WhimsyLand

Back to this month's Poetry.  Zbigniew Herbert offers up this from Portrait of the Fin de Siècle:  "Ravaged by drugs stifled by a mantle of fumes / the supernova smolders burned to a fiery star / of three evenings — of chaos desire and torment / steps onto the trampoline begins all over again", which has elements of post avant disjunction.  Carl Dennis brings up back down to earth with Birthday:  "Now that the time remaining is insubstantial, / I need to review my history while asking / What exactly it suggest I've lived for, / What pleasures or duties, what moods / Of brief elation or extended calm".  Carl isn't that much older than I, what's with this dour assessment?  A couple of modestly innovative pieces by H. L. Hix.  Harry Clifton describing sheepdogs, skylarks, and Irish meteorological exotica. Nice work by Eleanor Wilner, including a concrete poem featuring the moon, my favorite astronomical object.  Good quick hit by Atsuro Riley, The Roses:  "The house with the nick- and snigger-name  Snort and Grunt. / Shunned trailer-house, (pocked) scorn-burnt.  Side-indented, / thorn-bined, boondocked in a hollow."  I had to smile at Nance Van Winkel's Nest:  "We have a rental car, and thank you, no / we won't get out.  We can see the animals / quite well from here."  Plodding unfortunate ode to the recent war dead by Todd Hearon.

More blogwalking as I debug a WinCE-based N-point video alignment program:  Thanks to Eduardo and Diana for noting this list of poetry contests. My goodness, Laurel is going to have another baby (congrats!).  Ginger reposts a comment she left on this blog, and which I mistakenly deleted.  Matthew gives up the secret recipe to Noodle Pudding with a Difference.  Steven can't find much to like about the Broncos.  It just registered that Kristy Bowen (whom Derek met once at the Columbia library) has a new book out from Ghost Road Press.  I had also failed to notice that RJ has a book out Three Candles Press.  MiPOesias's kicking first issue is out.  Henry sets the philosophical groundwork for the School of Cool Quietude.  Does Richard create all the artwork on his site?  If so, he's amazingly prodigious.  I was reading the blog of my buddy Scoplaw (AKA RJ), who linked me to Robert's summary of the absorptive and anti-absorptive poetry, terms apparently invented by Ron (Robert also mentions getting stuck at the Rejkjavic airport, which happened to me once, but I consoled myself by drinking beer and reading at the world's smallest Hard Rock Cafe inside the terminal).

Robert's usual cogent and matter-of-fact discourse got me thinking again about The Babies and other works that have challenged me — in many cases, in fact, challenged me not to write them off as gratuitous gibberish.  One interesting thesis among RA's arguments is that difficult poetry is preferred by many not because it is difficult, but because it is familiar (as well as aesthetically pleasing).  I can't help but think this is a phenomenon similar to the effect that mathematics has on those unfamiliar with it.  There are many texts that Junie, for example, just gets way quicker than I (the work of Carl Phillips come to mind).  Conversely, the last time she saw the page of Laplace equations, her eyes glazed over at the sight of all those squigglies.  But, math and science are a different thing altogether, you might be mumbling under your breath right now.  Are they?  I wonder.  When I see

e^iП + 1 = 0

I marvel that Euler could have discovered (and God knows how) an equation that combines the five most important numbers in mathematics (and only those five — talk about concision).  When I read a particularly elegant algorithm, so much of the structure and components are familiar to me that I can appreciate the beauty of both what is being described and the mind behind it.