You Exist. Details Follow. -- Stuart Ross

The ground had a hunch.
Furniture made no sense.
Oh luminous blur of body destiny!
You huff and puff. You stand
on magnificent corners,
wander into a cage of sunset.
The ground explained
the meaning of sunset.

Whoa. *mind blown*

I think I have met Stuart Ross before, and I think he was that slightly ragged man with the intense stare outside the grocery store who cornered me and wanted to tell me a million important things that made no sense at all. These lines, from “You Exist. Details Follow.”, are typical of his style in his new book of the same name.

Every poem is absurdist in some way. In some instances this is charming and engaging—I think particularly of the line “When we met, poodles sported four legs, just as they had before, and just as they do now — four legs for every poodle.” Some poems wallow in the absurdity to the point of being incomprehensible, but others evoke a strong narrative or relationship though a series of images. I liked the poem “Fathers Shave”:

Father shaves. Details follow.
The blade rips the bristles
from his cheeks, his chin,
from beneath the thunderous
nose. It rips the carpet
and the curtains, rips
Sylvester the Cat
right off the TV screen.
We children cry.
The blade rips the welcome
mat off our porch, the
grass off our lawn,
the trees off our block,
oh weeping willows.
Father goes to the office.
His boss caresses
his smooth face. The
clients ooh and ahh.
The streets are bare
of cars. One planet
hurtles into another.
There are no prizes
in a bag of Cheezies,
but in Pink Elephant
Popcorn you get a
little sticker or maybe
a tiny soldier with a parachute
you can drop out your second-
floor window. Look!
He drifts down.
He drifts in the breeze.
The jays and sparrows
gaze on in wonder.

I like the view through the eyes of children, the sense of the father as this larger-than-life, intimidating force. He is dangerous, barbarous and awesome in the true sense of the word, yet outside the house no one sees this side of him. After he is gone, the children are free to relax and immerse themselves in the minutiae of things that amuse them. Nevertheless, there is always the knowledge that father will return.

Conversely, there are poems such as “Time”:

It’s about time.
It’s about time.
It’s about two astronauts.
Starring ______________ as Blugga.
A brave crew? A strange place?
Prehistoric gals? Sue me.
Tell me where all past years are.
It’s about dinosaurs vs. astronauts.
It’s about their fate.

I feel in this case like putting on my best Simon Cowell voice and asking, “OK, Stuart—how do you think it went?”

Misconceptions about Haiku

I had the chance to sit in on a middle school English class one day while substitute teaching. Another teacher was using the classroom after I was done. Instead of going to the staff room, I stayed and observed a lesson on haiku.

Someone in the classroom—maybe this particular teacher—clearly loved haiku: there were books of “cat haiku” and other collections, and a poster with a haiku by Jack Prelutsky on the classroom door. Yet this teacher gave the same definition of haiku that I remembered from when I was in school: it is a poem of five, seven and five syllables, usually about nature. In fact, this is exactly how most Americans would define a haiku.

A friend of mine, Dejah Leger, is deeply into haiku, and through her I have learned how inadequate and even inaccurate this definition is. Traditional Japanese haiku are indeed three lines of five, seven and five syllables, and are technically always about nature (a poem identical in format that instead considers the human condition is a “senryu”). But Japanese not only counts syllables differently than English does, but the words tend to have different numbers of syllables. A poem in English that adheres the five-seven-five syllable might well be too crowded.

Adherence to syllable count, though, is not the central issue. Haiku is about an image—it is not a vehicle for explicit opinion, musing, rhetoric or emotion. All those things must be implicit, and be accessed only through the image.

an ancient pond
a frog jumps in
the splash of water
–Basho

Often, the beauty of a haiku is the tension between two images in the poem. Two of the lines of a haiku (often) form a phrase, and the remaining line a fragment. It is this juxtaposition that gives a haiku its significance. Senryu, too, though focused instead on human concerns, are essentially imagist.

A fantastic book for further study on this is Jane Reichhold’s Writing and Enjoying Haiku.



Reichhold argues that the essence of a haiku lies in the connection between two parts of a haiku, the fragment and the phrase, which may come in either order. The significance of a haiku comes from the juxtaposition of these images. Senryu, too, though focused instead on human concerns, follow this same imagist fragment-phrase pattern. As for length, Reichhold recommends about two “beats” in the first and third lines, and three “beats” in the middle, as a rough equivalent to five, seven, and five “on”.

