Ghost Bikes

I'm a filthy bike-looker. It's impossible not to notice the wide variety of analog machines hitched like horses to post in this town. The more I ride my own bike, the less I can keep my eyes off the saddle of another, the angle of a top tube, the craft of handlebar tape. Some bikes are so eccentric I become familiar with where they're usually parked. I know that the chartreuse tall bike lives on Hawthorne, the orange furry bike with plastic flowers sticks close to Alberta. I noticed the sheer volume of all-white bikes before I noticed that they never moved. I thought they were art projects for fixie fans or trophies, more to look at rather than to ride until my girlfriend reporting seeing these white bikes in her town too and sent me a local article about the emergence of ghost bikes as memorials to bicyclists killed on the street. Ghost bikes are aptly named as the imagery is certainly haunting.

 

 Brett Jarolimek ghost bike

Via.

Establishing the Identity of the Poet

and June Jordan's Directed by Desire


The volumes of poetry in June Jordan’s Directed by Desire demonstrate the method in which the poet is able to sensibly combine multiple issues into a single poem. I think all poets generally have a few topics that they continually revisit; usually they are topics with which the poet feels some personal connection. Unfortunately, despite how meaningful to the poet, the reoccurring themes can sometimes feel monotonous to the reader, or even worse, they can appear to imply an imposing agenda.
I can identify my own patterns and issues in my writing that are directly tied to who I am as an individual, and I am ever-conscious of how these patterns and reoccurring issues are interpreted by the reader. I think that considering how the reader perceives the poet is a relevant concern because the focus should be on the poems and the speaker in those poems rather than on the poet herself. I want to be in control of the identity of the poet, but I feel that that identity should be offered in bits and pieces over several works, whether those be collections of poetry or otherwise. The identity of any author should be a gift offered to the reader who studies multiple works by that author and takes the time to contemplate that individual’s published offerings. In order to offer that gift, the writer must be compelling enough to encourage the identity-seeking reader.
June Jordan’s wide gamut of poetry succeeds in inviting her readers to know her without giving them the chance to judge her incorrectly by the juxtaposition of content in her poems. Jordan’s reoccurring themes are generally: world politics, activism, women, femininity vs. masculinity, people of color, food, sex, etc. Many of her poems contain two or more of these themes at once, such as in “The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones” from Against the Stillwaters:

The victory
the liberation
of the Indo-Chinese peoples
apparently
belongs to pint-size
short
slight
runt-hard armies
not excluding ten-year-olds
boyandgirl
guerrilla fireflies
a multi-thousandfold
an army
marching on and on
in 69¢
single-thong slippers
thin
loose pyjamas
a military presence
fortified
by a handful of rice
wild fruit
and the indomitable
sexy
instinct sexy sting
of freedom (9-34)

and “Meta-Rhetoric” from the specific volume, Directed by Desire:

Homophobia
racism
self-definition
revolutionary struggle

the subject tonight for
public discussion is
our love

we sit apart
apparently at opposite ends of a line
and I feel the distance
between my eyes
between my legs
a dry
dust topography of our separation (1-14)

The combination of themes in these excerpts is organic. The reader isn’t a victim of propaganda or ego and predictability is out-of-the-question. In “…Miss Valentine Jones,” Jordan combines ironic political commentary with sensual imagery and even nods to her reoccurring male/female dichotomy all in a short list; she suggestively combines her role as an activist with love and sex in “Meta-Rhetoric.”
Perhaps Jordan didn't consider her reader while writing as much as I do, but it seems best for now to consider everything in my pursuit to write the most dynamic, reader-accessible poems as I can.

Kathy Acker’s Bodies of Work

and her Influence on my Statement of Poetics

photo by cromacom 1986

Kathy Acker comments on the nature of art and the process of writing in her collection of essays, Bodies of Work, those of which I feel could be compiled into what would be her own posthumous literary manifesto. Her unapologetic views concerning the “world” (mainly New York City, Boston, London, and San Francisco) of visual and literary art are stated with an appropriate authority and a level of consciousness that I admire. As a writer who is piecing together her own statement of poetics, I feel that Bodies of Work is an invaluable resource in this process.

There are four main points that Acker makes to which I can relate and/or endorse. The first point she simply states as thus

“The more that I write my own novels, the more it seems to me that to write is to read.”

Acker is referencing her habitual return to using the writings of Marquis de Sade as a source in her essays and novels. I whole-heartedly agree with the notion that to write well is to read well. I find that I generate more work (poetry, essays, creative-non, blog, diary) if I include reading of almost any kind into my creative process. This doesn’t mean that I practice imitation all the time, although sometimes I do, it means that the words of others keep me continually stimulated and refreshed. Vocabulary is important to me. Since poetry’s main business is to pack as much meaning into as few words as possible, I find it necessary to read in order to develop word banks to work from and in order to keep my language relevant. Reading the work of others also helps me to conceptualize style, and to see my own work in perhaps the light in which someone else sees my poems.

The second point that Acker makes is one I’m still reading and rereading. She says about herself

“For me, writing is freedom. Therein lies (my) identity. I prefer writing fiction to essays because there is more freedom in fiction and so, I question my essays. To be precise, essay-writing seems, at least at first glance, tied to expression. The problem with expression is that it is too narrow a basis for writing, for it is pinned to knowledge, knowledge which is mainly rational. I trust neither my ability to know nor what I think I know. Moreover, the excitement of writing, for me, is that of a journey into strangeness: to write down what one thinks one knows is to destroy possibilities for joy.”

