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in a poem (1.26.23)

an image lies with words

though must not assume

the position of the world

and lie with images

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a human is a small flame (2.3.23)

in my rear view

watch a woman watch

a woman heat

a hot dog in the heat

above a sterno

you drunk

me, you

drunk me

#poems #poetry #first draft #writing poems #daily poem #creative writing

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incoherence (2nd draft, 2.1.23)

woke again today to the world and its demands

I cut my yolk and watch it run like a reputation

your face glowering like an orchid

over the newspaper

on Wall Street the brokers are tuning their instruments

and while you were working, I wore a foothold in the wall

strung a conspiracy of red in every direction

right now you bathe in sunlight, sipping at something

inside your slipping fabric

my desires are innumerable, I'm afraid

#poetry draft #poems #first draft poem #creative writing #poetry

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last year, drowning (10.19.22)

as we stack our sobriquets

in the fire and light them

you fan your hair and say

the air we breathe is rarefied

that turning to the past is an act

of self-deception

in the sky the crows break apart like cinders

night unfolds in rows, a kind of cape

of everyone, the consensus seems to be

things speak for themselves

out of your book

I've stopped working

the same circular images like so many

dicks in a fist, remembering instead

the chinks in our verdant bathroom tile

& because I loved you

how many spiders had to die

#poetry #poems #writing #creative writing #poetry of tumblr #poets of tumblr #creativewriting #firstdraft #daily poem #tumblr poems

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skittles for the ferryman (6.20.22)

the lemons mean a bee

sweats sour clemency, the ocean

over laughter, my eye many-sided

every edge distributary

prism light sweeps my feet

neural and adept at tasting

you/your biology, a really brilliant

soaking sound

the bodies turn in

zeroes, turn in visible tides

the ocean neutral gold

feel geometry on every level

angle, a sunk position 

playing many sides

outside, the rain bows

a forever tower

now collapse like rain

#poetry #poetry draft #first draft #creative writing #writers of tumblr #poets of tumblr #poetry of tumblr #poems #daily poem

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tray table (10.5.22)

spilled to carbonated cubes

secrets reduced to blue

arc between dots on a screen

you wanted me only

one place like thin air

with no room to land

#creative writing #poetry #poem #first draft #daily poem #poets of tumblr #tumblr poetry

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Poetry Lessons from John Ashbery's "Street Musicians"

John Ashbery has been deified by critics, but my sense is that he's divisive among young writers and poets. He's kind of a hallmark of obscure, academic white guy poetry that once ruled the literary world but is out of vogue (in many cases for a number of good reasons)—but on the other hand, he's incredibly prolific, has a tremendous vocabulary and has a silly, cerebral voice that is entirely his own.

I read his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which critics seem to consider his magnum opus as far as I can tell, and wasn't totally moved by it; there was interesting language and strange moments, but I found it too navel-gazey, too inward-facing and without enough footholds for readers. Unnecessarily difficult, in other words.

Even so, I picked up Houseboat Days, another collection of his, because I wanted to give him a fair shake anyway in the interest of closely reading good poets in order to improve my own writing.

With that out of the way, "Street Musicians," the first poem in the collection, actually impressed me. There are a few main things I want to take away and remember from it, which are as follows:

1. Titles, Context and "Directions" in a Poem

A common struggle for me when writing my own poems is choosing a title that speaks to what follows.

As I see it, there are different strategies you can take:

Self-consciously poetic title that speaks literally to the content (popular in older poetry, for e.g., Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" or Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken")

Self-consciously poetic title that speaks figuratively to the content in varying degrees (on the more direct end of the spectrum, "Mean Free Path" by Ben Lerner comes to mind, alluding to a particle's path in physics vs. a reader's path through his elliptical writing style vs. a person's path in love and relationships and memory through their own life)

Plainspoken phrase with poetic affect, figuratively related to the poem either directly or indirectly (Elaine Kahn runs the gamut here, particularly in her collection Romance or The End—a more direct figurative example could be "You Dream of Candy Because You Want Yourself To," which does mention dreaming of candy in the poem but only as a detail, whereas a less direct one might be "Reality Steve," a reference to a blog of reality TV spoilers on a poem that doesn't seem very related to that at all; it might be a reference to The Bachelor or might not, since the poem does mention a person on TV with nice hair, or it could be a reference to a real lover in the poem the author addresses, though it might not—the title has a feel of an inside joke, though magically still works somehow)

Title that is the "first line" of the poem (Emily Dickinson has come to be known for this in retrospect, since her poems were seemingly untitled—"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" for example)

And so on.

