Sometimes I read a lyric poem - singular or serial - and I am struck by two contrary reading experiences. On one hand, I am taken by a poem's structure, the attention of the poet, the technique, tone, etc, - how forcefully these combinations impel themselves on to the page. I am totally present with the process, and the momentary totality of the poem's object, its presence. I am with it - which means to say its particulars have become an assured presence within the immediate horizons of my take (world) as a reader.
Yet, on the other hand, the poem(s), no matter how solid its occurrence in my imagination, critical presence, etc. is soon gone, particularly as I move on to the works of others, or shift my awareness to, say, the television, the inevitable perk and threnody of the news, its repetitions and cycles.
And, in terms of the lyric poem as an experience in reading - no matter how present it was - - becomes such a fleeting thing without much bearing on what's left of either my private or public space. What is that that 'thing' that caught me and then flew by? Why does much work - much of it good, and, certainly, labor intensive - fly by with but a transitional, momentary effect? Whatever act or frame could make that pleasure more concrete, an enduring, significant presence, a constantly returnable project & gift?? (Perhaps, obviously. that is part of the poet's job, too).
I suspect we know that's the job of a critical community - to maximize the public presence and circulation of a work or works. To review a person's work, to secure (ideally) our attention. And, no doubt, the importance of academic institutions. To insist students write critical papers, memorize, and/or improv new works off the work of others - to insure that a work secure a place, a point of memory in the young, as well as older persons. And, for those of us outside institutions, to resist and confront the the sense of erasure that inevitably haunts those of us who live, read, write and work not 'at the margins', but in locations that require a different sense of critical reception and measure.
Without this surrounding labor of critical community, so many often extraordinarily fine lyric poems - let alone larger forms. - end up fleeting around, or become paralysed in a kind of statuary limbo. They may vibrantly appear in a small publication, then disappear as readily. For the poet it takes a fierce stubbornness to put up with can appear as an almost instant annihilation or a perennial sense of being 'not quite dead on arrival.'
The reason I write this is that I became quite aware of this condition whitle reading some quite fine books that have come my way to review. Recent intriguing good works by Peter Manson, George Albon, Joseph Noble, Tyrone Williams, Tim Atkins - all guys (I realize), but, indeed, a mix of sexual, ethnic and national persuasions, yet each (most at mid-life, I think) working various lyric, experimental edges. They are among many, obviously both men and women, out in the field of combatting limited attention to their work,each working the language to scrape out (sing, whatever), a non- familiar truth in fresh, demanding and/or startling ways. As I begin to write these various or combined reviews I remain struck by the ambition and struggle to make a work find its location in a contemporay landscape that is mostly either oppositional or,most likely. oblivious to an enterprise that - as both poet and reader - I, if not most of us, totally support.
Proportionately, without wanting to sound one bit self-piteous (because the work can bring such joy and critical pleasure) Sisyphus might appear to have had it relatively good! In this nation (USA), where Executive (Cheney. Bush. etc.) management has done nothing but produce a national paralysis of the imagination (it's nasty girim and impotent, to be both obvious and frank). Without sounding like a 'draino liberal' (I hope), I think its absolutely essential to do whatever we can (in community, critcially, creatively, etc.) to vigorously support the efforts of both poets and poems (lyric and otherwise) to continue to rise and take hold in the public realm - and take form in the pleasure and combat of that. Otherwise we be in for a long, thirsty time! So yes, I am writing my reviews. You, too?
Stephen Vincent
_http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
Where, if you have missed it so far, you can still visit my travels with Charles Olson - and then some - in the Yucatan.
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