com/Articles/funny-jokes/actual-school-excuse-notes.html, last visited Sun, November 16, 2008)

In this modeling poem I chose option 66, the “Excuses list”, so I wrote a poem made up entirely of excuses. There were so many options, it was very hard to decide which one to choose, I liked many of them, but I have to admit I am not really fond of experimental poetry. This is funny and entertaining in a way, but sometimes tiring and hard to follow. I know quite well the French OuLiPo movement; I have already participated in a workshop like that and heard a lot of “innovative” ideas about poetry, but I still prefer conventional forms and meters which is considered to be “high poetry” by people in general. Googlism is certainly funny, I have checked it out, but finally I chose the excuses. At first I wanted to write something “original” on my own, then I had to realize that it must have been very hard and almost impossible to do so, so I used Internet to help me find good excuses. Fortunately, some funny excuses popped up instead of the usual boring “Sorry, I can’t go here and there…” things. This seemed to be more interesting and inviting, so I just picked some of the funny excuses at random. I created two major kinds of excuses: excuses for being late from work and funny school excuses including some parent-written justifications which were even funnier than the “artificially” created ones as they contain parents’ mistakes. At first I was afraid of this Internet collage poetry, I felt that this is not “real” work or “real” poetry, but then I thought of Bruce Covey and his poetry and I had to establish that he did the same, and he was very entertaining. There is not a great difference between finding some interesting things on Google or Yahoo and compiling them to have a new work of art and finding some pre-written materials and putting them together to create poetry. As originality is not an expectation nowadays and Internet has greatly changed our world (and poetry as well) I think this is not a “crime” or plagiarism writing poems like mine. I indicated my sources, just in case you wanted go back and read more. Using this collage technique and the net, I think I greatly challenged notions of “mainstream”, traditional poetry. This kind of poem was hardly imaginable in the 19th century (or even in the first half of the 20th century). Not only because of the lack on Internet, but maybe because poets had a tendency to respect traditional forms and classical allusions, rhyme and meter. I know this seems to be a vague generalization, but I have not read this kind of poetry before the 20th century. I can imagine its earlier existence, but it must have been suppressed by mainstream poetry. I think it is always interesting to play around with language (until people are able to follow and enjoy it); the success of e.g. Queneau clearly shows it has its place among the classics in the canon. We should accept that art is constantly changing just like expectations; unified art does not exist anymore as it used to be earlier. Anyway, I have some favorite parent-written excuses, some are very funny, especially the ones where I put “sic!” between brackets.

Kenneth Koch's poetry

This week I chose Kenneth Koch to write a few lines about. I particularly liked his poem entitled “Geography”. This is a very inventive and interesting poem at the same time. It has eight stanzas, seven is dealing with different kinds of people from all around the world and the last one unites all of them and shows us (like a kind of a slideshow) what they are doing at the same time in different places of the world. Interestingly the first and the eight stanzas are the longest ones, giving the poem a framelike structure. In the first stanza we can get to know the fifteen-year-old Amba, from Africa (more exactly from the jungle of Congo). Here we have a beautiful synesthesia: “At morning Amba heard their pink music…”. Moreover, we have a lot of onomatopoeic words as well: “whether it be blue (thhhh) feathers” or “high trala to the nougat birds” or even “The moon (zzzzzz) shining down on Amba’s sweet mocked sleep”. I especially liked this last one as it expresses the sleep of the moon. The image of the sleeping moon can easily fit into the imagination of a fifteen-year-old boy. In the second stanza, we fly through the Ocean and go to Chicago to get to know Louis. He is a boy of seventeen and his life is not full of joy; he has to work as a milkman, probably to support his family or himself. Suddenly we turn to Frank, “a young outlaw”, who is “Crossing Louis’ path gently in the street”. Even the Holocaust is briefly mentioned with two onomatopoeic words (“whizz and burr”), quickly crossing Frank’s mind. We do not exactly know where the people in the third stanza are from, they have English names, but that does not reveal the country where they are. The characters in the fourth stanza must be from Antarctica, as they live in igloos and are spearing the whale. We have a beautiful simile as well: “the green crusty ice”. Ten Ko and Wan Kai in the fifth stanza must be from Korea or from Vietnam, they are working on the rice paddies. Here we have a synesthesia: “blue desire”. We do not know at all where Boon, Angebor and Maggia from the sixth stanza are from. Maybe they are from Africa, as the words “oona” and “zee’th” sound so African, but this must be misleading. The little prisoner in the seventh stanza lives in the desert, but we do not know much about him or his conditions. We do not know why he is incarcerated and who the mentioned lover is. The eighth stanza wonderfully unites the scattered, small “icons” from all around the world, everyone is here together. This is just like the end of a play: every actor and actress shows up once more before they go away. This way we have Amba once more together with a beautiful onomatopoeic word: “Amba arose. Thhhhhhh! went the birds, and clink clank went/ The leaves under the monkeys’ feet…”. We have Wan Kai, Ten Ko, Daisy, Louis, Roon, Maggia, Baba once more, like a great finale. However, the ending is not joyful; someone named Enna plunged into the gloomy lake while screaming. Her indentify remains a secret.

