The Sound and the Fury

 

Date: Saturday, May 16, 2009 9:30 AM ---- "Poets.org" <poetnews@poets.org> wrote:

 

Blue or Green
by James Galvin
We don't belong to each other.                             We belong together.                                                                            Some poems belong together to prove the intentionality of subatomic particles.                                       Some poems eat with scissors.                                                      Some poems are like kissing a porcupine.                    God, by the way, is disappointed in some of your recent choices.                Some poems swoop.                                                    When she said my eyes were definitely blue, I said, How can you see that in the dark?                                           How can you not? she said, and that was like some poems.                                                                                   Some poems are blinded three times.                                    Some poems go like death before dishonor.                                                                               Some poems go like the time she brought cherries to the movies; later a heedless picnic in her bed.                                    Never revered I crumbs so highly.             Some poems have perfect posture, as if hanging by filaments from the sky.                                         Those poems walk like dancers, noiselessly.                       All poems are love poems.                                                                     Some poems are better off dead.            Right now I want something I don't believe in.

 

From As Is by James Galvin. Copyright © 2009 by James Galvin. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

 

Reply to the Academy of American Poets:

 

This "poem" is sheer gibberish. It is “full of the sound and the fury, signifying nothing.” Apparently you people have no idea what poetry is.

 

Lewis Turco

___________________________________________________________

REMARKS

Lew

I couldn't agree with you more. Like a second-rate abstract expressionist painter, Galvin simply hurled words onto a page and dubbed it a poem.

Don Kimball

 

What’s the difference between a first-rate and a second-rate abstract expressionist painter, Don? Although I must admit I like Miro.

Lew

 

Try to be a little tolerant, Lew. 

Who cares how other people write? What they call their work?  This business of renaming a particular non-poetry form has been rejected by the poetry establishment. That would have solved some things.  Hell, you don't write what I do, you promote what I value as poetry but do not write myself, and I have not scored you for it.  You have a right to.  Come down off it, man. Your reputation isn't threatened.  I just saw that Annie Finch included your book as a reference for Stonecoast.  Good!

And don't throw a punch at me because I won't answer you.

Tom Fallon

 

Why would I throw a punch at you, Tom?

Lew

 

Unless you are the court jester, you don't get to tell the truth, Turco, and you should know that!  

You and I share so much angst after all these years. I recall how disappointed you were when you passed the age that would make you eligible for prizes for "Young Poets," and still had not gotten what you were due!

Did you ever read an essay I posted at this link?

http://www.thebestpoetry.com/talentordumbluck.htm

The website where it appears has never been launched. I thought, after all these years of books and strivings, I ought to try something different. The Academy will not be giving me any awards in this lifetime. For however many dollars, I can become an "associate member" while those who run it go on setting a tone for poetry (as in the poem you denounce) and awarding each other prizes...

So I would place ads in little places saying, "Take the poetry challenge" with just the link to my website. My intention would be to draw as many hits as possible from the curious. Perhaps I could stir controversy. But most of all, at least my poems would have new legs and get some new readers.

It's an interesting thought. Maybe when I retire I will complete, proof, spruce up the website and give it a try.

Meanwhile, I'm always pleased to hear from you and admire your just anger!

Cheers,

David Axelrod

 

Very interesting essay on your relationship with the Iowa Workshop, David. I remember Ben Santos and love his remark! I recall when I decided to go back to Iowa for its 50^th Anniversary celebration in 1986 I think it was. I tried to talk Vern Rutsala into going, too. He said that none of his friends were on the program, so the hell with it. But I went anyway (his friends were my friends) and had a good time.

Oh, by the way, Paul Engle was not the founder of the Workshop, though he was of the International Workshop.

Lew

 

Agreed, Lew.

Watch Language poetry become Languish poetry...No longer a questioning but a style

Jack Foley

 

Yeah, Jack,

But I have a certain fondness for silly games.

Lew

 

Not silly enough in this case.

Jack

 

Lew, why waste your breath?

Roger Dickinson-Brown

 

No breath, Roger, Just a little finger action.

Lew

 

Ugh. They've lost their marbles.

Dave Mason

 

Dear All,

I'm happy that Lew's list has become active again and am pleased to be part of it.

Not to change the subject, but I'd like to invite any interested poets on this list to submit a poem, a translation, an appreciation, or an article for possible inclusion in a festschrift for the great translator from the Chinese and Japanese, Burton Watson.  If you don't know who he is, then do look him up.  His Chunag Tzu is a classic.  If you know and admire his work and would like to participate,  or know someone who might, then please contact me back channel. The deadline is October 2nd and the publisher will be Ahadada books, though Columbia University Press has expressed an interest.  Check out Burton's great reading at www.poetryvlog.com  Thanks for for your kind attention. 

Jesse Glass ahadada-jr@jcom.home.ne.jp

 

Since when, Jesse, has my "list" not been active? I guess you must mean my e-mail list, not my blog.

Lew

Lew,

Had a few moments to revise this "poem." With rearranging just a few lines, I think, tweaking here and there we might better understand this "work of art." 

:)

I hope you enjoy.

Boo-hoo, I mean

Don't we belong? To each other, 

                            together? This be a long

                                                                           poem. Some 

belong together. The intentionality of subatomic particles proves that

scissors eat some poems. With

                                                    some, poems are like kissing a 

porcupine. 

                   Dogs, by the way, are disappointed in some of your recent 

choices.

               Some poems poop.

