Continued Comments, on What Makes a Poet Last

This is copied and pasted from a breif convo via comments over at Stoning the Devil.

Kelly said...
alright. the more i think about specifically what you were getting at here(in that i applied my own more loose context of doubling, as in having layered meaning rather than a secondary character-as-theme) and particular to the idea of impoverished contemporary poetry, and in thinking about my responses to the five questions of the most recent post: what consitutes good poetry?

1:28 PM

P.F.S. Post said...
Good question. There is no definitive answer.

How about answering the question with another question: why have the Romantic "Big Six" lasted?

What traces are in their poems that cannot be effaced?

Adam Fieled

And here is my response, since I felt a little indulgent leaving all this on his blog:

you poor stranger apologies in advance i process and better understand my own thinking/opinions/thoughts by writing, so do pardon this long long rambling response.

isn’t that just it? they were the voice of the undercurrent of their time. in other words not necessarily anti-industry but pro-nature. what the common folk were still about. wordsworth was a pagan for christ’s sake. lyricism was valued not necessarily bc of the eloquence of the soft language but bc it was pro-romance (romance defined here as a style, thus romance the vehicle, used symbolically: style that is anti "mechanics", words on a page symbolic in form of being different then all that is devout/stringent and therefore leading to mechanism/industry.) which makes them no different then the ex-pats in paris that spoke words of the undercurrent after the war, hem and his posse. later allen g and the boys will be huge, too, and lasting. five years ago who the frick was o’hara? but here come more and more of allen g’s stuff to the modern stream and brighter and brighter his posthumous light, longer and longer the shadow of he, and his pals, allure. for real, the ones that stick around are the ones who voice the words of the ppl in the streets. but more importantly they’re the ones with background enough (i’m talking education here, higher-ed, which makes this not a complete convo without talk then of money/classism) to have the connects to get in to the mainstream where the establishment can pick them up and apply aristocratic virtue to them. (here's where i go off on the absent voice of ethnicity in the revered language of contemporary art. the xenophobia and misogyny inherent in this remains then our final frontier--which leads somewhat in to some of my thoughts on your 5 questions…) yea the recession will breed innovation as it always does. but, deconstructionalist as i am, it will be modernism that will deliver us: the internet. where finally the Voice, the voice of all ppl, not just by and large the lasting voice of academic whites (like you and I---eeeeek forgive me, there I said it!!) will have equal-opportunity to level the playing field.

Thanks Adam for allowing that splurge...

From Letters to A Young Poet

Man, I just wrote the longest post ever, the kind that made me feel turned-out from the inside, flexed, stretched, fully-expelled with the hairs of my capillaries outreaching for a dance in the sun. Or the snow storm, as it were.

Guess that's all that really matters, hmmm? Since it got erased when I tried to post it.

That's only happened one other time, a long esoteric post from years ago when I was still on the farm, all about LSD the Merry Pranksters etheric wounds and generational vibrations, and acting our destinies unconsciously from our DNA. Too much witchywisdom at once for one hot shot to the blogosphere!? This post I just lost had secrets that maybe I wasn't really ready to give out...

The snow just started in Easton. I am at the Coffee Cat, writing. In my car is a home-made blueberry pie from the Amish Market. People there, unlike the Acme, or Foodlion or Wal-Mart, unlike the streets of downtown, were mellow, smiley, moving slow.

I am not going to include the links, thoughts and intentions that my post-lost-to-the-ether included. Instead I will give you this, from Letters to A Young Poet by Rilke. And I will say also that the Mama told us this, if we were listening, about the snow. Back September when Fall first got here, under the moon. Farmer's Almanac too says it will come and come through March. Mama says it just cuz we need a good deep rest, lots of time to listen. Which means come Equinox and tide-changing in March, there will follow lots and lots of time to grow....We'll either be prepared, or not!

Fine by me, I'll be writing!

You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must ," then build your life according to this necessity...

