Week 3: Abstract versus Concrete

Task Discussion

• 
  MichaelScott   Aug. 30, 2011, 4:43 p.m.

  Here's my response to 'Night Waitress', I'd love to see someone else have a go at either poem.

   

  All night gas station

   

  On CCTV all night

  I’m a moving freeze-frame

  from a 1980’s rom-com

  somewhere in those pixels

  someone who hasn’t seen

  marriage running on empty

  give me the remote

  I’ll dig you out

  and not tell him

  these nights I don’t stop thinking

  everything else

  Pump 4

  fills

  gum pack at the night hatch

  a red taxi

  woman driver

  she stares video

  me and her

  grabbed normal

  Travis Bickle rant

  goes

  leaves fusebox buzz

  Damo Suzuki

  busking stock room water pipes

  Kurfürstendammrattle 1996

  sunshine

  hits the corrugated

  roof

  of the semiconductor plant

  bleaches early morning

  me memories

  washed from the screen

  brushed back to the street

  I flow over daybreak’s weir

  to make me a night of Technicolor

  time stamped

  face    

  back    

  hands

  eyes

• 
  Vanessa Gennarelli   Aug. 18, 2011, 1:52 p.m.

  We're going to take some more time with this task--let's extend the deadline until Sunday and all try to take a stab at the example poems. 

  Can't rush the art!

• 
  MichaelScott   Aug. 12, 2011, 11:02 a.m.

  Here is my poem in response to 'Crush' - Michael

   

   

  Pick

  pick blackcurrants
  blind shrimp eye bushes

  stare     careful

              pluck

  navigate
  thorns

  I can’t enter my face

  so I see brambles         billowing
  creeping tangles                      of not me

  not you

  face lit with happy
  the pink smear MMS memory

  almost

  but the almost I remember
  is better than the
  whole I've forgotten of
  anyone else

  blackcurrants

  made me want to love you more

  and understand you less

• 
  Vanessa Gennarelli   Aug. 14, 2011, 12:59 a.m.
  In Reply To:   MichaelScott   Aug. 12, 2011, 11:02 a.m.

  I feel just as affected, if not more so, by your blackcurrants than Limon's persimmons. "blind shrimp eye bushes" has a sharpness to it that cuts through the sweetness that we think of in fruit, and these lines 

  "but the almost I remember

  is better than the
  whole I've forgotten of
  anyone else" 

  moves from the concrete to the abstract fluidly.  

  Because of the sharpness and implied violence of the poem, "face lit with happy" went too far for me--maybe just "face, lit" or "face--lit" will insinuate the movement in the poem?  "Happy" felt like it might not belong in this world of blackcurrants?

  Thank you for sharing your poem, Michael. 

• 
  tesspatalano   Aug. 17, 2011, 10:03 a.m.
  In Reply To:   MichaelScott   Aug. 12, 2011, 11:02 a.m.

  I agree with Vanessa, Michael's reinterpretation of Limon's poem is just if not more affecting.  I especially enjoy the last three lines which seem to drive home the sentiment of the whole poem, similar to Limon's.  I think the word in both poems that resonated with me the most is "less."  Your inclusion of it, (as the last word as well) was a nice juxtaposition to the growing and overwhelming plant you describe.  The one abstract idea I really enjoyed, but questioned its place in this poem was "MMS memory."  I love the idea of technology-based imagery, but it distracted me from the natural imagery and the relationship you were focusing on.  I either wanted more of it in this poem or none of it.  All in all, I thought this was a succesful interpretation that resonated with me as a reader.

• 
  Vanessa Gennarelli   Aug. 12, 2011, 9:41 a.m.

  Hi Poets!  Welcome David and Ninja!  

  Are folks needing more time for their poems?  How is attacking the Hull and the Limon?

• 
  Vanessa Gennarelli   Aug. 10, 2011, 10:43 a.m.

  Hi Poets!  I wanted to post another poem from this recent issue of Poetry Magazine that might be good for this assignment.  It chronicles a complex observation of a couple eating dinner at a restaurant.  I thought it would be useful here, as it moves from abstract to concrete, but it's also a situation we could recreate for ourselves, or re-imagine it easily.

   

   

  Seen Through a Window

  BY DAVID FERRY

   

  A man and a woman are sitting at a table.

  It is supper time. The air is green. The walls

  Are white in the green air, as rocks under water

  Retain their own true color, though washed in green.

  I do not know either the man or the woman,

  Nor do I know whatever they know of each other.

  Though washed in my eye they keep their own true color.

