Blog November 8 — Mark Wagner

Notes on the contributors to the MassPoetry blog

Blog from Worcester 

Joan Houlihan’s critical response to Word Comix by Charlie Smith (Norton, 2009), The History of Forgetting by Lawrence Raab (Penguin, 2009), Blind Rain by Bruce Bond (Louisiana State University Press, 2008), and Trust by Liz Waldner (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2009) in Contemporary Poetry Review has gathered a good deal of headwaters for this critic’s turbines – admiration on one hand and a further complaint.  Houlihan is largely correct to suggest — in the cases she or her editor have chosen — that we can get a sense of what is to come by looking at the opening lines of the poems in these four books, and it would be fun for our blog members to all admit to having a favorite first line, or what we take to be an effective first line.

The first thought, the dawn of a glance, an initial inkling the first line throws down could be an exercise in showing off what you know of ‘the canon’ (Let us go then, you and I. . .  – Eliot).  At the same time, it’s hard not to be whimsical when thinking of great first lines (After this we’ll go out for ribs and Budweiser – James Tate).  On Eliot’s line, I always take that to be a translation of a line from Whitman’s Song of the Open Road. Whitman, not known for his erudition in an academic sense, does sprinkle some foreign language in his poetry. In Song of the Open Road he begins one song, “Allons allons,” the French for “let us go.” Let’s go. Let’s hit the road.  Let’s head for the hills, make some hay, eat some asphalt, or, in Eliot’s case, to go down to the sea . . . to the sea.  There, as we know, Eliot hears the mermaids singing, though doesn’t think they’re singing to him.  It’s ironic, or sneaky perhaps, that Eliot, who knew French, would translate Whitman’s French into English.  This is Eliot who would sprinkle his poetry with allusion and foreign words so thick as to be later accused of misogyny and fascism.  In any event, where Eliot does not get it on with the mermaids, Whitman’s road includes limpid jets of love, hot and enormous. . .

Tate’s first line comes from one of his small run books called, Hints to Pilgrims (1982). And what’s funny — or perhaps not funny — about the poem is that the first line and every other line in the poem are variations on that first sentiment – After this (what?) we’ll go out for ribs and beer. Or beer and ribs.  We’ll go out for ribs and beer after this. . . It’s a nightmarish scenario, and one tempting reading would be that Tate is commenting on the American diet, circa 1982, a nightmare from which some of us are trying to wake up. But that reading would ignore the fact that we don’t know what ‘this’ is. . . I don’t think we can fix a meaning because the author doesn’t tell us what he’s doing in the first place.  Are they reading poems?  Watching a good soccer match?  Listening to jazz? What are they doing that only ribs and beer could answer?  (If we’re going to say they’re having sex, and are planning a little post-coital barbeque, we’ll need to identify what kind of sex they’re having, and I don’t want to get into that . . .

At the start of this little blog, I mention a complaint with Houlihan’s review, that is, she seems to have a suspicion of first person narrative poetry, as if the sincere reconciliation of poetry with personal narrative is somehow suspect.  I suspect she is tired of reading about other people’s lives, but at the same time, Yeats laid down a challenge that has not gone away: how can we separate the dancer from the dance?  In other words, even tired narrative poetry is attempting to practice what poetry has long practiced — an economic, linguistic rendering of an individual life in some way.  And – at the risk of generalizing – there does seem to be au currant and avant garde positions, where poetry is seen as some sort of linguistic wordplay or word combinations that escape clear ‘meaning.’  The slow rush to beatify John Ashbery is a case in point.  The poetry (critical) world wants someone or something to hang their hat on, and perhaps for lack of a stream of literature, for lack of a congealed thematic movement in American poetry, Ashbery fits the bill because he is mysterious and playful and has a lifetime’s body of work.  He has created an oeuvre — one with a sense of mystery and discovery and erudition.  And to stake out a world that science and master narratives cannot swallow, to use language to subvert clear meaning and identification, this is a project and position that poetry can and should strive to maintain, but do we do this at the expense of other ways of writing and being?

The poetry community in Worcester this year is marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth Bishop, who some claim as one of our gritty city’s four, poetic saints, along with Charles Olson, Stanley Kunitz, Frank O’Hara, etc. . . )  I think of Bishop and the untidy, cheerful, and awful activity of Worcester because it is her 100th year, but also because of her magnificent poem – In the Waiting Room which begins,

In Worcester, Massachusetts

I went with Aunt Consuelo. . .

As Joan Houlihan asks in her review, Is this an “I” that I want to know more about? It’s hard to say. I mean, on the face of it, the lines have a certain iambic swing that is attractive, and it’s hard not to like the word Consuelo, but to enjoy this masterwork, we need to read on. The first lines only set the place, and later we’ll learn the time — wartime. . . And Bishop’s first person narrative comes with a twist – In the waiting room of a dentist’s office, Lizzie realizes she is a person — she is an I — and the poem celebrates that she is female, has a name, is destined for pleasure and pain.  As we know, in part it is her aunt’s suffering in the dentist chair in the next room that brings on this awareness.  In part it is the naked pictures in National Geographic, and in part it is the dismal weather outside, where there is a war going on.  The poem is a magnificent rendering of someone coming into awareness of themselves and their gender and their place and time.  Is this an I I want to know more about?  Read on and find out.