poetry – Page 2 – Clara Hsu

Winter Thoughts

It’s easy to give up. I did, after a year of blogging, simply stopped. Somehow my lack of sleep and the storm outside make me feel isolated from the world. The house is quiet. The cats are curled up next to the heater, burning their fur and noses. Hello!

This is not just another winter. The end of the world came and went. We wondered, rejoiced, and also wept for the dead children in Newtown. The meaning of Christmas, however, is still shopping.

Christmas dinner: everyone has some kind of diet restrictions.

When I was young I didn’t care to go home for the holidays. Now I miss my children but understand that they have to share their time with others. We play musical chairs.

Tying up loose ends. Binding books. The year is all in the poetry.

Image from fotolia.com

The Consciousness of Words

Mallarme to Degas: “Poems have to do with words, not ideas.”

If words are like music notes, how is a poem written?

Consider a word: its meaning, etymology,size, shape, sound, color, rhythm, effect, strength, and weakness. How does a word look on a page? How does it move and sound in space, appear and disappear; how does it jam and set apart from others?

If words are like music notes, then poems may be written not for their connection of things or feelings. Meanings would have to be derived from the synthesis of sound, with each word contributing to their shades and dynamics. Reading a poem would be an active production of sound instead of someone sitting quietly in a chair leafing through a book—imagine an audience leafing through a music score in the absence of an orchestra.

Words—alive in all possibilities, with poetry their vessel.

The Edge of the Paper

What do you do when you reach the right margin? What to do if you don’t want to turn back to the page but keep going? Alas the limitation of a piece of paper!

Is the poetic expression controlled by the size of a piece of paper? Or should the paper find a way to accommodate the expression? If words fall off the edge of the paper (Is it allowed?) where will they go? Who will catch them?

“Beethoven wrote a sonata that was out of the piano’s range of his time.” Composer Henry Cowell said in an interview regarding Charles Ives, “Some composers write for instruments as they find them. Others insist that one be built for the music they hear in their mind.”

Submit Submit

“How do you get published?” Someone asked.

“You submit.”

That’s the bottom line. It’s easy to say but it takes just as much discipline to send out a poem as to write one. (Much of the time, writing is easier than sending.) I have failed this particular new year resolution time and again; failed to submit even just once a month. What’s the problem? Submission is not poetry. It is work of the tedious kind: reading requirements, guidelines, following directions, licking stamps, etc. And when the rejection letters come in, they reaffirm my reason for not submitting.

Occasionally I get excited when the ad says contest winner gets to give a reading. I am a sucker for such privilege. It gets me going and dreaming a little. It’s good to dream.

Image taken from: pcmailingservices.com

Duino Elegies

The lament of existence? Or the lament of not appreciating one’s existence? The confusion of relationships, society’s mandates, and one’s own conflicting feelings about what’s real and what’s not? On reading the ten Duino Elegies at Jannie Dresser’s salon we were drawn into the complexity of Rainer Maria Rilke’s mind.

Though we were constantly reminded of mortality, in the “short hour” we called “life”—perhaps not quite so much as an hour…the most visible joy can only reveal itself to us when we’ve transformed it, within. (Seventh Elegy.) The astonishment one encounters when being touched by a lover for the very first time—when you’ve once withstood the startled first encounter, the window-longning, and that first walk, just once, through the garden together: Lovers, are you the same? (Second Elegy); Rilke is asking us to take note of changes and change our lives.

There were audible sighs after the last word was read. The afternoon was made heavy.

Wandering Nights

Into the world of dragons and monsters, knights and kings, nature and the super natural. These were boyhood dreams and realities. When Lawrence was little, my ex-husband brought home J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit—his favorite when he was a child—and gifted his son with his first fantasy novel.

Lawrence went on to explore that world in video games, a different medium with keyboard and fast thumbs. The fantasy characters have grown to include the Orient and aliens from space.

Only now have I crossed the ocean, from The Monkey King (my childhood’s favorite) to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The medium has also changed, from prose to poetry.

“Butcher!”

I saw poetry butchered on a stage, chopped into pieces and tossed to the audience. I heard it gasped and struggled for breaths but no one came to its rescue. The onslaught trampled down century by century, smearing the names of poets, destroying the pleasure, the intrigue, the wonder, the art that is poetry.

The butcher asked for audience participation. The audience participated. The butcher asked for sing-along. The audience sang along. The butcher bowed humbly, thanked everyone for their undivided attention. The audience clapped as the lifeblood of poetry spilled onto the floor as red as the carpet.

It is finished. The stain on the butcher’s sleeve is all but noticeable. The stain on poetry is spreading.

An Anglo-Saxon Page-Turner

There’s nothing like a page-turner. It gets the adrenaline going. It takes me on a journey and makes me forget about a lot of things, like meals, chores, and appointments, etc.. For once, there is no lingering on a sentence or trying to make sense of what is on the page. I am suddenly a reader who understands every word I read and that makes me feel good. Furthermore, it is POETRY! How can that be possible? Poetry, a page-turner?

It is entirely possible when reading Seamus Heaney’s translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. It is like a Dan Brown novel, action packed with the hero slaying a menacing troll, the hero slaying the troll’s mother, the hero battling with a dragon, etc.. The story unfolds, line by line, quickly and seamlessly. But is that why I read poetry?

In the original Old English text, each line has a clear pause in the middle. This text is placed side by side with Heaney’s translation so the archaic structure is apparent. Heaney mostly ignored the pause except for an occasional song or poem within the poem. He tells the story in poetic prose and indeed has created a page-turner. But the value of Beowulf is in the movement of the poem—the rhythms, and how stories were told in the 7th Century. The plot is only a story. The movement is life.

What Poets Want

Jens-Ferdinand-Willumsen _Sophus-Clausssen-reading-poems_1915_Aarhus — Jens Ferdinand Willumsen: Sophus Clausssen Reading Poems 1915

What poets want is to be heard. As Owen Dunkel said, “I love my poetry.” Most poets will read at the open mike forever if they are not stopped by the clock. Sometimes even the clock cannot stop them. This phenomenon, however, is not unique to poets. Artists and musicians have the same craving. “Such exhibitionists,” commented Joseph Flummerfelt, choir conductor. To meld all the voices into one without the singers trying to outdo each other is a tough job. Deep down inside every choir member wants to be the soloist.

When it comes to sharing our arts we have little self control. Time is for others to keep.

Puzzling Poetry

poetry puzzle — Poetry Cloud by Aaron Geiger

There was one summer, when my children were being tutored in Berkeley, that I worked on a lot of jigsaw puzzles in the waiting room. The challenge was entirely visual. After a while I figured out a system of approach, and the pieces fell into place quite easily.

Consider the invention of writing was initially regarded as secret codes possessed by the privileged few, poetry is like a puzzle too. Metaphors, puns, visual clues, stresses and form are some of the tools to create multiple imageries and meanings. It is theater. It is a secret letter. It is an open invitation to play.

To find the key: observe.