Early July
--Campbell McGrath


Showering outside
by candle glow: too lazy
to change the lightbulb.


Jellyfish season--
climbing back into this world
alive and tingling.


Alone on the beach,
one kite and me, drinking beer.
Sunset. July 1st.

Reading Campbell McCarthy, at least in Seven Notebooks, reminds of listening to pop-rock by a musician who secretly does know what he or she is doing. There is an accessibility and obviousness to the writing, but the writing can suddenly, almost unnoticeably, slip into a much more refined style or with unexpected depth. I would draw comparisons with Mark Knopffler (!!!!) or Robert Cray, both being wizards with their instruments but still devoted to the basic structures for a ‘song‘. From his poem 3 A. M.:

Worrying the bone of the future into slivers of the past.

Staring out the window at halos of light, the alley trees,
night sounds assembling into tiny monostichic poems,
a hum, knots and blooms, algal minutiae, matchsticks, kindling,
ascetic archways rising and falling, telephone lines
that bridge the rainfall to fulfill a promise written in filaments.

Zones of thought, mimic-markings, allotments geared to suffer,
momentous shapes that seem to belong to another world,
ways of concerning the air like cottonwoods prone to flower,
the farthest away waving like a child being kidnapped.

And then a later poem in the collection:

Night Thoughts

3 a.m.: cheep, cheep.
I, too, sing of happiness--
but I still can’t sleep.

Why say happiness?
Ghost clouds sailing past the moon,
sad and immortal.

Whisper of ground mist.
Find contentment where you can.
Whisper of ground mist.

McGrath expresses some opinions on American poetry. First, a general statement from a Wall Street Journal Q & A:

WSJ: What is the state of poetry in our culture today?

Mr. McGrath: Many other cultures value poetry more than we do. In Ireland, poetry is a top cultural pursuit, the art to end all arts. Poetry resonates differently in each culture; it doesn't in America. People say modernism killed poetry for them: it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't touch a popular musical oral tradition. Years ago, you memorized and read poetry; it was one of the things you were forced to learn. Now it has tiny role in school. People who publish poetry today do it from a sense that poetry needs to be published, not because they think they are going to make money.

When I first started reading McGrath's poems, I thought the subject matter was a bit trite, the syntax to comfortable, until I realized the artistic intent behind his writing. And this inevitably carries over into McGrath's views on poetry. From the poem, Ode to Blueberries:

All the new poems are about blackberries.

But to praise the blueberry
is to praise the ordinary and easily obtained
pleasures of this world,
spartan gems
in green plastic baskets,
summer's caviar...

...in their early winter rambles,
they were to happen upon that
brittle, fine-branched, pale-leaved bush,
they might mistake it for
forsythia,
more likely they would not
pay it any mind
at all, those
eager American poets
traveling ever deeper into the forest
in pursuit of the legendary,
labyrinthine,
bramble-tangled temple
of the blackberry.

Tell me, which is it,
they have come to adore,
the fruit
or the thorns?

And then from the poem, April 20:

Talking in class about rhetorical posture...

Where is the speaker situated in this poem?
Not the speaker but the voice. Not the voice
but the self. Not the self but the locus of issuance.
How can I convince them that poems if texts
are human texts, that texts if artifacts
are artifacts forged in the furnace
of the heart, the soul, the psyche, however
you imagine or care to name that machine
we hear idling in the engine room at night.
Springlike today, near seventy, sunny and blue.
Budding trees no longer skeletal as logic.....

Campbell McGrath’s Seven Notebooks (2008) is a compilation of seven different sections with each having their own individual topic, examples including McGrath’s family life, thoughts on language and art, notions of civilization, social changes and McGrath’s personal enjoyment towards the positive effects and meaning which poetry can provide to an individual. Each section relies upon a variety of poetic forms and brings a nimble spontaneity to the collection. A few pages possibly with full paragraph prose poems, but then followed by a series of minimalist haiku, the juxtaposition suggesting an impromptu approach to the writing and places an emphasis upon the liveliness of poetic words rather than aesthetic refinement-- not unlike a journal, or blog if you will. To add another structure to the collection, there are constant allusions to the particular season in which each ‘notebook’ was composed and the collection chronoligically follows the course of one complete year, the first notebook beginning in January and then the last taking the reader into the following December.

While the predominant form of Seven Notebooks is Asian based, his acknowledged influences also include the American breadth of Whitman‘s invocations, the private exultance of Rilke and the surreal exoticism of Neruda. However, rather than attempting to match the extremes of these literary giants, McGrath’s nods are balanced through the banality of his day to day existence. While Rilke faced his mystical torture and Neruda observed the horrors of the twentieth century, McGrath offers more subdued versions that are proportionate to a basic middle class family life, but still conscious of the difficulties occurring throughout the world and the inevitable threats that face anyone’s existence, regardless of how lucky or how privileged their background. And this further reflects the Asian use of the quotidian for subject matter, with many of the poems evolving from common day to day occurrences such as blueberry picking, watching the sunrise, attending to dishes or observing surfers on the beach. Unlike Western art, this is an effort to downplay the extremes of our passions to identify and recognize what’s unique to the everyday.