  
  The man is all his own hunched strength, the body’s

  Self and strength, that bears, like weariness,

  Itself upon itself, as a stone’s weight

  Bears heavily on itself to be itself.

  Heavy the strength that bears the body down.

  And the way he feeds is like a dreamless sleep.

  The dreaming of a stone is how he feeds.

  
  The woman’s arms are plump, mottled a little

  The flesh, like standing milk, and on one arm

  A blue bruise, got in some household labor or other,

  Flowering in the white. Her staring eye,

  Like some bird’s cry called from some deepest wood,

  Says nothing of what it is but what it is.

  Such silence is the bird’s cry of the stone.

   
• 
  Vanessa Gennarelli   Aug. 8, 2011, 9:59 a.m.

  Hi Poets!  Let's get started on our first poems.  If you have other ideas for sample poems, please edit the course task--these are open to collaboration.

  Please post your poems by Sunday so we can read them.  Excited to break some rules with you all. 

• 
  Carol Peters   Sept. 4, 2011, 4:53 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Vanessa Gennarelli   Aug. 8, 2011, 9:59 a.m.

  I love this Lynda Hull poem.

  Last night I began writing my poem by working out a couple of lines that emulate this segment of Hull's poem:

  I want a song that rolls
  through the night like a big Cadillac
  past factories to the refineries
  squatting on the bay, round and shiny
  as the coffee urn warming my palm.

  Here are my attempts:

  I want a steak that fills
  my plate like a ninth symphony
  Sunday afternoon on Tanglewood’s lawn
  at summer’s end, crisp & brown
  as Guinness foaming a mug.

  I want colors that echo
  a rainbow like an aspen copse
  mirrored by an artificial lake
  swallowing putts at the fifth hole, complementary & bold
  as Payne Stewart’s plus-fours.

  Today I worked up this draft:

  Spring in Cafayate

  The winds of August clog
  the air with choking dust, scatter
  construction’s rank debris – concrete 
  bags, broken tiles, bits of twine, 
  plastic bottles – winds from north 
  & west, from east, entire days indoors 
  I wait for quiet at dusk, 
  watch the ornamental grasses 
  shimmer like dancing fans, watch 
  the yellow dust collect 
  at every door, on every pane – 
  a swirl, a swarm, a storm. 
  So much dust defeats me. 
  I ring for Elva – sweeper, mopper, 
  multi-jobber – she arrives 
  at six, by eight, 
  the damp surfaces gleam 
  like roofs of terracotta after rain
  while deeper dust 
  settles in darkening fur 
  & fiber rugs, a sofa upholstered 
  chenille, drapes that shifted raise 
  a cloud speckled with web, 
  clean clothes that sully clean 
  limbs. It’s grit between sheets, grime 
  on children possessed by 
  breathless play, sediment sinking 
  in forgotten glasses of wine. 
  It’s spring in Cafayate.

• 
  Vanessa Gennarelli   Sept. 6, 2011, 1:37 p.m.
  In Reply To:   Carol Peters   Sept. 4, 2011, 4:53 p.m.

  Carol! Welcome!

  There are masterful pivots between the abstract and the concrete here. I love "a cloud speckled with web" and "So much dust defeats me."

  I really admire how the reader follows the path of the dust, and that's the device that moves us from the abstract to the concrete--very interesting.

  There are qualities of the grotesque here that color my interpretation of the rest of the poem: 

  ...scatter

  construction’s rank debris – concrete 
  bags, broken tiles, bits of twine, 
  plastic bottles

  and

  It’s grit between sheets, grime 
  on children possessed by 
  breathless play, sediment sinking 
  in forgotten glasses of wine. 

  So that I approach the balance of the poem with some level of trepidation, expecting Elva to be complicit in the dangerous of influence of dust.  The tone of the poem has an oblique danger ("deeper dust/fur" "entire days indoors")? How obvious do you intend this train of imagery to be? 

  The mystery continues with the poem's sense of time. The title insists it's Spring, the traits of the weather and the poem's own lines tell us different.  I don't trust this narrator who waits for quiet and spends their time inside--what's to this game with time?

• 
  Carol Peters   Sept. 7, 2011, 5:55 a.m.
  In Reply To:   Vanessa Gennarelli   Sept. 6, 2011, 1:37 p.m.

  Vanessa,

  Thanks you so much.

  This is wonderfully helpful. I will study more when I reach a landing point.

  We are crossing from Argentina to Paraguay this morning.

  End of August & September is spring here in northern Argentina in the mile-high desert. 

  You are very kind.

  Carol