Then would my love be true?

Could I but love you smooth and hard
Then would my love be true?
If I could cut it down to pith
And carve out all the bark and twigs;
If I could smooth it down to bone
And buff it like an ivory charm
Without its wormholes, turns, and twists
Then would my love be true?

Image via Llwyngwril Gallery

Book: Shira Wolosky's The Art of Poetry

Image via Mountain Photogallery

There are few things more enjoyable than a good poetry guidebook. Sometimes the field of literary criticism seems aimed more at padding resumes than advancing thought, and the ponderous re-interpretation gets tiresome. However, I've just found a book of poetry interpretation that is a complete joy. Imagine being shown an incredible glittering mountain. Then being given the tools to climb it. Shira Wolosky's The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem is just such a Matterhorn moment.

I picked up The Art of Poetry yesterday at the New York Public Library. I've only just skimmed it and read the first chapter, but already have a tighter and more precise understanding of how to go about appreciating a poem. The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poemis organized incrementally. It starts with analyzing the most elemental part of a poem--words; and goes on through "Syntax and the Poetic Line", "Images: Smile and Metaphor", on to "Poetic Rhythm" until all elements of a poem have been covered and are seen as fitting into the whole.

Here is Wolosky on words and word placement (this is fabulous!): "In poetry there are multiple reasons for choosing and placing words. There is not one single pattern in a poem, but rather a multiplicity of patterns, all of which ideally interlock in wider and larger designs. There are in fact many designs on many levels, where each meaningful word and element points to the next one, in an endless process of imaginative possibility. These intricate patternings of poetry are what generate the essential nature of poetry: its intense figurative power, to always point beyond one meaning or possibility to further ones. (p.4)"

Wolosky then goes on to say that "This art of selecting words is called diction." (Yay! new word!) She looks at how the use of different levels of language, ranging from colloquial to esoterically philosophical, can be contrasted within a poem to surprising effect.

The Art of Poetry put to use: I want to pay more attention to the levels of language used around me. I want to listen to random fragments of speech on the subway, pay attention to how my Aunt discusses the merits of her adorable poodle, and see how newscasters on TV use language.

Poet of the Moment: Ilya Kaminsky

picture via Washington Poets Association

I went to the KGB Bar Poetry Reading on Friday. These are my impressions of poet Ilya Kaminsky and his work:

Ilya Kaminsky is really tall. He has a man's walk but when he looks up, a boyish face. Standing over the microphone, at a podium far too small for him, his craned neck has a weird grace. But the most amazing thing about him is his voice. A Russian accent, and I have never heard such mutilated language. His voice quacks and screeches mournfully, chants and crescendos into a harsh whining shout. For closing stanzas, he drops to a low crooning tone that touches you forcefully yet gently. He passed out books of his poetry beforehand, so I read along and don't miss a word. In fact, his wacky voice speaks from print alone as forcefully and strangely as his tones in person, and the two complement each other perfectly.

Ilya Kaminsky troubles me. Troubles me first of all because I have never heard such a voice, and it is disconcerting. And his poetry is of a world I am completely unfamiliar with. What I do know of it I have discounted and brushed off as history past. His poems, at least the ones he read to us, deal with a Russia still stumbling out of the old Stalinist regime, a Russia still reeling from the memories. The way Kaminsky hears sounds, notices things, loves, cries, and sorrows is all completely foreign to me. It is disconcerting and troubling to stumble on a faded page of history book and discover in it senses I never knew. Troubling, but concurrently, wonderful.

Ilya Kaminsky's website: www.ilyakaminsky.com
His books are available here: www.ilyakaminsky.com/books

Obama in the Tulips

Image via Cheng's website

Speeches, future, hope, and change
Move me not in any way
I'll buy a vase instead
A vase that I can move my fingers round
And fill with tulips; a glass vase plain,
That I can hold in my two hands
Holds speeches, future, hope, and change.

World go Marching by

Image via Dolce & Gabbana
I moved to New York City very recently (Jan. 08) but already have noticed the gulf between the many who make a living (barely) and the few who get noticed. Thinking about this, I was walking down __Street, en route to MoMA, and it seemed that everyone I passed was more attractive than me. This was depressing. I put the two thoughts (inadequacy in work and looks) together, and this is what I came up with:

World go marching by
On handsome shoulders
Your dark eye
Need not spare me
The slightest glance.

World with heart detached
From hands; flaxen hair
And linen suit
I don't know you.
Not that you would ever notice.

World that lingers
At the doorstep
Handsome jaw and cigarette
Eye trained on the girl behind me
World, I spurn you.

Plans for the next two weeks

Patch of Weeds by Albrecht Dürer via Science Musings

It is March 15, a quiet Saturday evening, I just returned from the library with a stack of poetry books. It is starting to smell like spring outside. Also, I attended a great little poetry reading on Friday at the KGB Bar, and want to blog about that. All this bodes for a good beginning, for next week and this blog.

Here's the list of books I brought back:
The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem
Selected Poems And Four Plays
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass
Poet's Market 2007 (Poet's Market)

Goals for these last two weeks of March are:
1) Getting at least 10 good postings up.
2) Go to another poetry reading.
3) Research reading at a poetry reading.
4) Look into interviewing someone in the poetry world, an author, publisher, or
aficionado.
5) Last but tops, write good poetry. My goal for this is to write 5 good (meaning great) poems
a month. So far for March I have two which seem decent. They will be the subject of the
next two blogs.

...If I can get all this going in the next two weeks, I'm going to spend the first week of April taking this blog public, introducing it to family and friends, etc.