Lit Bit

     One I of the things I love most about Bob Hicok’s poetry in This Clumsy Living is how pedestrian a lot of the language is throughout the book. I know I have complained about the use of too pedestrian language in the work of other poets, but Hicok shows us that ordinary language, the day to day can be rejuvenated and made interesting.

     “My dog puts her head in my crotch, presses her nose
     through, to the other side. This is good morning.”

There is just something fun and familiar about lines like the one above. Anyone that has had a dog or contact with dogs most likely knows exactly what Hicok is talking about here. It isn’t that the circumstance is entirely new to an audience, but the way Hicok describes the action of the dog pressing “her nose through, to the other side” is what is unexpected as well as the proclamation that this action is a greeting, a sign of affection. My general knowledge of people’s reactions to a dog sticking their nose in crotches has been negative, so it is refreshing to see someone taking a different perspective on this.

     My favorite poem in the series has to be Switching to Deer Time.

     “How I decide

     to get out of bed these days is deer.
     If I look out my window and see them
     I know it’s time to feed my feet
     to the mouths of my jeans
     and when I told my wife the deer
     are my new clock she said they won’t fit
     on the mantle…

     …And deer are the best clocks because time

     is twitchy, is a nervous thing
     running away from us into woods,
     into its own death and I don’t like
     wristwatches…”

The first and second stanza I think really exemplify how Hicok renews language, makes it interesting again. The lines “I know it’s time to feed my feet/ to the mouths of my jeans” is a perfect example of how he manipulates everyday language to his advantage. There is nothing fancy or tongue-tying about this expression, and yet it is surprising. Reading it, I know exactly what he means, but I am surprised because I would never have thought to word putting on my jeans in that way. One of the amazing things about this poem is Bob Hicok’s amazing ability to take something like deer and completely reinvent them and their purpose. He brings the wild into the home, giving them a domestic spin, and at the same time, there is no real control over these elements such as deer and time and natural disasters. Through reinventing the deer and connecting them so thoroughly to something manufactured, like clocks (and even our methods of keeping track of time), reminds us how unpredictable domestic living his, how easily the wild and untamed can creep it’s way into our everyday lives – like time. As I read through this poem again and picked out these lines as an example of the poem, I got to thinking about wristwatches and deer running into woods toward their own death (because the hunters are out there). Hicok’s description of time as deers is spot on if you really think about it; and when I do, I don’t like watches or clocks either. The face of a clock is circular, always coming back around again, always renewing, cyclical, and yet time hardly feels that way. No, time really is “twitchy, is a nervous thing” and constantly running from us, and we’re constantly running toward it and then looking over our shoulders at the time that has elapsed, that time we can’t get back. It’s linear, if not sporadic – like the leaping and dodging of deer through trees over bramble, at least in the short span of an individual’s life. This poem about reading the newspaper and the invasion of nature into the domestic and plastic of our lives (whether by deer as clocks or earthquakes) is a shining example of how Hicok takes the everyday and makes you think about the bigger things in life, about the stuff beyond your morning cup of coffee. And yet it is all nearly disguised in deers and jeans and the patterns of routine.

     The entire book really centers around these domestic affairs, these day to day thoughts and encounters – and occasionally beyond, but it is never tiring or boring. Hicok varies his poem structures throughout the book, even including a poem within a poem at one point, and he doesn’t use any kind of formal structure or form (at least not that I noticed). I’ve read this book through twice and a handful of specific poems more than that. I’ve enjoyed it every time, maybe even more the second time around. It is certainly a collection of poems where you notice more the more you read through it. The breaking down of the book into the different sections feels a bit random, but not distractingly so. There was no huge disconnect between sections or section titles and their content. The first time I read the first section I thought it was titled “Twenty-three widows,” not “Twenty-three windows” (emphasis mine), which was confusing because I kept trying to figure out what widows had to do with it all. Instead the section titles are as simple as Hicok counting how many times he used various words.

     My least favorite section of the five was “Thirty-three skies.” There are moments when Hicok steps away from the concrete images that ground such concepts as time, and these are the instances when the poems feel a bit too philosophical. I find a lot of these moments in the fifth section:

     “Doing, not what you think,
     but what you are. The difference between counting the rings of a tree and
     finding a place in the sky.” – The New Math

     “When I got to the other side, it was the same
     as this side, which returned to, resembled
     the other side, which is where I was born
     and learned to hide in the shadow of my father” – Physical

I’m sorry, but what? There are moments when Hicok prods subjects like god and his existence as well as life and death, but more often than not, it doesn’t work in his favor. The language becomes vague and a bit flighty, trying to hard to soar up with the clouds and such. I prefer Hicok to stay on the ground and tell me about the smell of wet grass and how his dog is coprophagous (eats poop) and how a cow looks exactly like the other cows in the field. I want the poet, not the philosophizing, Hicok. While I’m not fond of his occasional detours into the spiritual, metaphysical, what have you, I do appreciate that his poems never become “churchy” or preachy. They simply settle on the pages as thoughts put into words.

