Jimmy Santiago Baca's Black Mesa Poems

Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Black Mesa Poems captures a rural, Southwestern landscape and does so beautifully in places. Lines like “he didn’t protect his life from wind” and “watch me pass, silent/at the shortness of my life . . .” appear as glimmering halos throughout the book (89, 120). There is much to study here, in each poem, each line, each word. I enjoy Baca’s ability to introduce me to the characters in his poems and a lot of them leave me with the feeling that I just gained a new friend. But sometimes, Baca’s poems verge on the side of verbose. Certain ones, when read aloud, turn into tongue twisters, which convolutes the point of the poem. In “Day’s Blood,” Baca uses a series of words that leaves me stumbling over each syllable:

Snouts in weeds for more chance scraps,

in mournful whines and whimpers, heel-nipping,

with floppy, sagging, lopsided shuffle,

the cross fields toward the Onate Feedmill . . . (19)

The adjectives and verbs in these lines overpower the story of this poem. Not many of the words create a common association in my head and I have to pause after each one to picture the image Baca is trying to paint. It is with poems like this that I go to craft to find something I can grasp and enjoy. Although this section falls flat for me in meaning, I can appreciate Baca’s use of eye rhymes. He is very economical in his poems by recycling each letter over and over, thus minimizing the letters used while creating a visual aesthetic. The number of words with double letters in these lines astounds me (heel-nipping, floppy, sagging, shuffle, cross, and Feedmill) and even without the double letters, Baca manages to find visual rhymes in “chance” and “scraps” (reusing the c and a), as well as “whines” and “whimpers” (reusing the w, h, i, e, AND s). As convoluted as this passage is, the brevity of its letters is quite impressive.

In that same vein, Baca has a solid grip on the use of rhyme. He uses it sparingly, but enough for it to be noticed. In “BJ,” Baca uses a nonce rhyme scheme to add softness to a heartbreaking story:

to the old clapboard house,

he combs her, dresses her, shoulders

smelling favorite soup

waver up

from the blackened pot

on the woodstove top.

flute of his tractor

grumbling chapters (86).

Note that these lines are not in succession, as I am focusing only on the lines where I want to draw attention to the rhyme. The first pair with “house” and “shoulders” is another eye rhyme, with the word “house” being completely reused in “shoulders,” as is the case with “soup” and “up.” The rhyme scheme for “pot” and “top” is interesting because it is a transposition of letters – is there a term for that? The last set with “tractor” and “chapters” is a slant rhyme, which is subtle in both sight and sound, but is beautifully recognized when read aloud. It is these rhymes, paired with certain stories, which kept me engaged throughout the book.

Ai's Vice

Sometimes I tire of critiquing poetry. Sometimes I don’t want to know what the poet is trying to say, or the craft s/he is using to say it: internal rhymes, line breaks, syntax. Sometimes I just want to feel the poem and close the book with nothing more than my own nostalgia on my mind.

Good poets can do this. They can use all the elements of craft to create a poem that is better left felt than critiqued. Ai is one of these poets. As I read her poems, I think of my own experiences, and I am inspired to write about them using the beauty of the language and the power of memory. As a poet, I think any topic can be powerful, as long as it’s powerful to the poet. And sometimes, on occasion, I want nothing to do with form or craft, I only want the reader to feel something. That’s not to say that craft is left out, because it never can be, but it can definitely take a back seat while the story is initially being told.

Now, Ai is not craftless, nor is she unaware of the technicalities of writing – quite the opposite in fact. She is so good at everything technical that her poems seem painless in their construction. In “She Didn’t Even Wave,” she takes the death of a mother and celebrates the beauty in it:

She was walking toward the barn

when it struck her. I didn’t move;

I just stood at the screen door.

Her whole body was light.

I’d never seen anything so beautiful (30).

This language is accessible. I can go into specifics. I can discuss the “o” sound in these few lines and how the repetition of it ads to the “awe” of the poem, the tragic memory of the speaker, the moment where life changed and the only thing the child could do was watch with her mouth open. I can point out the simplicity of the language and how it is working on two levels of this poem: accessibility and the memory from a child. And I guess I just did discuss both points of craft, but I only did it to get to this point: the craft is so exact that it is really the story that the reader is left with. And this story is tragic and beautiful and tragic again. It makes you want to cry from sadness and joy simultaneously.

Ai’s uses of the seemingly simple lines – lines like “I can break your heart” (37), and “I mean to live” (26) – have me crawling across the floor, looking for an appropriate place to hyperventilate. I don’t want to know why she wrote it, I only want to be left with the feeling of having read it.

Gary Lutz Interview

A wonderful interview with Gary Lutz:

http://htmlgiant.com/?p=16620

gerald stern made me cry

i have lost sleep over this, the second poem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7udFR6SVOtQ

Lucille Clifton's good woman

There are so many things that can be discussed and labored over in Lucille Clifton’s poetry in good women – the brevity of it, the space surrounding each small piece, the bluesy and colloquial language – but I am most interested in discussing, in this blog at least, the two voices she uses in her Kali and Mary poems.

