It has been ages since I read Don Marquis. I possibly have something of his left in an anthology, but that would be it. I was reminded of archy and mehitabel after reading the above sentence in a paper about E.E. Cummings. Never a great influence on mine, his writing appealed to me because of its lack of capitalization and punctuation. I followed the lead of Cummings in that for a long time (as the days of youth are counted).
"American humorist Don Marquis once said that publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon . . . and waiting for the echo."
It has been ages since I read Don Marquis. I possibly have something of his left in an anthology, but that would be it. I was reminded of archy and mehitabel after reading the above sentence in a paper about E.E. Cummings. Never a great influence on mine, his writing appealed to me because of its lack of capitalization and punctuation. I followed the lead of Cummings in that for a long time (as the days of youth are counted). My recent rumination about Claude McKay, in a whittled-down version, appears today at The Critical Flame, featured among several other poetry-centric essays. A marvelous photo of McKay addressing the Kremlin stands at the top, and further down there is a reproduction of an original cover from The Liberator. The original, unexpurgated text of my essay is posted amongst my essays here. Contemplating a HiatusI may take a little time off from blogging to work an idea that has been gnawing at me into an essay.
With a varied career behind me - "illustrious writing career" - I have begun to wonder what it all means. Poetry? No, I don't foresee writing much more of that. Plays in verse? Possibly. One project rests at a standstill right at intermission - the longest such I've ever subjected myself to in the writing of a play. (Maybe the line cannot be retrieved.) But I have a couple of projects long in the contemplation stage which I must sooner rather than later work toward bringing to fruition or else give up on. Prose essays? I can't see myself doing much more work in that area either. This then would be something of a swan song. Because I tend to focus on one thing at a time, I may be absent from my "News" pages for a bit. So no random thoughts on Cicero and whatnot. (If I get back to Cicero.) To be sure if I do get an essay done I will report that here. But life promises to be hectic in the near future so even singular focus may not speed the plow along too rapidly. Despite the negativity of my recent essay, let me not dismiss the achievement of McKay's editor in his belated Complete Poems. A review I happened to come upon puts a more positive spin on the book.
Frankly, I regret that I do not possess a copy. I paid full price upon its issue, and was, as I mentioned, disappointed in the book—so disappointed that I bore the shipping costs to return it. Professor Lowney speaks highly of William J. Maxwell's introduction, of which I have no recollection. I would like to revisit it, and also the poems (including the famous Cycle Manuscript) to give it a considered reappraisal. At the time, the cycle of poverty had me beaten down and I felt that I couldn't spare the change. Vivian Maier, in the past five years, has become world-renowned, following, I believe, an initial feature on a local PBS program in Chicago, where she lived most of her life and did most of her work.
Last night I saw something from a documentary about her; whereas, when that first program was broadcast, little was known about her, by now so many facts have been accumulated, though mysteries remain. Politicians throw around the word audacity now and again, but her vigor is something else. The stamina to maintain oneself as an artist in the world is never little. In her case, the problem, as a woman, was how to keep a roof over her head (without resorting to marriage) yet be able to do her work. Nannying provided a solution; though her end, relatively recent, was not by any means a good one. Yet she managed, in the course of a life, to accomplish something in the pursuit of an artistic vision that will outlast her. In America, as a poet, you realize that, if nobody is for you, you can consider it lucky that at least probably there is no one actively working against you. In all the arts, the struggle to persist and persevere is a constant; yet in the end (however the effort may prove itself untrue, or irrespective success and failure), it seems to be one of the best measures of a human life. Years ago, in an effort to put bread on the table, I worked briefly at a company called Shure Brothers, in some clerical capacity. I remember conversing with one old man, a machinist, about what it takes to make it in this world. He had a skill set which had served him well; though, as with many other companies at which I worked, his job and lots of others undoubtedly disappeared as technologies changed. Shure Brothers reinvented itself as Shure Electronics; another well-known manufacturer at which I worked failed to do so, and a vast shopping mall stands where it stood. A news story which has haunted me concerns the deaths of three young men that worked there - well after my brief sojourn so I would never have met them. On lunch break their car was rammed by that of a girl who was trying to kill herself. She broke her ankle; the three men died. The newspaper stories dwelt on the fact that the men had been musicians; that their day jobs were something that must be done so as to enable them to indulge their real passion: playing. Although it was because of Shure that I first noticed the story, felt sympathy, and followed it - not intentionally but obliquely - the emphasis seems correct. I felt that it was for their connection with music that they would rather be remembered than for the employment situation which brought each to Shure. Work often comes to us accidentally; but our passions spring from within. (I'm sure the process is more nuanced than I suggest.) In a sense, also, I felt that it was more the individuality of a musician that would be missed - in a sense less replaceable - than that of an employee, to say nothing of the unique nexus we call a person. Nothing about this tragic story will cease to disturb me; but I am confirmed in this: Do what you love. Whether by accident or intentional as with the case of the cartoonists slaughtered yesterday in Paris at Charlie Hebdo, each one of us lives under a sword of Damocles which may drop at any moment. Earning a living is hard; and doing so while cleaving to the way of an artist (or worse, poetry), can at times appear miserably daunting. But what else does common humanity demand, but acting for reasons beyond profit? Pity those that work only for money. V.S. Naipaul has a good book about the lengths to which men allow themselves to be driven in the race to get ahead. Yet other aims remain superior. (In the grand scheme of things I suspect even those of the artist or poetry remain paltry, whereas practicing kindness and compassion toward all creatures may be utmost in significance.) In previous posts I made mention that I had been at work on a project - a long essay actually. Except for odds & ends corrections and minor tweakings, for all practical purposes it was completed on December 19.