Some of my favorite poems from this collection:
     Grooming
     Elsewhere
     Duh
     My new neighbor
     Switching to Deer Time
     The active reader

All in all I really enjoyed Bob Hicok’s writing and this particular collection of poems and i give this book:
★★★★☆
~It definitely has great re-read value

     I have considered myself an atheist for a few years at least now, though up until this point I have not verbalized it to anyone, not even my closest friends who are atheists as well. I’ve simply not been ready to come out and shout to the world what I do or do not believe. In fact even in arguments I have remained generally neutral, not being one to run headlong into confrontation. Yes, I’m a chicken . But some things have happened in my life that have finally pushed me over the threshold and I’ve decided not to be quiet anymore… well, at least not in web country. I’m not quite up to telling my generally catholic parents about this, but I’ll get there eventually. This is a big step for me and I’m happy to finally make it. I’ve been considering it for quite awhile now, but have been hesitant since it is only realistic that fair treatment for all religious beliefs or non-beliefs can’t be entirely trusted. While I certainly hope that people are sensitive enough to respect others’ choices I realize it is not that simple. But ultimately I don’t care anymore how this affects my future, this is how I feel and what I want. And I’m happy to finally be out:

     I feel compelled as a poet to tackle the quality of writing and performance of the Inaugural poem given today by Elizabeth Alexander, “Praise Song for the Day” (the link will take you to a comments section which has the text of the poem posted a few comments down). If you have the chance to read the poem (or hear its oration) prior to reading this post, go for it, it can’t hurt – well, not a lot at least.

     My initial exposure to this poem was strictly the transcript. I read through the poem fairly quickly and found it generally unremarkable. When I returned later and read through the poem again and began picking apart the details of it, I find that Alexander’s language is generally uninventive, redundant, and occasionally bordering on archaic:
          “Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform,
          Patching a tire.”
These lines are an example of what I find as borderline archaic in the language, between the stitching and darning – there is just something bland and lifeless about this expression that reminds me of a “When I was your age” speech from my great grandparents. Followed closely behind that is the line, “Repairing the things in need of repair.” My response: Really? Imagine that. I mean what else would possibly need repairing? How about some detail here, how about something more specific. Oh sure, she preceded that statement with the darning of a hole and patching a tire, but these things are so pedestrian and mundane that there is no life to them. That’s the beauty of poetry though, the poet has the artistic license to take language and make those mundane moments, those little facts of living that keep us going and make them INTERESTING!!! It is absolutely possible. If I can do it, surely a published poet can as well? That is what I expect from a poet that has been chosen to read for the inauguration of the next president!!!

     Between the old and the boring language of the poem is the vague: “Someone is trying to make music somewhere.” All I can think of is what kind of music? what someone (or rather who)? where? I understand that Alexander is working within the confines of making accessible poetry, considering that she has an audience that may not consist strictly of poets and readers of poetry, but that does not mean dumb down the poetry and make it so common that it loses meaning. It is the details that allow poetry to be relatable and moving. If you turn the subjects into someones and everyones then NO ONE is going to want to read about them or hear about them. We like to think that we are all unique, yet connected by similar experiences and emotions, which means we want to read characters in the same light. The problem with the someones and somewheres is that they feel nothing and ground us nowhere. In a poem it is better to be specific and let the audience know where they are, whether it is by a street name, city name, a certain smell in the air. This poem has no atmosphere.

     Another problem I have with the poem is the representation of the working classes:
          “Say it plain that many have died for this day.
          Sing the names of the dead who brought us here.
          Who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
          Picked the cotton and the lettuce.
          Built brick-by-brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.”
I get the whole “Yay for the working man (and woman)” and “They’re the backbone of our country” but I think it is a bit much for this poem to be so exclusively blue-collar (and by the way, I thought the whole “Joe the Plumber” was a McCain/Palin bit?). My dad is a civil engineer, worked his way through college for six years and works primarily in the office, designing rail runner systems and such, but he doesn’t lay the tracks down himself. Does that make his life and his work less praise worthy because he isn’t the laborer? I’m all for finally giving the working man his dues and recognizing how important he is to the infrastructure of our country, but that doesn’t mean exclude the other end. I thought our goal was equality, or is that just my mistake?

