Posts tagged ‘poets’

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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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July 17, 2010

Mostly wondering what comes next

by jhon baker

Listening to Rachmaninov (there are too many fucking variations on how his name is spelled for spell check to keep up thought it offers nightwatchman as an alternative) and thinking about this kind of poetry I’ve just read about called flarf. The example I saw was from a Google’s search prediction – someone put in half a phrase and then took what was there and called it a poem. Here is the Wikipedia definition of this avant garde nonsense. And it is nonsense in my not so humble opinion. In the article it compares it to so called “cut up” – which really is the Tristan Tzara method where you cut the words out of something else and rearrange them like either a ransom note or magnetic poetry. The Tzara method takes authorship as where flarf takes an audience to simply recognize it to be something and react to it. I don’t call it poetry but accidental art and it would more belong in a museum then in a serious journal. As accidental art I think it’s interesting and engaging. Like typing in an innocuous phrase and searching images until you manage to find porn – normally about ten pages for any keywords.
another way to look at flarf would be closer to photography – taking what is already there and manipulating it or pulling it into focus. Forcing a viewer to read beyond the goal.
So, I am not saying it’s bad art – just incorrectly categorized.

edit: I use the word authorship – I think it is the wrong word – what I mean is that to come up with this flarf a writer is unnecessary – a poet would only get in the way, I mean that there is no single creator but an audience to recognize it for it’s writerly quality but without the writer it is avant garde art, that should be on the walls, not on broadsides.

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July 8, 2010

revision

by jhon baker

Right now I am busying myself with looking over everything I’ve written since the start of the new year and deciding what needs work and what is perfect in situ. I like to look at things with a mind that has moved on to know. I always surprise myself when I put something on this blog for public consumption without have allowed it to be thought about for at least a day first – but first thought best thought and sometimes it is even worded correctly the first time out. More than once I have edited a post several times throughout the day and I am starting to think I may need to write them all in advance but then my readers might miss the fresh crazy.
It was Allen Ginsberg who first taught me (not personally) that first thought is best thought and for the complete education one must look at the amount of time he puts into each poem and how much rework is really done. It’s the first thought that is best – not first strophe best strophe or first word best word.

just this note today and that is all I think, I can smell dinner cooking and it is blanking my mind making any sort of first thought be about pork chops.

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June 24, 2010

Thursday

by jhon baker

untitled (I sit down to write)

1.
I sit down to write.
and the longing that comes out is immensely
distressing.
disparate writing and thought,
the thoughts are why I am driven here.
it’s either this or murder, rape and drugs.
good drugs;
illicit drugs, but
less the psychiatric form.

paper awash with malaise and frankness
but I get tired of it and just sit for awhile,
watching TV and creation.
but I won’t do anything with it.
may cut myself up more and wonder why;
ultimately it doesn’t matter.

2.
I waste more ink on this then anything.
I could be writing about birds or sick
children.
I could be writing about pavement and
street car fantasy races with a blonde
cheerleader type waving handkerchiefs.
I should be writing about the mundane,
that is what life has delivered me to.
books, children, sex, good food, conversations.
it isn’t all bad. I don’t miss the street living
or sleeping in the back of my car.
I don’t miss the nights without memory at bars
I don’t miss the anonymous sex and waking to
find there are no eggs for breakfast.
I don’t miss anything about school except the schedule of it.
I don’t miss the hard drugs and hard dealers,
or the late night lab experiments resulting
in a high and extreme weight loss.
I don’t miss not having food and not knowing
when the next days meal will come from.
I don’t miss the sexual abuse or neglect.
I don’t miss playing in bands or writing badly in
strip clubs hanging around even worse writers.
all of us thinking that we were going to be the next
HD or Buk or Lorca
no one really wants to be the next Lorca;
or maybe that is what I really strive for;

to be shot.

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