Each year holiday
Spectacles amplify
Sentiment for that
Long lost world of yore
Buffalo plaid flannel
Jackets and herring
Bone blazers
Look great
On the cast
Of Bedford Falls
There are moments
I could let myself
Cry for how much
I want to believe
George Bailey
Rises above the shadow
Potter opportunist scum
Or Sam Wainright's dick-
Headed voraciousness
George knows the score
He's weak
Can't help it
And love for it
Gnaws at him
It's lovely
Feeling a world
Of dead faith grate
Against great doubt
But there's no fortune
In plastics
To be made no
More globe to travel
Observe instead the ghost
Debris of Mom-n-Pop
So over it's not
Even a figure of meaning
In the soi-disant
Hucksterismo of now
I like it
When the angel
Suspends Bailey
Between being and
Not having touched
These molecules
An impossible predicament
A spiritually native
Recognition
So real nothing
But narrative matters
Against the bleak
Breaks of snow drift
And winter
Sunday, December 14, 2008
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9 comments:
Can't resist seeing at least part of that movie every year. Interesting way to test my own cynism. I'm still slightly obama'd, so this year I allowed the ending to warm a small part of my heart--anyway, thanks for a good poem.
O
Came across you today while children were working on projects. . .
is this poem what you mean by slow poetry? Or somewhere along those lines?
Could it jive with what I suggest here (which is essentially a rejection of the "avant-garde as mainstream" crowd and a call for a return to craft and audience)?
Nice to have come here,
GMP
G. M.: Thanks for the note.
I looked at your "revision of poetry." I noticed some notable differences between what you address and Slow Poetry. Most significantly, SP does not have a prescriptive agenda. It's aligned with a notion of the avant-garde that values social change over aesthetics.
The descriptive platform put forward by SP focuses on the social and economic situations poets face as producers of their work--and provides strategies to think about communities and the possible uses of poetry in a world undergoing a radical contraction of resources.
I like "craft" but I wouldn't want to impose it on anyone--let alone define what it should consist of. I'm interested in how writers see the world, and so any formal methodology or craft can potentially produce valuable perspectives.
I guess, if anything, I have an affinity for Horace's quip that poets "instruct and entertain." Beyond that, however, our practice should give us the news--let us know what's happening.
*
Owen--yo--thanks for the shout-out!
Dale
Dude--
I could use a "Buffalo plaid flannel" --where can I get one?
I dig this film but I hate it that George never leaves town... A socialist agenda, sure, but a dreary, conformist one at that. what a dull little life he ends up leading. who was it who said that "potterville" -- the dirty little city of vice and roadhouses that would've happened without George Bailey -- looks a hell of a lot more interesting than what's actually there?
can't help but agree. and wish george had gone on safari, like he wanted.
anyway, great poem!
David, great to hear from you. James Howard Kunstler makes the argument that Pottersville is a helluva lot more interesting than Bedford Falls. G. Bailey basically markets suburban plots made possible by cheap oil. The party atmosphere at Nick's is more boisterous and lively too than, who's the Italian dude with all the children--Martini? (Not-so-subtle racism, too.) Anyway, Watching it this last time on network TV I could see how much Bailey envied Potter--was spiritually possessed by him. And his suspension between being and not being is truly ponderous and sends ripples of philosophic deadlock through me. What negative matter! If only, if only....
Dale,
Slow Poetry any relation to, or offshoot of, Gabriel Gudding's "Kinder Poetry" ideas?
Steve
theenk.blogspot.com
Steve, I'm not as familiar with Gabe's "Kinder Poetry" as I should be, probably. While I like the idea of kindness, it sound too prescriptive. Slow Poetry is a platform on which to better understand community formations and how artists and communities can respond to the environments we inhabit. A proposal for kindness reminds me of Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan's argument during the Vietnam War era. She famously opposed war. Duncan shot back that poets should not oppose evil, and enter into it fully--to understand it and show how it operates in our lives. Anyway, I would need to look more closely at Gabe's arguments, as I've said.
In the end, slow poetry doesn't support anything: it's a negative force that moves by stealth and necessity to oppose, if necessary, everything "of value" in a culture that is rapidly going "poof."
I agree that making any poetics particularly prescriptive is plain wrong. (And it's a BIG world; there are infinite reasons for writing, even "poetry.")
I too like very, very much GG's idea of kindness, as well as a lot of his ideas (and I hope that I'm not misrepresenting them by giving them this umbrella term "Kind"; I doubt that this term in fact explains everything that he would like poets to consider). Alas, my own familiarity with his ideas has only begun recently, so I am just exploring here, also.
"Slow Poetry," too, of course.
And I have a good deal of respect for what you write and the way that you think, ditto your good friend Kent J. I look forward to keeping up with more of the "Slow Poetry" thing, developments, as they come about.
I'm not sure how much I would go with EITHER Levertov or Duncan. For me, they are both dead, which may sound "harsh" on my part, but I AM, after all, so dreadfully tired of depending on "the past," or, for that matter, "only poets." Blah blah, I'm not trying to make any kind of big point about my sometimes quite actively abandoned reverence, either...
"Bailey Savings and Loan" is VERY intriguing. Good Stuff!
More later and in time,
Sincerely, Steve :)
Steve, very quickly, as it's quite late here--thanks for your generous note above. The only thing I find pressing to add right now is that the Duncan / Levertov thing remains important to me because what they did is relevant still to how we think about poetry in different contexts--particularly thinking of it as a way to say something meaningful about the world.
I don't think we should emulate them, but recognize how their conflict plays out in the poetics of the present--and (can) inform(s) us still. Their problem--how does poetry create social change--remains ours. And it's that word "change" that presents so many prickly difficulties. We need progress AND yet we need to honor the laws of inertia--being still.
Anyway, if the Slow Poetry committee ever gets around to making its list of things, it might begin by noting how very unproductive resolution can be. Didn't someone say poetry is impossible? At least they should have. It is, and yet we write it. That improbability interests me. Everything else which is obedient to the laws of nature or state or whatever seems a lot more unkind in its banal but certain grip on things.
Wow. Sorry, I've strayed off into a ramble....
Anyway, I'm bleary and weary--but am honored by your kind comments above--particularly about my poem. Many thanks!
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