I remember two haiku lessons from my youth, and one by a teacher when I was doing my student teaching, and all missed the mark. In the latter example, the teacher even shared his own “haiku” with the class, which were essentially seventeen syllables of stream-of-consciousness free-association.

The result of classes such as these is that haiku are misunderstood by most Americans. But why would teachers teach haiku this way? Of course, many teachers simply teach what they were taught, often neglecting any research on the assumption that their teachers were correct. But more than that, haiku, taught the way it is taught, fits the requirements of a freshman English class perfectly—it’s easy to read, easy to write, and it teaches about syllables.

It is hard to get students to pay close attention to language, and because the current concept of poetry is so influenced by the modernists, there is very little sense of form in any contemporary poetry that students are exposed to. After reading only free verse, there is little sense among students that a poet crafts and forms a poem rather than simply writing down the first words that come to mind. Haiku of the classroom variety provides the teacher with a simple, accessible way to get students to write a poem in a form (which also aids the student somewhat—imposing limits can dispel the indecision that results from too much freedom). Moreover, it teaches about syllables, which must be taught, but which would be boring and pointless to teach outside of a poetry lesson. Haiku (classroom variety) is the simplest form of syllabic poetry, and it doesn’t require the discussion of meter or prosody. The result is that haiku provides an entry-level exercise in paying attention to language (a noble goal, to be sure).
To alter classroom haiku to more accurately reflect the original tradition would make it more difficult for students because they would have to follow much subtler conventions. The requirements of the poem would be harder to define, and the quality harder to judge. From personal experience, I can tell you that no English teacher wants to call a student’s poem incorrect or inadequate. The bar for haiku is therefore lowered to the point that any student can jump over it, so teachers can say, “Yes, that’s a haiku,” without complicated questions of image, connotation and juxtaposition.

The result is a massive cultural misunderstanding of this form of poetry. Examples include the following. The second of these, through the use of enjambment, escapes the strictures of natural line breaks, and so the 5-7-5 structure morphs into simply a requirement for seventeen syllables. The third of these abandons syllable count altogether; lacking any kind of concrete imagery, it is truly no more than a platitude arranged into three lines.

Underground magic.
Peel brown bundle, mash, pile high.
Salt and pepper clouds.
     Pat Mora, from Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué rico!

Oh good, you’re home. I
Celebrate joyously with
A rousing ear-twitch.
     Deborah Coates, from Cat Haiku

Teach children
Not the limitation of ego
But the omnipresence of life.
     Lily Wang, from Garden Haiku

Consider also the use of haiku in this comic strip (Get Fuzzy, Darby Conley).

The internet is full of “haiku” on all subjects by many enthusiasts, all of which share the same misunderstanding. The popularity of this form in mass culture is likely the same as for teachers. It is quick and easy, and allows the author to compose a poem on a subject with ease. The author can then access some of the cultural cachet that comes with having written a poem, and the observations therein are validated more than if they were rendered in prose. This last comic strip pokes fun at the resulting pretension and vapidity of haiku, but that is only applicable, of course, by the current popular definition.

Afterglow—Alberto Blanco (trans. Jennifer Rathburn)

Bitter Oleander Press, as I learned when I read the most recent issue of their journal, has an interest in international poetry and side-by-side translations. This is seen once again in their publication of a side-by-side translation of the work of Mexican poet Alberto Blanco, Afterglow, translated by Jennifer Rathburn.

I find it fun to read the original of a poem next to its translation whenever I know even a little of the language. In this case I got to see some of the interesting choices that Rathburn made. A good example is “Psalm of Transfiguration”. 

En las amapolas de cobre
Cantan los pájaros ultramarinos;
En la espuela de caballero
despunta la fiebre que no cesa.
El fuego se aviva y el humo crece
como las ramas de un árbol planetario.

In copper poppies
chant ultramarine birds;
In the knight’s spur
spikes the endless fever.
Fire arouses and smoke grows
like the branches of a planetary tree.

Rathburn translates “cantan” as “chant” instead of “sing”, which fits the poem well. The original Spanish original has a sense of both possibilities, but an English translation must pick only one.

She translates “la fiebre que no cesa” as “endless fever”, but think of all the possibilities: it could have been “fever that never ends” or “fever that never ceases” or “neverending fever” or “fever without end”. It’s always a challenge to balance truth to a translation and poetic necessity; I think Rathburn does a great job in this volume.

