Jose Angel Araguz's Blog, page 28
August 18, 2017
shameless with hayden carruth
I found this week’s poem reading through The Seleced Poetry of Hayden Carruth (Macmillan, 1985). In his introduction, Galway Kinnell quotes Carolyn Kizer’s response to the question of what it takes to be a poet: “It is necessary to be absolutely shameless.” There are many things this could mean. For one, Carruth was writing at a time when the term “confessional” was rooting itself into the poetic landscape. But there is more to what Kizer means than gossip, per se. There is a depth of feeling to Carruth’s work that is tapped into indirectly.
[image error]An example of what I mean can be found below. The narrative of “In Memoriam” is straightforward through the first six lines; the stoking of a fire in winter described in these lines grounds the poem in physicality. The repetition of the word “suddenly” in line six, however, marks a turn from the physical to the emotional. The speaker goes on to describe reading the poems of a recently deceased poet in the same straightforward manner as the fire, only this act of reading coincides with an increase of heat in the room. This coinciding blurs the physical and emotional in a shameless way; the heat that overwhelms the speaker is evoked on both levels. Rather than state his grief directly, the poem moves on carrying the charge of these blurred states through imagery. The admission (or confession) in these lines, however, occurs in the clarity of each line, and rings out because of it.
In Memoriam – Hayden Carruth
This warmish night of the thaw
in January a beech chunk
smoldering in my Herald
No. 22A box stove suddenly
takes fire and burns
hot, or rather I suddenly
who was reading the sweet
and bitter poems of Paul
Goodman dead last summer
am aware how my shed
becomes a furnace, and taking
my shovel I ladle
a great mush of snow
into the stove’s mouth
to quieten it
and then step quickly
outside again to watch
the plume of steam rise
from my stovepipe straightly
and vanish into mist.
*
Happy misting!
José
August 11, 2017
marvin bell & monopoem giveaway
Obsessive – Marvin Bell
It could be a clip, it could be a comb;
it could be your mother, coming home.
It could be a rooster; perhaps it’s a comb;
it could be your father, coming home.
It could be a paper; it could be a pin.
It could be your childhood, sinking in.
The toys give off the nervousness of age.
It’s useless pretending they aren’t finished:
faces faded, unable to stand,
buttons lost down the drain during baths.
Those were the days we loved down there,
the soap disappearing as the water spoke,
saying, it could be a wheel, maybe a pipe;
it could be your father, taking his nap.
Legs propped straight, the head tilted back;
the end was near when he could keep track.
It could be the first one; it could be the second;
the father of a friend just sickened and sickened.
from Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000 (Copper Canyon Press, 2000)
This week’s poem is impressive in the way it works the theme of obsession via sound and rhyme. The first stanza is pretty straightforward with its end rhymes; tension is created within each line, however, by the subtle use of consonance within each line (“clip” “comb” “mother” “home” “paper” “pin”). Obsession is implied in the use of the word “it” to open each line. The poem departs from this structure, repetition, and rhyme in the second stanza. The voice then becomes clearer, distanced. This distance and interruption then makes the return to rhyme in the third stanza all the more dramatic. This last stanza’s rhymes, however, are slant/off (“pipe” “nap” “second” “sickened”). This fraying of the preciseness of the first stanza brings the poem back into the immediacy of obsession, with the poem’s ending adding more possibilities to what “it could be” rather than resolving the obsessive meditation.
[image error][image description: an ink and pencil sketch of three marbles]
This particular poem compliments my latest Mosca Dragón monopoem which features my poem “Canicas” from my book, Small Fires (FutureCycle Press) which also dwells on childhood memory.
This new monopoem also features the ink and pencil sketch shown here and will be sent along to the 10 winners of the Small Fires Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to all who entered!
I have a small number of extra copies of this monopoem, so if you are interested in receiving a copy of this monopoem, send an email to thefridayinfluence@gmail.com
Happy marbling!
José
August 4, 2017
blurring via bei dao
Sometimes a poem blurs the line between where one is and what one feels in a fruitful way. In Bei Dao’s “The Boundary,” one sees this kind of blurring happen in the repetition of the phrase “I want to go to the other bank” and the images between them. The repeated phrase has the directness of desire and logic, which is tested by the images of the river “altering” both sky and speaker. These observations lead up to the repetition of the opening phrase, which, in being repeated, feels like an attempt to counter the altering just implied.
[image error]As the poem develops its ending, the image of a pigeon flying towards the speaker is another observation, another thing altering what is in the poem, and completely interrupting the desire of the opening phrase. The image of the pigeon is one of action; the boundary of the title, then, can be seen as being between this active reaction to the world and the more passive, internal (re)action of observing and desiring that is poetry.
The Boundary – Bei Dao
I want to go to the other bank
The river water alters the sky’s colour
and alters me
I am in the current
my shadow stands by the river bank
like a tree struck by lightning
I want to go to the other bank
In the trees on the other bank
a solitary startled wood pigeon
flies towards me
translated by Bonnie S. McDougall from THE AUGUST SLEEPWALKER
*
Happy banking!
