Aach...ye speak like a poet, but ye punch like one too...

PUNCH LIKE A POET

Tuesday, February 21, 2006
  
Book sale score!

Last weekend Fanny and I made our way to the annual Times Colonist Book Sale. The TC is the local newspaper. They sponsor a big book sale every year, the proceeds of which benefit charity. Books are provided by donation from the community, which comes through in fine form--there were something like 300-400 thousand books crammed into an empty furniture store. One dollar for paperbacks, three for hardcover. We stayed for over an hour and whittled our finds down to these:

In Cold Blood (Truman Capote--we saw the movie a few weeks ago), The Chosen (Chaim Potok), Texasville, Terms of Endearment, & The Evening Star (Larry McMurtry), Deliverance (James Dickey), Houseboat Days (John Ashbery), All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy), If the River was Whiskey (T.C. Boyle), The Good Earth (Pearl Buck; hardcover), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway; hardcover), Raise High the Roofbeaf, Carpenters/Seymour:An Introduction (J.D. Salinger), The Brothers K (David James Duncan), Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut), The Quiet American (Graham Greene), Journal of a Solitude (May Sarton), The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), A Place to Come To (Robert Penn Warren), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), and A Strong West Wind (Gail Caldwell; hardcover).

I'm starting with the Chabon, which Michael recommended several years ago. Quite funny. All about comic books and escape artistry. Fanny's reading the Caldwell, which is a just-published memoir of growing up in the Texas Panhandle. We think we must have gotten our hands on a reviewer's copy or something--it was just in the books section of the paper a couple of weeks ago.

# posted by Daniel at 3:52 PM.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006
  
New music

Wanted to give a heads-up that my dad's band JamisonPriest has a new album out, available for purchase at their website as well as at Village Records. I haven't heard it yet (still waiting for a copy to find its way north...hint hint) but am going to hazard a recommendation anyway. Quite enjoyed their last album, We Called Ourselves Poets, and word on the street is that the new one is even better.

# posted by Daniel at 6:01 PM.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006
  
V-Day

Actually took these last Thursday. But they make sense today, too. These were taken the day after our six month anniversary.



Beauty and the Besmirchment.




Looking southwest at sunset. The closer mountains are Canada; the further are the U.S.




My beautiful wife.

# posted by Daniel at 6:52 PM.

Friday, February 10, 2006
  
Great days

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
The Beatles

The sun's been out the last few days here in Victoria. I didn't recognize it at first; we've had unceasing clouds and almost daily rain since mid-December. The day's are getting longer again too, the days slowly lasting more than eight hours. I've been getting off the bus early on the way home just for the pleasure of walking. Yesterday Fanny and I went down and sat by the water for awhile at Cloverdale Point. I changed the oil in the car. The cherry trees are blossoming downtown. We found a small branch full of blossoms that had broken off during a windstorm. It's sitting in a pitcher of water on our kitchen table now.

I doubt that this will last, but for the moment it feels like spring. It's been a nice respite. I'm used to more variety in my weather: to quote Steve Earle, "They say in Texas the weather's always changing." Stable weather is nice when it's sunny, but when it turns bad you start wishing for a shorter climate cycle.

You don't like the weather in Abilene? Just wait fifteen minutes. You don't like it in Victoria? Wait three months.

# posted by Daniel at 10:41 AM.

Monday, February 06, 2006
  
How to read a poem, pt. 1

There's an art to it. It isn't a difficult art, and it doesn't take long to become proficient, but it's not quite the same as reading anything else. It's also not quite the same for any two people, so feel free to add to or subtract from this list.

First of all (and most importantly) read the poem out loud. It doesn't have to be audible, but pronounce the words of the poem to yourself as you read them. Read it slowly enough to process it as a heard text rather than a read text. Imagine yourself reading the poem out loud to yourself, if nothing else. Poetry is auditory; poets obsess over how things sound, over the spoken pulse and flow of the language. You aren't getting the poem if you don't take time to listen to it.

