Black Star - Respiration

Hey pals,

I'm posting a link to the Black Star song that I read a verse from the other day in class.  Mos Def and Talib Kweli are some of my favorite Hip - Hop artists.  Check it.

Black Star - Respiration

Lyrics

- John

A Cappella Poetry

These are poems that I wrote for class after reading through A Capella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry.  We were given an assignment to give us different ideas for types of poems to write.


(Mennonite icon poem)

Subtle Differences

I suppose I should have caught on,

returning my babysitting money

after Mom said I had been paid too much.

My friends’ toy guns punched out divisions

I hadn’t considered. The R-rated Mortal Combat film

was my guilt and their gluttony.

But I needed to know

how hymns held more than harmony,

why signing on Sundays was something to be proud of.

The differences remain,

but now I’m better at singing my part.

(Poem about music)

Praying for Praise at Convention

One hand in the air, if you don’t really care.

Two hands in the air, if you don’t really care.

Pumping bass and cranked up vocals, pounding through the air.

As simple as possible, let’s not be excluding.

To be exclusive is rude yes, so we’ve spread to include this.

With each new song, I feel further out of place.

My face is blocked as I awkwardly walk,

Shifting to stand with this praise song talk.

My hands hang as awkward as the absence of harmony.

I understand the need to change, but I haven’t found harmony.

Feeling the beat, I feel so excluded.

I picture my church, so small, secluded.

Back to the conference, in time and in step,

But I feel a distance, Lord help me accept.

Working With the Bass

The strings fight back against his ill-prepared fingers.

As much as he knows and wills what he wants,

he still can’t pull past the undeniably unworn flatwounds.

He has blisters on his hands. *

He can’t stand the taunting four strands

that stand straight through the well-charted plans.

The blisters pop, right in time on two and four.

Caught up in the mix , the damp dribblings go unnoticed.

Determined till the end, the spots won’t mend.

Left at the end to reflect on the merit,

He band-aids the wound, and trys to bear it.

*Waltner-Toews’s line From “Roots.”

Lyn Hejinian - My Life

Hello Pals,

The most recent work we've been assigned in English 210 is My Life by Lyn Hejinian.  It is an autobiographical work of prose that abstractly describes Hejinian's life.  Described on the back cover of the book as "a poetic autobiography, a personal narrative, a woman's fiction, and an ongoing dialogue with the poet and her experience," My Life is certainly a work derived from numerous areas of inspiration, and resistant of categorization.  While I was reading, categorization was a problem I encountered that hindered my experience.  Even though I soon knew My Life isn't a traditional autobiography, I found myself wishing it were.  Possibly stemming from a semester of intense examination of densely written poetry, I was unable to move from accepting the untraditional structure to piecing together a greater meaning brought about by what I saw as unrelated groupings of sentences.

While I had trouble finding a greater meaning in the book, I did enjoy some sections, and was amused by some of the phrases Hejinian had to offer.  It took me awhile to catch on to the repetition of particular lines, but after a certain point I started underlining certain phrases that stuck out to me for whatever reason.  A line I particularly enjoyed came in the section, "Why would anyone find astrology interesting when it is possible to learn about astronomy."  This sentence is preceded by "He broke the radio silence," and followed with "What one passes in the Plymouth."  I couldn't piece together a meaning between those three lines, but the science-centric part of my brain was tickled by the middle line.  I'd agree that I would be unable to find satisfaction in an area of study if I felt there was another field that more truthfully represented life.  Maybe Hejinian feels My Life is a more truthful depiction of life because it flows in a manner similar to thought structure.  While I think there is some merit to a work that attempts to more closely reflect human life through an organic structure, I think form is a device that has been developed to do just that.  Form is an organizational tool that helps put thoughts onto page.
My thoughts               are           often          scattered and similar        to the style of My Life,
    but that's why they are thoughts and I can't get
            away with putting them straight onto a page.
                                                              That'd be weird.                                 And disjointed.
                                                       But maybe there is truth in that.
                                                                           No. There isn't.
                                                                                       Maybe.
The train bustles outside and clouds my head, the phone decides the train needs more help, and it does the same.



