here are my notes from the tony Hoagland talk etc, sorry I ahven't edited them--you cna just delete them if you want.
The Poetry archive online
061001 Dodge
TheWanderingPoet2006@yahoo.com
Dickinson "Poetry is the tooth thatnibbles at the soul."
Jorie Graham "Poetry insists on going through existenceinstead of going around it."
Sunday October 1, 2006, 9:34 AM Tony Hoagland Craft talk.
Jorie Graham's brain storms fume out of the beaker of her skull. Her writing is very much a process, like throwing yourslef against the shore like a wavesover and over.
Poems have a center of gravity, poems have multiple centers of gravity around which the other elemnets of the poems arrange themselves. Jorie Graham's poems are encounters, you encounter things and then you release them.
"A poem makes a wise statement in the third stanza." TH says we have these terrible preonceived notions about poetry. Our job aspoets is to let our version of poetry evolve. Find something you can do well. Some people have atalent forimage,somepeoplehave atalent for syntax,some people have a talent for sound. TH has ametaphor talent, a hugemetaphor image claw like a crab. Start with what you're good at, develop that until you're very good at it, then add other more hard-earned skills. Don't wallow only in your first talent. Contain a poem, allow a poem to have a wild discovery, have passion and intensity (Duende), strong feeling, magnifying glass. Feel strongly, magnify that feeling. The journey of craft.
TH says Emily Dickinson says "art is a house that wants to be haunted."
TH: The poem must embody the whole psyche. A lot of poems fail because they don't embody the contrdictoryness of life and humans. I like things coming in from the side, I like contradictoriness within the poem. Complicate the narratives. Whether it is a narrative poem or not. I like for the ID to be in the poem, the angry greedy animal self, the jealosies and meanness and secret greeds. The walking around civil self. The super ego with it's principles and moral edicts. Catalyze, fume, make conflicts with each other.
TH The Birthday cake, by someone else but I didn't get who. Paul Goodman. I think.
TH The animal self and the child self need to be brought in. The vioelnce of self and the vioelence of feeling that breaks through the surface of the poem and thrashes around. I'm not convinved by all good manner in a poem. A moment of joy, pain, or sorrow. etc.
TH Compare what you are like walking around and talking to your friends. Some of that energy should bein the poem. Poems will always fall short of the full spectrum, but should contain avarietyof experience. Build the dialectical energy of the poem, the differnet energies of the self talking to each other and conflicting with each other.
TH A lot of the dialectical energy of the poem exists in nouns. The turtle with it's plastic palm, the condom and . . . (I keep missing things.) The poem is a snow glob and cannot contain toomany things, but the things it does contain should be disparate in some way. Adjectives have a dialectical energy. rhetorical energy. A pem is a little archtectural contruct. Itneeds a topography.
TH A Rotweiler with a bungee cord. A nuclear device in a border bag. 4 or five conflicting adjectives with dialectal angular energy. They don't have to stay in a smooth arc. Filthy beautiful heterosexual shimmering Posaic River. Add An exclamation. Oh miserableme,ahthat I wouldnever have seent he sun com eup that day. Never again will I seea day like that, never again will I walkalong thatriver,never again will I .. . Collages.
TH Joining together associative disorder andmaking them work as apoem.
TH The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth. You don't want to write the same poems all your life. Look for greater ambitiousness. Get serious.
TH You work repeatedly falls behind your life. Don't stick with the old news.
TH: I'm in danger of being too cautious, where did Eros go in my life that once was so strong, why are feelings so muddy? What are your current issues? I wanted to have one true moment in each poem. How to advance? ONE INch at a time.
TH quoting Lorca: They fuck you up, your Mom and Dad, they do not mean to but they do,
TH I want things to appropriate me, I don't want to appropriate things!
TH Lou Welch, pretty good beat poet. Draw a circle 100 feet in diamaeter and in that circle are a thousand things that no one has ever looked at. Look hard, locate those moments. TH We are the physicists of experience. Particularity, precision, attentivenes. Gerald Stern's poems leap around like a cricket on a fryiing pan. (he says this admiringly.)
TH A poem cannot be chaos either,it has to happenin stages. For Grace after a party by
accusation, rhetorical moment.
TH Memorize poems to internalize muscular movements. Don't eat junkfood, eat brilliant poemtry, they turninto us.
(junk in junk out.)
You're always being pulled apart. Bring in an unidentified moment. Open sewer systems of thoughts and constructs. Most of what's in the river is garbage. Poets have more ADD than most of us. Pay attention to the river and every once in awhile, one of the crazy persons in your head says or sees something interesting. The seeds of poems.
Dialectical energy, close attendnace, looking, adequate intensity.
TH Exploration of content, adventure in content and technique.. The snowman by wallace Stevens one long sentence. It grows a muscle and augments your poetry. Analyzing porty with friends helps. Helps you learn and teach yourslef. Analysis,give it your attention, it enters you. Studying technique helps you grow. But some people over value technique. It's not all technique,you have to perform openheart surgery on yourself on the wing of a biplane with one engine failing. You need both duende and technique.
We have different kinds of talents and also different degrees of talent, but stubornness is a big help. The three levels of the self and the poem is a forum that integrates them
TH John Ashburg: "Everything you know is wrong." And then from there you can write. You can open. It's not about showing how smartyou are or what a good writer you are.
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