                                                   When she said my eyes were 

definitely blue, I said, How dark? Can you see that in 

                                          the can?

Ewww. Not! she said, and that was like some poems.

                                                                                  Some poems are 

blind to our times.

                        Some poems read like death dissing honor.

Some poems blow like the time I popped her cherry at the movies; 

later a heedless picnic in her bed.

                                   Never revered, this poem’s dumb

(highly).

            Some poems posture, have perfect hang time online, like 

pollen through the sky. 

                                        Those poems dance like walkers, 

lie. Less noise.

                      All are love. Poems are poems.  

                                                                   Some better poems are off, 

dead

           right now. I want something more. I don't believe this.

Scot Slaby

Lew,

I'm enjoying your "Musing," and about a third through with the sample poems by several of your remarkable students. This series of poems based on an ancestor's diary is fascinating!

As for the Poem-a-Day exchange, I avoid those clashes that persuade nobody and teach nobody anything. What's the point of dealing with such things on a personal basis? I just put things down and stop reading when I can't stand them: I do a lot of that, in fact. I'm sure there are people who feel that way about what I write, and I'd just as soon not hear from them. It wouldn't do any good if I did: this is how I write, and being told that somebody else hates it is not going to make any difference!

What you've done with your "Musings," on the other hand, is entirely different: you're pointing out work you like, giving examples, and letting the reader learn from the experience. Positive is better.

Cheers —

Rhina

 

Dear Mother Rhina,

Thank you for the scolding. Just what I needed. However, my own mother was far from being a member of the Turn the Other Cheek school of thought, and as a teacher I pulled no punches, as any of my former students can tell you. Some of them appreciated my telling it like it is, as perhaps you can tell from "Musing about Students."

I did not ask the Academy of American Poets to put me on their e-mail list. But since they did, I feel no compunction about commenting on the spam I find nestling in my little bowl of poetical turds each morning. I especially don't understand why I am on the Academy's spam list at all because I had thought I was a non-person to them. They do not have me on their list of "American Poets," even though they are the "Academy of" that. This despite the fact that I had been a member of their organization for decades, had won their Prize at the Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa in 1959-60, edited the "Manoah Bodman" issue of their Poetry Pilot for November 1973, and established and funded in perpetuity the Academy of American Poets Prize in the writing program of SUNY Oswego many years ago and so forth and so on. (The main thing that happened is that one of their "Chancellors," John Hollander, stole one of the Bodman poems I had reconstructed and published in Poetry Pilot and used it in his anthology of American poetry without acknowledgment.)

When I retired from teaching in 1996 I also officially retired from the Academy, which apparently they resented, hence struck me off their roster of living American poets. On the other hand, my old friend and teacher Don Justice was never a member, yet they honored him all over the place anyhow. Nothing like being even-handed and fair-minded. "And this is nothing like it," as Bill Burns, one of my old Fantaseer buddies, would have put it.

Lew

Son, I wouldn't dream of scolding a super-smart kid who's taught me as much as you've taught me over the years with one book after another! No, I just want to save you the unnecessary misery of getting into useless squabbles with people who are not going to learn anything from it anyway. It's not really a matter of turning the other cheek, but of walking out altogether for lack of interest.

I used to belong to the Academy, and sometimes liked the books to which they gave prizes, but very often didn't. At any rate, I never got to their events, even when I still lived in NYC, and am involved with too many other groups anyway, so I let my membership lapse. What are "Bodman Poems," and what do you mean by "reconstructed"? This sounds like quite a story about Hollander, whom I never met; I'd love to hear it!

They don't list you as an American poet? Really? Well, that's sort of like The Planetary Association of Mammalian Species not listing Homo Sapiens. I think it's funny. Maybe they think you're a bird. Where did you find the list? I'm wondering if I'm on it, or any of the Powows, for that matter, but I doubt it.

Cheers —

Mama

Dear Mama,

No, you're not listed either, so you don't exist in the opinion of the Academy of American Poets. I just checked. Go here to find out who is and is not a nonperson (!) http://www.poets.org/search.php/ — Isn't that a double negative, and don't two negatives make a positive, or at least a snapshot?

Lewson

P.S. Manoah Bodman is the early American poet I discovered many years ago and whom I researched and wrote a book about:

The Life and Poetry of Manoah Bodman, Bard of the Berkshires, Edited, with an introduction, by Lewis Turco, Lanham: University Press of America, 1999. ISBN 0761813241, cloth. 

Before I published the book I wrote quite a lot about him:

Commentary on Manoah Bodman, Poetry Pilot, November 1973.

"Manoah Bodman: Poet of the Second Awakening," Costerus: Essays in English and American Language and Literature (Amsterdam), viii, 1973.

"Manoah Bodman 1765-1850" (bibliography), First Printings of American Authors, Vol. 4, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli et alia, Detroit: Gale Research, 1979, pp. 35-36.

Bodman, Manoah, Encyclopedia of American Literature, ed. Steven R. Serafin, New York: Continuum, 1999.

There is more about him on my blog, in the archives. I reconstructed many of his poems from stanzas scattered in his maniacally religious books, in particular An Oration on Death, & the Happiness of the Separate State, Or the Pleasures of Paradise, Etc Ephraim Whitman, Williamsburgh, 1817. Hollander stole one of the poems I reconstructed and published in Poetry Pilot for his American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, edited by John Hollander, New York: Library of America, Volume 2, where it appears without acknowledgment as though he were the one who had done the reconstruction. I complained to the publisher who simply shoveled some bullshit in my direction.

Lew