NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/arts/poems/13275

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-30 | 8.0 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!destroyer!gumby!yale!hsdndev!husc-news.harvard.edu!husc-news!nikolay
From: [e-mail] (Philip Nikolayev)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Crtical Comments and a Bonfire Carol (was: Re: STORM)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 31 Dec 92 02:35:49 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: The Kremlin Wall of Harvard
Lines: 203
Nntp-Posting-Host: husc10.harvard.edu
In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 25 Dec 92 04:26:22

[e-mail] (Zhenya Gorokhovsky) writes:

>Here's another poem. Whoever cares, please comment.
>Happy holidays to all.

>        STORM
>
>        At whose oblique request,
>        conclusive as it nears,
>        avenging whose suppressed
>        tart mutinies of tears,

>        unstifling whose lament,
>        assaulting whose terrain?
>        A monstrous laundromat,
>        abetted by the brain.

>        On the soaked city plan
>        some districts still persist,
>        so pert and soi-disant,
>        so distant through the mist.

>        The grey dominion forms
>        an atmospheric gap;
>        vast chunks of Harvard dorms
>        are swallowed from the map

>        as lightnings from above
>        perform the first sortie
>        of self-inflicted love
>        with vibrant cruelty.

>        A welcome cleansing mess
>        blasts from the baffled vault:
>        surely a careless
>        ill-shaven angel's fault.

>        Teenagerly, revealed
>        through shifting sheets of spray,
>        resplendent to a field
>        of hesitant dismay,

>        he spells and celebrates
>        a silver-melting glow.
>        Through him reverberates
>        the perfect vertigo.

>        A chain of sparks ignites
>        from an initial flame.
>        Quintillions of lights.
>        Abandonment of shame.

Ed Gaillard has already commented on this poem; I advise no one
to take what he says seriously. The poem shows considerable mastery
of style and achieves much more than Ed is prepared, or perhaps able,
to acknowledge: his comments seem to be taken from some mock-pedantic
penn'erth rhyming manual for the poor. Many a neophyte rhymester learn
sooner or later to count syllables and achieve a certain precision in
rhyming; often, also, they pick up the nasty habit of applying the few
and simple rules they've internalised to every poem that comes their
way. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, as long as they
venture no constructive criticism. Somehow, I am not inclined to worry
about the author of this poem, who seems to know perfectly well what
he is doing; but I feel that Ed's criticism must be corrected, for
the sake of other readers. A few introductory tips. Firstly, meter has
very limited value in and of itself; it is useful as long as it permits
the author to play off the rhythm against the meter in a sort of
counterpoint. Ezra Pound, I think, points out somewhere that this in fact
is the general principle on which all art is based: making use of a
constant and a variable element. In other words, in a good modern English
poem, the rhythm is almost necessarily subversive with respect to the
meter. (It should by no means be confused with ordinary sloppiness and
unintentional skeltonics!) Therefore, in a poem composed in iambic
trimeter (a beautiful and rather difficult form), the line
'Quintillions of lights', with its liquid ambiguity of vowels, is
overwhelmingly preferable to the 'quintillions of white lights' suggested
by Ed. It's a curious fact that whenever a beginner proposes to 'improve'
an accomplished poem, he always seeks to introduce cliches so as to rid it
of its 'faults'.) Ditto, in context, for 'surely a careless'. Secondly,
a few words about rhymes. The dull reader often overlooks the fact that
rhymes have, or should have, peculiar semantics of their own. Thus, Ed
finds fault with 'celebrates'/'reverberates' because it relies on secondary
stresses, although the line explicitly tells him that the effect it tries
to create is a reverberation (which is reinforced in the next line:
'the perfect vertigo'). This inability to *understand* rhymes causes
an inability to understand images. What is the 'monstrous laundromat',
asks Ed, failing to notice that the meaning of this simple metaphor
is whispered to him by the adjacent rhyme 'terrain'/'brain', whose
beauty lies chiefly in its unobtrusive reluctance to utter the quicker
solution: 'rain'. Indeed, it rains all through the poem, but the word
isn't spoken once. I like that. The rest of Ed's questions about the
meanings of the poem's images are too elementary to deserve to be
answered here. A second glance at the poem should easily resolve them
all. Parenthetically, let me suggest the following: isn't there a
necessary connection between the hackneyed notions that poetry 'is not
intellectual but emotional'; that it should contain 'clear images',
and many readers' inability to make sense of any decent text? Do you
folks ever read anything besides nursery rhymes?

This poem is beautiful in its sound. I stanza three, the atmospheric
noises are captured with very impressive precision. (Ed, the city
districts mentioned there are 'pert and soi-disant' because they resist
to the last before the rain erases them from view - 'from the map'-
completely.) Phonetically, the two most beautiful lines are 'He spells and
celebrates / a silver-melting glow': they capture the melting of a
hard, dry nugget of metaphorical silver as it turns into a fluid,
mercury-like drop; 'spells' is a subtle, elusive pun on 'spills' (ah,
too bad that most most probably won't appreciate what I'm saying here).
In a word, it is quite an impressive poem.

Gee whiz, at last I have praised something here. And now that I have,
here are a few words addressed directly to the poem's author. Now that
you have fallen victim to my flattering, publicly uttered remarks, I
hope you realise that no one else here will ever again grace you with a
single nice, friendly word. Abandon all hope: I have monopolised you in
your entirety. You are mine, and don't you dare resist my bear-hug. From
the way you write, I have very little doubt that you have no trouble
understanding what I'm saying. Indeed, you may be the only one in this
group capable of that. Therefore, listen carefully. I wish you a Happy
New Year. Do you remember the old custom of making huge bonfires and
burning various domestic rubbish during this season? Back in Russia,
we always used to amuse ourselves with this sort of thing. Why not
try it again in  a new context? And to reward your fondness of iambic
trimeter, which I also love, here's a bit of seasonal doggerel for you.
It's meaning is quite transparent.


        BONFIRE CAROL

        Alors, my gifted mate,
        my hesitant bonhomme,
        come help me to cremate
        the cream of douchebagdom.

        We'll raise a vicious din
        and make a solid urn.
        Who said we couldn't win?
        Who said they couldn't burn?

        By purifying fire
        destroy their bulk and heft
        quire after shoddy quire
        till in the end there's left

        no gutless, garlicky
        of gurgling memory
        glutinous Lugowski
        Marek; no dumb Marie

        Coffin, replete with bat-
        shit tougher than basalt;
        no conrad; none of that
        dull dandelion, G'alt.

        The list goes on and on:
        (hey, Watch-and-Seals, adieu!)
        the sad panopticon
        (bye, Cherubini, phew!).

        Don't scold, rebuke, berate
        their witenagemot:
        scald, scorch, incinerate
        the sere sincere sore lot!

        The slow, the smug, the sleek
        may wail over spilt milk.
        Flail, lacerate the clique
        and conflagrate the ilk:

        iconoclastic squeaks
        and positivist squawks
        uttered on clueless peaks
        by clawless, beakless hawks;

        the flock of holeless ducks
        ensnared in netless toils,
        brought home on wheelless trucks,
        humped dead by duckless goils;

        all humpless camels, whose
        fair females can compose
        and mellow males effuse
        caramel rhyming prose

        (we'll neatly fumiduct
        their prolix caravan);
        erections that eruct;
        and Alex A. Karan;

        the hosts of toady gents;
        the hordes of fishy dames;
        the dolts; the decadents -
        consign them to the flames!

        Be firm, then, light the fuse
        and fry the crass milieu!
        None will survive the blaze
        except a different few.


Ciao,
Philip Nikolayev
[e-mail]