One thing you usually don't do is pick a non-poetic title that is strictly nominative and literal, which Ashbery does here (ie, it's about two street musicians... and it's called "Street Musicians"). Even so, it ends up working because the title still has an interesting relationship to the rest of the poem.

The main thing it depends on is the first line that follows it:

"One died, and the soul was wrenched out/ Of the other in life..."

The jump from the plain and nominative "Street Musicians" to "One died.../ Of the other..." does a lot of work with very little. Upon first reading the title, it could mean any number of street musicians; now immediately, it means only two.

Only two evokes a lot: a deep friendship, a rivalry, almost a romantic relationship. The fact that one of them has "died" in the first line also makes the poem feel very fast paced; in a way, "Street Musicians" is doing a ton of expository work and is setting up a timeline for the whole piece almost invisibly: as we see by the end of the first stanza, 90% of the story is already over when the poem starts, and the rest takes place in the twilight of that fact.

Suddenly, a boring title is actually pretty interesting—and the jump to "One died" is both tragic and kind of darkly funny (he's almost using the "jump" from title to first line as a narrative "line break," which is probably an underused technique).

Finally, as my one-time poetry teacher Elaine Kahn always stressed, you want a title that strikes the right balance between explaining and directing and providing another opening into the poem; in my own thinking, it's like thinking of the title as either a door (the only way in) or a window (one possible way) into the poem.

Direct and literal titles tend to run the risk of over-explaining or over-directing, but Ashbery elides that trap for a couple reasons: first, the title is so plainspoken and direct that it almost becomes too vague again, leaving room for interpretation; second, the poem itself actually doesn't offer many concrete clues (!) that the poem is a literal story about two street musicians other than the title (yes, there's details that lead that way, but without the title, it would be way too easy to interpret in countless other directions).

Suddenly the title is generous: it's just enough to get you started reading and interpreting, but not much more. Good start!

2. Abstract vs. Concrete, Open vs. Closed Language and "The Rules"

Some common writing rules are "show, don't tell," "use concrete language," "be specific," "avoid excess abstraction" and so on. They apply to almost all writing, but they have some special application in poetry.

Apart from its history as CIA propaganda, "show, don't tell" is a misunderstood rule and it breaks down when it comes to poetry (more accurate might be "balance showing and telling"), and the other three rules I mentioned basically follow this one rule.

The problem is in other forms of writing, "concrete language" means specific and descriptive language when painting scenes or pictures, but typically it leans towards a realist aesthetic (ie, use language that helps readers reproduce reality in their minds). In poetry, what is or isn't "concrete language" has a different sense—it means more juicy words and fewer filler words, more words that point to richer or multivariate meanings, more arrangements of words and lines that evoke than those that don't, and so on.

In essence, poetry already has a broad license to be abstract; it is encouraged in a way that it isn't in many other forms of writing. Even so, it's a question of where the abstraction comes from in poetry. Generally speaking, if it comes from the language you've chosen itself rather, it's a counter-productive kind of abstraction.

Again, thinking on Elaine Kahn's advice I've heard in the past (and her admission of being a fan of Ashbery, which surprised me), she says the key is to be "very concrete about abstract things," and that you can "get away" with abstraction if you can make it real somehow.

Ashbery is still too abstract in general for my taste, but I have to admit that he's kind of a master of this. Consider his description of the life and times of the surviving street musician:

Wrapped in an identity like a coat, sees on and on The same corners, volumetrics, shadows Under trees.

First of all, "wrapped in an identity like a coat" is almost disarming in how basic it is. The idea animating the metaphor is basic and well-understood: identity is illusory or "false" in some way, a rationalization. But "a coat"?

But then we get the description that follows: the seeing "on and on" evoking a dread of mortality, "corners" taking on the literal meaning of street corners and the figurative meanings of being "cornered"—and then the pivotal "volumetrics," which in my estimation, basically breaks "the rules."

What exactly is a "volumetric"? The definition is "relating to the measurement of volume," which is about as un-concrete and abstract as a noun can get (it's doubly breaking a rule because "volumetric" as an adjective might be evocative, but pluralizing it into a noun makes it seem like it would be bland again). So, why is it not bland here?

The concrete words Ashbery uses here around it are so concrete that they are almost mundane: the corners, the coat, the shadows, the tree. On the one level, we get the day-in, day-out existence of the unfulfilled street musician. Then, tying all of these things together, we get volumetrics.

