Category Archives: precision

POET Gjertrude Schnackenberg

26 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in book awards, Poetry, precision, word-dancing

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You don’t have to be brilliant to read Gjertrude Schnackenberg’s poetry – but you do need to surrender to her word music! Her new book, Heavenly Questions, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2011 (paperback), is a set of six linked long poems written in iambic pentameter –  a pulsing drumbeat of syllables – blank verse enriched by occasional rhyme. She comments: “…poetry is an effort to communicate meaning. It’s doing it through feeling and emotion rather than through the ideas it presents.”*

 “It is perhaps the most powerful elegy written in English by any poet in recent memory, and it is a triumphant consummation of Schnackenberg’s own work.” Carl Kirchway 
 

The emphasis in the Web reviews is her stunning elegy for her husband. For me the real beauty is in her confident stride even more than the content; it is the way she travels with words– entrancing the reader by means of iambic pentameter, that     –/  –/   –/  –/  –/ rhythm, which does to the mind what riding a camel or a horse does to the body.  Schnackenberg’s poems avoid both the archaic as well as distortion in the natural order of words, which – in less skilled hands – leads to the feeling of ‘manufactured’ lines.

…Reading this book is like reading the ocean, its swells and furrows, its secrets fleetingly revealed and then blown away in gusts of foam and spray or folded back into nothing but water. Heavenly Questions demands that we come face to face with matters of mortal importance, and it does so in a wildly original music that is passionate, transporting, and heart-rending... Judges Citation, Griffin Poetry Prize.

She carries an invisible inherited poetry: the blank verse vehicle of Shakespeare’s plays, of  Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” I’ve been in the light rain of meter and occasional rhyme most of this year now, and all but  well-written free verse strikes my ear as dry or un-musical. What happened to that ancestral rhythm and rhyme that rocks us? Musicians and Spoken Word artists have picked it up in this dominant  culture of un-formal poetry, but now with Schnackenberg and AE Stallings too, here is poetry in form, a read that’s fresh, yet carries the ancestral link forward. Here is a taste of the nearly 6 page poem “Fusiturricula Lullaby,” from Heavenly Questions. (Fusiturricula is pronounced few-see-tur-IK-ula – a sea snail).

 A shell appears––Fusiturricula––
And uses its inherited clairvoyance
To plot a logarithmic spiral round
An axis of rotation evermore
And evermore forevermore unseen….
 

This triple repetition coils the reader through the shell. She often uses repetition  as a climactic devise in her long poems. She says: “Repetition can be hypnotic.”* Trance-like. In the poem of her husband’s death, “Venus Velvet No. 2,”  six pages into the poem  she begins the negation –no one, nothing,  never, never again, and not, not; then the negative goes further with unscrolling, unwheeling, historyless, and nothing less. You can see her life with her husband unwinding to its conclusion, without the least bit of sentimentality. The result is paradoxically beautiful and haunting. Blank verse serves the longer poems well. •  If you are a poetry lover, read Heavenly Questions. It’s elevated enchantment. <>

*AUDIO INTERVIEW – [This one is great!] from the series: New Letters on the Air (30 minutes): <http://www.prx.org/pieces/60701-poet-gjertrud-schnackenberg&gt;

VIDEO FILM CLIP: < http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2011-shortlist/gjertrud-schnackenberg&gt;

The following are links to other Web sites with information about poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. (Note: All links to external Web sites open in a new browser window.)

West Chester University Poetry Conference, 2011

19 Sunday Jun 2011

Posted by in Events, Poetry, precision, Toni Blackman, West Chester Poetry Conference

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When you google the WCUPC, it’s not easy to find. Even spelling it out, you might come across phrases like, “Traditional Poetic Craft.” TPC is a password for the door, if there was a door, that reads: Enter to Study with the Formalists.  Once inside the workshop, you’ll discover the metrical music and the rhythms of poetry are squeezed into technical vocabulary  –– tetrameter, scansion, numbers of feet per line. Cut a line and you have a hemstitch.  Enjambment is to be used with care, so as not to take away the impact of the pentameter in a sonnet. Iambic pentameter carries the load of centuries of poetry with it, and is perfect for shouting  from a stage, as in Shakespearian theater. (Thanks, Andrew!)