José
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Small Fires
by Jose Angel Araguz
Giveaway ends August 10, 2017.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
July 31, 2017
microreview: Gabriela Aguirre’s La isla de tu nombre
This week’s microreview features Gabriela Aguirre’s La isla de tu nombre and is presented first in English (with translations of the Spanish), followed by a full Spanish translation of the microreview. Special thanks to Veliz Books editor Laura Cesarco Eglin for her great help with translations of the poems and prose.
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review by José Angel Araguz
review translation by José Angel Araguz with Laura Cesarco Eglin
Un pie sobre la mesa,
un par de manos,
un nudo hecho de sílabas y dedos.
Un pronombre nuevo para mí
porque nunca lo dije con amor,
contigo en la mitad del nombre:
pequeña mía.
Y una canción que suena en mis oídos
para que la bailemos en mi cabeza
cuando lo terrible.
Un árbol crece despacio
–y quiero que lo sepas.
A foot on the table,
a pair of hands,
a knot made of syllables and fingers.
A new pronoun for me
because I never said it with love,
with you in the middle of the name:
my darling.
And a song that rings in my ears
so we can dance to it in my head
when the terrible.
A tree grows slowly
–and I want you to know.
La isla de tu nombre (Veliz Books) by Gabriela Aguirre begins with this short, intimate lyric balanced between the tangible and intangible. The move from the “foot” and “hands” of the first two lines into “a knot made of syllables and fingers” moves the poem directly into this duality; the word “knot” also implies both sexual tension (knot as in the knot of the bodies) and other tensions (that of language, that between two people). This move is returned in the line “And a song that rings in my ears / so we can dance to it in my head” which brings the meditation into the body itself. This interiority leads to the final two lines, which compare the speaker’s inner world to the growth of the tree. Yet, unlike the tree, this speaker can reach out from this inner world to let the beloved “know” about it. The way a love relationship can make such knots, and the way poetry can help evoke them, is at the center of this manuscript.
The dualities, begun in the “island / name” of the collection’s title, serve as a key into the world of Aguirre’s poems. The distant and solitary implication of an island is reckoned with the personal nature of a name. This focus on language and how it charges the (in)tangible is further explored in “Rayar los libros, glosar lo escrito.”:
Rayar los libros, glosar lo escrito.
Me enseñaste a hacer anotaciones al margen
para no olvidar lo importante.
Nunca antes rayé los libros,
querida mía.
¿Cómo tendría cara para abrirlos después
y encontrarlos alterdos
por mis frases y mis interrogaciones?
No quiero encontrar tu caligrafía en mis libros,
tu paso por ellos y por mí.
Pero abro uno con anotaciones mías
y sé que detrás de mis trazos estás tú
deciéndome que hay que rayar lo escrito,
dejar marcas y preguntas.
Mark the books, gloss what’s written.
You taught me to take notes in the margin
so as not to forget what is important.
I have never marked books before,
my dear.
How could I face opening them later
and find them altered
by my sentences and my interrogations?
I don’t want to find your calligraphy in my books,
your passing through them and through me.
But I open one with notes by me
and I know that behind my strokes you are
telling me that it is necessary to mark what is written,
leave marks and questions.
Here, we find a speaker interrogating how the acts of reading and writing always point to something other and involve the world of memory. The imagery of this conceit is compelling; marginal notes done in one’s personal handwriting always stand in stark contrast to print words. A literal reaching after meaning and modifying a text occurs in this image. This image and its tension are pushed further within the context of a relationship. How much do we change each other while reaching after one another? What does intimacy mean in terms of handwriting? Regarding this latter question, the speaker finds the beloved behind her own “notes.” The poem ends on this action, on the speaker dwelling on what she’s been told by the beloved.
What drives these poems, ultimately, is this reporting and documenting of the heart. La isla de tu nombre engages the reader with short lyrics that share the scope of Sappho’s poetry and the intensity of Alejandra Pizarnik. In “Somos siete en esta mesa” the themes of the book are centered within the role of a person sitting at a dinner table with others:
Somos siete en esta mesa
luego de la carne y la ensalada,
el arroz y el pan con romero.
Mi copa de vino se calienta despacio
porque el fresco del jardín no alcanza,
porque la respiración vertical del bambú
no alcanza a detener los ruidos de la banda de reggae
que ensaya en el edificio de junto.
He sido asignada a partir la tarta,
a partirla como se parten las conversaciones,
el deseo del otro,
la tierra durante las catástrofes.
He sido elegida para escribir este recuerdo:
el de las frutas que brillan bajo la luz
mientras el cuchillo las atraviesa.
Me han dado un arma para partir una costra
que en el centro tiene el color oscuro del chocolate.
¿Cómo podía negarme?
Cómo negarme a la posibilidad de trazar un camino,
otro
otro
siempre distinto
nunca el mismo
ningún trozo igual.
Cómo negarme ante tal ofrecimiento,
cómo negarme a las pequeñas catástrofes
de la cocina:
ahora todos tienen un pedazo de la fruta que duele
después de haber sido cortada por mí.
