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Mike Snider's Formal Blog at the Sonnetarium
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008 |
The 30th (counting those 5 limericks) NaPoWriMo 2008 poem is up (scroll to the bottom) but not yet podcast. That page has the original versions (with one exception) of the poems in the order I wrote them this month.
In the last few days I've re-ordered them, done some minor editing, changed a few titles, and set a common format for the poems spoken by my characters — all but the limericks and the final double dactyl. You can, for a while anyway, download a pdf of the whole thing in the proper order and with my current revisions.
4:05:11 PM 
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Monday, April 28, 2008 |
The 29th (counting those 5 limericks) NaPoWriMo 2008 poem is up (scroll to the bottom) and podcast.
One more! — and a lot of reading and drive-by crits.
10:58:48 PM
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Sunday, April 27, 2008 |
Three gigs again last weekend, but soon only duets with Krys: one last gig for the band on May 31st until we can find new players for bass, guitar, and drum — and NaPoWriMo 2008 is almost ever. Thanks to the 5 limericks on the 17th I’ll finish, and I’ve written a very late introduction to what I hope will be a workable chapbook.
6:52:19 PM
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Thursday, April 24, 2008 |
I’m finally figuring out the plot for my NaPoWriMo 2008 adventure, and I see I've left some holes. Everything is here, but this last one, "One Phone Call," will actually be placed in the early middle of the story when it’s done. Other poems will move around as well, and one way or another, for a while at least, I’ll make everything available in the proper order.
I hope you’re enjoying it — I’m having a grand time!
5:27:00 PM
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 |
Check this out, from the header of a cached message — somehow a Safari cached message — that Spotlight turned up when I was looking for something I’d said about Paul Goodman's poem "FLAGS, 1967":
Date: Oct 27, 1995 - 2:17 PM
msnider @ nando.net (Michael Snider)
Looks like it was a UseNet post of mine (probably to rec.arts.poems) that I once found doing a Google Groups search, and it’s such a me rant that I’m reposting it here today, sig and all. It begins by quoting some zine editor’s request for poetry (I’ve deleted the names — I don’t remember the people or the zine anyway):
WHAT I M LOOKING FOR:
No rhyming poetry. No rented poetry (e.g., tortured soul , bleeding
night ). I like personal poetry. I like poetry that makes me think &
feel. I like poetry that experiments with form amp; takes chances. I accept …
What on earth can "poetry that experiments with form" mean 80 years after
the imagists and the futurists and the dadaists, 40 years after the Black
Mountain poets and "Howl"? Found poetry, performance poetry, multimedia
poetry, chance poetry, hypertext poetry, god help us language
poetry--nothing is so likely to become dated as the avant garde, which
must define itself as something different from what just happened. And 80
years of avant garde one-upmanship has led only to Jesse Helms vs. the
Piss Christ. You pick one of those two.
Here's a poem that takes chances--a sonnet from Paul Goodman:
FLAGS, 1967
How well they flew together side by side
the Stars and Stripes my red and white and blue
and my Black Flag the sovereignty of no
man or law! They were the flags of pride
and nature and advanced with equal stride
across the age when Jefferson long ago
saluted both and said, "Let Shay's men go.
If you discourage mutiny and riot
what check is there on government?"
Today
the gaudy flag is very grand on earth
and they have sewed on it a golden border,
but I will not salute it. At our rally
I see a small black rag of little worth
and touch it wistfully. Chaos is Order.
and another, also from Goodman:
God damn and blast and to a fist of dust
reduce me the contemptible I am
if I again hinder for guilt or shame
the blooming of my tenderness to lust
like a red rose; I have my cock traduced
to which I should be loyal. None to blame
but me myself that I consort with them
who dread to rouse me onward and distrust
what has a future.
Let me bawl hot tears
for thee my lonely and dishonored sex
in this fool world where now for forty years
thou beg'st and beg'st and again thou beg'st
because this is the only world there is,
my rose in rags among these human wrecks.