Kim Addonizio reading

Here you can stock up on implements for the tool kit that aids precision in writing. The intricate formal dance of poetics is not for the timid writer. Timothy Steele, word-master and workshop leader, writes: Knowledge of meter will promote a surer ear for rhythm and will alert one to useful arrangements of sound and speech. This view begins to color how I perceive the music and organization of the poetic phrase. I feel as though I’ve been drawn into the Tango dance world by an expert dancer, and now all I hear and see is Tango… Here are some champions of the art worth dancing with.

Robert Frost. A favorite  of mine is Acquainted with the Night – in flawless terza rima pentameter.

Richard Wilber is a wonderful poet, and was celebrated at the conference for his ninetieth birthday. The Ride, takes the reader on a ride with the short three and four foot lines: …I rode with magic ease/ At a quick, unstumbling trot,/ Through shattering vacancies/ On into what was not….

A.E. Stallings (Alicia) is a young and esteemed poet. Her poems are terrific; she balances a relaxed flow with traditional elements, as in this from  Lullaby near the Railroad Tracks: Go back to sleep. The hour is small./ A freight train between stations/ shook you out of sleep with all/  it’s lonely ululations…            [see interview link below.]

Kim Bridgford*, Conference Director, is attentive, friendly, and was a constant presence. I enjoyed seeing her take in each event with grace and openness. It turns out Kim was in The class I took at WCU in 2004 with Fred Chappell. In my notes, I came across this poem she workshopped, then included in her book: Instead of Maps.                     

From her sonnet: Robert Frost: You seemed to know the most about the dark,/ But softened it so we would listen, still/ As leaves before they show they’re vulnerable/ To wind. You seemed to know the grief of work,/ And also joy depending on the weather…

I want to commend Kim for bringing together the Hip-hop / Rap community and the conference poets. Russel Goings, author and crusader for black empowerment, said in the panel, Anthology of Rap– “Do we have a marriage here?”(of genres). He was answered by the commentator, Farai Chideya (multimedia journalist on TV and radio), “I think it’s a first date.” The “rhythm and words folks” from New York City, especially the amazing Freestyle Queen, Toni Blackman – Musical Ambassador, performer and writer – brought fresh, delicious word music. From her website: “She’s all heart, all rhythm, all song, all power, a one-woman revolution of poetry and microphone. An award-winning artist, her steadfast work and commitment to hip-hop led the U.S. Department of State to select her to work as the first ever hip-hop artist to work as an American Cultural Specialist.” May Toni be back next year, teaching and sharing the difference, for example, between RAP and SPOKEN WORD.

The Hip Hop / Rap folks including Toni Blackman (L), Andrew DuBois, Russel Goings (blue shirt), and Farai Chideya with Kim Bridgeford

I’m going to be following the direction of the conference with interest. And, it’s time to get Patricia Smith on faculty! Thumbs up for WCUPC.
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*Kim Bridgford, is the editor of the online magazine Mezzo Cammin (www.mezzocammin.com), and the founder of the Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, launched last year at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington; it will eventually be the largest database of women poets in the world. She is the author of five collections of poetry: Undone, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Instead of Maps, nominated for the Poets’ Prize, and others.
 

More on these people: Youtube Toni Blackman: “Hip-hop is tagging your heart, not walls….”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0M67j2oA0&feature=related

Interview with AE Stallings: < http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/19/stallings19.html&gt;

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PRECISION –––

16 Monday May 2011

Posted by in DJ AM, Jacques d'Ambois, Poetry, precision

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Light show on City Hall,San Francisco 2010

I’ve re-done this blog post dozens of times. Precision takes practice……..