Another interesting think to note in this poem is how sound devices, which are usually destroyed in a translation, can be spontaneously (or intentionally?) created. “Amapules de cobre” ends up as “copper poppies”, and the line “el fuego se aviva y el humo crece” results in the wonderfully alliterative/assonant sentence “fire arouses and smoke grows”. Whether by serendipity or design, it is fun, and somewhat reassuring, that the sound elements of poetry aren’t doomed upon translation.

As for the poetry? It is something like the wild hallucinatory prophetic visions of the Old Testament prophets or the Book of Revelations. The entire book is written in the present tense, and there is no sense of specific everyday life. There is nothing that happened, only things that happen, always, universally, even in cases like

The failing calf
in the corral dies.
A dazzling bull
contemplates the field.

The images spill forth as from a dream—disconnected, intense, packed with significance but without meaning. Any references to “you” or “I” are disembodied and universal as well. Either one might refer equally to the poet, the reader, or anyone else, real or imaginary. We never get to see into Alberto Blanco’s life—only into his mind, and the visions that live there.

Blood Honey – Chana Bloch

Chana Bloch’s strength lies in image and metaphor.  Her style of free verse is simple and fairly typical of poetry today.  Her subject matter, too—themes of life and death, family and culture—are not unexpected.  It is the sudden and surprising image or metaphor that begs to be read again and again--not from confusion, but from the sense that such a line needs to be savored--that makes her poetry engaging.

Wild Honey

A puddle of sun on the wooden floor.

The infant crawls to it, licks it,

dips a hand in and out,

letting the wild honey

trickle through his fingers.

Then a voice from on high—

Look at the pretty color!—

Wipes up the glory with a rag of language

A Life on Earth

[…]

An adult heart is the size of a fist, he said.

And what does the heart do?

Hoists itself up each morning into the weather.

A fist is not just a sign of defiance:

four fingers and a thumb can grasp.  And hold.

And what does the heart hold in that tight little fist?

The string of its life on earth,

taking the tug of it, letting it fly,

not letting it fly away.

[…]

Sometimes the surprise is more deliberate, and Bloch reveals a deft control over her words and an admirable wit.  One of my favorite stanzas, discussing her mother, reads:

Things are easier between us lately.

She’s not so carping. Is even willing to listen.

One would almost think death

had mellowed her. 

Heart Turned Back – Bertha Rogers

Bertha Rogers write complex free verse frequently about nature, farming, animals and family. Her poetry, lacking any kind of sound or rhythmic device, relies mostly on image, metaphor and juxtaposition, her best poems leaving the reader enjoying the pictures seen or the language used to describe them. In theme and mood she is something like Robert Frost or Seamus Heaney.

Here’s the thing: her poetry is not easy.

No one says it should be; even before the obfuscatory modernists got their hands on it, good poetry was not necessarily easy to understand the first time through. I’m just saying that many things about Rogers’ poetry make it difficult, like a tight knot of words that the reader must unpick. Consider this poem of hers:

Lessons

At sixteen I cut into the worm, I
contemptuously dissected the frog,
laid out on mirrored metal—I saw my face.
Who, you ask, will kill the cat that murders
the bluebird’s chick? In that doomed orchard
dying trees forgot how they edged toward
bees, convulsed to fruit. High in the woods,
beneath the hawthorns, the skirted brambles,
deer the color of dying leaves turn and
turn and go to sleep. The clock in the kitchen,
time swollen, ticks. I talk to the dishes,
the immortal cats. Days like this, the dew
dazzling the sky, it’s all beauty to me;
even the stopped wing; the bent, wet grass.

It’s not that it is incoherent, but it does feel like we are playing cards, and I’m trying to guess Rogers’ hand as she lays down one card slowly after the other, her face inscrutable. The meaning lies in the relationship of the images to each other, but like those “magic eye” posters, you have to keep staring until the meaning comes into focus.

Furthermore, Rogers is not bound by typical diction (not that any poet should be, of course). As a result, the reader is faced with phrases like

I beg them back—those gone prodigals; their
sweet hapless speech outvoicing resilience.

Such word choice can induce both insight and head-scratching.  My guess is that Rogers’ appeal will largely depend on the reader and the reader’s mood: read these poems without distraction and hurry, and savor the rich descriptions.

My favorite from this collection is “A Hunting Story”:

The Saturday hunter meant well.
He meant to kill the jackrabbit
jumping from rotten corn stalks
in the winter-rimed field.

Confused, the old black spaniel
forgot she was a hunting bitch;
became the hunted, the white tail.
She jumped, too.