     I feel like Alexander’s repetition of the phrase “Praise song” diluted the impact of the title and the meaning she was trying to get across by naming the poem “Praise Song for the Day.” She uses that phrase four times in a very short space at the end of the poem, so by the time you get to that last line of the poem it does not have the impact or strength that it should. Instead it is simply another phrase of praise. And neither am I sold on the idea that this poem is about praise and celebration. It feels colorless and emotionless. There is no poignancy in the language or the depiction of images she gives us in the poem. It’s just plain and drab and I’m bored reading it. I find this unacceptable. I had a conversation with one of my poetry professors today about this poem and how poetry is allotted so little time in extensive exposure to a larger public. What this means is that the moments where poetry has access to a large audience we need to rock their socks off! This poem did no rocking…except to sleep. I am embarrassed as a poet that this is the impression of poetry so many people are going to be exposed to, that this poem is now unfortunately representative of poetry today when there are so many more poets and poems that exude passion and feeling, that have a knack for refreshing language and taking what we already know and making it new again. I consider this a sad day for poetry. Harsh, I know, but I feel strongly about this.

     Elizabeth Alexander also has a tendency to lean on lists in her poetry. Lists can be extremely informative and effective in poetry, but they also have a natural choppiness in their rhythm, which means if they are over-used you will get that disjointed feeling in the reading of the poem, because you just move from one list to the next. Which segues my comments on to the actual reading of the poem. If I was distraught at the text of this poem, I was near sick when I heard Alexander’s oration of the poem. This was my first impression of her performance: Is this the first time she’s read her poem out loud? Because that’s what it sounds like. I was appalled by the lack of enthusiasm in her voice. Her reading was disjointed and choppy as though she was continually looking down at the page (and continually losing her spot at that). I am being intentionally pitiless because poetry is a form of performance. Standing in front of audiences to give readings of your work comes with the territory of a poet. Which means that a poet has to be prepared to play their part, to read the poem with authority, to convince the audience not only that you wrote the poem, but that you really are the “I” of the poem, or the “dad” in the poem is your real dad. I don’t mean to exaggerate everything, but subtle inflections in the voice, an emphasis here, another there, intuitively draws the audience’s focus in on certain points. Reading a poem you wrote out loud is the opportunity for the poet to say “Hey, this is what it’s supposed to sound like, how it’s supposed to be read.” Alexander’s reading of her poem was as lifeless and colorless as the language she uses in the poem. It made me cringe.

     While I have very strong feelings about this poem and Elizabeth Alexander’s performance of it, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. So I decided to look and see if I could find any of her work posted online, which led me to this site where there are about twenty or so poems from various books of Alexander’s. I read more than half of the poems available and found that they generally are in a similar style to the inauguration poem, but with a bit more freedom in the content and language of the poem. Even with the freedom to use words like genitalia and tit and poop, Alexander’s poems are stiff and choppy. I read a comment online today about the poem saying that the lack of any kind of rhyme robbed the poem of any lyricism, which resulted in a disjointed, choppy rhythm to the poem and the reading. While I agree that the poem had no lyricism to it (and I found that the majority of her other poems didn’t either) I was slightly offended that they attributed this lack strictly to rhyme. There are so many ways to create a lyrical quality to a poem aside from strict rhyming patterns. There are the choice in line breaks, the words you choose and the sounds of both the consonants and the vowels, the way repetition can be used, internal rhyme… so many ways. No, the lack of flow in this poem cannot be blamed solely on the absence of rhyme. But I digressed, my apologies. While on the whole I would not recommend Elizabeth Alexander’s poetry, there were a couple of poems where I thought she pushed beyond the stiffness of her other poems:
          ”At the Beach” from Body of Life,
          ”Neonatology” from Antebellum Dream Book and
          ”Emancipation” from American Sublime
While I appreciated some aspects of these three poems, even in them I was not entirely satisfied with the poet’s work. Frankly, I think there are plenty of other poets that would have fulfilled this inaugural post much better; even Natasha Trethewey would have been a better choice.

     I am almost finished with the application process for schools. Just one last batch of paperwork and applications to send off and fill out. And then it’s the waiting game, the sit and twiddle thumbs nervously game. That I can handle. On top of applying to Graduate schools I am also in the middle of moving. The actual move will take place this weekend. I’m leaving behind the city I’ve lived in for about six years now while I pursued my undergraduate degree. It has been an abundance of ups and downs. Although I may not have wanted to admit it to myself, as this weekend draws so close, I realize that I will actually miss this place. It was the first place where I asserted my independence, where I chose to follow the path in my life that I wanted, not the one everyone else thought I should follow. I still mentally pat myself on the back for the steps I took in that direction; I’m proud of myself.

