'A Poem is the Case of the Deliberate Transformed by the Accidental...'

(Roof Top, Background, Similar (Village, Santa Lucìa, Oct. 07))

...is a quote from poet David Kirby's article Why, Poetry? which can be found here.

David Kirby is an American Poet and Professor of English at Florida State University.

The article includes his ideas on pretty much every aspect of poetry. The first one being what a poem is and what the poet’s relationship is to the poem, he says the following:

A poem is a reluctant lover. You, the poet, are crazy about it, but it couldn’t care less about you. Pursue the poem aggressively and it’ll run away or, like a figure out of Greek myth, fall dead at your feet when you touch it. Reverse psychology will only get you so far: If you ignore a poem, it might whisper a line in your ear the way the answer to a crossword clue pops into your head when you’re not looking at the puzzle, but it won’t whisper two lines, much less a whole stanza.

Great summing up, don’t you think? The two-way choice – fuss the poem into oblivion or give it the cold shoulder and strike lucky only on the barest of an offchance.
He later goes on to say that:

A poem is the case of the deliberate transformed by the accidental.

The deliberate is the intention of writing a poem and the accidental is the unexpected that happens to jolt life into the poem. He says that in the film Casablanca, the deliberate happens when a woman walks into a bar, the accidental is what follows, the play-it-again-Sam lift that makes what starts out as trivial transform into art. In Ode to a Grecian Urn – the deliberate is the guy noticing some pottery; the accidental is what happens because of him noticing the pottery.

He also speaks of the reaction people give when he says he is a poet:

When strangers ask what I do and I tell them I’m a poet, a typical reaction is, “Gee, I just don’t get poetry.” But do you “get” Rossini’s String Quartet in C Major, I reply? Or if you’re at a dance recital, do you stand up in the middle of row H and shout, “Stop! I don’t get it!” Just give poetry a chance, I say. Many poems don’t work for me either, but most are short, so I just keep reading until I find one that, as Emily Dickinson put it, takes the top off your head when you read it, or gives you a chill no fire can warm.

I love the parallels he makes here between ‘not getting’ poetry and the idea of someone stopping in mid-listen or mid-look to cry similar regarding ‘not getting’ a piece of classical music or a dance recital. The idea of giving poetry a chance and not having the need to ‘make things click’ immediately is one of the fundamentals of enjoying poetry. One can allow music and art to wash over them and bring them ‘there’ but it seems that poetry is deemed to have the ‘I don’t get it’ cry attached to it for life.

He goes on further to talk about how poetry is a unique art form. He compares poetry with fiction by saying:

If art parallels life—if it recreates on another level the mixture of light and shadow that is human existence—then what makes poetry unique as an art form? Let’s compare poetry to its closest relative, fiction. This is a simplification, but in fiction, the writer is usually trying to get George to Sarah’s house by eight o’clock with a bunch of roses, say, whereas in a poem, there’s usually neither a George nor a Sarah but an “I” who is trying to understand something that will probably never be fully understood.

The rest of the article is very interesting as well. He goes on to talk about reviewing poetry and the whole American history of the practice of poetry since World War II.

One line I found totally enchanting and revealing is the below. He uses this line to explain what writing about poetry is like ...and it seems to sum it all up. : )

So writing about poetry is like taking a photo of Bigfoot: There’s a grainy image, but the main thing you notice are the tracks leading into the trees.

* As an aside, there is a David Kirby connection to one of my poems and The Wrong Miracle, albeit a tiny, tiny connection, but this is how I discovered this guy. : ) I talk about it over there...

Fridays and Crunchies...and Capuccinos!

Thank goodness it's Friday...and the sun's come out.

* Aside note: First blurb thoughts at The Wrong Miracle : )

The Wrong Miracle Blog

(Life Buoys Above Her (Vietnam Aug. 06))

I have set up a blog for the book - The Wrong Miracle - which can be found here.
I'd like to put up some audio of the poems there and some background info. and lead-ins to the poems...and some pics that I associate with each poem....basically anything and everything related to the poems and book...within reason! : )

Sarah's Chapbook Out from Tilt Press

Sarah J. Sloat’s chapbook is out with Tilt Press.
Tilt have a sale of 5 chapbooks for $30 which is incredible value for money!
Sarah’s chapbook costs only $8 dollars.
If you don’t already know Sarah’s work, you are in for an amazing
treat…she really is a superb Poet...I’ve been reading her work for the past
few years and you can definitely call me an addict.

I haven’t received her book yet but when I do I hope
to write a little more about it.

Here is Sarah’s summary of what lies between the covers:

a javelin (p. 8),
an Esso station (p. 2),
musical chairs (p. 11),
pilaf (p. 5),
"your name on a grain of rice" (p. 15),
more rice (p. 19),
valentines (p. 21),
a biblical allusion (p. 17),
the Andes (p. 12),
day-old wine and a hydrogen bomb (p. 6),
a metaphor (p. 22),
a puppet village (p. 10),
a statue of Lautreamount (p. 16),
Jesus (p. 13),
assonance (p. 18).

and here are 3 poems of Sarah’s up in
Swink Magazine to give
you a taster... she really is the real McCoy! Go read her!

'Poetry Enters Remarkable New Era…'

(Graffiti in Granada, Andalucia Sept. 08)

(Washed-Up Bike on Dunfanaghy Pier, Donegal, Aug.08)

Poetry Enters Remarkable New Era is the headline from The Independent referring to Jen Hadfield winning the T S Eliot Prize.