Where it is, the word gives a whole new dimension (pun intended) to all the other daily observations of this would-be musician—and it gives a vivid inner voice to the musician at the same time. Suddenly, "corners" is evoking math formulas and trigonometry, "shadows" is evoking physics, vectors, light, heat.

Finally, the way the line breaks leaving "under trees" alone is interesting as well. Having "corners, volumetrics, shadows" together is important for these connotations to fly, but really what the musician is remembering or thinking of are the "shadows under trees," which is actually quite a specific image: he is thinking of the specific public places in parks and street corners where he can find shade on a hot day, and how the romance of that has drained with repetition. What was once a welcome respite, a secret performance space for those in-the-know has now been reduced merely to mathematics and logistics.

From Ashbery here, maybe we have a new rule: you can make your concrete language abstract, but it depends on context; you can do it if doing so will open more avenues and interpretations than it will close, which it does here.

From this and other examples, we can see that there are rules, and then there are rules. There are rules beneath the rules, and we ought not to take them (or the world, if we are to describe it evocatively) at face value.

3. Be Proportional with Vocabulary; Evoking Over Stating

Finally, Ashbery is thought of as an extremely verbose and dense poet (and sometimes he is), but "Street Musicians" shows a lot of restraint. There are a handful of moments that make you want to reach for the dictionary:

volumetrics

chattels

declamation

And none of these are really too much of a reach for any average reader. The moments that make you really sit up in your seat actually use quite plain language, combined or deployed in an arresting way. The moments that pop out for me are:

suburban airs/ and ways

beached/ glimpses

So I cradle this average violin

In November, with the spaces among the days/ more literal, the meat more visible on the bone"

The first two use line breaks to create puns and multiple meanings. The "average violin" is so crushing in what it evokes given what precedes it, but the language is entirely plain.

The last example is maybe the most instructive for me, because it is perhaps the most abstract in its concept and in its language while still working somehow. The first part of the line for me evokes a calendar, the sense of time passing (though why does November make the spaces clearer? shorter days? longer and more visible divisions of time?).

The second part evokes a kind of hunger, but almost inversely—a sense of literal "meat more visible on the bone" makes me think of when there won't be meat on the bones, of aging and eventually dying, of the hunger we have in our youth that wanes as we get older. Neither of these "images" are particularly concrete as we usually think of it, nor are they particularly related—but he orchestrates them so that they are here.

Finally, the only thing that turned me off in the poem:

"The plush leaves the chattels in barrels/ Of an obscure family being evicted Into the way it was, and is.

For me, this is Ashbery Ashbery-ing as people usually accuse him, and I start to lose the thread. "An obscure family" doesn't do a lot for me," "into the way it was, and is" I understand but uses too many non-word words to make its point, the missing comma in the first line drives me insane, the double-s in "chattels in barrels" is frustrating for some reason and feels overly arcane.

But hey, nobody's perfect.

#john ashbery #poetry lesson #elaine kahn #street musicians #houseboat days #creative writing #poetry analysis

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open or closed (9.22.22)

the point of a poem is not beautiful

description but evocation or

incantation which may include it

turn every overflowing scene

into image, meaning render

complex phenomena

into nouns (somehow)

put them in the past

make them into marbles—but

could a noun become verb?

"complex nouns"

into adjectives? no

the adjective is pure feeling

and thus is it closed

consider the pores:

what can enter and where?

what is channelled and how?

like a mobile or chime

our attention is air

blowing through

pore is a hole

or to pass through

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from the top (9.20.22)

the day I named him ant he lived

and died in griffith park

my cat slept by the folded towels

vanished, at every point

a line, the curves implied

intelligence I remembered

lobbyists

for individuality (that lie)

the hard hike

enough to cry to

song I memorized

he digs his pads

in delicate turns

ass obscuring vision

always forced inside

your fist

#poetry #poems #writing #creative writing #firstdraft #poetry of tumblr #poets of tumblr #creativewriting #tumblr poems #griffith park #cat poems