There are seven of us at this table
after the meat and the salad,
the rice and bread with rosemary.
My glass of wine warms slowly
because the cool from the garden is not enough,
because the vertical breathing of the bamboo
is not enough to stop the noise of the reggae band
rehearsing in the building next door.
I have been assigned to cut the tart,
to cut into it as conversations are cut into,
the other’s desire
the earth during catastrophes.
I have been chosen to write this memory:
of the fruit that shines under the light
while the knife pierces them.
I have been given a weapon to break a crust
whose center is the dark color of chocolate.
How could I refuse?
How to refuse the possibility of drawing a path,
another
another
always different
never the same
no piece equal.
How to refuse such an offer,
how to refuse these small catastrophes
of the kitchen:
now everyone has a piece of the fruit that hurts
after being cut by me.
The deliberation in the second stanza over the act of cutting into a tart, of being “assigned” an active role, parallels the active role of the speaker throughout this book. The line “I have been chosen to write this memory,” is powerful in its clarity. The sensibility behind these poems is soberly aware of what it means to be isolated in one’s feelings, able only to offer others “a piece of the fruit that hurts.”
To return to the title’s metaphor, the island of another’s name carries with it the weight of our relationship with another person, as well as their absence. A person is not their name; a word is not the thing it signifies. The poems of La isla de tu nombre contend, however, that poetry is a way to cross the distance between language and the world.
La isla de tu nombre can be purchased from Veliz Books.
*
reseña por José Angel Araguz
traducción por José Angel Araguz con Laura Cesarco Eglin
Un pie sobre la mesa,
un par de manos,
un nudo hecho de sílabas y dedos.
Un pronombre nuevo para mí
porque nunca lo dije con amor,
contigo en la mitad del nombre:
pequeña mía.
Y una canción que suena en mis oídos
para que la bailemos en mi cabeza
cuando lo terrible.
Un árbol crece despacio
–y quiero que lo sepas.
La isla de tu nombre (Veliz Books) por Gabriela Aguirre comienza con esta lírica íntima y compacta entre lo tangible y lo intangible. El movimiento desde “pie” a “manos” en los dos primeros versos hasta “un nudo hecho de sílabas y dedos” mueve el poema directamente en esta dualidad; la palabra “nudo” también implica tensión sexual (nudo como en el nudo de los cuerpos) como otras tensiones (la del lenguaje, la de dos personas). Este movimiento vuelve en el verso “Y una canción que suena en mis oídos / para que la bailemos en mi cabeza” que coloca la meditación en el cuerpo mismo. Esta interioridad conduce a los dos últimos versos, que comparan el mundo interno del yo lírico con el crecimiento de un árbol. Sin embargo, a diferencia del árbol, este yo lírico puede llegar desde este mundo interior para permitir que la amada “sepa” sobre ella. La forma en que una relación de amor puede hacer tales nudos, y la forma en que la poesía puede ayudar a evocarlos, está en el centro de este libro.
Las dualidades iniciadas en la “isla / nombre” del título sirven como clave en el mundo de los poemas de Aguirre. La distante y solitaria implicación de una isla se mezcla líricamente con la naturaleza personal de un nombre. Este enfoque en el lenguaje y cómo imbuye lo (in)tangible se explora más en “Rayar los libros, glosar lo escrito.”:
Rayar los libros, glosar lo escrito.
Me enseñaste a hacer anotaciones al margen
para no olvidar lo importante.
Nunca antes rayé los libros,
querida mía.
¿Cómo tendría cara para abrirlos después
y encontrarlos alterdos
por mis frases y mis interrogaciones?
No quiero encontrar tu caligrafía en mis libros,
tu paso por ellos y por mí.
Pero abro uno con anotaciones mías
y sé que detrás de mis trazos estás tú
deciéndome que hay que rayar lo escrito,
dejar marcas y preguntas.
Aquí, encontramos a un yo lírico interrogando cómo los actos de lectura y escritura señalan siempre algo distinto e involucran al mundo de la memoria. El imaginario de esta idea es convincente; las notas marginales hechas en la letra de cada uno siempre están en marcado contraste con las palabras impresas. Un intento de entender el significado y de modificar un texto ocurre en esta imagen. Esta imagen y su tensión se realzan aún más dentro del contexto de una relación. ¿Cuánto nos cambiamos unos a otros mientras nos intentamos entender? ¿Qué significa la intimidad en términos de la letra de cada uno? En esta última pregunta, el yo lírico encuentra a la amada detrás de sus propias “trazos.” El poema termina en esta acción, con el yo lírico pensando sobre lo que la amada ha dicho.
Lo que impulsa estos poemas es este informe y esta documentación del corazón. La isla de tu nombre atrae al lector con poemas líricos que comparten el alcance de la poesía de Sappho y la intensidad de Alejandra Pizarnik. En “Somos siete en esta mesa” los temas del libro se centran en el oficio de una comensal:
Somos siete en esta mesa
luego de la carne y la ensalada,
el arroz y el pan con romero.
