aloha jehovah

[ejjobrien]

*******

if i should sink, flowered, into the wet sage
nor heaven pursue its sidereal cote,
sing semper fidelis, albeit cock-knave
aloha jehovah? : alcoa alcove?

if i, in the shoes of the dead maven bluesuede,
should gainsay my mewling, sling on my headstone-
agnostic, repackaged, then set by slew cold graves
sequoia.      annoyed?..    yeah!!...    --a mohel, soft-stoned....


spring to me plantings, let autumn's chrysanthemums
slide, mama, can'ya ? blastoma dead son
who entered heaven with new soul decanting.
westminster pet-spinster, this winter: catcomb



********

If I should sink, flowered, into the wet sage
nor heaven pursue its sidereal cote,
sing semper fidelis, albeit cock-knave
aloha jehovah? : alcoa alcove?

If I, in the shoes of the dead maven bluesuede,
should gainsay my mewling, sling on my headstone-
"agnostic, repackaged" ,then set by slew cold graves
sequoia.      annoyed?..    yeah!!...    --a mohel, soft-stoned....

Spring to Me plantings; let autumn's chrysanthemums
slide, mama, can'ya ? blastoma dead son
who entered heaven with new soul decanting.
Westminster pet-spinster, this winter: catcomb.


********************

[billmoss]

Hello.

Three features stand to the fore:

1) register shifts, not-quite-free association, a few (sometime rhyme-based) needle-skips, and seemingly pointlessly scuffed (and in spots, seemingly sloppy) punctuation don't seem to justify calling this piece "experimental": the era of jazz poetry more daringly consumed what novelty those bits might have. And thus, "experimental" is not adequate to protecting this from exposure to a normal poetry forum;

2) the language seems uneven. "If I should" seems to fit better if supplanted by "Should I." S1L2's "nor" asks for either a preceding negative or replacement by "and;" and lacking both, introduces an unproductive rhetorical hiccup;

3) the apparent reaches for randomness don't seem to engulf enough to achieve an impressionistic feel. If associative links aren't apparent, then the reader/observer must choose between seeing only disassociated fragments (i.e., mildly organized babble), or creating her or his own (associations): (in the absence of redeeming music) should the latter not occur, the former is the default.

The first question to ask is whether you yourself know what you intended this piece to say or do; the second is whether you feel you achieved it. The third is what that objective was/is, or should have been.

While some bits might be interesting, I think most are orphaned, and need to be brought into a more apparent (whether or not currently existing) fold. As with any kind of poetry, it's not the state in which a piece is written that matters, but the product that comes out of that state.

Shalmahalom,
Bill

[ejjobrien]

Three features stand to the fore:

1) register shifts, not-quite-free association, a few (sometime rhyme-based) needle-skips,
and seemingly pointlessly scuffed (and in spots, seemingly sloppy) punctuation don't seem to justify calling this piece
"experimental": the era of jazz poetry more daringly consumed what novelty those bits might have.
And thus, "experimental" is not adequate to protecting this from exposure to a normal poetry forum;

2) the language seems uneven. "If I should" seems to fit better if supplanted by "Should I." S1L2's "nor" asks
for either a preceding negative or replacement by "and;" and lacking both, introduces an unproductive rhetorical hiccup;

3) the apparent reaches for randomness don't seem to engulf enough to achieve an impressionistic feel.
If associative links aren't apparent, then the reader/observer must choose between seeing only disassociated fragments
(i.e., mildly organized babble), or creating her or his own (associations):
(in the absence of redeeming music) should the latter not occur, the former is the default.

Hey Bill,

Thanks for dropping in.

By 'register shifts' would you mean change of voice or POV? Or would you have some other concept in mind? I'm not following your meaning on this.

I can't say for sure I'm in tune with your concept of 'redeeeming music'. To me, the piece seems somewhat lyrical in an anapestic (or waltz) sort of way. The sounds are soft and to my mind almost Celtic in nature. Being a 4th generation Irish-American, I cannot claim knowledge of the Celtic language. We simply do not speak it in my house. But this poem is rather heavy on the 'hk' sounds and the long A and O almost diphthong vowels which to me are representative of that language. My primary exposure to actual Celtic language consists of me learning a tenor version of 'Oiche Chiuin' to sing at my church this Christmas. I have read some of what others term to be 'sound' poetry and to me they seem to be heavy on irregular rhythms and 'clunky' or highy glottal words.

