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 <[log in to unmask]> 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