Ocean City in the Storm

I thought I'd post something a little different. OC got a foot this weekend. Check out this link. Sounds like we're in for even more tmrw?? Lots of writing for me.......

She aint crazy she right

Here is a poem that I opened up to and just read as means of ritualizing the end of my very productive last two hours of writing writing writing. I like it bc it called out to me, from the same place of illustrious space within where the heart light glows, called out to and moved me in there so that when I opened the book this is the poem that fell out before me.

I like it a ton, also bc it is the theme of my life. In that double sense way all language has that is the very reason I love love love writing-as-art-as-craft-of-life. Or it was the theme of my life, but now, in celebration, no more no more no more....

Poem to end my day, by Sharon Olds

Everything
Most of us are never conceived.
Many of us are never born--
we live in a private ocean for hours,
weeks, with our extra or missing limbs,
or holding our poor second head,
growing from our chest, in our arms. And many of us,
sea-fruit on its stem, dreaming kelp
and whelk, are culled in our early months.
And some who are born live only for minutes,
others for two, or for three, summers,
or four, and when they go, everything
goes--the earth, the firmament--
and love stays, where nothing is, and seeks.

Yup.

Beautiful Friday in Baltimore

For my birthday when I turned 16 my mom dropped off a carfull of me and my friends at some random pad on St. Pauls St in Bmore for a show featuring S.Q.U.I.D. They were formerly Mustard Seed Magic and truly, when I write that I still get a little magic tingle in me that reminds me of sandalwood and vintage stores and Eastern Ave. We got in trouble that night with mom and didn't open our mouths the rest of the drive home because we smelled like beer and weed, even though between the four or five of us there probably was only a six pack and a pinner or two that got finished. But o god that night, the punk rock Xerox's stapled all over the lightpoles, my purple doc martens, all that music that matched the city streets and I remember feeling so cool. But being tough about. It was Baltimore, anarchy dreams, riot grrrl zines, DIY. I mean c'mon, it's way not cool to talk about being cool.

This Friday I have a date with me. I am so stoked about it, Beautiful Friday. I used to do those back in college, my senior year, that first year I was getting clean. I lived upstairs from Amy in CHestertown and sometimes she wouldn't have heat, or electric, and her and her baby would come up and I would feed them on my then-vegetarian-diet of whole grain noodles apples and kale. And blue cheese cuz that's what Amy liked. And since that's what it was, me and Amy trying to stay clean and me and Amy helping each other with that, and also me trying to finish college, and work two jobs all at once, when I read the idea that year about dating me it made real good sense. So that's what I did, and I started calling it Beautiful Fridays and it was the day that was to me, for me, and only me. I guess because back then I didn't have have class on Friday and I remember that I didn't have to work at the coffee shop on Fridays, either. Just Pussers on Friday night, if they needed me/there was money to be made.

So everything superfreakincool that could possibly happen is happening this Friday and I am no longer too cool to talk about it or pretend like I dont care. I am so excited! Me and me, on a date doing way rad free stuff in the city which is my home. Making me not only on my way for a date with me, but with Baltimore, too:

The whole thing started with exhilarated cartwheels over learning about Puss Fust, an all girls exhibition at a gallery called Open Space. But I emailed them to get their hours and found out that they've already started to uninstall. Which would be, or actually still is, a serious bummer except for by the time I'd settled on Beautiful Friday this week I was so glittergoldenbowsin myhairexcited that I couldn't turn back, and so am equally stoked to go instead to the John Waters photo exhibit at C. Grimaldi's. If for some reason you are too un-kitschy or devoid of trashisness and therefor perhaps rather boring, and you dont know who John Waters is, please kindly go here. (Ehem, Sammy.) Then there is the tough choice between this screening at The Patterson, and this reading at Atomic Bookstore. Whaaaaaaa?

I can't even imagine what this beautiful date of mine will choose. What will she wear? I wonder if she'll like me?

I must say, I am looking wildly forward to finding out.