Give the poet the benefit of the doubt. Assume that everything in the poem is the way it is by design. This won't always be true, but if you don't make this assumption you'll end up passing judgement on poems and poets that you simply didn't spend enough time with.

The flip side is to remember that you don't have to like or appreciate every poem you read. Roger Jones made the comment in a class I took that he (a teacher of poetry) liked only one out of every four poems or so that he read in journals. He's more generous than I am (or maybe he just reads better journals). But learn to recognize the difference between, "I don't like that poem," and "That's a bad poem." Not that there aren't plenty of bad poems...

Take note of your reactions to the poem. Does a particular spot give you trouble? Why is that? Read the poem and come back to these spots. There may be a reason that they're difficult. Pay special attention to things like verb tense shifts and rough grammar. Why are the line breaks where they are? Does a line carry a different meaning if you read it by itself rather than continuously with the surrounding lines? That's a trick poets use a lot.

Who's the speaker (the person--not the poet--actually saying the words of the poem)? Someone embedded in the action of the poem? An observer? Is there an "I" in the poem? What picture of the speaker emerges from their word choice and tone? How reliable a reporter do you think they are? Why? What's their attitude towards the subject matter of the poem? Why are they telling you this?

That's more than enough to start with. If you can't keep all that straight at once just focus on reading slowly and audibly, pay attention to your reactions and assume that there's a reason for everything in the poem (and then think about what that reason might be). These'll take a long way towards appreciating poetry as poetry, rather than as oddly formatted prose.

# posted by Daniel at 10:21 AM.

Sunday, February 05, 2006
  
Overdue for an oil change

Sometime in the last 24 hours my site meter crossed the 10,000 mark. I suppose this is a milestone of some sort.

I also learned that Punch Like a Poet is mentioned on Billy the Blogging Poet's blog. He's doing a sort of survey of poets who blog, and seems to have come across this site. So, Billy, thanks for the mention (and thanks to Katy, who brought the feature to my attention).

Also, for those of you on Myspace.com, I've got a profile now. Myspace.com/punchlikeapoet.

# posted by Daniel at 1:46 PM.

Saturday, February 04, 2006
  
News and a revision

Sometime last winter I was seized with the notion to publish a small collection of poems for Easter. The idea was to polish up all my bleak, depressing poetry about Jesus, Easter, the Incarnation, etc. and release them together. Then I fell in love with a Canadian and spent my energy and creativity over the next months charting trans-continental road trips, planning weddings, and filling out various immigration paperwork. This year, however, I'm not nearly so distracted, and so intend to have something for you by late March. I've been working on revisions and cajoling my wife into editorial work on my behalf. (She's quite an editor, among many other things.) Don't have any idea yet how it's going to come out, but barring some unforseen crisis it'll at least exist. We're releasing it under the "Back Porch Books" imprinture and will probably cost in the neighborhood of $5/book plus shipping for those who don't live in Victoria.

This is why the revisions of older work. These are what I've been working on lately. The finished project should have 10-15 poems. The poem below, Self Portrait After the Resurrection, will be in for sure. "The Jesus Tortilla" will probably be as well. Others that have been on the blog in some form or another are Burning the Body, Kingdom Come, Paschal Song, The Dead in Jazz, Good Friday After the Altar Call, and Possible Worlds (possibly). Most of you haven't seen Christ Among the Rocks, When They Crucified My Lord, Miracles at Cana, Stapling Christ, or Trinities. The list is still pretty tentative, but should at least whet some appetites. Here's a sample.



SELF PORTRAIT AFTER THE RESURRECTION

He puts his fingers where the soldiers
pounded in the nails and later pried them out,
and runs his hand along the seam
where the spear broke through. He cries

My Lord and God. An hour later he looks again.
And again. And. He stares all afternoon
at the wounded hands, the holes like ruined eyes,
until Christ says Jesus, man, they're only scars.

In camp he curls up farthest from the fire.
He strains to hear Christ's voice above the pop
and smoke but falls asleep instead and dreams of hands
but in his dreams the hands won't open.

# posted by Daniel at 4:23 PM.