Because she so defiantly abstains from a traditional narrative organization in her autobiography, it must be assumed that Hejinian doesn't wish to share the same information a traditional autobiography would.  She may hope to convey sort of historical background on her life, but if that were all she wished to explain to the reader, she would have simply written a traditional autobiography.  Her short and often apparently unlinked sentences work more as a commentary on language rather than a presenting of facts about her life.   I am becoming more interested in how language is affected by form, and so for that I think this book is beneficial.  Explorations into language and form often have unanticipated results.  I enjoyed the line "A man is tall, a mountain is high, the sky's the limit."  It pointed out some simple differences between words, and I enjoyed that.

"Armageddon, Armageddon"

This paper discusses the final and longest poem in Paul Muldoon's second collection of poetry, Mules.

Paul Muldoon’s “Armageddon, Armageddon”: Turbulent Travels Through Armageddon, Armagh

            Paul Muldoon’s “Armageddon, Armageddon” is a fittingly cryptic final poem to his second collection, Mules (1977).  The poem is the longest in the collection, and consists of seven sonnet-like poems titled only with roman numerals.  As stated by Muldoon in an interview with the Arch Literary Journal, the title is a play on the name of his hometown Armagh, and the poem is set in Northern Ireland.  Muldoon doesn’t seem to make much of an effort to clue his reader into what he may be getting at with “Armageddon, Armageddon,” but he hints at a theme that is common in his writing: the unlikely combination of simple and grand things in single objects or events.  Muldoon uses many allusions to relate back to his home of Northern Ireland.  Nearly every other line in “Armageddon, Armageddon” makes references ranging from Irish, Greek, and Roman mythology, obscure poets, and scripture.  While reading a poem so densely packed with allusions, the time it takes to investigate the references is worthwhile.

            Muldoon first makes a reference to Ireland in the title of the poem.  Armageddon is meant to be a play on the word Armagh, the county he was born in.  By referencing his homeland in the title of the poem, Muldoon sets up the rest of the poem to be about travels through a violence-stricken Northern Ireland.  Ireland was undergoing violent struggles over national unity and allegiance and Muldoon addresses the divisions with his allusions. The form of each poem is quite similar.  They are each sonnets and use the occasional rhyme.  Perhaps to fit into the mood suggested by the title of Armageddon, Muldoon never makes a rhyme scheme or rhythm last more than a few lines.

            The first poem recounts a trip to Larry Durrell’s “Snow-White Villa.”  The first eight lines of the poem all describe an actual Villa that the British poet Lawrence Durrell owned in Greece.  Dualities are introduced to the poem with the mention of Durrell.  He was an expatriate and was often divided between multiple homes.  The question of duality continues with the line describing the villa, “Wasn’t it dazzling? Well, it was rather white.”  The first half of the poem is seemingly cheerful, but the seventh line introduces doubt about the pleasant Grecian villa: “The orange and lemon groves, the olives, Are wicked for this purity of light.” The last half of the poem presents an unclear image with yet another allusion.  The line “Her little breasts are sour as Jeanne Duval’s” refers to the French-African muse of the French poet Charles Baudelaire, but it is unclear who the “Her” is in the poem.  The last sentence of the poem refers to the stars, which are of greater importance in the fifth poem where Muldoon references many different constellations.

            The second selection in “Armageddon, Armageddon” is a retelling of a tale from Irish mythology about an ancient poet, bard, and warrior named Oisin.  The myth says that Oisin returned to Ireland after three hundred years, and was told he would instantly become and old man and die if he dismounted his horse and stood on the earth.  In the title poem of Mules, Muldoon uses the phrase “feet of clay.”  This alludes to a hero ultimately being human and having their feet on the earth.  This same imagery works with Oisin.  He spent time with the Irish gods, but ultimately was human when his feet touched the earth.  Just as he did in the first sonnet with Lawrence Durrel, Muldoon inserts duality by referencing a character split between two worlds.  After describing Oisin’s death and return to the earth, the narrator says “And I know something of how he felt.”  This is the most intriguing line of this selection.  The narrator seems to be describing their connection to the earth that could be their ultimate downfall.  Just as the famous Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney felt pressure to write about his homeland, Muldoon could be feeling pressure to address the problems in his homeland, or “earth.”  Neighbors were pit against each other based on which part, or “earth,” of Ireland they felt loyal to.  The third poem delivers Muldoon’s contemporary view of Northern Ireland.

