He cites the following alliterative excerpt from Carolinian
(Crosscut with Sound) as an example of what he likens to psychedelic lyrics
from the sixties:
[please forgive the spacing between lines; Blogger has decided to make its own poetic interpretations.]
Colander, canopy,
colander. Contrivance
Of green light-spots we’re leoparded by.
Wild grape ampersand.
Beale finds the
word play "dizzyingly dull" employing a "disjointed
futility." He wants the poems to go somewhere or "achieve something."
He feels anger
because he feels duped by the work, has gained nothing from it. Earlier on he
refers to the reader as a consumer.
What I'd like to
address is the idea of difficult poetry. Is it ok for a poet to write something
that someone might find incomprehensible? Does a poet have permission to play?
Should a reader be able to "unpack" a poem and is the reader meant to
be a "consumer" of poetry, with all the negative connotations consumerism
and mass consumption bring to the meaning of "consumer?"
"Poetry is an
art--like painting or jazz, opera or drama--whose pleasures are generally open
to any intelligent person with the inclination to savor them. Critics, justly
obsessed with the difficulty of interpreting poetical texts, often forget the
sheer immediacy of the medium's appeal."
Speaking as someone
who tries to write poetry, what I gain from this play and experimentation is permission
to write freely and to try and tap into areas of the subconscious which refuse
obvious superficial explanation. It moves me away from pat answers, from cliché,
from the propaganda forced down my throat by mass media and from public
convention.
The type of
language play and push against the boundaries exemplified by Babstock's "Methodist
Hatchet" is demonstrative of this skill. I disagree quite vehemently with
Beale's notion that any stoned fool in front of a microphone could come up with
Babstock's lines. There is turn-on-a-dime enjambment, there are painterly
images, there is a poignant beauty to the text.
Much of it seems straight-forward
to me. Take for example, "Five Hours in Saint-John's:"
What would you do?
Turns out your flight's not
till five, and your
plate's been licked clean
since ten. Along
Water St. the harbour-
facing shopfronts
glaze under the heatlamp
Gioia points to the decline
in North American culture of public interest not just in poetry but in all
contemporary art forms, from "serious drama to jazz." These arts
being consigned to the margins.
This is why I ask
the question in these terms: should poets be allowed to play? Who or what can stop a
poet, you might wonder. In my case, the viewpoint that poems should be
accessible to all, immediately understandable and written with a consumer in
mind or have some great purpose tends to stymie me and block my creativity. I
feel like a fool and a wanker for even trying to write anything at all. But another part of me feels called upon to represent a different view, to attempt and to stumble along anyway. Because I know not all readers have this point of view.
I listened to
Shelagh Rogers, host of the CBC Radio show "The Next Chapter" as she
talked to Ken Babstock about "Methodist Hatchet." I urge you to listen to the extended interview here. She was delighted
by his book. She'd never had him on the show before and questioned why not. While
Rogers is an avid reader, I don’t see her as someone who is a poetry
insider. or a member of some sort of intellectual elite.
She had questions,
but she didn't seem impatient or upset about the language. She was drawn to the
hiccoughs and the line breaks, etc. She called his voice "vibrant"
and "mercurial." She mentioned
the energy in his poems. The main tension in the book is that there is no
longer any large coherent systematic world view because of the collision of
various disciplines, such as evolutionary biology and human pyschology. Babstock
is drawn to the rifts or schisms or places of resistance. He is easily convinced
of contrary things. "Methodist Hatchet," puts these ideas in
proximity. What's human is the voice trying to put these unlike realities
together, the attempt. Rogers said that the world "is such a friggin' mess
right now, we need poets more than ever."
Babstock's poems are
powerful, highly specific, descriptive and visual. Take for example, "A Pharaoh
In Moosonee - ONR's Polar Bear Express Out of Cochrane." The idea of resilience
is there in many layers. And savour the lyricism of this description:
brattling over a
high trestle, feeders to the Moose River
a brown-cocktailed
from snake oil and stubby,
motor oil and cola.
Fir
and jack pine of
the hardening
drift into Siberian
distance.
O biggest biome
trekking poleward.
Orange vinyl bib.
In her "Globe and Mail" review of the book, Sina Queyras calls Babstock one of the most
exciting lyric poets writing today and I agree. Lines like "Shadows bloom,
stretch, cat-paw across the blank as/ a surfeit of you; spillage, black
dew." from "Lee Atwater in Blowing Snow" are powerful and
beautiful. They evoke an image that lingers long in my mind's eye and heart. The more I
return to this book, the more I love it.
I think you can get
all you want from poems themselves, but if, as a reader, you are curious and wish
to understand more, these days there are interviews, reviews and often poetic
statements written by poets themselves. If you want to learn, you can reach further.
In "Can Poetry
Matter," Gioia makes six proposals to poets and poetry teachers to bring
the art to the public. One of these is for poets to write prose about poetry,
to write about their work. This book was written in 1992. Now there are a fair
number of ways, a confused reader can learn about the work and the poet if he
so desires.
No comments:
Post a Comment