Mi copa de vino se calienta despacio
porque el fresco del jardín no alcanza,
porque la respiración vertical del bambú
no alcanza a detener los ruidos de la banda de reggae
que ensaya en el edificio de junto.
He sido asignada a partir la tarta,
a partirla como se parten las conversaciones,
el deseo del otro,
la tierra durante las catástrofes.
He sido elegida para escribir este recuerdo:
el de las frutas que brillan bajo la luz
mientras el cuchillo las atraviesa.
Me han dado un arma para partir una costra
que en el centro tiene el color oscuro del chocolate.
¿Cómo podía negarme?
Cómo negarme a la posibilidad de trazar un camino,
otro
otro
siempre distinto
nunca el mismo
ningún trozo igual.
Cómo negarme ante tal ofrecimiento,
cómo negarme a las pequeñas catástrofes
de la cocina:
ahora todos tienen un pedazo de la fruta que duele
después de haber sido cortada por mí.
La deliberación en la segunda estrofa sobre el acto de cortar una tarta, de ser “asignada” un oficio activo, es paralelo al oficio activo de el yo lírico a lo largo de este libro. El verso “He sido elegida para escribir este recuerdo”, es poderoso en su claridad. La sensibilidad detrás de estos poemas es sobriamente consciente de lo que significa estar aislada en los sentimientos, sólo para ofrecer a los demás “un pedazo de la fruta que duele”.
Para volver a la metáfora del título, la isla de un nombre lleva consigo el peso de nuestra relación con otra persona, así como su ausencia. Una persona no es su nombre; una palabra no es lo que significa. Los poemas de La isla de tu nombre sostienen, sin embargo, que la poesía es una forma de cruzar la distancia entre el lenguaje y el mundo.
La isla de tu nombre es publicado por Veliz Books.
[image error]Gabriela Aguirre (Querétaro, México). En 2003 obtuvo el Premio Nacional de Poesía Joven Elías Nandino con el libro La frontera: un cuerpo, y en 2007 el Premio Nacional de Poesía Enriqueta Ochoa con el libro El lugar equivocado de las cosas. Ha sido becaria del FONCA, del Consejo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes de Querétaro (en la categoría Jóvenes Creadores), y del Instituto Queretano de la Cultura y las Artes (en la categoría Creadores con Trayectoria). Fue becaria de la Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas en el área de Poesía de 2005 a 2007. Ha sido incluida en diversas antologías de poesía y textos suyos han sido publicados en varias revistas y periódicos nacionales y estatales. Algunos de sus poemas han sido llevados a escena en la obra de teatro “Homenaje a un ciego que abrió los ojos”, bajo la dirección de Rodrigo Canchola. Estudió la Licenciatura en Lenguas Modernas-Español en la Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro y la Maestría en Creación Literaria en Español en la Universidad de Texas en El Paso. Actualmente estudia un Doctorado en Artes en la Universidad de Guanajuato.
July 28, 2017
poetryamano project: january 2017
This week, I begin archiving my Instagram poetry project entitled poetryamano (poetry by hand) here on the Influence. This account focuses on sharing poems written by hand, either in longhand or more experimental forms such as erasures/blackout poems and found poems.
Below are the highlights of when I started the project in January. Every few weeks, I will be sharing another round of highlights as I continue to archive.
Stay tuned next week for more of the usual Influence happenings. For now, enjoy these forays into variations on the short lyric!
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My first post was this translation of a line from Antonio Porchia. I felt like it was a statement on the, ahem, influence of social media on our lives. Mainly, though, I thought the line was neat.
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Poem written in my head while talking on the phone with a dear friend.
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Poem thought of after my dissertation defense. Playing off the idea of gate-keeping in academia, I came up with this as a line in a freestyle in my head, then as I came to share it, I found myself writing it down in three lines of three words each. I like it here as the form breaks up the rhyme. I’m hoping to share more random things like this that come up and never land on the page for fear of being too cursi, corny, contrived, or any other alliterative term that comes via self-conscious worry.
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This one came from revising from a series of poems that would have been tanka but ended up way too rambly/brambly.
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In working on this one, “find” was originally “learn.” Yet, I liked the vibe of having “lost” followed by “find.” I couldn’t decide until my wife noted how you must find something first, and only then can you begin to learn it. And so I found this poem, and am humbled to keep learning what it has to say. I also like how the filter blurs the words on the right side.
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HANDS. Note that: 1) the five lines run 2,4,6,8,2 in terms of syllables (cinquain), and 2) the word “hands” is spelled downward in the first letters of each line (acrostic). Formal games like this are my jam.
*
Happy amano-ing!
José
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Small Fires
by Jose Angel Araguz
Giveaway ends August 10, 2017.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
July 21, 2017
one more from tina cane
In my recent microreview & interview of Tina Cane’s Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books), I focused on the idea of place and its dual nature in the book as noun and action. I found this particular lens to the collection engaging on several levels. In a poem, place is often both what we write about and what we create in writing. This duality parallels several ideas on the interaction between content and form discussed by poets from Charles Baudelaire to Denise Levertov. There are moments in Cane’s collection when content and form interact and create a tension that feels like a living pulse.