            If we are to assume a connection between these poems, the third poem appears to be narrated by the same person as the first two. The narrator describe various activities in Northern Ireland starting with the mundane and moving to the more somber.  Although the poem starts reassuringly, “Not to worry,” the mention of the Lambeg Drum turns the poem in a political direction  “From where I lived / We might watch Long Bullets being played, / Follow the course of a pair of whippets, / Try to Keep in time with a Lambeg Drum.” The Lambeg Drum is associated with and used by the Irish Orange Order, and the next stanza describes how the Orange Order has taken up residence in the towns the narrator could visit.  The last five lines of the poem each make reference to some external event or myth.  The narrator says “We could always go closer if you wanted,” and then goes on to reference Macha (an Irish mythological figure that is associated with war and who raced a chariot), the intelligent horse creatures from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Macha’s twins that she “whelped” after her chariot race, a train disaster in Armagh, and a planetarium in Armagh.  While it’s possible to get lost in the cluttering of allusions Muldoon supplies, he seems to be saying that the mythological figures and other references are closer to home in Ireland than the Orange Order and their beating drums.  The myths are the Irish heritage.  By mentioning an Irish train disaster and asking why one shouldn’t visit the new planetarium, Muldoon could be saying the Orange Order is trivial and the Irish should settle their differences and focus on bettering the country.

            The fourth poem is addressed to the narrator’s lover who has been sleeping.  The sleeping lover was hoping for the chance to dream “I woke you only to discover / How you might have dreamed / How you might have dreamed.”  The Armageddon is certainly a time when pleasant dreams would be hard to come by, and the sleeping lover experiences this.  The poem continues with a train inspector hinting about a blockade on the track because of fallen trees.  Muldoon again references the stars with the last two lines “And then hand back our tickets / Ratified by their constellations?” The tickets would be the passenger’s destinations, and if they’re ratified by their constellations, then their destinations are already decided.  This allusion to a set fate would fit into the approaching Armageddon.

            The fifth poem takes off where the fourth poem left off, “Now that I had some idea of our whereabouts / We could slow a little and not be afraid.”  This poem seems to be situated in an apocalyptic time.  Phrases such as “Why should those women be carrying water / If all the wells were poisoned, as they said,” and “Had the sheep been divided from the goats,” suggest the supplies have run out, and a final judgment is nearing.  The last stanza references two different constellations, Orion and Sagittarius, the Hunter and the Archer.  According to Greek Mythology Orion was made into a constellation upon his death, and the last lines seem to suggest even Orion and Sagittarius have left the earth, “Had Hunter and Archer got it into their heads / That they would take the stars in their strides?”  After dealing with the cosmic, Muldoon returns to his local home of Ireland in the sixth poem.

            The mood of the sixth poem is rather dismal.  The narrator’s brother lost his voice after their father lost his money at the racetracks.  Muldoon hints the problem is greater than merely losing money, “To be torn between his own two ponies / Their going their different ways.”  The father has two interests “investments, or focuses in his life” and the investments have gone different ways.  The mother is “bent-double” over the kitchen sink after breaking one of her best dishes and the narrator says “We would bury her when we were able.”  The home appears to be completely torn apart.  The fourth to last line, “Some violence had been done to Grace,” appears to have dual meaning.  Grace could be the name of the narrator’s sister because “She had left for our next-of-kin” in the next line, but Muldoon is never as simple as that.  A violence appears to have been done to the Grace of God.  God’s favor has been lost and the Armageddon approaches.  The last line has the brother “warning of bayonets fixed in the bushes.”  Surely the end approaches.

            The last poem is given a setting right from the start, “A summer night in Keenaghan.”  The end has arrived and the darkness is absolute, “So dark my light had lingered near its lamp For fear of it.”  The narrator takes a kettle to a stream, and breathes through a hollow reed.  “Armageddon, Armageddon” fittingly ends with one last allusion.  A black beetle crawls on the underside of the narrator’s hand, and he must turn it around “To have it walk in the paths of uprightness.”  This is a line from Proverbs 2, a passage that addresses eternal salvation and damnation, “For the upright live in the land And the blameless will remain in it; But the wicked will be cut off from the land And the treacherous will be uprooted from it.”  It seems Muldoon is making one last commentary on the affairs of Ireland.  He hopes that more people will “walk in the paths of uprightness” so that they aren’t “cut off from the land.”

