No Need to Get Sentimental

The poets this week all show mastery of restraint. For such personal pieces, there is no overemotional blathering, whining, crying, or otherwise boring the reader with their weeping. There is emotion, to be sure, but overall I don’t get the sense that the poets feel sorry for themselves, or expect you to feel sorry for them either.

I will make one exception for the poem that does tip the “emotional scale” this week, and that, of course, is “Daddy.” This is certainly on the list of favorites for any Plath reader (like me), and I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that it has what could be considered a “hysterical bent.” In many ways it is a rant, but it is filled with emotional anger, not self-pity. Out of all of the poems this week, I think this is the one that wears the most emotion on its sleeve. But it’s an emotion that is built upon intelligent metaphor, so we completely excuse Plath for raging against her dead father, who died and left her when she was so young. We breathe a sigh of relief along with her when the “vampire-father” is finally dead. It is ultimately a catharsis for her, filled with such irony and cryptic references that we can’t help but read along, hanging on to every word as she makes sure the stake has truly gone thru his heart, and she can safely, finally, say she is “done.” It’s emotional, yes, but I think it builds to a sense of mastery over one’s emotion, and shows the poet’s strength, not weakness. She ends up the heroine, no longer the helpless victim, crying for someone to save her.

I seem to have a new “favorite poet” each week, or at least one that I’m happy to have read and plan to continue reading. This week it is Galway Kinnell. I’d never heard of him before, and I certainly enjoyed his frankness and subtle humor. His “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” is one that any parent can appreciate. I think my favorite one, though, is one that wasn’t on our reading list. That is the aptly titled, “The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students.” Here, there is an emotional tone to saying goodbyes, but, as Richard Hugo says, it “approaches the edge of sentimentality.” He comes right out and says, in so many words, “I did care / I did read each poem entire.” There is a feeling of connection from the instructor to his students: he can feel their loneliness by the postmarks of their hometowns. That is a perfect example of expressing emotion without going over the edge.

They Make It Look Easy

So many good poems this week…..but for my discussion I will focus on Corso’s “Marriage” and Koch’s “To My Twenties.” I enjoyed the humor in each of them, and their related themes of “freedom” in one’s early years.

My first reaction upon reading “Marriage” was, wow, this is a manifesto. It’s quite lengthy and is the only one by Corso in this anthology, so I thought to myself, this must be his “magnum opus.” It’s quite funny in so many ways, and addresses the terror many people feel about the commitment of marriage. I liked that he went back and forth on the issue of getting married and not wanting to live life alone, while weighing in on the pros and cons. When I first read it I got the sense that it was a rant, sort of Richard Lewis style (one of my favorites). A few of the chosen phrases threw me a little, but the poem is so fun to read that you just go with it. “Radio belly! Cat Shovel!”…."Christmas teeth! Radiant Brains! Apple Deaf!”……(hmmm….okay….). Not quite sure of the intended message there, but it does give a sense of spontaneity, of a stream of consciousness as the speaker works out his neuroses.

And, as usual, I fell totally in love with the poetry of someone “new” this week….Kenneth Koch. The three selections we read had me online, looking to buy his collected poetry. “To My Twenties” reminded me a bit of Corso’s poem, sort of a self-analysis of being young, with all of life ahead, all the choices before you. Although in this poem, as he “speaks” to his twenties, he does say “in you I marry.” So, at this point he’s already far ahead of Corso’s mental limbo of “should I? shouldn’t I?” I also love his sarcasm and point that, hey twenties, you sure didn’t give me a hell of a lot of direction! I was completely taken with his simple language, with a few “haughty” phrases thrown in for fun: “Whither, / Midst falling decades, have you gone?”

In a sense, "Marriage" was about the fear of the future, where "To My Twenties" was about the fear of a future lost.

I love the casual style of the Beats and NY School, but I’m not fooling myself. I know there is technique there. They just make it look easy. And fun.

Seeing the Ordinary World in a New Way

This week’s poems of PlainSpeech, Free Verse & Everyday “Mere” Facts open a new world of poetry for many readers. Everyday scenes and situations are the subjects, bringing the often lofty art of poetry to a level that readers can appreciate, and even identify with. Rhyme and metrical forms are not the focus, and may or not be used to heighten the meanings of the poems. In fact many of the poems employ “free verse,” a style that is not written in strict rhyme or meter. There may be rhymes or internal rhymes, or there may be none at all. There may be a particular rhythm embedded within the poems in various places, or there may not. Either way, the poems still retain a “musical” quality, pleasing to the eye and ear. And always, there is a sense that the words convey a deeper meaning; that beneath the surface of “everyday” situations there lays a truth -- a root cause.

Although the speech is plainspoken and often in free verse, the poems still remain true to poetic nature. Rukeyser’s “Boy with His Hair Cut Short” is an example of variations of meter and use of half-rhymes to end some of the lines. Each stanza has five lines, giving it a sense of uniformity. It even appears on the page to be a “standard poem” -- in closed form -- but upon reading it we hear that it is a new variation of form, yet just as poetic.

Many of the poems this week do in fact employ internal rhymes and end-rhymes, clearly creating pieces that are “true to what poems are and what they try to accomplish.” But what sets these poems apart is that there is no strict rule governing that they MUST adhere to the rhymes throughout the poem. Many veer off at the discretion of the poet, taking the poem in a new direction. In Randall Jarrell’s “Next Day” for instance, lines 2 and 5 of each stanza rhyme, but beyond that, the other lines do not. With this, there is a sense of continuity or “form” within the poem, but the effect is subtle, so that the reader doesn’t feel they are reading a forced pattern.

Another way these poems remain true to their ancestors is the use of symbolism, or using one thing to stand for another. This is done perfectly in Rukeyser’s “Ballad of Orange and Grape.” Here, the hot-dog-man’s consistent (and insistent) mix-up of the flavors in each bin represents the non-sense/insanity of human life, from violence and rape to sexism and war…..unfortunate, everyday circumstances.

And, thank goodness for Elizabeth Bishop. Her insight and humor bring a hope to the everyday, in two of my favorite poems. “Filling Station” is observation at its most brilliant. To see beyond the dirt and oil to the female side of life’s machinations is the epitome of this style of poetry. (I have heard her read this poem, and it is endearing to hear the audience laugh along with her when “somebody” oils the plant).

And in my top five favorite poems, there is Bishop’s “One Art.” This is a villanelle, but Bishop makes it her own by changing the refrains to suit her needs. Here she offers a lesson in keeping a smile and sense of humor through heartbreak and loss.