The references to McGrath’s influences and the traditions are perhaps too obvious to be appreciated at an artistic level. He doesn’t attempt to match their gestures, nor attempt to bring something new to their forms, so what is left is an amount of educational intent in the writing. To that, McGrath even relies upon quotes from other poets and thinkers between his poems, which to me suggests a particular audience. The greater strength in his writing though is the appealing tone, which allows a reader to not just recognize, but share in McGrath’s love for poetry and how it can be intimately incorporated into a person’s life. Readers and writers don’t live vicariously through literature, they use literature to conceptualize, augment, understand, console, expand, challenge, document and enrich whatever material life they may be living. And when a reader can experience firsthand the how and why McGrath does this in his own life, with a pure delight that is void of ostentation or pretense, the exuberance becomes contagiously welcome.

I have some unexpected business to attend to this week, which will leave me with time to read blogs but not post anything new myself. I'll be back up as usual next Monday.

Dawn
--Campbell McGrath

5 a.m.: the frogs
ask what is it, what is it?
It is what it is.

It is clear that we have developed a society which depends on having the right amount of anxiety to make it work. Psychiatrists have been heard to say, "He didn't have enough anxiety to get well," indicating that, while we agree that too much anxiety is inimical to mental health, we have come to rely on anxiety to push and prod us into seeing the doctor about a symptom which may indicate cancer, into checking up on that old-life insurance policy which may have out-of-date clauses in it, into having a conference with Billy's teacher even though his report card looks all right.

[...

...]

But if, then, our anxieties are actually signs of hope, why is there such a voice of discontent abroad in the land? I think this comes perhaps because our anxiety exists without an accompanying recognition of the tragedy which will always be inherent in human life, however well we build our world. We may banish hunger, and fear of sorcery, violence or secret police; we may bring up childeren who have learned to trust life and who have the spontaneity and curiosity necessary to devise ways of making trips to the moon; we cannot-- as we have tried to do-- banish death itself.

--from One Vote for this Age of Anxiety; Margaret Mead

["White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)"; Mark Rothko*, 1950]

Lonesomeness. Morandi, Cezanne, it's all about lonesomeness.
And Rothko. Especially Rothko.
Separation from what heals us
..............................beyond painting, beyond art.

Words and paint, black notes, white notes.
Music and landscape; music, landscape and sentences.
Gestures for which there is no balm, no intercession.

Two tone fields, horizon a line between abysses,
Generally white, always speechless.
Rothko could choose either one to disappear into. And did.

--from Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Charles Wright

* Rothko's paintings are always quickly brought into conversation when I find myself talking with someone skeptical about modern art. With some artists, I can understand where they're coming from, even if I don't agree, but if they can't find it in themselves to relate to Rothko.... the poor souls unfortunately don't know what they're missing (feeling?).

Wright’s most recent book of poems, Sestets, came out in March of this year. A much more astringent collection, partly because of working within a concise form, with each of the poems composed from only six lines (albeit, rather long lines at times and with his customary spread across the page), but more importantly in tone as well– a more bitter voice, tinted at times even with anger, contradictory, defiant, stoic, tighter in its demand to vocalize to the reader.

It’s a welcome move for Wright. On the surface it appears to be just another Wright collection, only of shorter works, but once burrowed in, a reader will find that this is a different Wright, not standing within the voluminous fields of life, but a Wright, now 70, who is acknowledging the nothingness of the void, where he finds both mockery, and grace.


Stiletto


Why does evening up here

.........................always, in summer, seem to be

The way-- as it does, with the light knifing low from right to left--

It will be on the next-to-last one?



The next-to-last one for me, I mean.

There is no music involved,

.........................so it must be the light, and its bright blade.

The last one, of course, will be dark.

.......................................And the knife will be dark too.

Charles Wright’s poetry is most notably recognized by his longer poems that sprawl split stanzas and phrases across the page and in resemblance of the components and spaciousness of landscapes. Subject matter is often imaginative descriptions of the natural world with focus being upon Wright’s immediate sense during the composing of the poetry rather than recollections, presence of the here and now, but, also while incorporating subjective emotional states within the descriptions, which would include personal memories. Lastly to the compositions, Wright quietly adds philosophical concepts on language and time, Eastern and Western theological traditions, and death-- lots of death, as a working contrast to being, presence, creation, individuality, relationships, etc.

Wright’s general stylistic goal was to create poetry which could spread out with the breadth of Walt Whitman while also employing the conciseness of Emily Dickinson. While the critics and academics will have fun with this for some time to come, to an average reader, Wright has accomplished his goal as he simultaneously writes from an immense vision of being with the microcosm of the individual self. I would also add that there is a lot of Hopkins’ sprung rhythm bobbing along in Wright’s lines as well as a reliance upon visual imagery, giving a painterly aspect to his poems.

