we did factor into the composition
as whispers of cut grass and a competence
clotting up the land
where all of what was missing and the bits of coal and silt
would later emerge upon a failing symmetry
that of our ancestors.
they we presume slept in fields of fruit and sent the neighbor children
to collect the things they had lost or could no longer carry
and so came about the floating of faces
not down but up
alongside the mountain.
the makings of tradition are various as kinds of ice
and porcelain wreckage and reds and yellows
reduced to gestures
and in them often nothing said or even scratched out
and so came about our pouring out and flying
up the land
obstructing the minor landscape and holding out for the crash
as though itself it were in the phrasing of the riding out of our place
among the cracked reeds and the sustained
and the erupting legless everything
and the coming round of all the things that entered in procession.
So, I was kind of afraid to share this poem, because I really don’t know what I think of it yet. I’d really appreciate some feedback.
One thing I do know is that I feel like something is missing before the first line/stanza, and I can’t figure out what needs to go there. I originally had two lines above it that I had to get rid of, because they really weren’t very good, but now it seems empty. I don’t know if that’s because I know that there was something there to begin with or because the poem really needs more… what do you think?
December 18th, 2007 | #
promise ill make a comment soon - just havent had time to write it all out
December 19th, 2007 | #
Thanks for sharing, Inga! I think it’s best to put stuff up of which we don’t know what we think. I’ve been reading over the poem a bit the last couple days, and I was sort of waiting for what Sturgeon would say because he usually has illuminating comments. I think my main difficulty with your poem — which, by the way, I read numerous times because I liked it and wanted to understand — is that I don’t know what you mean with certain images. I don’t know what to make of “various as kinds of ice” (there are only a couple kinds, right?), and I really like “the floating of faces” but I can’t get to the bottom of it (or the top?) Also, what might the mountain represent?
Ok I read it again and I think you might be right about needing something at the beginning. It might be the trajectory that’s hard to follow; maybe if you introduced the directional scheme (down and up, alongside) earlier on, or hint more at what it means to come “down not up.” Because what I get out of this poem is that tradition is accidental and infuses us with empty nostalgia, which I agree with - and towards the end I think you’re connecting the obsession with tradition to the illusion of final ends, the “crash,” apocalpyse, parousia (the return of Christ). That the predilection for tradition engenders eschatological fanaticism?
Maybe the ‘up’ means emergence, that things like tradition are created, procreated, like everything else, that they never came down from anywhere. And I love phrases like “minor landscape” and “failed symmetry” and “pouring out and flying / up the land.” It takes a lot of work to understand this poem because each of these phrases demands some hermaneutic undertaking, but I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. It’s somewhat inaccessible but it’s fun to work at; it rewards the worker. You might think about making some of your images more recognizable, though — this at least is what I am struggling to do more in my own writing. I don’t know how you’d make it more recognizable, and whether doing so would compromise your intentions with the poem.
December 26th, 2007 | #
Sorry I’ve been absent from all the amazing writing on the blog recently. I’ve been pretty self-involved, and now I’m on family vacation, so don’t have much time. I want to comment on the poem page too, but in a while.
But thanks for sharing this! I like it, and I’m bewildered by it. But not in a bad way. I like the geometrizing of the poem, made me think of faulkner. It gave me the experience of reducing human experience to the landscape itself, which pre-existed us, and I really like that idea, though, and think that it’s really fruitful. It is a good way to think of tradition, which claims to be as eternal as the landscape. sorry for a lack of constructive criticism, but I’ll be interested in seeing what you do to it: post a later draft, too?
December 26th, 2007 | #
I’m really sorry for being so tardy on fulfilling my promise of a comment. I wrote something down and couldn’t really make it cohere, so here goes again from scratch.
I’ve read your poem now many times, and let me start by saying that I like it - and what I like about it is that each time I come back to it, I question my previous interpretation. It’s difficult, and it pushes me to either hold fast to my interpretation or critique it - well, I suppose it does both. The original sense I got when I read it was very physical. It immediately made me think about archaeology - and by that I mean both the critical epistemological archaeology that Foucault proposes, and the actual act of digging into the earth, uncovering remnants and ruins. I think the format of the poem, and the lulling quality of the lines is interesting in that context, because it feels less of a delving into than a skimming over. But I think that seems to be one of the themes here, the life above ground. I really like that image, which I think you’re getting at, of time passing downward, into the earth. We live above our past, on top of it, and also we form ourselves in relation to it, and vice versa. I sense a bit of critique of this also in the poem, perhaps its a critique of tradition itself - not quite of nostalgia - but of that need to try and decode history in order to arrive at the present. I know I have more and better thoughts on this poem, but I’m finding them hard to tease out right now. I’d really like to hear your thoughts, Inga, on the themes you’re writing about.
I do want to mention one thing - for some reason the line “not down but up” bugs me, and I’m not sure why. I feel like it should be taken out or altered in some way. I’m sorry I can’t really explain why.
In any case, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and maybe that would help me make my comments a little more relevant to your process here. Thanks for posting too!
January 1st, 2008 | #