This visual was made by 4 very expensive projectors from Obscura Digital  tec company during the Black and White Ball last spring. My son, Ammon, works for Obscura. Their technology is mind boggling. Here is the equipment, worth around 2oo grand. Their reputation with light and color is built on edgy modern precision.Obscura's projectors

The book, I was a Dancer, by Jacques d’Amboise is my current favorite read. He tells this story about precision that I love. The set up: he’s teaching 100 kids.  “All one hundred of you have exactly 30 seconds to get out of your chairs and move to the stage. But when you arrive, spread out and hold still. But – no noise, like ghosts.” It doesn’t happen. “They run, yelling and giggling… You failed the test. There was noise and most of you got there too soon… They usually get it the second time.” He congratulates them. “Once the children see that we are having a class of precision, order, and respect, they are relieved. It’s the beginning of dance. Precision and exactness are steps toward  truth.”p. 366.

Precision. In the arts, in life.



an inlayed tile from the Taj Mahal


The Precision of Pain      by Yehuda Amichai/ trans. Chana Bloch
The precision of pain and the blurriness of joy. I'm thinking 

how precise people are when they describe their pain in a doctor's office.

Even those who haven't learned to read and write are precise:

"This one's a throbbing pain, that one's a wrenching pain,

this one gnaws, that one burns, this is a sharp pain

and that––a dull one. Right here. Precisely here,

yes, yes." Joy blurs everything. I've heard people say

after nights of love and feasting, "It was great,

I was in seventh heaven." Even the spaceman who floated

in outer space, tethered to a spaceship, could say only, "Great,

wonderful, I have no words."

The blurriness of joy and the precision of pain — 

I want to describe, with a sharp pain's precision, happiness


and blurry joy. I learned to speak among the pains.


~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~










Zuleikha


W.S. Merwin had it about right when he spoke of the insufferable need for precision. He said, “Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you’ve lost the whole thing.”


Gustave Flaubert had a different way of saying the same thing: “Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.” Conrad Geller


“What (Emily) Dickenson sought to achieve in poetry was, a mathematical accuracy applied to human “ardor and grief.” “All of Dickenson’s poetry,” comments Helen Vendler, “is an attempt to fix precision… on a maelstrom of emotion.”  Because I could not stop for death –– /He kindly stopped for me––/ The carriage held but just ourselves––/ And immortality… [Emily Dickenson, poem #712].


the late, great DJ AM


I am planning to attend the WCU formalist poetry conference in Pennsylvania the beginning of June. I’m going to study meter with Timothy Steele. Sonnets and Iambic Pentameter. Hard stuff for a poet not in school. <>


Masters of Precision:


DJ AM comes to mind here. Precisely.  He took rhythm and music into another dimension…


In the world of drum rhythm there is the Indian-born Tabla Master, who lives in Marin County, California, Zakir Hussain and the American trap drummer who grew up in Marin, Terry Bozzio.


The wonderful Zakir Hussain is the best in the world at what he does. Here is what some reviewers have said of him: tabla drum master with intricate, continually nuanced rhythms, virtuoso, intuitive player, uses swift, precise, rhythmic articulation... These words are far from the experience. Poetry serves better.


Zakir Hussain


Terry Bozzio is a favorite drummer. I like this description of Terry Bozzio’s drumming by Ryan Baker. <www.precisiondrumming.com> (commentary on the drum solo in the song, “I will Protect you.”) It’s like the split second lift at the crest of a roller coaster, or the feeling you get just as your parachute catches. The fury is the heart of the solo… Toward the end, when the rhythm simply can’t go any faster, he again creates an illusion that it does by the rate of movement between different instruments, particularly between the snare and those tiny splashes in front of his face.


Terry Bozzio


And I might add, that I have had similar experience listening to Zakir, but you gotta hear it and feel it in your body! Words can only take you so far. But precision can take you further than most anything.


PRECISION. Pay attention to where it shows up in your life. <>  <>  <>