Poetry Monday: PoemTalk95: Robert Fitterman’s Sprawl

It has taken me a while to catch up on PoemTalk - one of my favourite podcasts.  There hasn’t been a single episode that I haven’t enjoyed - I really liked the previous episode 94, which explored two poems from CA Conrad’s ‘(Soma)tic Midge’.  But since we’re already in January, I thought I’d share the latest episode, which is an exploration of five sections from Robert Fitterman’s book Sprawl published by Make Now Press in 2010.  All of the pieces explored are actually available in the Penn Sound archives so if you go to the PoemTalk link here: http://jacket2.org/podcasts/i-too-received-identity-poemtalk-95 you can listen to the episode (which also contains Fitterman’s readings) or listen to the individual poems read aloud.  These poems aren’t what you’d call lovely.  They’re kind of mock-consumerist, full of sound-bites, and familiar enough to be uncomfortable for the listener.  They’re full of vernacular voices, opinions, commentary at the shopping mall, on social media, or private conversations.  Fitterman’s reading, which is funny, sound almost like a comedy skit by Steve Wright.  Rodrigo Toscano likens Fitterman’s mall to Dante’s rings of hell, and if you’ve recently been shopping in a mall, you might agree (I might have made that comparison myself last time I was at Westfield).  PoemTalk’s very intelligent group featuring Al Filreis (as always), Michelle Taransky, Rodrigo Tuscan, and Laynie Browne suggest other possibilities in the work: the mapping of consumer culture as an archeology condensed to existentialist profundity.  Is that going too far?  I’m not sure, but I enjoyed their exploration very much, and as always, this podcast continues to teach me new ways to approach difficult or heavily conceptual poetry with an open mind and a multitude of possibilities.  Check it out and let me know what you think.  

Poetry Monday: James Schuyler (and PoemTalk)

You never really master or finish with a good poem.  I’m not talking about the writing of poetry, which is another blogpost entirely.  Reading poetry is an ongoing process.  Good poems always beg to be read again.  Though there’s nothing quite like reading a poem in that silent one-on-one space, I also really enjoy the way a close reading in a group setting can open out a poem, unpack it, and provide new insights as the group members riff off one another. It becomes a whole new reading. Jacket2’s PoemTalk is a great way to experience a poem.  These relatively short podcasts make you feel like you’re part of the discussion circle as the participants chat about and work through a single poem in a way that somehow manages to be casual and light, and still rigorous.  The latest episode focuses on James Schuyler’s “February”, a poem I came across many years ago and had forgotten.  Finding it again at my favourite podcast, illuminated by such warm and intelligent poets and teachers, has been like finding a piece of myself I put aside.

The podcast begins with Schuyler’s own reading followed by a discussion with Erica Kaufman, Bernadette Mayer, Al Filreis, and Julia Bloch.  Here’s a little sample of “February", which shows the delicacy of the poem and the way it “paints” a very visual scene of light and colour on the last day of a New York City winter:

The green leaves of the tulips on my desk
like grass light on flesh,
and a green-copper steeple
and streaks of cloud beginning to glow.
I can't get over
how it all works in together

In the podcast the group talk of how this poem gives us access to something private, something very ordinary that we might see every day, and puts it in a new extraordinary light.  For me, I feel that this poem, even with its very conversational language (the “language of cats and dogs” as Bernadette Meyer - I think - put it), is suffused with nostalgia.  Perhaps that’s because the moment of this perception is already gone.  The NY that Schuyler writes about is already a different place, and the awareness of this loss seems to underpin the delicacy of the language and the more immediate joy of the poet’s vision.  Or maybe it’s just me and my ongoing sense of nostalgia for the city I grew up in.  You can read the full poem here: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/schuyler/schuyler_february.html  

For lots more of Schuyler’s work, visit: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/schuyler/index.html
And do please, just for your own pleasure, visit PoemTalk and spend a little while procrastinating in the most delightful of ways.