I knew a site that had previously published my work was compiling a new issue the theme of which would make it a suitable place for my piece when done, so I had been in contact with the editor, who encouraged me to send it on - which I did promptly on the 19th. I expected something back, by way of, "I have received the essay - will not get to look at it for a while (or will)" and so forth. I queried once or twice, but nothing save silence answered me. On the 3rd I heard back. "The piece is much much much too long for us" I was told (or words to that effect), "but I have edited it down a bit - tell us what you think." The tenor was changed, and after some thinking and soul-searching I wrote back, "I've decided to put the original up on my site; if you'd like to use the shortened version you are welcome to provided you reference the original" (or words to that effect). To that the reply: We would, if you hold off on your posting until we publish. "Fair enough," I said: "Please tell me when you expect that to be." In no case was my intention to rush the editor, but I wanted information, especially upon which to base my decision. Will I be waiting two days, or two months, I naturally wondered. But again my query was returned with silence. So I've just decided to post my essay, Claude McKay Walks in Ferguson. The reasons are manifold. For one thing, I don't want to be up at midnight thinking of this stuff while Claude McKay's ghost hovers around me. Waiting on other people - in the literary world - has led to nothing but disappointment. I've always, in the end, had to make do with lumbering along alone anyhow: there is nothing to be gained (for the artist) by perpetual hemming and hawing, postponing and perseverating. One is reminded - bluntly - of the nature of so many of my fellow Americans (for example) who feel that the only proper time to protest a war is after it's started. I've written, at length, of my efforts to get Against Holy War produced, in an essay you can find here. In that same essay - if memory serves me well - I went into laborious detail about the plays submission process in general. Almost without exception, the rule was never to hear anything back. (At least an SASE with a few poems would always get a return if not a response, but dramatic manuscripts never did: perhaps the stamps were donated to the non-profit enterprise.) One expects, as a poet, to be greeted with the world's silence. There is no groundswell longing to hear about my relationship with and having been influenced by the poet Claude McKay, even as there was no groundswell against the US invasion of Iraq. The theatrical community of Chicago showed itself, in effect, pro-war; but there is no reason why, confronted by the silence or the indifference of the masses, the poet or artist should not just continue along his merry way. Equally so in response to an individual that will not answer questions. That is not to say people don't have their good reasons - surely they do - and, in reference to McKay mentioned in the piece, I am in nowise careless of burning bridges that lie before me. But I am yearning to sleep, and troubled by McKay's ghost. He has spoken to our times, and it hardly matters that folks have other pressing matters to attend to. From a letter from Caelius to Cicero: Liguria (?), c. 16 April 49 I beg and implore you, Cicero, in the name of your fortunes and your children, to take no step which will jeopardize your well-being and safety. I call gods and men and our friendship to witness that I have told you how it will be, and that it is no casual warning I give; having met Caesar and found what his disposition is likely to be once victory is won, I am telling you what I know. If you suppose that Caesar will continue his policy of letting opponents go free and offering terms, you are making a mistake. He thinks and even talks of nothing but ruthless severity. He left Rome angry with the Senate, he is thoroughly incensed by these vetoes. Believe me the time for intercession will be past. Cicero to Atticus: Cumae, 2 May 49 As I see it, Caesar cannot last very long without falling by his own impulse, even though we are ineffective. Look how with all the advantage of novelty and brilliant success he has in a week become an object of bitter hatred even to the needy and reckless mob which supported him—how in so short a space of time he has lost two masks, the mask of clemency in dealing with Metellus and the mask of riches in the matter of the Treasury. Again, whom is he to take as his partners and assistants? Are the provinces and the state to be governed by people not one of whom had the capacity to look after his own family property for two months? Cumae, 8 May 49 A wretched life we lead! To be so long prey to fear is surely worse than the actuality we are afraid of. Servius, having arrived on the Nones of May (see my earlier letter), came to my house early next morning. Not to keep you in suspense, we found no future in any plan. Never have I seen a man in such a quaver! Yet I must admit that none of his bogies was imaginary. “Pompey was angry with him, Caesar no friend. The victory of either was a dreadful prospect, not only because one [Pompey] was cruel and the other unscrupulous, but because of the straits both were in for money, which could only be extracted from private property.” As he said all this he shed so many tears that I wondered such length of misery had not dried them up! To Mark AntonyThe worst death you contrived Was Cicero's harsh end. The man of treasured words To silence you did send. Your purchased agent with his sword That honorable head assailed, Triumphing over eloquence Where even Cataline had failed. This is the just reward For your transgression grim: Since you tore out his tongue, All tongues will speak of him. The above quatrains by Martial are translated by Garry Wills in his selection. Responding to an Essay on FictivitySalemi misapprehends the fictive nature of poetry. In an online proclamation, he writes: “A poem doesn’t necessarily have to represent anything that... the poet actually thinks or feels. A poem just has to be an effectively constructed poem, nothing else.” Never mind the tautological aspect (and I have removed his emphatic italics) of the second statement. In essence, Salemi understands something about what poetry is, or how it operates: “When it comes to emotion poetry’s job is evocative, not expressive.” Where he goes astray, however, is when he concludes: “[D]on’t... tell me that the truth is more important than your art.” One of my sonnets touches upon this very topic: Deliberate fiction poetry or else The word “expresses” never set well with me; but the only alternative, “reveals,” is disruptive of the meter—nor is the thought “expresses” wrong.