And this twerp who says "I like personal poetry. I like poetry that makes
me think & feel. I like poetry that experiments with form & takes
chances" would exclude them because they rhyme. What an idiot.
I'm tired of those who think being modern means abandoning useful
tools--as if a modern carpenter would abandon tape measures, or a modern
architect would abandon elevations, or a modern cook abandon good knives.
[deleted] and [deleted] got me thinking seriously about these things
after I objected to some "archaic" words in a good poem of [deleted]'s. I
write formal poems, and perhaps I've reacted to charges that they were
"old-fashioned" by trying to root out anything other than form which might
make them seem so--just another member of the poetry police. Well, I'm
turning in my badge. Fuck them. Fuck anybody who says poetry has to be
this way and not that way.
Just to be contrary, here's my latest free verse:
In the Dark Woods
Getting into the woods is easy--
Even in a park you leave the path
Only a moment--turned around--
Everything is almost right--
That beech was an oak--
The creek gone underground for a spell
Three notes sounding smooth rocks
Quartz breaking open in the hand--
In the thicket wait
Burrs, cuts, and ticks
Up the stony hill
Trampled ferns and asthma
Down the gully broken logs
Or is it legs?
Well. Nothing for it
But to get on with it.
This time you're on your own.
Michael (rant mode off)
--
All men are poets in their way, tho' for the most part their ways are damned bad ones. -- S. T. Coleridge
Both poems are in Goodman's Collected, out of print but obtainable.
1:00:15 PM
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My 21st NaPoWriMo 2008 poem, another ovillejo, was finished and posted about a half hour ago. Eight more days and nine more poems unless I count those limericks as 5 …
I“ve added the DaRK PaRTY ReVIEW blog over on the left under “Resources” — any blog featuring Echo, Ring Lardner, a furious review of the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and an interview with a first-time novelist on the front page the first time I see it is my kind of place.
12:27:41 AM
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Monday, April 21, 2008 |
Last night’s terzanelle beat me about the head and shoulders till nearly 2 in the morning, so I'm much less ambitious today: for NaPoWriMo 2008 number 20, a triolet (and scroll down — it’s too late for anchors).
5:30:01 PM
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How do you spell Ricky Ricardo’s despair?
But with the three deaths of friends and neighbors (most affecting Krys more than I), getting in a late garden, three gigs coming up this week, and the mysterious disappearance and arduous recovery of this blog, I’m not too disappointed to be only a day behind in the 2008 NaPoWriMo. The 19th poem (hey, it may be the 21st but I haven’t slept yet) is up and the 18th and 19th are podcast.
2:12:29 AM
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… and more than a few dollars short.
But the 18th NaPoWriMo 2008 is up (at the bottom of the page).
WTF? Everything here at the blog — but nothing else of mine on the host server — just disappeared, and apparently sometime early Saturday! Luckily, I have local backups of everything. Let me just say again — WTF?
2:14:18 AM
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Thursday, April 17, 2008 |
This was in my master's thesis.
And now there are 5 of them (scroll to the bottom) for NaPoWriMo 2008. You can listen to this episode here or choose among them all here.
11:05:42 PM
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008 |
Sure it is.
If I live through the next three days and the creek don’t rise. But the 17th 16th NaPoWriMo poem is up. There’s a hell of a lot of good work going on at Poetry Free for All and at The Gazebo — go check them out.
10:13:28 PM
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008 |
I managed to mail one of my three (count ’em!) tax returns without the last page, the signature page, of course, and had to redo the damned thing for a lousy $36 refund — well, I’d only paid $221 to North Carolina, and I don’t know why they got anything. So NaPoWriMo has indeed affected my mind. Or else I’m just losing it all natural-like.
But the 15th 2008 poem is up, and in a form of which I’d never heard before Saturday, the sevenling. Thanks, Trace!
BTW, that sevenling link points to a blog which hasn’t been updated in almost 2 years — I probably need to find something with a longer half-life.