I’ve been reading Wright for sometime, but only his more recent books. So last week I decided to enter in his earlier collections. First was Country Music, Selected Early Poems (60‘s and 70‘s, preview available at google books), which didn’t grab me too much. Not that I had any specific problem with the poetry, but only that it lacked what has distinguished Wright as a major American poet, the lack of development endemic to any other poet in their less formed stages. Although, it was interesting to see the early beginnings of the concepts and styles which Wright later became known for. Next up was The World of the Ten Thousand Things, Poems 1980-1990 (preview not available at google books), which generally consists of the “Wright poem” (described above), although the language was not as sharp and imaginative as his collections from 1990 onward. In his most recent books, I really find he bends language into new realms, which brings an artistry to the poems that anyone can appreciate, as opposed to being limited to those that are aligned with his spirtual vision. From one of my favorite Wright poems, Buffalo Yoga:



Wind whirls, and dust flies up in eddies,
Flowers rise up and fall,
……………………trees buckle, and rise back up and fall.
Summer saddens and grows hot.

Bull snipe cackles in marsh mud.
Hawk corkscrews above the meadow,
………………………………............then dwindles out in the overcast.
Sun back, then swallowed for good.



Wright’s publications from the last 15 or years are widely available at any bookstore and samples of his poetry can be found at poets.org, the Poetry Foundation and Modern American Poetry.

You are all much too young to be listening to these poems. I hope someday you have the occasion to think back and say, “I remember when that old fool warned me about what was going to happen, and I didn’t pay any attention to him whatsoever.” As well you should not. This is called “The Woodpecker Pecks, but the Hole Does Not Appear.” That’s the funny part of my reading—it has nothing to do with the poem.

–Charles Wright, from a Fall, 2008 issue of Blackbird

[Over the July 4th weekend, I attended the 2nd annual Rothbury Music Festival. While my day to day life now is much more subdued than my younger years, moving more towards the pace of oceanic tides in the ground cover, moon phases, the open pages of passing seasons, the contrast is why it felt amazingly fresh to again be in an environment where the abandonments of self can also momentarily occur, vis-a-vis with other creative wonders, through a consummate within loud (subsuming the whole landscape loud!) externality of ongoing forms. Summer! Such as what live music can thunderously offer! Both while its being played, and then again when driving home afterward: the equalizing silence within the variant shifts in all the clouds, a hole there, the full moon close to the horizon softening needled tops of pines along the highway. Being finally at home not as a destination, but an ongoing cycle of form and formlessness.]

Its hard to imagine
how unrembered
we all become

How quickly
all that we’ve done
Is unremebered
and unforgiven,

......how quickly
Bog lilies and yellow
clover flashlight
our footfalls,

How quickly and finally
the landscape
subsumes us,

And everything that
we are becomes
what we are not.

This is not new,

the orange finch
And the yellow
and dun finch
picking the
dry clay politely,

The grasses asleep
in their green slips
Before the noon
can roust them,

The sweet oblivion
of the everyday
like a warm waistcoat

Over the cold and endless
body of memory.

Cloud scarce
Montana morning.

July,
with it’s blue cheeks
puffed out like a putto
on an ancient map,

Huffing the wind down
from the northwest
corner of things,

Tweets on the
evergreen stumps,
swallows treading
the air,

The ravens hawking
from tree to tree,

not you, not you

Is all that the
world allows,
and all one
could wish for.

--“The Woodpecker Pecks, but the Hole Does Not Appear”, Charles Wright (as transcribed from the Griffin Poetry Prize Youtube channel recording of Wright reading the poem)

Each individual arrives at the satisfactions the arts can give him, if he ever does, by a process all his own. The process must start with curiosity-- the kind of curiosity that prompted [a] young man to ask me about the Guggenheim Museum. This sort leads to exploration. Inevitably, exploration will lead to discovery of a world as wide as the limitless mind of man, as tall as his aspirations, and as deep as his despair.

The world of the arts is by no means always comfortable, but neither is it likely ever to be boring. It is full of surprises, humor, traps for the unwary, and challenges to smugness. It is a world of moods as well as of revelation, of beliefs and fears, of unpleasant truth as well as of delicious fantasy. Perhaps it is arrogant to say that anyone who does not venture into this world is only half-interested in life. I say it, nonetheless.

--from the essay, The Fine Edge of Awareness, Russell Lynes

[Firework Drawing #20; Rosemarie Fiore*, 2007]

I'll be away from the computer for the next week but will be back up and running around the 12th. Summer passes quickly in Michigan so I'm going out to enjoy it for a while. Thank you to anyone who has had an ongoing interest with this endeavor and the appreciation extends toward your own interests and efforts equally. Making the world a better place may be as simple as following and enjoying our own paths and while respecting and learning from those of others as well-- something that I've learned from the blogosphere. Take care.

*via Gurldoggie