Clifton identifies herself with Kali and creates a relationship with the goddess in which both women play a part. In “the coming of Kali,” Clifton allows the goddess full reign over her body and secrets:

running Kali off is hard.

she is persistent with her

black terrible self. she

knows places in my bones

i never sing about but

she knows i know them well.

she knows.

she knows (135).

The intimacy that Clifton feels with Kali is established quickly and matter-of-factly in this poem. It is so deeply rooted that Clifton cannot escape from it, nor does she try (although she does try to pass it on to her sister, which is mentioned in “she insists on me.”) Clifton gives herself to the fate of being connected with this goddess in both feminine and racial ways (although in Hinduism, black is symbolic of death and decay).

There is a tone that is set through Clifton, which establishes a sibling-like relationship with Kali. The bold, bossy language found in “calming Kali,” shows Clifton’s role in the relationship, which is both demanding and maternal:

be quiet awful woman,

lonely as hell,

and i will conform you

when i can

and give you my bones

and my blood to feed on.

gently gently now

awful woman,

i know i am your sister (140).

I have been trying to name this thing that Kali has over Clifton. It is respect, certainly, but it is something else too. There is a respect from intimacy, as opposed to venerability. It is interesting the way in which Kali is always capitalized, whereas other names throughout the book are not.

Clifton’s voice in her Mary poems is quite different from her voice in her Kali poems. This is where you’ll find venerability. There is no bossy tone to Clifton, no dual-role relationship, just observations and personifications that Clifton does not challenge in the same way she does Kali:

joseph, i afraid of stars,

their brilliant seeing.

so many eyes. such light.

joseph, i cannot still these limbs,

i hands keep moving toward i breasts,

so many stars. so bright.

joseph, is wind buring from east

joseph, i shine, oh joseph, oh

illuminated night (200).

In this poem, “holy night,” Clifton creates a persona in which she stands in for Mary. You’ll see that the maternal theme is here, as it is in many of the Kali poems, but the brassy tongue is gone. In its place is a vulnerability on the part of Mary, instead of Clifton herself. If I were to guess, I would say that religion is not something Clifton wanted to challenge, but rather something with which she wanted to empathize. But even in that, there is still the fact that she does not capitalize Mary’s name, like she does Kali’s.

Clifton gives Mary’s character a certain humanness that is often overlooked in religion. In “island mary,” Clifton explores the possibility of doubt in Mary:

after the all been done and i

one old creature carried on

another creature’s back, i wonder

could i have fought these thing (202)?

It is hard, for most religious persons, I would think, to consider the possibility of Mary questioning her role in Christianity. Yet Clifton does it naturally, and believably, in this poem. The vulnerability that Clifton gives Mary in several of these poems is heartbreaking and often times unbelievable. Unbelievable because religion is based on faith and the ability to believe that each role (in the Bible) was taken proudly and without doubt, even though that isn’t always the case (even Jesus had his doubts, yes?).

So where does this leave us? It leaves us with the blatant fact that Clifton can do amazing things with her voice through such short spurts. It also leaves us with the knowledge that Clifton can carry and deal respect on many levels, and has the ability to immerse herself, in very different ways, in the people she finds fit to speak about. And really, that’s all I need in any poem.

Olga Broumas' Beginning With O

Olga Broumas’ Beginning With O is a book that takes me from one edge of language to the other. It is rich with situations and ideas that were unheard of (or just coming to light) at the time of its publication. Brouma is able to capture her readers with moments of astute rumination in one stanza then catapult them into a world of racy ideas and language in the following stanza.

As wonderful as this visual and mental whiplash sounds, I found myself often disappointed at the predictability of the language. I set myself up for wading through the beauty of the language until I hit the other side, which always came. Broumas does deliver punches in her poems though. There were some wonderful images that were worded perfectly from the very first poem Sometimes, as a child:

you’d dive

from the float, the pier, the stone

promontory, through water so startled

it held the shape of our plunge . . . (1)

What stood out in this stanza is the very unique way Broumas described the dive of the subject. In poetry we are told that nothing is new, nothing is groundbreaking. We, as poets, have to fight a constant battle of finding new and fresh ways to describe the same old things. Broumas did a wonderful job of doing this with “through water so startled/it held the shape of our plunge . . .” The language is simultaneously romantic and dangerous, and the verb “held” paired with “startled,” “shape,” and “plunge” give this scene the appropriate drama that is easily visualized for the reader.