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I sought the unifying theory (8.10.22, 9.20.22 edit)

all winter through falling water

the sun a brilliant solipsist

a supercool shriek

latticed through ice

my ear to ground

my singing blood

a trusting hand

of thickets

a dream of dust

to come back body

godlike, a traffic king

in shadows

beneath the bridge

I was a baby

in the overflow

of all crimes

I will be a person

forever my skin

announced, iron-stained

like new love

forgetting the before life

I beheld the world

similarities, the green

passing freckled trees

the twisted cheek

and the thank you

#nature poem #poems #creative writing #poetry of tumblr #poemaday #daily poem

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glossolalia (6.1.22)

first coffee then onto logy

breakfast             tooth

cutting sidewalk corners

gummy       lawn strip

glass and shit and dead sperm

USB       unimpacted

lampposts coolly comic

sans   hazel the cat

pet bounty still outstanding     lost Ukrainian

passport seriously

a stranger

story

work at home today a day

collapsing colony like telescope

minding down

my inside    cats lap

cursive attention    hazel charges

Griffith palms

in Midwest tube sock

men inflate and flail

before Chryslers

in LA

lotion fill cracked fe et   

with light   water marbles

girlfriend cheeks says

her rabbit hazel

nibbled lawn       a grassy run

until the hawk

a long short

falling

       uncaught bullet

sky softens

a slow swallowing

twisted glottal

stop

come morning

more glossy

fascist headshots

in the mailbox

#poets of tumblr #poetry #creative writing #poems #los angeles poems #poemblr

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apple box (5.19.22, edit 7.26.22)

offensive

address on

apple box

a sense of

a vantage

advantage

defensive!

a fence is

not a fence

#poetry of tumblr #tricube #poetic form #poems #creative writing #tumblr poets #poets of tumblr

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haiku (3.10.22, edit 7.26.22)

all thought calcified

to cover your weeping wounds

is identity

#haiku #identity #creative writing #poetry #poems #poetry of tumblr #tumblr poets

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in my dream, you rose (edit 7.21.22)

Your face seems dark red

in slow light. I catch the time

in my watch face and turn

to your file, to draw

your dream form.

Mine is I am a rose, a red drop

in blue-green water, the ocean

an edge I make up.

My watch clicks time out

a heart-shape in the light.

You turn to the word

not my dream of water.

Your heart is a light drop

dreaming it is an ocean.

I file down our edges

and make a face in the dark.

catching your water

I drop and you are slow

to catch me. Your face turns

to mine and you watch

my blue face.

I form an organ

to catch your water.

#poetry of tumblr #poems #ocean #creative writing #poets of tumblr

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as above so below (5.18.22, edit 7.18.22)

with a bowlful of fingernails between us

I remember you buckling

like the barstool beneath me

years later. I suck

heads off shrimp

gaze at your captive fish

dancing or trying to escape

as we chew the room

cracking like carapace

your maple wand rests

on the mantle somewhere

beyond irony

for now

I feel relentlessly supported

the spirit is rising

but all I inherited

were two chairs

in my living room

the one no one

bothers to see

you say it was always a physical thing

situating history

as sky darkens

I always aspired

to be

like the sun

#poetry #poems #family #poetry blog #occult #as above so below

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keep up the good name (5.26.22)

I.

dog gone        the house howls

andante in the morning      dear

bending for an hour

over the hill

to casco bay             winding

over open water

in our bedroom of wind I die

every day

blow saxophonic

apologies       sorry

I toured

when the boys were born

they are all your good byes

buy a cottage for two          I'm sure it will do

for the dream girl of theta chi

II.

gutted trout

over newspaper       eye

caught a fly once

shirts dyed                 sink

topped off

lost Paisley

grew mops

dropped majors

to burn my forestry

dreams for you        stay

out of my ashes

not over         the phone

at least           instructive

at last             casting

your pearls to swine

sorry if I ever hurt you

mom               oh no

you were great

fine

III.

final boat unfinished            I sin

to complete you (nonsense

you never believed)

I hear you

in Eileen Myles vowels

body        not warm

after all

if god were real

you’d become a painting

not yellow

you’d deign to appear

in my dreams

you were always writing

obituary         it is what it is

driftwood

still rippling

I forget you screamingly

fast awake

tell me your story

I'm listening

IV.

#poetry #grief poetry #original poems

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coronas 2.17.22 (4.18.21, 1.8.21)

Through digital window I look upon

newly dead and the trees still stand outside.

One shut hour a thwack refracted into bush.

Now open, I hear birdsong all day through

isosceles aperture, terracotta roof

leaning palms and downtown skyline,

sun sunk but last light in mirrored

sighing skyscraper, transmuting

silver gold.

Surreal is to forget

to notice, granting begetting. Close enough

now even light disintegrates, the self less being

and more happening. Outside clouds eclipse moon

and fear, me, equally

revelation and antisepsis,

holy ring and numinous void, vampire

and wailing heart. I can smile staring

down cruel coronas, a small body daring

stand for something great

that only patterning allows

all angles equation;

transformation,

baptism

#coronavirus #quarantine #poem #rewrite #poetry #tumblr writing