SoQ or Post Avant???
Bemsha Swing responds to my comment/question... but I'm still bewildered. If I use this quiz, I'm smack dab in the middle.
I read/love work from many corners of the poetic globe, but I'm not sure if/why what you READ should determine where you fall. Like, Keats wasn't a Romantic because of what he READ, was he?
And then too, there's HOW you read. I'm a huge fan of Oppen, but I consider him highly narrative. I read him as a sequence of tiny stories. And I love Simic, but my favorite thing he wrote was simply a book title, a fragment.
What makes more sense is to judge on my work.... but I can't do that, since I don't understand the rules. So will you help me? As a test I'm posting a poem I published in the Iowa Review, which is, I think, a SoQ publication (according to my dim understanding). What do you think? Am I Quietudinous? Either way it's fine... but I'm curious.
Sense
Nothing stops the peacocks from crying in the yard.
We can’t see them, but we have ears, and they’re awful,
So bright and everywhere.
Loud across the lawn.
Their weeping, their plumage, their blue—
Louder than anything should be. We can’t get our work
Done inside that racket! But hey— that’s a peacock for you.
Gaudy as hell.
The sycamore tree was blossoming, but now it isn’t.
It’s bearing weight—it’s bearing fruit. Green fruit.
Pears. There are pears falling all around us,
Heavy in the grass.
They don’t belong on the tree, and they know it.
So they jump. Stupid pears haven’t got the sense
God gave them. Don’t know how lucky they are.
Meanwhile.
What else is there to do? The pears are thunking
Against the earth and the peacocks are screaming
Louder than before. A girl could run away.
Or she could lie.
Down she goes, like a pear, down. Screaming
Like a peacock. Down she goes, into the grass, heavy
With all her intentions, her various sanities.
Thunk she falls.
And from there only the sky and the bare brown branches,
looking for all the world like sycamore branches. And grass
tickling both her cheeks. And the peacocks are sleeping.
Quietly she lies.
I read/love work from many corners of the poetic globe, but I'm not sure if/why what you READ should determine where you fall. Like, Keats wasn't a Romantic because of what he READ, was he?
And then too, there's HOW you read. I'm a huge fan of Oppen, but I consider him highly narrative. I read him as a sequence of tiny stories. And I love Simic, but my favorite thing he wrote was simply a book title, a fragment.
What makes more sense is to judge on my work.... but I can't do that, since I don't understand the rules. So will you help me? As a test I'm posting a poem I published in the Iowa Review, which is, I think, a SoQ publication (according to my dim understanding). What do you think? Am I Quietudinous? Either way it's fine... but I'm curious.
Sense
Nothing stops the peacocks from crying in the yard.
We can’t see them, but we have ears, and they’re awful,
So bright and everywhere.
Loud across the lawn.
Their weeping, their plumage, their blue—
Louder than anything should be. We can’t get our work
Done inside that racket! But hey— that’s a peacock for you.
Gaudy as hell.
The sycamore tree was blossoming, but now it isn’t.
It’s bearing weight—it’s bearing fruit. Green fruit.
Pears. There are pears falling all around us,
Heavy in the grass.
They don’t belong on the tree, and they know it.
So they jump. Stupid pears haven’t got the sense
God gave them. Don’t know how lucky they are.
Meanwhile.
What else is there to do? The pears are thunking
Against the earth and the peacocks are screaming
Louder than before. A girl could run away.
Or she could lie.
Down she goes, like a pear, down. Screaming
Like a peacock. Down she goes, into the grass, heavy
With all her intentions, her various sanities.
Thunk she falls.
And from there only the sky and the bare brown branches,
looking for all the world like sycamore branches. And grass
tickling both her cheeks. And the peacocks are sleeping.
Quietly she lies.
5 Comments:
Post avant.
this is interesting . . . a poetry diagnosis.
I think the question is Orwellian. You should be concerned whether you have written a good poem or a poor one. You have written a good one. I'll have more to say on this.
I'm thinking you ride that crazy poetry ground of...neither post-avant nor SOQ. We've got to come up with more schools...
Nice poem. Reminded me of Stevens' "Domination in Black," probably because of the peacocks.
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