I have it in my mind that this piece wants 3 stanzas. Perhaps some of your 'register shifts' and other criticisms stem from the 2nd stanza which to me is the weakest. It extends the subject introduced in the first but does bring in some more disassociated elements which are not central to the piece- particulary Elvis (or Carl) and big trees. But at the moment, it doesn't seem like one can go from stanza one to stanza three without a bridge. The joke about being as annoyed as a mohel working on a limp dick may be me just distancing myself from the gravity of the subject by making light of it. Levity seems to be wanted here.

The first question to ask is whether you yourself know what you intended this piece to say or do;
the second is whether you feel you achieved it. The third is what that objective was/is, or should have been.

This piece is just me musing on the concepts of death and afterlife. Its depth strikes me as being a little further up the evolutionary food chain from say a 'Donovan' song. But, I honestly have no more answers for you than what I present. I'm simply saying here is an immortal question- let's play around with it some.

While some bits might be interesting, I think most are orphaned, and need to be brought into a more apparent
(whether or not currently existing) fold. As with any kind of poetry, it's not the state in which a piece is written that matters,
but the product that comes out of that state.

'Interesting' works for me. My gut tells me that finding some substitute for
'in the shoes of the dead maven blue suede' might handle many of the objections you noted. It would seem possible to be a bit more original and on point than that phrase. I shall ponder.

Ned

[billmoss]

Hello.
First, let's make clear the near impossibility that circumcisions are performed on erections. Given that you've stipulated a Jewish ritual, you also must know (as I do after a quick look-up and email) that circumcisions are performed on eight-day-old boys not circumstantially inclined to erectile response to ritual surgery. One might also speculate that an adult male, too, would be disinclined to show that sort of arousal when his member is approached by a man with a ritual knife. But even were an erection stipulated, it would make the act of circumcision far more difficult. So, no matter how you look at it, the quip re the mohel goes nowhere. Of course, I can't speak for Celtic mohels, if such ever existed, so if the Celts regularly circumcised aroused candidates, I retract my statement (and offer my centuries-retroactive sympathies).

Register (or tenor) shifts are, among other things, changes in levels of formality—generally, they're understood to go beyond what might be a normal range or spectrum as defined by a given speaker in a given situation. An example might be the interjection of a much higher or lower-register word than expected in a given discourse: use of "thence" or "promulgate" in a present-day, inner-city, profane street argument; or "shit" in a formal speech act (e.g., addressing Queen Elizabeth). While this can be very effective in given contexts, in the above piece the shifts seem ineffective, arbitrary, and self-dullingly frequent.

"Legal" meter is what I call meter that can be "proved" by a scan, but which doesn't come across in a read—as might what I call "natural" meter. Sometimes intended meter is blocked or obscured by punctuation, or other possible/plausible stresses, or any other apparent discontinuity that inhibits the reader from finding a flow—including clumsiness or apparent illogic. While your oral reading might have verified the anapests you intended, the question has to be whether a reader will find them without a guide. In your piece, even "legal" meter is hard to find: the phrases intended to reflect it are not only separated by interruptive pauses for analysis, but also by oddball punctuation that suggests breaks in the flow.

Mood (said to be humor, here) and rhythm (if anapestic) might be likened to a dance. Whether the dance is to be Celt or, say, Judaic, the music and beat must be clearer; N must transmit whatever mood the dance is to represent or evoke; and the lexical stones across which this dancer is to skip ought to support the steps. Without that kind of sure-footedness, humor comes off as insubstantial or flippant, and pattern is lost for lack of apparent locus. One of my points was and is that intent didn't make itself apparent; the other is that "experimental" can't be justified by stumbles, but must be exemplified by something apparently and competently new.

The problem with "immortal questions" is that they're more often persistently moribund than everlastingly and vitally alive: and that in either case, not much of substance can enlighten them after all these centuries of flogging. For that reason, one usually deals with them through the uniqueness of personal specifics, rather than through amorphous generalities—no matter how reworked or seemingly idiosyncratic, or intended-to-be-novel the language of those treatments might be. Along those lines, I'll note that "further up the food chain from say, a 'Donovan' song" is not necessarily a very big step, if the song is "Barabajagal;" one might do well to seek firmer ground than relatives as easily and unfavorably interpreted as "less bad" or "better than worse."