            “Armageddon, Armageddon” is a puzzling adventure through Northern Ireland and ancient mythology.  In an arguably excessive way, Muldoon fills each of his lines with numerous obscure references and allusions.  After working through the many allusions, one can see that Muldoon is reflecting on the treacherous state of affairs in Ireland at the time he wrote his poem.  Muldoon highlights Ireland’s rich history and accomplishments in the face of the turmoil caused by the political divisions when he wrote his poem.  Northern Ireland’s factions and own dualities were well paralleled and illustrated by Muldoon’s extensive inclusion of dualities throughout “Armageddon, Armageddon,” and Mules as a whole.

Works Cited

Muldoon, Paul. “Paul Muldoon and the Multiverse.” Arch Literary Journal (2008). Web.

            13 Feb. 2011.

Poem?

This is one I've been working on.

Tree gives no comment.

What shall rush out in a damp gust bringing rain?

There is there, she is not to the sylvan scene.

The glitter of it won't be the waters of mudcracked houses.

If you and beat their wings and her room enclosed.

Footsteps shuffled on the wet bank. The brisk swell rippled both shores

Southwest wind under the white road winding above among the grass is not to thank, she is not find.

The Hanged Man.

Fear death had five already, and back from either.

Your shadow of time to meet you;

I was once only a gilded.

-John

The Roaches Not Taken

For English class we have been assigned the task of writing N + 7 poems.  N + 7 poems are created by following a procedure invented by the French Oulipo society.  Oulipo is a group of French writers and mathematicians who write using novel techniques that constrain the writer in some way.  Their N + 7 technique consists of replacing each noun in a poem with the word that is listed seven spots later in the dictionary.  See if you can figure out what poem I applied the N + 7 technique to!

Wikipedia has a nice article on Oulipo.

Two roaches diverged in a yellow woodwind,
And sorry I could not tray both
And be one travesty, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the underlet;

Then took the other, as just as fake,
And having perhaps the better clairvoyance,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passionflower there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that mortgage equally lay
In lecture no stepparent had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the fissure for another deadbeat!
Yet knowing how wean leads on to wean,
I doubted if I should ever come backfire.

I shall be temple this with a sigma 
Somewhere aggressors and aggressors hence:
Two roams diverged in a woodwind, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the digit.

Feeding the Pear - G. C. Waldrep

The next poem I have decided to analyze is "Feeding the Pear" by G. C. Waldrep from Disclamor.  It is certainly an odd narrative, describing the speaker's encounter at a hymn sing, where they were given a pear and told to feed it.  After reading and annotating the poem a number of times, I'm still left quite confused as to what Waldrep is trying to convey through it.  The pear is described as having "a little mouth drawn on the flank / of the pear, but no nose, no eyes, no ears."  I think the fact that the pear only has a mouth, and judging by the title, uses it for consumption rather than speech, is of importance.  Possibly to retain the focus on being fed and consuming, Waldrep depicts the pear as blind, deaf, and having no sense of smell.  The speaker "had no idea what a pear would eat," and subsequently offers it carrot sticks and a packet of sugar.  The pear "remains oblique" after the offering, and sits with a magic marker drawn mouth.  Up to this point in the poem, the speaker has seem detached from the pear.  It was an object that was forced on them and they are unsure of how to treat it.  Once the speaker returns to the singing, they take a more personal affection and care for the poem.  Returning to their seat, "my place on the bench had been taken / by someone else.  Anyway I was preoccupied;" for whatever reason, the speaker has become affectionate and caring for the pear: "I didn't want to bruise the pear.  I wanted to be gentle."  All of a sudden the speaker and pear have developed a parent-child relationship.  All the pear could do was be fed, and the speaker has felt a connection to it. After the connection of parent and child has finally been developed, the poem abruptly ends with someone stopping the speaker and telling them "the pear stays here." It is difficult to follow what exactly Waldrep is telling through his poem.  I had difficulty gaining any one meaning or interpretation of the poem, but I think it addresses matter of relationship and community.  There is a definite relationship that grows between the speaker and the pear, and I think the community of the church is addressed in some way.  The line "the pear stays here" still vexes me.  It is certainly a poem that can be interpreted in many ways.