Yeah, 'bemused,' Lawrence.
Although I also dont really 'know' all the terms & such.
Your tales reminded me of when a music teacher at a CGEP (college in Québec) told me of the trouble he had getting the students to hear different instruments in a jazz quartet (the wonderful Ben Webster with Art Tatum & bass & drums: because they listened, with earbuds, to very loud rock etc, they heard only 'sound.' So when he tried to discuss, oh, say, counterpoint, they hadnt a clue (which I found intriguing because even when listening to rock, I love to discover whether or not, & how, the arrangement works, how complex the interweaving of the instruments). I suspect they didnt really 'get' the thythmic punch of the music either (although I would guess that that's the whole point of rap).
And, oh yes, when they dont 'use' something it only means they do so unconsciously & therefor badly.
Doug
On 2013-01-24, at 12:36 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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
