I am bemused too by some current approaches to rhythm.
I remarked somewhere or other -- I experienced and talked about it --
a young lad who wanted to write songs but seemed clueless how to make
the words, not just in terms of content (which hardly bothered me at
the time as his temporary tutor because that was I thought relatively
easy to address) but in terms of a lack of ANY metric. He responded to
my remarks: "I don't do it like that; I don't use rhythm". I am as
sure as I can be that I have not misremembered.
I demonstrated to him -- to my satisfaction -- that he *was using it
if inadvertently if badly; but he responded: I understand all that but
like I say I don't use rhythm.
[I recall trying to ship some goods to Scilly and having trouble with
a lady who said her company didn't ship to Sicily. Not Sicily, I said;
Scilly. It's part of the United KIngdom. You don't need a passport.
They speak English. It's been English since the sixteenth century. You
can use UK parcel post.
And she responded: I understand all that; but I have explained that
we don't ship to Sicily.]
I see it now with music students. Not in all of them by any means;
but I am not sure there is necessarily a difference between popular
music and regular (?) students. At 7 in the morning, I have blanked on
the nomenclature "we" use to finesse that distinction. I'm a floating
apex.
They do know what rhythm *is.... sonically
I spoke yesterday with a Physicist friend. She's not working at
CERN or anything (you can see the range of places I am aware one might
find physicists). She's been a banker and is training now to be a
teacher. The point might be that she is good at number.
She is shocked that the professional teacher she is currently
supporting introduced Pi with a picture of a pie. Why not tell them --
5, 10 minutes -- i asked, about Greeks, alphabet, conduit of
knowledge. Oh, she said, she doesn't know the Greek alphabet.
And we both agreed that might be considered a little odd in a
mathematician.
(I was interested to observe in myself concern that she might leave
teaching and go back to banking; but perhaps both do similar harm; an
unanticipated bias)
I remember talking to one creative writing tutor ("I've been writing
for four years") to responded to my question about the degree of
prosody one might aim for. She said "Oh I don't bother with all that
stuff"
Can't they hear?
L
----- Original Message -----
From: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics"
To:
Cc:
Sent:Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:29:43 -0700
Subject:Re: poem at inauguration
Lawrence
such useful skepticism is needed. I started out, already listening to
jazz & rock & everything else, getting into Pound as I got into
writing. And, then, separated writing off from other stuff in many
ways, so that line of Pound's hit home given that I was writing (or
trying to write) open.
The wider, cultural awareness that youre proposing is needed,
necessary, &, yes, for an english speaker in Canada reading mostly
english language poets, Pound made sense, but he missed a lot too.
Which over the century has come to have more & more of an effect on
anyone who (wants to) listen(s). In Canada, bpnichol & cohorts
certainly brought a lot of those sounds into our consciousness...
As for now: well, a lot of writers seem determined to avoid
swing/rhythm, but for myself, it dont mean a thing without them...
Doug
On 2013-01-23, at 1:56 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
>
> I was on the point, have been on the point, of making a sneering
> dismissive comment on this... Never quite doing it... Then I read
> Stephen's post.
>
> Fair enough.
>
> On your third point, I have been thinking about your recent
reference
> to Pound and pentameter; and wondering; how right our Ezra was to
take
> credit for poets for what was happening... Not sure how
well-informed
> enough I am to make this judgment; but what the hell.
>
> [Cameron has just announced he is going to apply Conservative
sexual
> policy to European politics: a straight in-out question]
>
> There was the Blessed Gertrude. There were the Futurists (with
their
> racial wars and machine worship etc, I know, but); Stravinsky et
many
> al; recordings and later radio -- I can now "remember" a century if
I
> include my late mother's childhood memories and have in my head
> speaking of the importance of the gramophone She, my mother, hardly
> knew *where she was. That is not a put down: I once described
> "myself" as not knowing where I am much as an insect on a leaf
> doesn't. She knew London. But her sound world was American popular
+
> also a little Peter Dawson. (Australian)
>
> That's one memory, but indicative. Our sound world has changed
> utterly and also cluttered.
>
> Rhythm and swing is almost essential; and maybe hard to resist,
hard
> to avoid
>
> L
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics"
> To:
> Cc:
> Sent:Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:45:02 -0700
> Subject:Re: poem at inauguration
>
> Whitman did it, writing as a many (as Guy Davenport pointed out
many
> years ago).
>
> But, I suspect anyone who wanted to go on the offensive, so to
speak,
> wouldnt be asked, & would have to say no...
>
> Still, some rhythm, a little blues swing; is that too much to ask?
>
> Doug
> On 2013-01-22, at 2:34 PM, Bill Wootton wrote:
>
>> Inoffensive enough, I thought. Hard to be broadbrush and
inclusive.
>
>>
>> On 22/01/2013, at 9:07 AM, Max Richards wrote:
>>
>>> Miami-raised Cuban poet Richard Blanco delivered his poem “One
> Today,” written especially for the inauguration ceremony. The
full
> text is below:
>>>
>>> One Today
>>>
>>> One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over
> the Smokies, greeting the faces
>>> of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
>>> across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. One
> light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story told by our
silent
> gestures moving behind windows
>>>
>>> My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each
> one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day: pencil-yellow
school
> buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
>>> fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
> begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper— bricks
or
> milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
>>>
>>> on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives— to
> teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did for twenty
> years, so I could write this poem.
>>>
>>> All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
>>> the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day: equations
> to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined, the “I have a
> dream” we keep dreaming,
>>> or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain the
> empty desks of twenty children marked absent
>>> today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
>>> breathing color into stained glass windows,
>>> life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
>>> onto the steps of our museums and park benches 2
>>> as mothers watch children slide into the day.
>>>
>>> One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
>>> of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
>>> and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills in deserts
> and hilltops that keep us warm, hands digging trenches, routing
pipes
> and cables, hands
>>>
>>> as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
>>> so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
>>>
>>> The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains mingled by one
> wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it through the day’s gorgeous
din
> of honking cabs, buses launching down avenues, the symphony
>>>
>>> of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways, the unexpected
song
> bird on your clothes line.
>>>
>>> Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
>>>
>>> or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open for each
> other all day, saying: hello| shalom,
>>> buon giorno |howdy |namaste |or buenos días
>>> in the language my mother taught me—in every language spoken
> into one wind carrying our lives
>>>
>>> without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
>>>
>>> One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed their
majesty,
> and the Mississippi and Colorado worked their way to the sea. Thank
> the work of our hands: weaving steel into bridges, finishing one
more
> report for the boss on time, stitching another wound 3
>>> or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
>>> or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
>>> jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
>>>
>>> One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes tired from work:
> some days guessing at the weather of our lives, some days giving
> thanks for a love that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who
> knew how to give, or forgiving a father
>>>
>>> who couldn’t give what you wanted.
>>>
>>> We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
>>> of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home, always
> under one sky, our sky. And always one moon like a silent drum
tapping
> on every rooftop
>>> and every window, of one country—all of us—
>>> facing the stars
>>> hope—a new constellation
>>> waiting for us to map it,
>>> waiting for us to name it—together
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/21/one_sun_rose_on_us_today/?source=newsletter
>>>
>>> - strikes me as sort of 1930s Whitmanesque
>>> but likely to be warmed to by millions…
>>>
>>> Max
>>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
> Recording Dates
> (Rubicon Press)
>
> Reserved books. Reserved land. Reserved flight.
> And still property is theft.
>
> Phyllis Webb
>
>
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Latest books:
Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
Recording Dates
(Rubicon Press)
Reserved books. Reserved land. Reserved flight.
And still property is theft.
Phyllis Webb
|