[FLASH – The poetry issue  of  The Sound will be posted here as a pdf on Monday, January 12.]

On Nonsense and Metaphor, by Philip Dacey

 T.S. Elliot believed the modern inclination is for what he terms “melodious raving.” We tolerate poets, he said, who don’t know exactly what they are saying but manage to say well whatever it is they are saying, who sound good and sound well…

 Nonsense is the vehicle of the unconscious. The unconscious is revolutionary. Leaping poetry and deep imagist poetry are nonsense poetry. Robert Bly: “There ought to be a National Crazy Day once a year when we could all act crazy and stop putting the burden of our craziness on other people, who get so much of it they wind up institutionalized.” Nonsense poetry is equivalent to cleaning up your own mess. Yeats’ Crazy Jane and Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer are eating their own grief…

 Nonsense is an option at any point in the composition of a poem. It may or may not be exercised. It is a wrong turning that is a right turning.

New Yorker magazine poetry event. October

Metaphor is nonsense. Nonsense is metaphor. “Nonsense as a critical activity is and is about change; is an aspect of and is about the ongoing nature of social process.” (Susan Stewart, Nonsense.) It constitutes a challenge to the established order that has become disordered by reason of its being established, an unresponsive institution. “You must change your life.” [the last line from Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo. Here are the first lines describing Apollo’s statue: ]

 We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low

gleams in all its power…

 Rilke’s angels are agents of nonsense. Nonsense poetry is not coterminous with light verse. The disenfranchised gravitate to nonsense, instinctually. The lingo of subcultures is a retreat that is simultaneously the forging of a weapon for self-empowerment.

“…poetry is a game of chicken played with words instead of automobiles. The aim is to steer as close as possible to nonsense without hitting it.”

[excerpts from “In Praise of Nonsense,” published in Milkweed Chronicle: A Journal of Poetry and Graphics (Fall 1980).

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Philip Dacey, author of ten books of poetry as well as many chapbooks, lives in New York City. He earned a B.S. from St. Louis University in 1961, an M.A. from Stanford in 1967, and a M.F.A. in 1970 from the University of Iowa. Dacey served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria in the mid 1960s and has taught at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, Miles College, and Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota. In 1985 Dacey was a distinguished poet in residence at Wichita State University. Awards include a Fulbright lectureship in creative writing in Yugoslavia (1988); two National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowships (1975, 1980); YM-YWHA’s Poetry Center Discovery Award (1974); three Pushcart Prizes for poetry (1977, 1982, 2001); first prizes for poems in Yankee, Poet and Critic, Prairie Schooner, and Kansas Quarterly, and many regional awards. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Esquire, The Nation, American Review, Paris Review. His books include The Deathbed Playboy (Eastern Washington U. Press,

1999), The Mystery of Max Schmitt: Poems on the Life and Work of Thomas Eakins (Turning Point, 2004), and The New York Postcard Sonnets: A Midwesterner Moves to Manhattan (Rain Mountain Press, 2007). He also co-edited, with David Jauss, the anthology: Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms (Harper & Row, 1986). 

(written by Tamam for the Seven Pillars inauguration weekend)

No less than the prophets, Hagar speaks

He had to take us there, way out in Beersheba,
the land of nothing. His face was a hungry moon,
gaunt and white. He couldn’t look at me.

A woman doesn’t start a nation with a baby
and a mule; not alone she doesn’t, so Sarah helped
with her story of that jealousy that pushed me out

like I pushed Ishmael. I knew before my baby came.
I’d seen the well, foresaw
the black stone, had the tearing pain,

the time of doubt. I ran between
the hills, but that was in a vision. After that the time
had come to run and I was fierce

and mad with thirst for all I left behind and
as I ran I yelled at God, I called on God,
I said – Give it and hold nothing back. After Ishmael

unearthed the Well of Zamzam with his heel,
after the caravans found us, after Mecca
burst awake around us, after

Abraham returned to wake the Ka’ba,
then I could relax. My gift from God
is larger than I am. I doubt they mention it.

It’s plain, pinned at both shoulders,
the woman’s hair and face talcumed with dust.
A revolution, exile –
she, rumpled and threadbare,
ahead: a decade of colorless fabric, rough
patches. What does a wife wear
or a daughter
while she changes history?

Something nice, like the tunic
pictured in a textile manuscript,
excavated with tweezers,
flattened and guessed at,
a linen shift with dark woven bands,
running shoulder to hem.

You make up the colors, then see them
brighten in a washing tub, her hands
twisting and wringing out the cloth.

Now see her pull it over her head and arms,
then work it down her wet braids and body
as it settles with a shrug.
Dripping and decorated. Cooler.
Water birds with red legs are hand stitched
in bands at the wrist.
She can walk to the market like this,
barefoot and dripping.

Dress code came later.

cloud for Asma'

This is for you, girl —
sent home to the Najd with two white dresses;
when the month of June was over.
You, the pretty one who calls herself the wretch.

This is for the girl — that’s you,
who never got to touch
her husband’s hand
or even be kissed by him.

This is for you, girl —
the fool in a word trap. Trapped.
On your wedding day
you repeat the phrase
his youngest wife, Aisha, said
would make him love you
more. But look, his arm flies up
to hide his face,
and then he’s gone.

This is for you, Asma’ bint al-Numan ibn Abil-Jawn
Mrs. Muhammad until you die.
The fall
is lifelong, to the knees.

(last line is by poet Heather McHugh)