Apparently one headline in a British National Newspaper said: ‘Shop Worker Wins T S Eliot Poetry Prize’ Poetry must finally have landed if it is being sensationalised by head-turning lines like this – and more power to such headlines. Whatever brings poetry into the public realm can only be good thing. And then while in the public realm it’s poetry’s responsibility to get things moving… without the proverbial throwing out of baby with dishwater.

And there's more:
…But no one who followed the fortunes of the T S Eliot Prize this year could doubt that British poetry has entered remarkable new territory, with a new vigor and drive, and a fan base it could have only dreamed of a decade ago.

Don’t you just love that words like ‘vigor’ ‘drive’ and ‘fan base’ are being used to talk about poetry? Something is definitely afoot here.

The announcement that Jen Hadfield had won apparently led her to:

… promptly burst into tears. It was not a very Kate Winslet moment. Dabbing tears away, she read a poem about a horse, which happily contained the lines, "Ladies and gentlemen, will you fill your glasses? May I lead us all in a toast or prayer?"

Very apt lines for the occasion… I hadn’t read any of her work before but will definitely be doing so. What I have read of her work online so far has been truly excellent.

A poem with a title like this: Self-portrait as a Fortune-telling Miracle Fish is poetry that can turn heads, hearts and minds. It’s about time that Poetry had its way with words and may the fan-base go forth and multiply…or is this all a too-simplistic summing up of where poetry might be and where poetry might be going…?

Do you think British and Irish poetry is on the crest of some new wave? Can a poetry win like this really make a difference? And has this new era already been happening elsewhere, like in the States maybe?

Book

(Where's this guy making for at this late stage? (Teeny Santa in Santa Lucia Village - Dec. 08))

(Oh, He must be going over that rainbow (Outside the house Dec. 31st 08))

A great start to the New Year for me has been the news that
Salt Publishing will publish my first full collection of poetry in 2009. The collections' working title is The Wrong Miracle but I have a list of other titles I keep switching to as well!! Hope to get up the nerve to settle on one for sure soon!

‘We are wading in blood. Do something. Do anything’ (a quote from a doctor in Gaza)

(Photo from Irish Independent 12/1/09)

What the hell is wrong with the International Community that they allow the continuing bombing of Gaza?

This is absolute genocide. This is war crimes against a civilian population. This is absolutely crazy. Regardless of whoever your God is, please make your voice be heard to get Israel to stop. March, e-mail, beg, steal or borrow, whatever it takes ….every single one of us who sits without doing anything to stop this invasion is guilty of what is happening. If you don’t already know the details read here…

It’s obvious America is the only country that can make Israel listen (they give Israel $3 billion dollars a year plus arms... )– what’s happening to the 'Time for Change'??? Why aren’t the people speaking out? Why is there a deadly silence? For God's sake and/or pity's sake, do something...

Nose to Grind-Stone (Or Flash in the Pan!)

(Edited: Lanzarote beach - Dec. 06)

(Edited: A pan holding our farm together March 08)

I’m working quite a lot on revising some flash fiction pieces I did ages ago and I am making a few changes to my full length poetry manuscript which I had sent out to a Publisher who has just come back to me with some really good news – I don’t want to jinx things by talking too much about it just yet but hopefully before long I will be able to say what is happening.

I’ve been reflecting on how I started out writing poetry about 4 years ago and then I began easing into flash fiction pieces and non-fiction prose. I think I’d now like to try my hand at Short Story writing but don’t quite know where to begin. The idea of writing maybe 3000 + words or so both excites and scares me as I feel that I’d lose the momentum on the way there. The most I’ve written is about 1500 words. I wondered if anybody has any advice on how to start off; here are some things I’ve been mulling over.

1.Different ways people have got into Short Story writing.
2.The experience of the move from poetry to Short Stories or vice versa. (e.g. does one impinge on or help the other...)
3.Favourite Short Story writers.
4.Beginners pitfalls to avoid or if unavoidable how to escape from suchlike relatively unscathed (if that is at all possible : )).
5.Anything else at all related to the whole art of Short Story writing! Thanks: )

P.S. Oh and are there any D.I.Y. books that you would recommend!

Post-Abba!

Well, I am none the wiser about whether or not there was a real Abba member
in the group! Some say yes it could have been Agnetha and Frida and even some suggested the two guys were the originals…the big question in the local newspapers today was who were the original members, if any, that were there…no one seems to know for sure!

I am ashamed to admit that we missed about three quarters of the performance due to a timing technicality. Here in the Canaries we are in a different time zone (and at times a twilight zone!) to the mainland, one hour less – so our merry gang imagined Abba would take to the stage at the midnight hour and thus we dined and sipped at our ease and it wasn’t until we had left the restaurant and saw in the distance the obvious signs of revellers in motion to Abba that we realised they had actually started at 11pm to ring in the year on the national TV for the mainland folk. We had to leg it along the beach front as the news was spreading fast that they were about to finish. En route we met various friends with champagne and grapes – the custom being that for every strike of the clock at 12, you have to eat a grape. I gave up doing that a long time ago. The whole scene was of people running with bottles of champagne and eating grapes – it was funny. We arrived in time to hear them play a few songs…two other fantastic bands came on after that though and we danced till 5 in the morning. It was a superb night but yesterday ended up being a non-happening day and I am trying to get back to life today.

Another blow to the night was that the battery in my camera gave up five minutes into the New Year – it’s a new camera so at times I wasn’t sure what I was doing with it anyway… I have got a sort-of-photo of both girls...it's hard to say if they are they the real thing or not? No one seems to know, or if they do, no-one is saying. : )