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I can't make myself write poetry anymore (although I promptly wrote some lines after claiming this), but I do sometimes read it, and through discovering the anthology The Hell With Love via the typical method of an unrelated Google search, I have found out what "conversation hearts" are (and never knew before that they had a name). The last-named book contains James Wright's infinitely precious poem "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota," though the reviewer misquotes the final line's riposte to Rilke: it's "I have wasted my life," not "I've wasted my life." (A "conversation heart" is an American heart-shaped candy with a romance-related word or phrase imprinted on it; the anthology's title is presented in the form of four conversation hearts.)
James Wright's poem, which I have loved ever since discovering it when I was twenty, isn't really a riposte to Rainer Maria Rilke's "Torso of an Archaic Apollo" (I won't attempt to remember the correct German title), but a variation on its final-line revelation. Rilke's work of ancient art proclaims to him, "You must change your life." The works of transient harmony in Minnesota tell the poet that he has wasted his.
Wallace Stevens found such moments of revelation both in art and in the art that the imagination finds in nature, and so did whole generations of European and North and South American poets. See M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism.
But who wants to see it, really? I don't write much poetry because it is such a culture-specific product, so aimed at a very few people.
Nevertheless, I love Charles Wright's long poem Littlefoot, which I have just now gotten round to acquiring and reading, exactly because it combines arcane references meaningful to only a few with moments of observation and humor that are at least potentially meaningful to many.
A reference doesn't have to be arcane to be obscure, just culture- or age-specific. Wright incorporates a childhood memory from "Sixty-two years ago, the year of aluminum pennies," and of those younger than Wright is, only coin collectors and readers about World War Two on the American home front will realize immediately that 1943 is meant, although the pennies of that year weren't made of aluminum but zinc-coated steel.
This is why translations frequently come with footnotes, and a good many poems and novels in one's native language should as well.
Poets, and now bloggers, know they write for a limited audience, a far smaller one than fiction has, and even smaller than the audience for songwriter/performers. Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo wrote that his poems were intended for a very few, "not for a hundred, nor for one" (I quote from memory), and Wright writes,
...we thought we were writing for the angels
And find, after all these years
Our lines were written in black ink on the midnight sky.
Messages in the wind,
a flutter of billets-doux
From one dark heart to the next.
There are echoes there of Catullus' Latin verse, and a book title by Theodore Roethke. Even less known than "the year of aluminum pennies."
I find that LiveJournal will not let me transcribe poetry correctly unless I learn how to use something other than the tab key or space bar, but the lines without capitalization at the beginning are meant to be indented.
James Wright's poem, which I have loved ever since discovering it when I was twenty, isn't really a riposte to Rainer Maria Rilke's "Torso of an Archaic Apollo" (I won't attempt to remember the correct German title), but a variation on its final-line revelation. Rilke's work of ancient art proclaims to him, "You must change your life." The works of transient harmony in Minnesota tell the poet that he has wasted his.
Wallace Stevens found such moments of revelation both in art and in the art that the imagination finds in nature, and so did whole generations of European and North and South American poets. See M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism.
But who wants to see it, really? I don't write much poetry because it is such a culture-specific product, so aimed at a very few people.
Nevertheless, I love Charles Wright's long poem Littlefoot, which I have just now gotten round to acquiring and reading, exactly because it combines arcane references meaningful to only a few with moments of observation and humor that are at least potentially meaningful to many.
A reference doesn't have to be arcane to be obscure, just culture- or age-specific. Wright incorporates a childhood memory from "Sixty-two years ago, the year of aluminum pennies," and of those younger than Wright is, only coin collectors and readers about World War Two on the American home front will realize immediately that 1943 is meant, although the pennies of that year weren't made of aluminum but zinc-coated steel.
This is why translations frequently come with footnotes, and a good many poems and novels in one's native language should as well.
Poets, and now bloggers, know they write for a limited audience, a far smaller one than fiction has, and even smaller than the audience for songwriter/performers. Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo wrote that his poems were intended for a very few, "not for a hundred, nor for one" (I quote from memory), and Wright writes,
...we thought we were writing for the angels
And find, after all these years
Our lines were written in black ink on the midnight sky.
Messages in the wind,
a flutter of billets-doux
From one dark heart to the next.
There are echoes there of Catullus' Latin verse, and a book title by Theodore Roethke. Even less known than "the year of aluminum pennies."
I find that LiveJournal will not let me transcribe poetry correctly unless I learn how to use something other than the tab key or space bar, but the lines without capitalization at the beginning are meant to be indented.
