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In your poem, "Decoder Ring," there is a surface tone that is
humorous. However, an implicit message also exists that implies the
absurdity of advertisement in America and the effects it can have on
human consciousness. Do you believe commercials/advertisements
increase feelings of nihilism in our culture?
Nihilism is a
sales pitch itself. We once walked the earth with Te Deums in our
heads. Now it’s a Ford Truck jingle. But we don’t have to buy into
that nihilism, anymore than we have to buy that hairspray.
As I’ve gotten
older an interesting thing has happened to me. For forty years, I
have carried in my head the advertisements I saw on television as a
child. Nothing is more nostalgic to me than thinking about the White
Tornado or remembering that Winston tastes good LIKE a cigarette
should. Talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Summer of Love,
if you will, but my true sense memories of that time are the hymns
of our sponsors. Mock commericals in Mad magazine seemed the
ultimate subversion to me then, but now they seem more like homage.
Open your hymnals to song number 101, & sing with us in unison,
“Onward K-Mart Shoppers.”
I seem to be
making a big joke of it. In a way, it is; humor is a great teller of
truth. I came to write this poem when I realized that it was more
than a joke. It was one way to speak the true name of the world I
grew into.
Roethke once wrote, "The serious problems of life are never fully
solved but some states can be resolved rhythmically." You write
formal verse as well as free verse. Does this statement apply to
your work? Do you agree or disagree with Roethke? Why?
I’m in
whole-hearted agreement.
For one thing, assuming there are problems we ever solve [i]fully[/i],
they come but once. We figure them out; we move on & forget them.
That second math problem on your Freshman year midterm – the one you
got right – do you remember it now? Does it deserve to be called
“serious”?
The problems we dwell on are the ones that keep coming back,
unsolved, insolvent. The problem of being true to the one you love,
the expectations that fall short, the feeling that time is running
out. The moment we live in is itself an insoluble problem. If you’re
a philosophical type, these become big philosophical questions –
“What is the nature of being, what is the nature of non-being, &
why.” If you’re poetical, these become odes & intimations.
One thing we know for sure about these problems is that they do
return, & that we will try to answer the riddle once again, a new
answer, a new experience each time, & this outward spiral of Q & A
is what gives life its rhythm.
I think of
poetry in alchemical terms (you can thank St. Rimbaud for that). The
alchemical process is summed up in the motto “solve et coagula,”
dissolving & coagulating, analysis & synthesis. You don’t create
something out of nothing, a truism that’s eternally relevant to
poetry. You break apart the roadblock before you, then put the
pieces back together in a new way, redefining the question. You
change the world, & the world changes you. A poem is a seismograph
of that transformation.
Roethke goes
on to say we can resolve some states rhythmically. To resolve these
“states” rhythmically is to make one rhythmical statement after
another. Poetry doesn’t necessarily answer any problem for all time;
it merely replicates the give & take of brief certainty &
reoccurring doubt. This idea of rhythm reminds me of Robert Pinsky’s
comment that any given poem is one poet’s answer to what the poet
perceives as a set of problems, the so-called situation of the poem.
He goes on to say that bad poetry is what happens when someone
applies an old answer to a new problem. A bad poet would not be
listening honestly to the real rhythm of the moment.
I don’t think Roethke was speaking of formal verse, or making a
direct connection between “rhythm,” as he uses the term here, &
meter. But formal verse does contain this “solve et coagula” pattern
in every aspect, from the repetition of so many feet per line, to
the challenges solved & resolved by rhyme, & even in the use of a
particular form which both returns to & departs from its use in the
hands of poets past. One could say the formal poet reenacts the
riddle & the answer ritualistically. Every syllable reminds the poet
that he or she is retying the Gordian knot, casting a spell in hopes
of solving whatever problem is at hand – not the final answer, but
the right answer for this poem.
Who are you currently reading and how are they influencing your
style?
Although I
often buy whole books by new poets, I do most of my keeping up on
the contemporary scene through magazines, such as Poetry, the
Georgia Review, Kenyon. Lately, I’ve enjoyed the return of some old
favorites on those stages. Norman Dubie has some work in the new
Georgia, sharp as ever. Levine, Stern, Hicok, all have work in the
same issue (LVIII #2). The latest number of lyric poetry review (#6)
has quite a few good poems, if I may say (seeing as I’m an associate
editor there), but it’s our selection from Hayden Carruth’s “Letters
to Jane” (Jane Kenyon,) which I find most challenging. He just talks
about the things around him, grass cutting slewing out of a passing
lawnmower, the rain, the radio. He could almost be oblivious to the
situation of his reader, the fact that she’s suffering the cancer
that will kill her, & yet everything he throws into the mix is
somehow comforting & revealing. Oblivious or artful.
One thing I try to answer in my reading, a question which is
certainly unanswerable, is what governs the rules of engagement,
what is the relationship of disclosure to the workings of sympathy.
I’ve been rereading Lowell, an obvious choice, & I notice right away
that he does not really disclose anything more than being guilty of
the human condition. He throws in his family history or the
particulars of a European vacation, & eventually bits & pieces of
personal correspondence, & yet these disclosures are not – to me –
distancing. I feel they do a lot to make him human, even through the
formal gymnastics, which mark him throughout his development.
I’m asking the
same questions as I reread Vendler’s study notes on Shakespeare’s
sonnets, a daily exercise. Naturally, I find Shakespeare (in the
sonnets) short on disclosure, yet he manages to incite a genuine
sympathy, often by the making of promises or claims he cannot
seriously believe. He makes a clear denunciation of “false compare,”
yet he commits the same fault again & again. A calculated failure,
perhaps, but if it’s a literary device, it’s more savvy than using
standard hyperbole or metaphor to show off one’s poetic skills. I
find there is a lot left in the standard literary canon for us to
work from today – if only we don’t approach them as unassailable
giants. I don’t like to see Vendler bend over backwards in praise of
some of the really mediocre sonnets (#70, #80).
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