     Aside from all that jazz I am also reading This Clumsy Living by Bob Hicok and hope to have a review of the book of poetry up sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’m excited about finally getting some poetry reviews out. The Book Club is currently finishing up the third book of the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by the end of this month. For the month of February we are going to read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison in honor of Black History Month.

     Even though I am currently not in school I am certainly not lacking in things to do. I can’t wait to get moved and settled, which will hopefully result in more time for me to commit to Lit Bit and the Book Club. Undoubtedly I will keep everyone posted on how the school search goes.

Let’s break it down like this:

Section 1:

     The first time I read through this book, I found this section very moving in it’s portrait of loss and grief. In fact I set the book down and then finished the rest of it later. Though I realized then that there wasn’t anything surprising in the language, nothing to really keep me on tenterhooks, waiting for more, I certainly appreciated the sentiment. On my second reading of this section, the lack of interest in the language became more pronounced. I think it is completely possible to use simple language, but still keep it interesting; I’ve read poems where authors have achieved this. Unfortunately though, Trethewey does not manage this. After a first reading, after the initial emotional impact, the poems lose their life force, become dull and predictable. The moments that Trethewey borders on revealing something unexpected, borders language in a new way, she either pulls back or ends the poem.This is frustrating. I wish she would just go a little further. There are moments though where Trethewey catches you off guard in her use of language. One of these moments is the poem “Myth” which is essentially a large palindrome. The first half of the poem runs seamlessly into its mirror image, and if you are not paying attention, it can easily get by you until the last line where you realize that you ended where you started. This is one example of an interesting way that language can be used as well as a great display of Trethewey’s mastery of poetic forms. Throughout the entire collection you are surprised by different forms, which she is able to slide in and out of easily: you are not bogged down by the obviousness of meter or rhyme. This is hard to do and is certainly to be appreciated in this collection of poems.

Section 2:

     The quick shift from the first section into the second was jarring from the very first time I read this book. There is such a disconnect between this section and the first that the reader is thrown out of the momentum of the book. While Trethewey displays an adept ability in use of poetic forms throughout the book, there is something lacking behind the voices of the poems. Particularly in this second section of the book where Trethewey attempts to bring history to life through the voices of African-American Civil War soldiers and portraits of slaves. This is what it is like: photographic moments that tend to become stagnant and faded. Though Trethewey’s attempt is valiant, and the idea of this section interesting, she fails to make the connection between the voices of the poems and the circumstances they portray; rather it feels as though the reader is being denied access to this place of suffering, of hardship and eventual progress. It is as though the gates are closed before us, locking us out, and the poems are on the other side chastising us through the bars. These portraits are distant and disconnected, and generally this section feels particularly forced and bordering on didactic. Again here the language is generally predictable and more often than not too redundant. Trethewey often leads one poem into another by repeating phrases or words. I wouldn’t mind this if Trethewey had bothered to enforce a bit more restraint in her use of this tactic, but instead it is fairly prominent throughout the entire work, which quickly becomes tiresome. It’s like a repeating pattern in a wallpaper or fabric…once you notice it, you can’t take your eyes off of it, and not in a good way. There are moments though when this leading into another poem is more subtle and it works wonders. And while I think this is an interesting approach – this trip into history, this channeling of voices – it, frankly, gets old quickly. It isn’t the subject matter that’s the problem, rather the way Trethewey chooses to present it – all in the same strain. It’s too forced. She tries too hard to make a point about this history, about such injustices.

Section 3:

     This is the section that works to tie the other two together and I have to wonder if the sections were re-ordered, would they have more impact? The way the book is currently arranged the second section mostly feels out of place and yet it is the section with the poem that the entire work is named after. I wish that Trethewey had worked in the idea of native guard into the other two sections. Maybe some would argue that she has. And perhaps she touches on it a bit more in this final section, where she tackles issues of race identity, especially for a bi-racial person. I think if Trethewey had presented this section before the second section or the first section after the third, the section of history would feel more justified. As it stands, the presence of the second section feels out of place and this isn’t remedied until the third, but by that point, there isn’t much opportunity to take it all in and switch the directions of one’s thoughts. There is no doubt that Trethewey is taking on huge social issues that even modern society is still sludging through, and her efforts are certainly gallant, but ultimately it feels as though she is just scratching the surface, holding back the juicy details that readers love.

Some of my favorite poems in this collection:
     “Theories of Time and Space”
     “After Your Death”
     “Myth”
     “My Mother Dreams Another Country”

“Native Guard” by Natasha Trethewey – ★★☆☆☆
Worth reading, but re-read value is minimal.