3:29:11 PM
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Monday, April 14, 2008 |
That broken dizain bothered me so much that I had to write another one and give it to Jack in the 14th NaPoWriMo poem (at the bottom of the page). The form is originally syllabic, so even though in English it’s usually IP, I’m not completely happy to rely on the poet’s ancient right of elision. Oh well. There’s a lawyer in it.
3:40:00 PM
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Sunday, April 13, 2008 |
And Jack and I are already reduced to rhymes from Dr. Seuss. But the 13th NaPoWriMo poem is up. You can listen to this episode here or choose among them all here.
I’ve got a book review coming up here soon — one of the real treats in blogging regularly about poetry is that sometimes people send me books! I don’t comment on the ones I don't like since, as Auden said, nothing is unjustly remembered. I try to do my part to make it less likely that things are unjustly forgotten.
10:46:55 PM
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Saturday, April 12, 2008 |
Just what is a dizain, you ask? Look here.
Julie Carter is a fine poet, and she is also doing NaPoWriMo at The Gazebo and at PFFA — at the latter she asked me "Why not a dizain?". I'm happy to oblige, and, in the 12th 2008 NaPoWriMo poem, Sue starts to figure things out.
Update 4/14: It's not a dizain after all — I put an extra, unrhymed line in the middle of the thing. In my defense, I wrote it during an wards ceremony at a community theater where my fiancée took two statuettes, for "Best Musical Performance" for "Best Ensemble Performance." I need to do another, actual dizain.
Update 4/14 #2: I fixed it, I think. The audio is still the broken version, but the edit’s here (still no anchors! bleh!)
11:29:27 PM
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Thursday, April 10, 2008 |
Maybe I should recast the whole thing in this form — it’s so much fun working it out. I’ve posted the ninth 10th 2008 NaPoWriMo here. Helen’s not happy.
You can listen to this episode here or choose among them all here.
11:21:18 PM
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Wednesday, April 9, 2008 |
I’ve never quite done anything like the work I’m doing for NaPoWriMo this year: a set of poems (all in different forms, so far) spoken by the characters in a tale which unfolds as the poems are written. Trying to keep the voices distinct and consistent, working with different meters and forms, trying to keep all the plot lines going — I get surprised mid-poem — it’s a gas!
I’ve posted the ninth poem here (scroll down to the bottom), in which it transpires that it was no accident Sue overheard Jack and Hank discussing the outcome of their bet (back up near the top — I really should add anchors). You can hear this and all the previous poems here.
9:52:43 PM
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Tuesday, April 8, 2008 |
I’ve posted the eighth 2008 NaPoWriMo poem (scroll down to the bottom), in which Sue overhears Jack and Hank discussing the outcome of their bet (back up near the top — perhaps I’ll add anchors). No audio till I get home tonight, but you can hear all the previous poems here.
Update: The audio is here.
2:30:54 PM
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Monday, April 7, 2008 |
Even in graduate school, in a supposedly rhetoric-centered writing program, we never used or opened Aristotle’s Rhetoric. We never studied the terms of rhetoric, nor did more than very simple analyses of a few of the standard forms of argument. That really shouldn’t be surprising — at the same institution, for seven years, I taught Creative Writing, including poetry, without being able to scan (I thought I could). Years afterward I began to work the rudiments of meter: I only recently began to be interested in formal rhetoric, but at least this time I’m aware of my ignorance.
One part of that ignorance will be on display here tonight and in the next few non-NaPoWriMo posts, since I can’t name the rhetorical strategies employed in this poem of Paul Goodman’s:
Sawyer
These people came up here
only two hundred years ago.
A half a dozen names
of fathers in the graveyard
have brought us to the farmer
who used to be my neighbor.
But now his sons have quit
the beautiful North Country
for Boston where they will not find
a living or even safety.
The boy has joined the Navy
to bomb other farmers
where our Navy ought not to be.
“I set my mind on Ritchie.