Thanks,
Bill

[ejjobrien]

if I should sink FLOW ered in TO the wet SAGE
nor HEA ven pur SUE its si DE re al COTE
(SING) SEM per fi DE lis, al BE it cock KNAVE
a LO ha je HO vah al CO a al COVE

if I in the SHOES of the DEAD (MA) ven BLUE (SUEDE)
should GAIN say my MEWL ing (SLING) ON my head STONE
"ag NOS tic, re PACK aged", then SET by slew COLD (GRAVES)
se QUOI a an NOYED yeah a MOH el, soft STONED

SPRING to me PLANT ings, let AU tumn's chry SAN the mums
SLIDE ma ma CAN ya blast O ma (DEAD) SON
WHO (EN) tered HEA ven with NEW soul de CANT ing.
west MIN ster pet SPIN ster this WIN ter cat COMB

The parantheses mark the places where I would elide the accent. I could grant that the opening 5 words do not clearly establish an anapestic pattern, but it does seem clear to me by the end of the line. There could conceivably be some regional or dialectic differences with pronounciation of the word 'into'. I have heard it pronounced both 'IN to' and 'in TO' depending on context or speaker's whim.

The lines are not entirely symmetrical. Particularly in the last stanza I've dropped the 'pick up note' at the beginning of each line. But what I've done metrically strikes me as using substitution within reasonable bounds.

I do thank you for taking the time to research circumcision. Bet you never thought that would part of your job description as poet.

I'll probably pull this out of the drawer next month and reconsider the 2nd stanza. I like the bulk of the 2nd and 3rd lines, but L1 is filler and 'slew cold graves sequoia', well I like the way it sounds, but it doesn't advance the concept as much as may be possible.

I shall cogitate. Gracias for taking the time to actually review this with another set of eyes.

[shaula]

Dear poet,

(note: I went away with this is now I've come back to new posts and revelations. I'm posting my crit as it is without reviewing new comments.)

Thank you for posting. I haven't discovered experimental poetry yet, I hope you can put up with my read. I want to attempt your poem because I loved it, even though I didn't understand it first time through. It felt rich, like cheesecake with an undefined flavour. That's not a very helpful technical comment, is it?

My first read was very different from my second read because some of the words are not phonetically true. (ie: sidereal, cote, mohel) Thanks for that discovery. I will include definitions and things I had to clarify for my reference and for the benefit of the next like reader. This will be hard.

I know what a Mohel is, but didn't recognize the word. (expected Moyle|) Without it, the circumcision reference was lost on me. You know what? I didn't like that the tone turned to humour, it seemed fairly grave and I thought it would take itself seriously. The first four lines sounded like the voice of a soldier contemplating death in his prime (if I should sink flowered..) and then contemplete being unsheltered in the universe, from the reality and relativity of it. What if it's nothing afterall? Now, I liked this. These thoughts are real and universal.

The next line was a challenge. First of all,I had to look up maven and discover that it is yiddish. (It wasn't in my dictionary so I checked online.) The motto is the US Marines, so this is a Jewish person in the US marines. Now what does it mean? Were I in the shoes of an expert in blue suede (not built for function) shoes. Were I a useless beaurocrat. At this point, I'm thinking the soldier is questioning the wisdom of their orders, it's what I expect by my read. And he wonders, would I be the same? Would I say shut up and put up? Lay them out godless in cold graves? Am I my function?

Line 8 makes this change abruptly, all of a sudden I'm not where I thought I was. Is that what makes this an experimental piece? I thought N was calling his penis a great big tree and saying that it was bloody annoyed by the mohel. Now what about the soft stones? Are there stones in the ceremony, or is this an alternate (and more tempting reference). I'm off to check. And now I'm back. No stones, but the description of the relative holding the infant down shed new light on an image in a Margaret Atwood novel. (Handmaid's Tale) Very cool. Thanks again. Okay, so I guess I know where the stones go.

The final stanza has a powerful tone, spring to me plantings (to me) means let life go on. Let the autumn flowers go, let them bend into the snow. Oops. That just slipped out.
Westminster spinster? Is there a US/Israel/England connection here? Is this a commentary about a specific time and place, ie: here and now? It's a bird, it's a plane...it's this poem right over my head. Maybe just, maybe a thousand feet - it's hard to tell when I'm looking up.

This winter:catcomb. Play on catacomb? This winter, death and loneliness? My summation is not to my satisfaction, I get my own set of thoughts and images, but are they near to the intent? On one level, I still had fun. I loved the richness of the sounds and the imagery (sink flowered, into the wet sage) sometimes hypnotic, always very active. I can't be sure if it's a statemnet of personal values, or conflict in values, or is it a larger political commentary with three players mentioned?

