The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Three Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK THREE

Here are the poems to vote for in the third week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, March 15, to Sunday, March 21):

March 21: Isis Unveiled, by Edward Hirsch (vote only on the first poem)
March 20: Waiting on Judgment in Prison, Regretting, by Hŏ Kyun, tr. Ian Haight and T'ae-yŏng Hŏ (vote only on the first poem)
March 19: Personal Estates, by Sandra McPherson
March 18: Vandals, by Jennifer Boyden
March 17: To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral
March 16: Little Diary of Getting Old: viii, by Carlo Betocchi, tr. Geoffrey Brock
March 15: Watchful, by Bob Hicok

HOW TO VOTE: You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog (or as a comment to my Facebook link to this call for votes). If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments on my blog). If you want to vote anonymously, that's okay, but please choose some sort of pseudonym so I can keep track of different votes by anonymous voters. I will post comments as they come in.

Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).

Please VOTE BY FRIDAY, MARCH 26! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results. (March 28 at the latest.)

Feel free to pass on this call for votes to anyone who might be interested!

The winner of week one was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of week two was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.

Animated Poem

Here's an animated poem by my friend Geoff Brock.

Secret Life

Poetry has decided to put all of its poems on-line. So you, too, can enjoy this one by Li-Young Lee, "Secret Life," a nice companion to David Orr's "Daniel," which I posted a note about yesterday.

Lee's poem wonderfully captures how children will get completely absorbed in what they are doing—but as soon as they do not know where their parents are, then the absorption will disappear, making "the one who hears the dove more alone."

I read Lee's The Book of My Nights on a train from Kalamazoo to Chicago in October, 2002, and I was transported not only by the train but also by the book. "Secret Life" also creates the special effect of Lee's best work, which I am at a loss to characterize right now. Looking through that book, I found the phrase "a terrifying and abundant yes" (from the poem "The Well"). That will do nicely for now. (That phrase was cited by William Logan in his review of the book in The New Criterion as "moony silliness" and "beautiful mush." Oh well.)

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There are some other superb childhood poems in the same issue of Poetry, in the selection of contemporary Italian poems guest edited by Geoffrey Brock: "Slide," by Umberto Fiori (trans. by Brock), "For My Daughter," by Antonella Anedda (trans. by Sarah Arvio), and "Night Visit," by Swiss poet Fabio Pusterla (trans. by Brock).

My other favorite from that selection—one definitely not about children—is the sly and startling "Hygiene," by Raffaello Baldini (trans. by Adria Bernardi).

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Also worthy of note is "The Arrow Has Not Two Points," Clive James's dismantling of Ezra Pound and the Cantos. James writes from an interesting perspective: he once loved the Cantos (almost fifty years ago), then he later decided they were bunk. But now, he has reread them, to see if they really are bunk. His conclusion: they are bunk. His never fully stated implication: people who think they are brilliant are, like his younger self, too easily impressed by Pound's statements about his own work, as well as statements made by others, so they end up not looking closely at what Pound actually wrote, which is a bunch of tedious nonsense interspersed with "Imagist" passages that turn out to be as insipid, unspecific, or nonsensical as they are supposed to be original, grounded, and meaningful.

Now I'm waiting for Silliman's shredding of James ...

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ADDENDUM (thanks Swiss Lounge): Check out the archival material on Pound at the Poetry website, especially the fantastic slideshow of Poetry's publication of various Cantos over the years (see the bottom of the archive page for the link). It's worth looking at just for the Tables of Contents of the issues with Cantos in them!

Daniel

This poem by David Orr from the December 2007 issue of Poetry really grabbed me: "Daniel."

I like the way it traces how a little joke becomes first a family story and then an emotional reality for the speaker.

The issue also contains an extensive section of Italian poetry in translation edited by my friend and Scrabulous nemesis Geoffrey Brock. Perhaps I will comment on some of those later, but I have not gotten that far in the issue yet!

Facebook

I joined Facebook yesterday. I'm not quite sure what it is for, frankly, but my friend Geoff got me to join by pointing out that we can play Scrabble against each other with it!

Being a poet, writing poems

"... most poets seem to look at the writing of poetry not as an activity but as the basis for an identity."

I remember my friend Geoff Brock saying once that he did not like to say, "I'm a poet." He preferred to say, "I write poems." Being a "poet" was something, he suggested, that one should not claim for oneself, because it had a value attached to it.

My quotation above from Robert Archambeau suggests that "poet" in the U.S. today is no longer a "value" but instead a "profession" like any other, or within the academy, a "specialty." As RA concludes:

"I'm not even sure if we've got a name for someone who writes poetry and criticism, indulges in literary theory, teaches and writes about literature from a wide range of countries and periods, and does so for both specialized and non-specialized audiences."

How about "intellectual"?

Curse poems

David Lehman's "Curse" reminded me that I have been meaning to ask people to send me curse poems (titles, links, whole poems).

I first thought of this because of Martin Espada's "For the Jim Crow Mexican Restaurant" (which is on-line here, but you have to go to the end of the page to find it). I also like Glyn Maxwell's "Curse on a Child," and my friend Geoff Brock pointed me to Cynthia Huntington's "Curse One" and "Curse Two: The Naming," while Espada himself mentioned Pablo Neruda's "General Franco in Hell."

Others?

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Whatever your father says you'll oppose
and believe you're acting on principle.

(David Lehman, "Curse")

Poetry magazine, May 2007

Along with the call for submissions from those who have not been published in the magazine before, the May 2007 issue of Poetry has some fascinating things in it. It starts off with a bang with two poems by Bob Hicok, including the splendid "O my pa-pa." Susan Stewart contributes the sonnet "A Boy's Voice," and Maurice Manning's "A Blasphemy" is also quite strong, and is followed by two poems about sleepless nights with a small child by my friend Geoffrey Brock.

Then there's Michael Hofmann's review of the new Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert. I said there are fascinating things in the magazine, and this review is fascinating—not because of what it says about Herbert (we all know he's a great poet, don't we?) or what it says about the history of Herbert translation into English (although it's kind of interesting to find out that the previous translators have not done this book because of conflicts with Herbert's widow) or even what it says about the new translations (according to Hofmann, "Alissa Valles's Herbert is slack, chattersome, hysterical, full of exaggeration, complacency, and reaching for effect").

No, it's fascinating to watch Hofmann write a review that most people will remember because of what it reveals about the reviewer himself. As I'm not reviewing his review, I don't have to provide a list of adjectives like those Hofmann uses to dismantle Valles. I'll let you decide.

Poetry Calendar 2007

My poem "Cabinet d'Amateur" appears as one of the 365 poems in the Poetry Calendar 2007 published by Alhambra Publishing in Belgium. I have been enjoying the 2006 calendar published by the same house, not only because it includes my poem "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong," but because it is full of interesting poems, both contemporary and historical, often nicely paired (as when my poem is preceded by Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush").

The 2007 calendar also includes poems by my friends Geoffrey Brock and A. E. Stallings, along with many other fine contemporary poets.

The same company publishes poetry calendars in French and German, as well.

Two poems by Geoffrey Brock

Two poems by my friend Geoff are on-line on Poetry Daily. They are from his wonderful collection "Weighing Light."