How exciting not to trust yourself and to see what that looks like on the page! I love that Acker questions her own motivations and inherent inclinations for writing, and that she is honest with the reader in admitting that she has doubts about the origins of her own opinions. Because she makes this confession made early on in the essays, the informed reader knows to proceed with caution—not only while reading Bodies of Work—but while reading any body of work. I want to affect my reader’s ways that go beyond the book that sits in their lap. I want to change how they look not only at my writing, but the writing of others, and even their own, which I hope is applicable. An essential part of nourishing one’s brain is making connections, and that is exactly what Acker does.
The next point that she makes is what I think separates good writing from average writing. She says that

“writing must break through the representational or fictional mirror and be equal in force to the horror experienced in daily life.”

Secretly, there is nothing I desire more than to have my poems described using words like “horror,” “frightening,” and “terrible” in their non-pejorative incarnations. I strive always to “break through” the “mirror” and represent my topics as raw and exposed as possible. What’s the use in hiding? No one wants to read an abbreviated version of a story. People want the gory, sick, lonely, orgasmic details. If reality TV were real, why not reality poetry? Now is the time for the unburdening my conscience, my brain and my heart by writing poems etc. because the only thing there is to fear is the devastation I would bring upon myself by not contributing to the vital gamut of human expression while I had the chance.

The last point that Acker makes about writing is simple and what I see as most important

“it’s not an art work’s content, surface content, that matters, but the process of making art . . . only process matters.”

If I didn’t love to revise, to rebound after being rejected from whatever lit mag, to learn about myself, I wouldn’t be a writer. If I thought that writing poems would make me famous, would make me rich, would even provide me with enough money to sustain me daily, then I would be completely disillusioned and most likely hungry. I’m passionate about revisions and annoyed by those who claim that they never revise because for me, going back for the second, third, fourth look and beyond at a poem allows me to see the ways in which I have grown within those revisions. Each time I go back, I see what I have written differently and usually, I see what I need to do in order make the poem better, more lucid, more accessible, more whatever is necessary. The writing process, for me, is extremely gratifying because seeing my personal evolution through the stages of revision is the only way I can see myself, truly. I trust my writing process more than I trust the mirror.

Reticence vs. Hermeticism

and The Motets of Eugenio Montale

Hermetic

1. Completely sealed, especially against the escape or entry of air.

2. Impervious to outside interference or influence: the hermetic confines of an isolated life.

Reticent

1. Disposed to be silent or not to speak freely; reserved.

2. Reluctant or restrained.

Montale's series of love poems is full of personal references, all of which are addressed to “you,” or the speaker’s beloved. While critics have deemed this series hermetic and unsuccessful, I define poetic success, at least in part, as creating accessibility for the reader. The poet could never expect his reader to know the back stories to the privy moments and private jokes he mentions in the series; the mere existence of these references and the place that they hold represent the true nature of what the poet is communicating: the speaker and “you” were lovers and in their lover-closeness they experienced many intimacies, that is why their irrevocable separation is so devastating, and that is why the speaker’s tone is the epitome of dejection and loneliness.

In his introduction, the astute translator/poet Dana Gioia says

"The sequence recreates isolated moments of insight, stripped of their nonessential elements. Everything else in the story is told by implication, and the reader must participate in the reconstruction of the human drama by projecting his or her own private associations to fill in the missing elements of the narrative."

This suggests that the reader be active. As someone who strives to be a writer's writer and someone who lusts after an audience that is as aware of the saturated nature of language as I am, I feel that the most desired kind of reader is an active one. Montale makes this prospect statute.

IV

Far away, still I was with you

when your father

went into darkness and left you his goodbye.

What did I learn

in that moment? That until then

the ravages of the past

had sparred me

only for this:

I had not met you yet

and had to. I know this

from the pain of today, and would

even if the hours bent

back on themselves and brought

me once again to Cumerlotti

or Anghebeni, among the exploding

shells, the screams,

the panic of the squadrons

It's evident that the father of the speaker’s beloved died before they met, and that the speaker feels as though he could sense her pain even then, but the elements that are not explained such as “Cumerlotti / or Anghebeni, among the exploding / shells, the screams, / the panic of the squadrons” can be reduced down to a somewhat generic horrific event in the speaker’s life. No further details are needed to allow the reader to see that the speaker is comparing the immense pain that both he and his beloved have experienced in the past; the speaker implies that pain marries them. But something else is happening here: the memory of pain is penetrates the page, demanding the inclusion the reader, suggesting they recall some source of their own tragedy to stand in for the speaker’s unknown reference. This unites the reader to the two characters in the sequence, thus is proof that poetry, like some sort of specter, can speak and have influence from between the leaves that appear to be the final resting place of words.

Gioia also says

“Poetry can be reticent without being obscure.”

This is unequivocally true. I have never understood why some poets prefer to be thought of as hermetic. What credibility do hermetics offer? According to the reader, what is the difference between a poet who purposefully chooses to write in a manner in which no one but the poet themselves can decipher the meaning, and a poet who either unknowingly or thoughtlessly writes about something in a way that is so tightly wound that is totally inaccessible to the reader? Neither poet’s words will penetrate the reader; one does not care while the other simply does not know. This is why hermeticism is a problem, and why I do not think that Montale is a hermetic poet. He is reticent, and uses this quality wisely. The poet divulges what is most important: human emotion, which I think always wins over the alternative of concrete details.

In my own writing, I own the fact that I am a notorious compressor. A devotee to craft, I see words like math equations and I'm always seeking out the lowest common denominator. A hermetic poet, though, I will never be. My initial goal in revision is usually to expand rather than to condense. I want my poems to be accessible and I think that reticence can be a successful part of that, as long as it makes the reader work for what they looking for (it's obvious to me that readers are looking for something, just by picking up a book): to understand the poem, to connect, to find some sort of validation for their own feelings. Montale is an essential example of how to make personal references work within a text without excluding the reader.