I bought all the machinery for him
and the blue-ribbon cattle.
Now it has no point.”
So they have sold and gone
to San Diego
to see the boy on leave.
There will not be another
generation in America,
not as we have known it,
of persons and community
and continuity.
This poetry I write
is like the busy baler
that Sawyer bought for Ritchie,
what is the use of it?
But I am unwilling to be Virgil
resigned and praise what is no good.
Nor has the President invited me.
[p. 49 in my long out-of-print edition of the Collected Poems: Amazon lists a few used copies of a slightly later edition]
Goodman would have known the terms. Here and elsewhere he displays an easy familiarity with Classical antiquity: Virgil’s Bucolics and Georgics preceed his Aenied, and Goodman, in this (post?) bucolic poem, is refusing to be a poet of Empire — especially of an empire that doesn’t think enough of poets to even ask them to serve that empire. The economy with which he manages that comparison and rejection is nothing short of astonishing.
I want to understand that economy, so I'll be looking at this poem as I begin to explore the terminology and structure of rhetoric. It will be slow, at first, since I am slow and this is NaPoWriMo. The poem may turn out to be a bad choice of starting point — but Goodman’s sonnets were also my first introduction to metrical handling of contemporary matter, especially political matters. I trust him.
And I hope some of you will help keep me from going too far astray.
9:18:44 PM
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Things (I mean things, not people) weren’t working at work so I got theNaPoWriMo stuff, or most of it, done early: I’ve posted the seventh 2008 NaPoWriMo poem, a taunting double dactyl from Jack, and I’ve podcast it here. I'll replace that crappy audio tonight (the URL won't change).
And that means that when I get home to my books I can finally begin a series of posts on the rhetoric of contemporary and near-contemporary poems, starting with Paul Goodman’s “Sawyer.”
4:32:39 PM
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Sunday, April 6, 2008 |
I’m a bad blogger.
But we played five and half hours last light, played till after the bar's bar had closed, and it’s nearly a miracle that I’ve posted the sixth 2008 NaPoWriMo poem, an ovillejo, and I’ve podcast it here.
10:43:53 PM
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Saturday, April 5, 2008 |
I’ve posted the fifth 2008 NaPoWriMo poem, a villanelle, and I’ve podcast it here.
I’m having fun, anyway. Goodman tomorrow.
8:12:20 PM
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Friday, April 4, 2008 |
I’ve posted the fourth 2008 NaPoWriMo poem, a roundel, and I’ve podcast it here. Jack likes himself a lot.
Hey, it’s daily posting! And this after a concert of Estonian bagpipe music. It was fabulous!
Tomorrow we play an inpromptu gig at Boatman's in Ridge MD (where Krys and I will soon be running an open mic) with our friends Seve and Road. Don’t tell them, but we’re gonna steal the drummer.
10:24:41 PM
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Thursday, April 3, 2008 |
I’ve posted the third 2008 NaPoWriMo poem, a rondeau redoublé, and I’ve podcast it here. Jack’s wife gets a turn.
11:30:52 PM
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It was after midnight last night, but by golly it was still yesterday for me when I posted the second 2008 NaPoWriMo poem, and I’ve podcast it here.
In 2006 I wrote in a different form every day. This time, the poems will be in the voice of Jack, a philandering jerk, or of those who work, play, or otherwise interact with him. Jack is the speaker in the opening triolet; last night’s sonnet introduces his buddy Hank. As for the action and diction of the poem — I just watched Guys and Dolls again, so sue me! What can you do me?
The bored or obsessed can see the drafts of these poems here.
8:31:13 AM
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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 |
The first 2008 NaPoWriMo poem is up, and I’ve podcast it here.
I have neither forgotten nor abandoned my intention to write here about rhetoric in poetry. Sometime this week I’ll start with a poem by Paul Goodman.
10:39:31 PM
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© Copyright 2008 Michael Snider.
Last update: 6/26/08; 9:41:37 PM.
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