The bullet from the .22
Got the spaniel clean in the chest.
Her heart’s blood burst to snow,
to stalks, to furrows.

She died in slow black circles.

I sat straight on the wooden chair,
comforting the spaniel’s daughter
and crying, crying. Linoleum roses
grew red at our feet.

This happened in another time.

In the evenings, when I tell
my city-provincial dogs, they stare,
then run in happy circles and fall,
glad, on the Turkish rug.

The Breakfast Machine – Helen Ivory

Helen Ivory makes her poetry out of intriguing (and often disquieting) observations, often of impossible scenes or vignettes like something out of a strange dream. Add to this her love of metaphor, and you get something akin to Craig Raine and the Martian poets. Compare Raine’s famous lines

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

…with Ivory’s:

People are pebbles
and windows are mirrors.

When the moon is pushed
down the chimney’s throat,
the music begins.

(or)

In this house, everything sleeps.
Even the walls have relaxed
and the roof is too tired
to hold up the weight of the sky.

What Helen Ivory adds beyond poems like Craig Raine’s is that she trains her metaphors not on observations of the real, but meditations on the unreal. My favorite poem is this:

The Tooth Mouse

All of the teeth
brought by the Tooth Mouse
are piled high in an out-of-town
warehouse

They are gnashing
and grinding
and want to return
to the mouths of sleeping children.

It is said that they are whiter
than bone, cleaner
than melt-water, more innocent
than the children themselves.

But look at them here
all broken and angry,
chewing at the cold
metal door to get out.

The imagery of discomfort, childhood, and the dark side of maturing bring to mind Seamus Heaney. Ivory’s particular style of free verse are also reminiscent of Raine and Heaney. The lines are extremely well crafted, and there is no sloppiness nor unnecessary embellishment, nor any sentence twisted out of shape. I found myself excited to see what each next poem contained, as if I were opening old jewelry boxes. Each poem was like a curious new picture from a scrapbook of someone’s dreams.

The Porcupinity of the Stars -- Gary Barwin

Gary Barwin is an imagist, and an unapologetic one. An adherent of the “show don’t tell” school, he relies on nothing except image to communicate ideas, thoughts or feelings. The poetry is purely visual, and pretty cerebral, too. Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t strike a chord emotionally, just intellectually. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  It feels a lot like haiku.

What is intriguing about Barwin’s work is the strangeness of the image. Simply the act of picturing some things—for a brief moment imagining them to be true—is effective because of the oddity.

Daddy said
Son you have to make your own dog
if you have none

and I said
I have a fire hydrant
so I can just imagine

The fun of the poem lies in looking at it from all angles. It’s like holding up an unfamiliar kitchen utensil and wondering, “What in the world is this?”

Barwin is confident in his style. His writing is exactly what he intends it to be. The closest he ever gets to an explicit message and opinion is

a poem doesn’t have to have fourteen perfect lines
or else you’re spitting on graves

maybe you’ll slip up and tell a truth
stick your elbow into something

The question, I suppose, is whether the images resonate with you—whether they stick in your mind or get under your skin.

ants gather around the barbecue tongs
gasoline rainbows on the tarmac
a seven-year-old tries to run along the curb
man with the face of a pelican
squeezes out greatness
late in the afternoon

Most poems concern everyday life, but I think Barwin is at his best when he lets the surreal fantasy that pervades his work really manifest into something that disturbs the tranquility. In this he reminds me of Ted Hughes.

don’t do it, I said
choosing a piece of toast
a perfect fried egg

but she unhooked her jaw
and swallowed the sun

now it was really dark
and she stood up from the table
breakfast was over

I couldn’t find my running shoes
or my briefcase and
my dreams were of the moon spitting
as I tried to play chess

my abdomen was a sand dune
shaped by the wind
into the grains of a million
directionless games of beach volleyball

an infinite number of piglets
gnawed on my fingers, which were sprouting
uncomfortably from every orifice
there was no coffee

The line that makes the poem (the excerpt, actually) is “There was no coffee”. What is otherwise mundane gains significance when abutting a domestic Ragnarok.

Poem by poem, we get a slide show of everyday life seen through the prism of strangeness and fantasy. I think the proper way to enjoy Barwin is the same way I would enjoy just such a slideshow: I’d relax, zone out, and let the pictures click by me, one by one, not trying to understand, just looking intently.

Recommended if you like Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Mina Loy, Amy Lowell, the British Martian Poets like Craig Raine, or haiku.