1. if i should sink,flow/ered, in/to the wet sage (or into: can go either way)
2. nor hea/ven pur/sue its si/der/eal cote,

definitions:
sidereal: wrt stars, glad I looked it up because I have always thought of it as a two syllable word, having understood from books but never heard pronounced. Thanks.
cote: pronounced keut That's awkward. A small shelter for animals etc. Again, fooled into a two syllable read first time through.

3. sing sem/per fi/de/lis, al/be/it cock-knave
4. a/lo/ha je/ho/vah? : al/co/a al/cove?

semper fidelis: always failthful; motto of U.S. Marines
alcoa: refers to aluminum
alcove following made me think an entry to a mine, but aluminum is open pit, so rejected.
Hello goodbye god : aluminum shelter. station.

5. if i, in the shoes of the dead ma/ven blue/suede,

maven: Yiddish word, informal, an expert.
discovered blue suede shoes in lyrics has an interesting origin; Johnny Cash told Carl Perkins about a soldier who referred to his military air shoes as his blue suedes. Perkins later noticed a young man at a dance he was playing who was very concerned about scuffing his blue suede shoes. It had to come together into lyrics,it was synchronicity.

6. should gain/say my mew/ling, sling on my head/stone-
gainsay: speak against
mewling: crying (obvious, but thought I'd check)

7. ag/nos/tic, re/pack/aged, then set by slew cold graves (punct between slew and cold?)

slew cold graves: as in many, right?

8. se/quoi/a. an/noyed?.. yeah!!... --a moh/el, soft-stoned....

A sequoia is it? Don't make me laugh while I'm having fun.

9. spring tome plantings let autumn's chry/santh/e/mums
10. slide, ma/ma, can/'ya ? blast/o/ma dead son
11. who entered heaven with new soul decanting.
12. westminster pet-spinster, this winter: catcomb

Thank you for the read. \sorry for messing up the stanza breaks.

~shaula

[ejjobrien]

Hi Shaula,

Thank you for dropping by. I think you have done a wonderful job of deciphering this piece. I had a back story in mind when I wrote it, but your interpretation of a soldier facing his own mortality works just as well. I draw from a rather eclectic and nomadic upbringing so I have familiarity with several cultures, languages and traditions. (Note: I said 'familiarity' not 'expertise'.)

Some of the word choices were chosen just for sound including 'westminster'. I didn't have any particular association in mind, just needed a word that worked with 'winter'.

Your analysis reflects my view that S2 needs work. The reason I called the first line 'filler' is that is says nothing more to me than, 'when I'm as dead as Elvis'.
In the last 1 1/2 lines I was going for something along the lines of:

If I'm wrong, then make some grand, stupid gesture. Will I mind being wrong?Maybe. But, if so, not that much. (All of which presupposes that I will have some sort of ability to be cognitive of my demise and ascension, after the fact.)

You asked if you had gotten out of it what I intended. I think that would be a resounding yes. Do you have different views and different conclusions from mine?
Probably. I was musing on the subject and can only hope that someone else understood the musing and solidified or questioned their own beliefs in return.

Ned

[Featherless Biped]

I keep coming back to this for the rhythm and sonics. I felt that there was "redeeming music" here. I got "aloha jehovah?: alcoa, alcove?" stuck in my head, and when I get things stuck in my head, it's because there's music in them.

I love the plant imagery: you have flowers, wet sage, a sequoia (the dick joke is questionable, but I'll get to that), plantings, and chrysanthemums. Many idioms and dead metaphors for death are about becoming plant food, and you've picked up on that and made it seem fresh.

There's an intriguing theme that runs through the poem, involving the narrator's agnosticism, and the question of what will happen to him after he dies. "sing semper fidelis, albeit cock-knave" is, I guess, a way of telling God, "I'm always true to you darling, in my fashion". "agnostic repackaged" and "with new soul decanting" suggest that the narrator's essence will somehow be poured into other vessels--that his soul will come to fit heavenly form as wine fills a bottle, and as his body reshapes itself into plants.

I notice that you're geographically inconsistent. The aluminum and coal company Alcoa is based in Pennsylvania, and has a town named after it in Tennessee. There's also an Alcoa, IL, an Alcoa river in Portugal, and an SS Alcoa Puritan that was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico. I associate sequoias with California, though they also grow in China. And Westminster is... well... Westminster. The inconsistency bugged me a little bit--it felt more out of place than the big leaps of logic, for some reason.