Another poem that stood out to me was Beauty and the Beast. Here, Broumas pairs pain with ecstasy through her word choices:

For years I fantasized pain

driving, driving

me over each threshold

I thought I had, till finally

the joy in my flesh would break

loose with the terrible strain, and undulate

in great spasmic circles, centered

in cunt and heart. I clung to pain (55)

First, let me list the words that I consider to trigger an association with pain: pain (in both instances), terrible, break, strain, and cunt.

Now, the ecstasy words: fantasized, joy, loose, heart.

The word “cunt” is in the former list, not because the female anatomy suggests a place of pain for me, but because of the shock of the actual word. The fact that it is still shocking today (in most situations and to most people) only emphasizes the shock of it in 1977 when this book was published.

This simultaneous presence of pain and ecstasy in the poem is what is found in human relationships. The pleasure sought, and the pain that follows or proceeds. It is a constant back-and-forth-pull on emotions that really emphasizes the confusion in any given relationship that is based on curiosity, and even love. There is one word that takes the poem into a sexual realm: “undulate.” Since “undulate” has the ability to feel and sound both painful and fantastic, its presence helps create a sexual tension that keeps the poem balanced between pain and ecstasy, thus allowing the reader to feel both emotions while reading.

Something that left me disappointed in these poems was the way Broumas attempted to emulate Anne Sexton, and fell short. She used Sexton’s quote “A woman/who loves a woman/is forever young,” as an epigraph in “Rapunzel,” but failed to match Sexton's language in any way (59). An epigraph is supposed to support your poem, not outshine your poem, and I thought that in this instance the latter happened. I couldn’t even quote one area to support this, since it was the poem’s language as a whole. It just fell short for me. Broumas has wonderful language throughout, but I thought she set herself up for failure once she brought Sexton into the picture. Then, to make things just slightly more insulting, she writes this stanza in “Snow White” :

A woman

who loves a woman

who loves a woman

who loves a man (69).

Now, there is no way I can know why Broumas did this, or what, exactly, her goal was for this quote. But I know that I wanted to put the book down after reading this. It struck me as weak and insulting, regardless of how it fit into the poem. Sexton nailed it the first time, and I found no need for Broumas’ watered-down attempt at imitation. Sadly, this appears in the last poem of the book, and leaves me feeling a bit ripped-off as to the lingering language that I will remember from Broumas.

Ed Ochester's Unreconstructed

The thing that strikes me about Ed Ochester’s Unreconstructed is the range in his poems in regard to both content and form. He is one of a few poets I am familiar with who can deliver the same punch in a five-line poem as he can in a three-page poem. His longer narratives have this momentum that never leaves the reader bored or confused. I taught a class at OASIS this summer, and Ochester was on my syllabus. I put him there because he is easy to understand and is familiar to everybody. His language has a way of getting inside the moment, a moment that everyone has experienced in some way.

Many of Ochester’s poems have this seamless movement from one thought to the next. In “September, Listening to the Old Songs,” he goes from music, to nature, to being alone, to a memory of a friend, back to nature, then ends with an emotion:

“I hope you find nothing,” which was

perfect, and here under the stars

once again I realize it is perfect

as, after most sadness,

it always is. (29)

The use of “nothing” and “sadness,” paired with nature, create a loneliness that is actually wanted, one that is appealing and serene to the reader as if this sadness is more therapeutic than the sadness they experience on their own.

Ochester is capturing a universal experience in his poems. He is doing with rural landscape what Frank O’Hara did with urban landscape: he is taking the reader into small moments of intimacy between friends. He succeeds in doing this by putting the reader on a first-name basis with the characters. He lets the characters speak in his poems, and uses minimal space and language to create an atmosphere.

“Ed Shreckongost” is a prime example of this. The setting is intimate (the roof of the speaker’s house), and the landscape is established with “Deciduous mountains, old men/sleeping, lie down all the way to Saltsburg,/here & there the unhealed scars of stripmines.” Every word in this section lends description to the environment from which these men are inside: The lackadaisical, maybe even defeated, population of a small rural town; the deciduous mountains that are very specific to the eastern side of the country; and the stripmines, which are specific to Western Pennsylvania. In a 25-line poem, he uses only 3 lines to create a landscape that is relatable to every reader.

Another strength to this poem is the voice of Ed Shreckongost. His direct voice is used in 12 of the 25 lines – nearly half – and is the meat of the poem. This is an instance where a direct quote does so much more than mere story telling. There would be a disconnect between the reader and the subject of the poem if it were not for the presence of Ed’s voice. The lines: “’. . . Verne,/I’m a coonhunter,/presently/unemployed,’” works on many levels. The one-word lines slow the poem down, forcing the reader to recognize the breathiness in the speaker. They also capture the personality of the speaker by showing his lifestyle and priorities through the quote.

These are just a few examples of what I love about this book. I could go on for hours writing about Ochester’s use of language and knack for storytelling. His poems read like journals, revealing stories that capture the American Experience and are universal in their meanings and familiarity. His accessible language and common stories make writing look simple, until you sit down to write.