[image error]In this week’s poem, Cane takes the conceit and form of a telegram and subverts it to create a moving statement on mortality. The repetition of the word “STOP” — a direct allusion to the telegram form which would use this word to signal the end of a phrase or sentence — is expected given the title of the piece. Once the narrative of the poem begins to build, however, the word begins to carry with it an added sense of urgency. The practice of using “STOP” in telegrams increased during WWI in an effort towards clarity. In the context of a poem, this effort becomes less about clarity of a message and more of clarity of feeling.
Telegram to My Father – Tina Cane
YOU LOOK LIKE A GOYA STOP IN THE WATERY LIGHT STOP
CHEEKBONES SHARP SKIN THIN LIKE ONION PAPER STOP
BREATHING STOP SHALLOW STOP YOUR FINGERS FRAGILE DRUMMING
ON THE BEDSHEET STOP YOU ARE MOVING YOUR LIPS STOP TRYING
TO RIDE THE TIDE OF MORPHINE DRIP STOP UNCLE MARTY IS ON THE PHONE
MANIC IN STATEN ISLAND STOP PLEADING “YOU DECIDE YOU DECIDE”
JUST BELOW A SHOUT STOP THE FLUIDS I SAY STOP “WHY NOT ME?”
YOU ONCE QUIPPED “STOP” I SAID “WHY?” YOU SAID END
*
Happy pulsing!
José
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Small Fires
by Jose Angel Araguz
Giveaway ends August 10, 2017.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
July 17, 2017
microreview & interview: Tina Cane’s Once More With Feeling
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review by José Angel Araguz
A Minor History of the East Village – Tina Cane
Maybe you knew a kid who booked through Tompkins Square on his Schwinn and came out
the other side without the bike and in his socks never mind he wasn’t buying drugs this
the price of his stupidity or maybe you went to Gem Spa three days in a row for egg creams
to flip through Interview magazine still a stack of color Xeroxes assembled by Andy Warhol
or to The St. Mark’s Theatre to see Oh God! starring George Burns Enough! you’d said
crouched on the seat knees beneath your chin rats scuttling the aisle for popcorn dregs
but it never was
not when that guy died trying to sleep in a hammock on his fire escape
off Avenue A not when the cops found a woman’s head in a pot on her boyfriend’s stove
on Avenue B not when you and your friends mistakenly buzzed in the guys who would beat
Faye’s elderly neighbor close to death junkies hunting jewelry or just high they were men
you could describe to the cops to anyone for a long time after
and when the paramedics had you
stand by the stretcher as they unjammed the brake it wasn’t enough to want to take the woman’s
trembling hand and it wouldn’t have been enough to take it
*
Reading through Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books) by Tina Cane one encounters a poetic sensibility able to write from a sense of place that is both exterior as well as interior. Place works here as both noun (NYC in the poem above) but also the verb. It is the singular way in which Cane places a poem’s attention on subjects ranging from city life to parenthood that creates a space/place for the “feeling” of the title.
In “A Minor History of the East Village,” the city is evoked as a place both mysterious and indiscriminate. From the kid who loses his bike and shoes, to the rats scuttling through the movie theatre, things keep happening at the edges where no one seems to notice or pretends not to. When the speaker says “Enough!” in the same italics as brand names and a movie title (Oh God!, fittingly), the feeling of being overwhelmed is evoked. Rather than pull away, however, the speaker is further pulled into documenting this “minor history” by the words “but it never was.” These words answer the cry of “Enough!” and act as a volta, pivoting the poem into detailing three neighborhood deaths, the last of which occurs in the speaker’s own building. Suddenly, what has been happening at the edges is happening directly in the speaker’s life. The word “enough” returns in the final lines in order to be pushed against further, and convey how the speaker is caught in a moment where every action feels futile.
The collection creates and dwells upon such places/placings of complication via other “minor history” poems, a number of lyric sequences, self portraits, and nocturnes. Throughout, we find a sensibility able to reckon with the statement made in “Nocturne: Restoration,”: “My fingerprints make residence upon the earth.” This idea that fingerprints (full of connotations of individuality as well as mortality and transience) can themselves be places is at the heart of the book. What traces (places) do we leave upon each other? How much power do we give to memory? To names? These poems take turns contemplating these questions, and seeking answers beyond them.
In the aptly named “Trip to Now,” we find the admission:
I was looking for something specific and perfect
but let’s not ruin this with words
New York you and I
This idea of words being able to establish “something specific and perfect” while at the same time being a source of “ruin” reflects a seemingly conflicted idea of poetry. Cane’s poems, however, prove there is a fruitful and compelling tension in this conflict. It is what drives a poem like “Nocturne: Ludlow Street” (below). When the speaker states that “falling in love was like being on the verge of an accident,” we are left in a place that is both the search for something perfect and the need to avoid ruin. That this meditation leads to a scene between parent and son adds to the already high stakes.