Leaving aside his argument that poetry is sometimes fictional—yes, there never was a real floating ship as in “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” —poetry must touch bottom somewhere in a perceived truth on behalf of the poet. An “effectively constructed poem” cannot be stitched together out of nothing, for it to be of value to a reader, however airy and ephemeral words may be. So when a poet tells him, “I can’t change that word, because to do so would be false to the experience the poem is relating,” Salemi oversteps his editorial (or professorial) bounds in demanding it. Oddly, he falls into the same error he criticizes fellow academics of here: telling the writer what to say. His job is to take it or leave it. Salemi, a professor of forty years, is talking to students: there is nothing overall wrong with much of his dissection of the “art” (as he would have it), yet, of all people, he should know, it is up to the poet to make his or her own choices. When Emily Dickinson gives us her famous dictum, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” she is not being flippant. Other poets have expressed the same thing in different ways. For Machado it was writing in “double light” (doble luz). Eliot felt Shakespeare was particularly devious in the way he concealed his slant. If truth will have a slant, there must be a grounding. Put in another way: if art is to precede truth, there is no point in the endeavor. Where Salemi gets confused, is in the translation of experience into “conformity with the entire range of syntax, idioms, and semantics that embody the language’s tradition and accepted usages.” For example, in one of my oldest poems up at this site, I wrote, to signify the seasonal shift, of “[t]he dead leaf found in our tenement.” There are two things wrong with this: first off, it wasn’t a “dead leaf” that was found but something else—however the effect of literal truth would have been too jarring (a dead fly). The other, of course, lies in the word “tenement.” It is not quite literally true to transplant a building from New York’s Lower East Side into Chicago’s North; yet figuratively, the word provided an adequate (and accurate) description of what was essentially a slum building—albeit in a good neighborhood. [None of this addresses greater location: the scene opens on a beach in Taiwan, but the waves sloshing in the second stanza are Lake Michigan's.] Salemi would not dispute the correctness in either case in translating the experience into recognizable terms; but where he errs—and where he counsels wrongly—is when he suggests that a poem may be fabricated whole-cloth. A poem—again, for it to be of value, or, which amounts to the same thing, useful—must describe a genuine experience, however slant in the telling. (Conflict arises when, for example, in a poem like mine about an angelic encounter, the reader or professor wants to assert that the stuff is “make believe” or fancy.) The professional poet, of course, may construct a lament for someone he has not known; Michelangelo did as much in the design for a tomb he was charged with constructing. There—as with Longfellow and his shipwreck the Hesperus —you count on the poet to have lived to adequately translate his experience to his theme. Keats touched on something of the poet’s task: “You speak of Lord Byron and me—There is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees—I describe what I imagine—Mine is the hardest task.” The poet must keep true both to experience and to his reader (via his medium). Relinquishing either—admitting falsity—saps and sacrifices the “effectively constructed poem”. As an editor (and here let me reassure the reader that I have never submitted to Salemi's publication), he reveals himself embodiment of the workshop paradigm he critiques. I've read four parts out of fourteen of Wills' translation. It seems like an interpretive translation of the Ezra Pound variety, though I suspect Wills is truer in spirit than Pound was. After Richard Wilbur's dismissal (I posted it, but forget his exact words, against D.R. Shackleton Bailey's translation at Loeb), I have the Loeb on order from CPL. The library is supposed to be sending three as a set. I have enough Latin to check up on WIlls, though, seriously, that is not my intent: his versions are readable, clever, and no doubt reflective of their source. More—given my positive experience with Shackleton Bailey translating Cicero to Atticus—I want to get a sense of just what was Wilbur complaining about. (Somewhere in a prior post I quoted a reviewer defending the Haines translation of Aurelius. Actually, the whole sequence of comments is interesting, here. I too have heard that Loeb is working at improvement, but work is slow, and sometimes these old hands knew what they were up to; though, for the record, the translation of Aurelius that I read was Penguin's by Hammond.) Wills versifies smoothly. I was trying to recollect a couplet that he translated into an iambic pentameter version, but failing, I constructed my own tetrameter version based on his model: Your pubic hairs trimmed for a lass, |
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