Posts tagged ‘on poetry’

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December 7, 2010

in their own voice also Sylvia Plath

by jhon baker

I’ve come into contact with a lot of live poetry via “The Academy of American Poets” archive Compact Discs. John Berryman, David Ignatow (a personal favorite), George Oppen, Robert Lowell, and three more collections with too many poets to list. I truly enjoy hearing the poet’s voice reading from their works and I’ve managed a large collection of them – some pretty available and some not so much. All Digital now after many hours trying to remaster off of old cassette tapes. My proudest is my Sylvia Plath Collection which has become exceedingly hard to find. In all I have about 2 gigs of recordings not including some of my own which I’ve just begun to do.

My Sylvia Plath Collection is as follows…

Daddy
Ariel
Lady Lazarus
The Ghost’s Leavetaking
November Graveyard
On the Plethora of Dryads
The Thin People
Hardcastle Crags
Child’s Park Stones
The Lady and the Earthenware Head
On the Difficulty of conjuring up a dryad
Green Rock, Winthrop Bay
On the Decline of Oracles
The Goring
Ouija
The Beggars
Sculptor
The Disquieting Muse
Spinster
Parliament Hill Fields
The Stones
Leaving Early
Candies
Mushrooms
Breck-plague
The Surgeon 2 AM
Nick and the Candlestick (not a good copy)
Poppies in October
Fever 103

short list of some reasons I prefer to listen to poetry:
1. In the Poet’s Voice how can you go wrong?
2. Sometimes the pains intensity makes it hard to focus my eyes.
3. I can enjoy poetry in a darkened room.
4. a good read can make me weep, gladly
5. hearing a poem in the authors voice is like experiencing it again for the first time.

If anyone has any obscure or hard to locate recordings I would love to wrench them from your tight grip. Also trade or even purchase. I hunger for more.

Sylvia part 1

I listen to your voice,
late November,

reliving a moment long
worn away by times
passing
and memory.

did you mean to see it out,
taste of poison
fruits? or come
back.
all questions lingering
and a scar,
a very real scar,
traces round our heart,

I’ll show you if you come to see.
no charge,
no heart beats like ours

out of the ash, we sift
and sift, but find
no more

no phoenix burning
the midnight air.
…

 – Hoc Scripsi

EDIT: poem submitted for the Jingle Poetry Theme of Dreams Visions and Reveries because I’ve visions of Sylvia at times when writing and feel that connection (especially this last one) and at times I dream of her. Is it cheating?

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November 27, 2010

It’s about four in the morning or so

by jhon baker

well fuck it, I’m staying awake tonight to see if I can pull this insomnia at night thing into the more normal ‘trouble falling asleep but doing so eventually anyway’ and away from the ‘I watch the sunrise and then get sleepy’ category.
I am currently digesting Paradise Lost by Milton and am going to go through the epics before I return to normal reading. As I am not a Christian or Catholic I get to read this from a pure poetical standpoint and dig deep into his word and line – which are beyond measure beautiful and striking. Interesting is how words have changed meaning over the years, i.e. reeking – now it refers to something with foul and unappealing odor and when he wrote it it meant more of vaporizing or disintegrating.
While not as cool as Beethoven being deaf or Monet being nearly blind  – Milton was totally blind when he wrote all 12 books of Paradise Lost. being unable to see what needs to be worked and writing in iambic pentameter is astounding to me not to mention being able to keep the complicated narrative of Paradise Lost in mind while doing the aforementioned composition. oh, and he was also hated at that point in history by the powers that be so he did this in hiding and was jailed at some point around then as well, not for being a bad guy but for saying the wrong things about the powerful.
This is not to be taken for better perusal of his history and selected from my memory of a blurb I read somewhere – probably the preface to the tome I am reading.
I feel ashamed for waiting this long to read it and can only admit that I have skimmed the other epics (Odyssey, Iliad, Aeneid, Metamorphosis, Beowulf) some fairly heavy skimming but still. I am correcting this oversight presently.

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November 1, 2010

preface to the week

by jhon baker

Leaving soon for Florida – Disney world to  be more specific. Celebrating my boy’s seventh birthday. The last time I was there, when I was about 12ish, there was a sunscreen incident and my brother and I got second degree sunburn – this was the second day. That night we ate at the Mickey Mouse Buffet where M.M. gave me a great big hug – after I stopped screaming and crying my memory fades away. I am hoping that better memories are created this time.
I should be able to post while there depending on how tired I am and the amount of pain my leg decided to make me endure. I am hoping that a change of scenery will inspire a few poems out of me that aren’t about six foot tall mice and Disney pretty princesses. Disney pretty is not my pretty – Disney beautiful is not my beautiful – is there such a thing  as Disney sexy? They do make or subsidize porn films don’t they? Maybe my wife and I will happen across an adult bar wherein we get smashed and fuck in the bathroom, that will be Disney sexy.

I once wrote a poem called “sexy to me” – I don’t like it now but I should find it and place here a few excerpts for you laughter and comedic enjoyment – not that it was meant to be funny but that it probably is in retrospect.

sexy to me is sunday morning
reading the funnies
hair messed in a bathrobe
drinking fresh coffee
before the children wake up.

sexy to me is dancing the tango
in the kitchen
while making dinner or
after doing the dishes
elbow deep in hot sudsy water.

sexy to me is skillfully touched
with fingers, a somewhat
gradual fragility
like lace or satin
or the efforts of a silk worm.

that isn’t from the original bad poem and is just a sketch that still may be badly written – I’ll let you judge and later, I will as well when I sit down to really write it up.
I reread the original and it sucks beyond comprehension. I would like to obliterate all my former writings while I was learning but then I wouldn’t have learned anything. I would like to erase all of them from the WWW and publications so they could no longer be connected to me in anyway. Fortunately I wrote under a pen name.

last thought before I smoke my last cigarette for the night and go to bed awaiting the five am limo call – If I don’t get to reading your blogs – I will play the apologist now and try to catch up in a week. If I die in the meantime know that I’ve loved life, my wife, child and the few words I’ve managed to scrawl out if any of them are worth a damn. Not that I think I am not going to make it back – but you never do know – unless you do and hey, bully for you.

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October 15, 2010

Danse Macrabe, Op. 40

by jhon baker

I just need a few words to start me off and I’ll be running.
I made the mistake of getting out of bed today, I’m not looking for sympathy because fuck that. nearly every step today is as unbearable as the last one and as where I’ve medicated myself to the highest highs I still am clear thinking and in pain.
Lying down now and resting after a long day of doing nothing with nothing and not in a good Buddhist way or Taoist way either I wonder what I really need. I am convinced it is a few words – the right words and I’ll be off running. the fingers long to fly at the typewriter no matter what my little thigh thinks about it.
I long to do the tango in the kitchen.
I long to drink coffee whilst laying down and not spilling thus burning my hairy chest.
why are Breast and Chest spelled differently at the est part? Maybe it”s that since breasts are universally nicer than just a chest they get an extra A –
the red walls bring me focus and I notice a small drip in the paint.
Checking with the TSA I’ve learned that I don’t need any medical documentation for the medications, my ortho Frankenstein shoe or the metal in my leg. Interesting, I thought to myself, and said aloud – well, that’s done.

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