In this scene, the nuanced insights happen at the level of line breaks. Reading that the future “is a parallel universe we are driving” all on its own line, for example, has dual implications of control and lack of control. This jolt of meaning sets up the “fingerprints” imagery of the last line. This further surprising statement from the son carries a sense of gravity to it, and drives home the dual nature of place in this collection. In poems precise in their naming but open and flexible in their observations, Once More With Feeling engages with the idea that life happens between the places we consider and the places we imagine.
*
Nocturne: Ludlow Street – Tina Cane
I could have stood there all night staring at the Torah ark in your bedroom
looking for clues to the future a disclosure but the relic was a relic adorned
with Christmas lights in a semi-legal living space on Ludlow Street its wisdom
not for me falling in love was like being on the verge of an accident I had kept
to myself for so long often losing in order to falling in love was like being
shut out of ideas a delectable trap disclosure also often an accident
The future says our nine-year old son
is a parallel universe we are driving
down a tree-lined street Did they keep wood from Jesus’s cross?
he wants to know No I say There were fingerprints on it, I bet he says Yes
*
Influence Question: How would you say this collection reflects your idea of what poetry is/can be?
Tina Cane: I always characterize poetry as an approach rather than a genre. As such, poetry is a most flexible form and, like water, can fill any space the poet carves out. My collection, Once More With Feeling, reflects poetry as my attempt to understand the world and my experiences in it. I don’t write with any specific aesthetic or intellectual agenda. I write to understand. Having written a bunch of poems, however, does not imply that I’ve understood anything at all. And I don’t mean that in a deprecating way. I mean that writing is a path. My poems are stones I lay on my path, as I move forward.
Once More With Feeling is a book about place and love and grief and family, about glancing back while pressing on. That seems to me a most human, universal situation. The collection is grounded in particulars—NYC, neighborhoods, people—but is also me reaching out to the reader. To me, poetry is about connection—in all its incarnations.
Influence Question: What were the challenges in writing these poems and how did you work through them?
Tina Cane: This is the most explicitly autobiographical work I’ve written. I had to work hard to balance my own sense of yearning and vulnerability with a degree of dispassion I felt was necessary to avoid lapsing into nostalgia. There’s always a risk of sentimentality when one writes about the past. While I do believe a poem should move the reader, I resent work that tries to corner me into feeling a certain way. Sometimes poems can hide their true strength behind coy and snarky humor—disguised as intellectualism. Sometimes poems over-share in a way that burdens. I was trying to negotiate between those spaces as I worked on this book. Whether or not I’ve succeeded is certainly subjective, but I wrestled for sure.
At one point, a friend and fellow poet told me he felt a presence in the collection that wasn’t on the page. It was an interesting comment–one that took on true relevance when we discussed “A Minor History of Bodega.” I came to see the “bulletproof glass” in the final line as a metaphor for something I was doing—allowing myself to be seen, but through an impenetrable veneer. Prompted by that conversation, I wrote a couple of very spare “Self Portrait” poems in which the speaker is conflated with her mother. It was a small addition, but one that felt big to me.
Writing poems is rarely easy for me. Writing exerts itself on me.
As with life, in poetry I press on—collecting and sorting, seeing what gives.
It’s an exquisite kind of pressure to grapple with.
*
Special thanks to Tina Cane for participating! To find out more about Cane’s work, check out her site. Once More With Feeling can be purchased from Veliz Books.
[image error]Tina Cane is the founder and director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI and is an instructor with the writing community, Frequency Providence. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including The Literary Review, Two Serious Ladies, Tupelo Quarterly, Jubliat and The Common. She also produces, with Atticus Allen, the podcast, Poetry Dose.
Cane is the author of The Fifth Thought (Other Painters Press, 2008), Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Avenue Press, 2016) and Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books, 2017). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island, where she lives with her husband and their three children. photo credit: Mike Salerno
*
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Small Fires
by Jose Angel Araguz
Giveaway ends August 10, 2017.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
July 14, 2017
in the air with iskandar haggarty
This week’s poem “Flutter” by Iskandar Haggarty comes from his online chapbook There Are No Women In Our House (Praxis Magazine) and is a great example of how a lyric sequence can range in dynamic both conceptually and structurally. In terms of concept, Haggarty keeps the imagery “in the air,” so to speak, across the three sections of the sequence, charging the poem with the flutter of “sparrows” and “fireflies” as well as the expansiveness of a sky that includes moon, planets, and constellations.
This in the air work is furthered in terms of structure by the use of three line stanzas, or tercets, throughout. The sequence goes from four tercets in the first section, to three in the second, and two in the last. This consistency varies within each section by having a single line conclude each one.
[image error]This structural work creates a visual shape that has the eye “flutter” along with the concept, both moving the reader through the poem’s lyric narrative. The result is a poem that surprises by what it can evoke through its turns and images. From awe to “morning sadness” to finally wonder, this lyric sequence creates its intimacy in an indirect yet vivid manner.
Flutter – Iskandar Haggarty
I.
Your mother had
sparrows
tangled in her hair
and fireflies
trapped inside
her vocal cords.