Some more specific thoughts:

First strophe: Bill has pointed out that your first sentence is ungrammatical. I dunno: I like it anyway. "If I should" is important for establishing the rhythm; "should I" screws it up. You could replace "nor heaven pursue" with "while heaven pursues" or "and heaven pursue", if you want greater grammatical correctness. (I'm reading "nor" as a funny conjunction instead of a funny disjunction--is that right?) I can see how the sound of the word "nor" fits nicely in the poem, even if it d.oesn't exactly check out technically; it picks up on the R sounds in "pursue" and "sidereal". "alcoa" makes no sense, but sounds beautiful. If you want something a bit darker (and perhaps more thematic), there's also "cloaca".

Second strophe: I can get on board with "the shoes of the dead maven bluesuede"; people are always claiming to see resurrected Elvis in shopping malls, or Elvis's face on a piece of toast, so it does fit in with the resurrection theme. "gainsay my mewling" doesn't make complete literal sense, but that's all right; the narrator is somehow negating his complaints--whether by dying to give them up, or by rising to show they were never justified in the first place. "sling on my headstone" bugs me slightly rhythmically, because I want the accent to go on the last syllable. (Probably an idiosyncratic twitch.) I'm also a little confused about what it is to sling on one's headstone. I imagine it parses as transitive verb phrase "sling on" plus object "headstone", and that the narrator is grabbing his headstone and putting it over his shoulder, the way you'd do with a handbag. I love, love, love "agnostic repackaged". It is phonetically and semantically awesome. "slew cold graves" tripped me up rhythmically, until I worked out how to use the word "slew"--a deficiency in your reader and not in your poem. The sequoia/mohel line annoyed me (ha!); the dick jokes are irrelevant and distract from your theme.

Third strophe: "Spring to Me plantings" is ambiguous, and I like the ambiguity. It could be an injunction: "O plantings, spring to me!" I am more tempted to read "Me plantings" as a single clause, meaning "plantings of me". So I then have the reading "spring to plant me in the ground", and also (the reading that's most vivid for me) "the season of spring leads to plantings of me". I like the sentence "let autumns... can'ya?"; the narrator feels surprisingly relaxed about his own death, and is enjoining his mother to relax too. What he's saying is actually pretty alarming--he's died of cancer and is asking his mother to stay calm about it--but the way he says it makes it seem OK and accepting. I like that this narrator is able to talk about his death with so little fear. "blastoma" is clearly picking up on the phonetics of "mama", but semantically, it's a very scary word, and "dead son" is a scary phrase. I like the scariness here, because the death needs to be scary in order for the narrator's calm to mean anything. "who entered heaven" in your third line trips me up rhythmically; I am expecting a dactyl, and not a trochee, where "entered" is. You could patch up the meter "entered the heavens" instead (though people who hate all filler will be annoyed with the one syllable of metric padding), or find some other phrase. Otherwise, though I very much like the line, particularly the idea of death as the pouring of a soul out of one container and into another. In your last line, the only words conveying meaning are "this winter" and "catcomb"; "westminster" and "pet-spinster" basically sound nice. You might explore whether you can get more meaning without sacrificing too much of the sonics; perhaps there is some spindly plant life that can help you, or perhaps coffin-splinters can do a bit of work.

Overall, nice work.

[ejjobrien]

Hey feath!

Thanks for chiming in. I really liked your exploration of the plant theme and the tremendous amount of effort you put into understanding and commenting on this piece.

Let me answer some of your questions. I had intended 'nor' to be an ungrammatical disjunction as in 'not having pursued' that place among the stars where winged things reside. I just didn't like the sound or the antiquarian nature of 'not heaven pursued' which was the original line. I thought the speaker was saying should I die not having spent my life actively pursuing a christian themed religiosity, then I have been true to my principles however foolish that may have been.

Shaula hit the nail on the head with 'alcoa alcove'- an aluminum container i.e. coffin. My intent was the line should read: Will I be saying hello to God or to the inside of an aluminum coffin.

'sling on my headstone' is another place where I took some liberty with normal sentence construction. I had intended the reading to be: spray paint 'agnostic, repackaged' on my headstone.

You are right, of course, about the last line. But I don't know if I would have ever gotten to 'catcomb' (catacomb) without the pet-spinster. The last strophe is seasonally themed, so my intent for Spring was: spring the season of new plantings and rebirth. In the spring, visit me and plant some flowers, you don't have to visit that often, just remember me at least once a year. I was delighted to see there were more potential connotations than that.

I have to admit this piece is one of my personal favorites. Thank you very much for your excellent analysis and comments.

Ned