Frank O’Hara’s poetry

This week I chose Frank O’Hara to write about and I imitated him in my modeling poem. I really like his idea that poems should not contain any abstract or philosophical allusions (I think this way it is easier to understand it) and the idea that poetry should be amusement. In his lunch poems we can see the flurry of images and the cityscape of New York. In his poem entitled “A Step Away from Them” we can see the typical ingredients of a lunch poem. Even the first line tells us that. After this comes the description of the city itself. Basically he is just going around in the city and writes down what he can see. First we have some construction workers with their yellow helmets, then arrives the pop culture with Coca-Cola and a very subtle allusion to Marilyn Monroe (the flipping skirts). He even notices some cats playing in the sawdust. He sees the typical yellow New York City cabs and describes the weather (which was hot that day). After the exact designation of the place where he is (Time Square), he notices the famous “puffing billboard” which is also part of the pop culture. Racial issues and the question of integration became more and more important during the 50s, especially that Blacks are important “components” of the New York cityscape. In the poem a “Negro” stands down the street, representing his race. Then comes a girl, then some sudden honks, and we get the exact time and date of that day. This is quite unusual, in general poets do not give these data to their readers, but as this is a lunch poem, we can understand that. O’Hara’s great appreciation for neon appears in the poem, this must have been a new experience for people that time; he appreciated it even in daylight, when it cannot shine as bright as at night. He stops for a cheeseburger (pop culture again), when his mind gives out the names of some famous people, sort of randomly. We cannot even really understand how these names come here and what must be their significance in the course of the poem but this is what makes this poem a lunch poem, it is almost a stream of consciousness by Virginia Woolf. The representatives of another important ethnic group are to be noticed: some Puerto Ricans arrive down the avenue. And here comes the sudden change in the tone of the poem: the poet leaves his happy and easy-going style and becomes sad and deceived. He is talking about deaths, the deaths of some artists, artists like he is. After this change and his sorrowful thoughts, he has to come back to his real life, to his work. He even tells us he has papaya juice in his hands and a volume of poetry by Pierre Reverdy.
In “Personal Poem” we almost have the same pattern, as it is also a lunch poem. Here as well we have many places and people mentioned and the racial question comes up here as well (the handshake with LeRoi).

Modeling Poem #2

This time I chose Frank O’Hara to imitate. I like his poetry as it is “soft”, easy to understand and not fully overloaded with classical images and allusions. I like his idea that poetry should be amusement and it should not be abstract or philosophical. These characteristics made me easier to imitate him. As it is supposed to be a lunch poem, I put that fact into the poem as well. I even indicated that that time O’Hara worked for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and “he” wrote this poem during one of his museum breaks. Basically, I tried to put together everything he must have been thought and seen in New York in 1958 (I just made up the year); the same way he did it in his poetry. So I avoided every abstract or philosophical allusion and tried to focus on the amusement part of poetry and the whirling of images and names. Knowing his general appreciation for neon lights and every kind of fancy billboard, I put the “luminous neon advertisements” beside the indication of that hot summer day and the shining sun, showing that both of them do the same: give us hot. I even told it was 85 degrees, this must have been seen by a huge street thermometer down Madison Avenue. Now came the construction workers together with their helmets, like leitmotivs of his poetry. To give the whole a bit more advanced surrealistic ambiance, I connected the workers’ hats with the expensive and fashionable hats found in the exclusive San Francisco boutiques. Thus the inner and the outer world can kind of blend in the mind of the poet. Not only does he describe what he sees but he also tries to find connections between these things and his life experience, past memories of people and places. The next moment he notices the sign of a subway station, so just comes down to travel by it, but then he changes his mind and goes up. This can represent a possible roaming in a big city which is like a labyrinth in many cases, and where we have so many offered opportunities and possibilities. Another huge street billboard may show the time (probably the one showing the temperature), he must have been noticed that, so I put it into the poem just like the exact day of it. Speaking about racial issues, integration, segregation, different races, ethnicities, I put a “Negro” cab driver into the poem, who is not a very surprising character of the New York cityscape. The poet must have seen his delightful face, so he remarked it. This poem was “written” in 1958, when racial issues were treated differently than now, that is why I mentioned LeRoi and the handshake, which must have been shocked many people. I wanted another important minority group to be present in the poem; that is why I mentioned the “Chicanos” who are also significant components of the cityscape. I imagined them as laughing and funny people, probably having a break—just like the poet. Paul Claudel is briefly mentioned, maybe O’Hara knew him (he died in 1955), and I just referred to him because O’Hara mentioned a lot of French poets in his poems. The pop culture is present by his cheeseburger and Coke (and of course by the neon advertisements). Even though he avoided philosophy in his poetry, I could not help mentioning it in the last line (as he did that anyway in “A Step Away from Them”), referring to the brevity of life, connecting it to the “brevity” of the cheeseburger and the Coke.