Every morning, she’d
awaken before the moon
had slumber in its eye
and lightly brush your
snoring father’s
head full of Saturn
with her lips.
II.
Your mother was made
of ashes and was married
to the stars.
Each night, she’d rain down
from Ursa Major,
sprinkling the edges
of thunderbolts
and canopies,
fertilizing the soil
with morning sadness.
III.
Your mother was
the daughter of
Jupiter.
Really? I asked,
my eyes full of
crescents.
The butterflies in Grandpa’s eyelids smiled.
*
Happy fluttering!
José
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Small Fires
by Jose Angel Araguz
Giveaway ends August 10, 2017.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
July 10, 2017
microreview & interview: Manuel R. Montes’ Infinita sangre bajo nuestros túneles
For this special microreview & interview, I share excerpts from a Spanish to English translation in progress I’m working on as well as provide insights into why I’m excited about this project and some commentary from the writer Manuel R. Montes himself.
[image error]
review by José Angel Araguz
I am currently working with Montes on a translation of his novel Infinita sangre bajo nuestros túneles (winner of the Premio Bellas Artes Juan Rulfo para Primera Novela 2007), which is a complex work of fragmented storytelling. In our conversations over the text, I find myself using the phrase “lyric novel” to describe the ambitious range of techniques exhibited throughout the text. Infinita details the brief life and sudden dying of a prematurely born child through the various voices and thoughts of the individuals involved. The nonlinear story jumps between the past and present, establishing connections and metanarrative insights that recall modernists like Virgina Woolf and James Joyce, but which are executed with a human pulse in the style of Roberto Bolaño and Jonathan Safran Foer. Through this ambitious and engaging mosaic of voices and interwoven narratives, Montes honors the human experience of a child’s death with the gravity and complexity it merits.
In the following excerpt from the second section of the book, the narrative flows from a telephone conversation with the father of the lost child to the origins of the novel/narrative itself, all from the perspective of the writer, who is uncle to the “octomesino” or “eightmonther” (a variation on “preemie” which is used to refer to premature born infants):
“this morning I went to the cemetery, ripped grass from his tomb and am planting it, this way we’ll be closer to one another, don’t you think?” I hear a tightness in his voice, panting into the receiver, “by the way, have you begun writing the book?”
–I’ve yet to even try, the process comes less readily when one faces fiction in its most extreme order, made of pure reality–
my sister-in-law mailed me, in a yellow envelope, sealed, forty-two printed sheets and a back-up magnetic, three and a half inch disc, it is a long letter that contains “only what happened,” and besides this, another note, handwritten, in the first folio, which adds, “I hope this material will be useful, make whatever changes you think appropriate,” the font chosen is ordinary, the font size, reduced, in the document, unnumbered, almost every chapter is described, almost of a whole novel, “much is missing, I’m sending you what I have stored in the computer, according to my notes, as I remember it”
–but the novel or all the possible novels could be anywhere, and what is lost is the author, searching, attempting to write it or them, lost in the chimeric jungles of paraphrase–
the recipient of the letter is a space without image or the imposing blank page in the middle of a photo album
the recipient is, to be precise, the eightmonther
–“you should at the very least find a way to organize so many loose notes”–
A good sense of the tone and scope of the novel is given here, especially how the text moves between being a meditation on a family crisis as well as a meditation on the act of writing. Two frustrated acts of creation are paralleled. What moves the novel for me from straightforward prose into lyrical territory is how the narrative dwells on details and allows for significance and intimacy to arise out of things like the font chosen by the mother to share pieces of the story. The phrasing of that last line, that a brief life and a death can result in “so many loose notes,” is rich in poetic meaning, both for the narrator and the reader of this fragmented text.
The novel moves forward in this fashion, switching perspective and scene, in order to convey the emotional currents of the characters involved. One of the more impressive results of this fragmented narrative is the multiplicity of voices made possible through it, including that of the eightmonther. Here, in a passage a little after the one above, the narrator continues to metanarratively piece together and meditate on the task at hand, only to be interrupted by the eightmonther’s voice (in italics), creating itself amidst the “loose notes”:
another segment, from the notes of the letter
“everything was so real, that night –the first night of august– was the longest night of my life”
–is it that fiction could possibly shorten the suffering?–
it’s that your maternal love started to become more of a labyrinth, and started to darken
you have to tell them that my body, or its forgotten nostalgia, mourns itself at times, do not remember me, do not describe me, you don’t have to cure me, I am fighting to die, do not entangle me, do not bind me, I grow more distant if you tie me down, and I want to come closer, my body does not work, but I am not only my body, let me escape this body like I escaped yours, you have to tell them that it’s useless, you will see that it’s useless, when you are here, with me, that body has ceased to belong to me, leave it alone, leave me alone, that body continues to hurt me when you recall it
“I would like to know what you are thinking, what would you say if you could speak”
–“remember, organize, organize”–
there are quotes from other characters, but they are inconsistent, imprecise, lacking continuity, my sister-in-law could not deal too much with correcting them or giving them greater emphasis, making them more legible, clearer, impossible to behave so coldly when relating an agony, the voices which burst into the letter resemble those curtains which mysteriously widen like a bellows and make us look back, on summer nights, during a drowsy instant in which the wind has stopped blowing
Here, the rich turns of phrase continue: “remember, organize, organize” reads like a mantra during this attempt to narrate a dark time. The interruption of the eightmonther’s voice can be seen as a kind of consciousness bursting in, much in the spirit of the curtain image in the last paragraph, something else moving in the room of the narrative. What does narrative embody? What does it stir up? What does it potentially exclude or replace? These questions move like electric currents throughout the text.
While these short excerpts can by no means do justice to the whole of the novel, I feel comfortable sharing them here as fragments of a work that in itself is fragmented. Before a whole story is understood, there are voices making themselves known. The story of the eightmonther moves from the mother’s “loose notes” to the narrator’s meditation and effort that is the novel, and now to the translation of that effort. It is a story of motion, which is what is at heart of lyricism.
*
[image error]Influence Question: What were the challenges in writing this novel and how did you work through them?
Manuel R. Montes: The difficulties were — have been ever since I wrote the book ten years ago — strictly emotional, familiar. The writing process was impressively unconscious, fluid, impersonal and intimate at the same time. It was an act of hearing and transcribing more than anything else. Of waiting for the last pain from the silence of a white pages filling at their own pace. I — the self-critical I, the form-obsessed I, the style miniaturist and neobarroque experimental I — barely intervened. The novel wrote by itself in less than two months. I kind of recollect the overnight sessions in front of the computer, the urgency to finish and the sadness, but these I won’t consider hardships. The only real challenge for me was to deal with guilt and gratefulness, having dared to expose, with all its tragic luminosity and its engulfing darkness, the death of a new born, dear nephew. I experienced true regret and also a simultaneous, joyful necessity of immortalizing, in words that didn’t seem to be mine, his four-month, relentless and unbearable life and struggle before he passed away. I have not worked through this mourning feeling completely, nor have I stopped marveling every time I remember how the novel just materialized independently from me, way beyond my control or even my will. It was as if I couldn’t touch it. I still can’t.
Influence Question: In describing this project to others, I find myself using the phrase “lyric novel” – Do you have any thoughts about the phrase, which for me is not a fixed term but something I continue define as I continue to translate your book?
Manuel R. Montes: I am not against the phrase, not at all, which would offend by the way many of the novelists of my generation or even older authors if someone considered their works as examples of that category. Nevertheless, when I think of «lyric», it’s the expressive predominance of the «I» as the main voice of a work what comes to my mind, and because of that resemblance to a certain kind of poetry I would disagree with the term, since the narrator in my novel is a hidden shadow, a silent, invisible and anonymous figure, some sort of scared and hypersensitive witness who listens those around him or her crying. A nobody who is mute but has to translate to prose the horror and the wonder of a short and fragile existence, feeling impotence and fear and compassion, but also admiration. It’s not «I» who speaks or try to speak here, but «Them», «Us».
*
Special thanks to Manuel R. Montes for participating! To find out more about his work in Spanish, go here.
photo credit: Diana Cárdenas
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Small Fires
by Jose Angel Araguz
Giveaway ends August 10, 2017.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
July 7, 2017
Small Fires excerpt & Goodreads giveaway announcement!
This week I am excited to announce a Goodreads giveaway for my latest poetry collection, Small Fires (FutureCycle Press). I’ll be giving away ten signed copies of the book. Deadline is August 10th, 2017. Check out the details here:
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Small Fires
by Jose Angel Araguz
Giveaway ends August 10, 2017.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
To help celebrate this announcement, I am presenting an excerpt from Small Fires in the form of both a poem and some commentary. The poem is entitled “Hail from Corpus Christi” and as I mention in a Q&A conducted by Carve Magazine, working on this poem was key into finding the themes of the collection.
Hails from Corpus Christi – José Angel Araguz
I would be belted after dinner,
my food eaten with the moon,
the night a table where a place
is set, and a place diminishes –
hardened, chucked out of the sky,
milk-glow, but a rap like a stone,
the kind in movies thrown at windows
to get someone’s attention – I was all
attention as my mother’s boyfriend
turned to rain and thunder,
clouds broke into fists and cries
broke the sky of my sleep with lightning
that held fast in me, turned me
into that color – a hardened flash
falling through the years into a room
where I tried to restrain the weather
of what I felt, but raised
my voice, punched the wall, the table,
clawed after and clutched your arm
as you tried to leave before
hearing what I had to say,
clutched and pulled away to see the white
of where the blood had left, a hardened
streak that burst into
your hand hard across my face, your voice
no longer a voice I knew,
a voice that from then on
kept me at a distance,
would harden and check me for years,
distrustful, despite our apologies,
despite tears and my own diminishing
voice, a pebbled voice, a grit,
shit shit shit under my breath
every time we’d argue, knowing
there was nothing I could do
but take it, hold my clouded self,
not wanting to hit, ricochet, scatter.
*
For more commentary on this poem, check out the rest of the Carve Magazine Q&A.
Happy hailing!
José
