Kurt Malkames - weekly blog

Pretty standard week in poetry so far. In terms of my last assignment – I really enjoyed working within a set structure. I decided to use a take on the Oulipo N+7 method. Instead of a standard dictionary I used the Dortland Medical Dictionary (27th ed.). Also, I decided to use the word that was closest alphabetically to the word I replaced. If I went 7 down like the N+7 method it tended to destroy the rhythm and beginning sound of the word. The poem that was created was quite interesting. Half of it turned out to be kind of funny weird stuff and the other half turned out to be complex medical jargon that did not fit in the least bit. Examples would have been something like “I went to the gubernaculum”. The poems that I mixed these crazy words with was a super-traditional Chinese poem from centuries ago. The forms clashed tremendously and it was a complete disaster – or maybe it was a complete success. Ill admit that it was funny to read once it was done so maybe Ill go towards the end of being a success if it can make other readers laugh as well.

I decided to play poet instead of go to Senior Blues...

Just want to put out there...it is HARD to write a sestina using a completely random set of predetermined words. Especially when the words may actually be the epitome of random...but it is more entertaining (and engrossing) than doing work for tomorrow's class. Or walking to Blues in snow, apparently.

, Said the Shotgun to the Head

For this assignment, I chose to read and write about Saul Williams' long poem entitled ", Said the Shotgun to the Head." This book is basically a 200-page long poem about politics, love and God. Saul speaks in the voice of a man who tells of the coming of a female messiah, and the book is also somewhat of a love poem in dedication to the events of 9/11. This being Saul's third book of poetry, along with many other movies and musical releases, the content is similar to his traditional politically conscious approach. The book is filled with social and political issues and Saul incorporates spirituality throughout the entire poem, making the reader question our current societal structures and beliefs as a nation.

His creative wordplay and vivid imagery is what captures me in all of his work. He is able to draw a mental picture in your head or make the words feel like a movie, where you feel you are part of whatever he is talking about. He began writing this book prior to 9/11 and had already decided he wanted to write about a female Messiah. He then tied in Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction and creation. Once 9/11 happened, it all seemed to fall into place, and Kali was official. One of the more powerful sections of the poem to me was when the people in the towers first met and fell in love, but never said a word to each other. The first boom exploded and they held hands as they jumped. It's extremely powerful stuff because it's a beautiful re-telling of terrible events that have really happened. He is able to make part of a tragic story into something that is an honor to those who lost their lives during 9/11.

The format of the book was effective as he used indentation, different fonts and different sizes, as well as some pages with a few lines on them, or even just black pages. He was able to mix up the design and keep the reader intrigued throughout. While at my age, I'm not typically big on political issues or anything to do with politics at all, I appreciate the approach Saul takes and how he tackles the negative issues within our society. He has a hip-hop-influenced brain and even though some of his work may not have rhymes or music in them, his work is driven by an internal rhythm that has a lovely flow.

Assignment #6

For this assignment I chose Give Me Gray by Kimberley Bertrand. Kimberley Bertrand is an adjunct writing professor at SUNY Canton College in Canton, New York. Give Me Gray is her first book of poetry and focuses on the meditations of life and is a testimony to human existence. Bertrand divides the book into four sections: portraits, spirituality, sexuality, and perspectives. Each section has three to six poems that describe the section in some way or form. For example, in the first section, Portraits, every poem paints a vivid picture of some common scene, experience or thought in life. In the section, Spirituality, the title of the poem appears in a poem entitled, Give Me Gray. This poem is a prayer of sorts to God that asks, “just give me gray.” This poem and the book of poems promote a simplistic style of life where eccentricities and luxuries are not needed, all one needs is a “lifeline” to hold you to this earth. All the poems have a simplistic nature with a simplistic structure. For example, the poem entitled, Among the English, compares the serene life of an Amish person to the complex, hectic life of a modern person.

The poems in this book are a bit too simplistic for my taste. The author seems to be trying to grand amazing conclusions that are eye opening and revealing from common ideas. The overarching theme of the book is that the only thing you need to find meaning in life is to find a necessity in your life. This theme is intriguing and unique; however, the poems that Bertrand uses to portray this theme are rather bland and overused. Many of the poems seem to be very cliché and underdeveloped. In contrast to the majority of the poems, a few of the poems stood out above the rest. It was from these few that the meaning of the book became clear and that Bertrand’s talent was revealed. The poems Give Me Gray and Red Sky clearly stated in unique terms that life was about the simple things that connect you to this world.

Howl and Other Poems

Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg, was published in 1956. It contains Ginsberg's arguably most famous poem, "Howl," and marked the beginning of the beat movement. As it openly addressed heavily charged topics of the era, such as the political environment and homosexuality, obscenity charges were brought against the book in its first year of publication. Although the charges were later dropped, the notoriety that the book gained through this experience triggered a wave of success that was then supported by the integrity of the work itself.

In this edition, the book is divided into six poems: "Howl," "America,""A Supermarket in California,"Sunflower Sutra,""Transcription of Organ Music,"and "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound." Because each poem is rather lengthy, they stand more as subdivisions or lengthy chapters in a book as opposed to short ideas linked only through their inclusion in the same work. As all of the poems comment or reflect on contemporary life in some aspect, they serve to work as a cohesive unit of thought. The voice between the poems moves from that of an individual, to that of one representing society in its masses. Some of the poems, clearly spoken in Ginsberg's own voice, reflect fantasies of his lived life-- "A Supermarket in California" depicts an imagined encounter with Walt Whitman in a grocery story, while "Sunflower Sutra" extends an image of a sunflower to represent all of humanity.

Perhaps the most cohesive element of this collection of Ginsberg's poetry is the fact that the line is intended to match with the capacity of one breath. This, at times, results in multiple phrases to each line, alternating short concise ideas with more elaborate expansion. The flow of the language is at times light and conversational, and toes the line between ego and satire in nearly every poem. The images he chooses are heavily juxtaposed, forcing the reader to come to difficult conclusions from simple wording. Each line reads as a sentence would, if every sentence in daily speech were chosen of only the most carefully tailored diction available.

It is clear in both the form and even occasionally the voice that Ginsberg was influenced heavily by Whitman. His boldness in the address of sexuality builds upon the groundwork laid by Whitman in sever of his poems in Leaves of Grass. The introduction of this edition was written by William Carlos Williams, another noted contemporary and influence of Ginsberg's.

I found this collection of Ginsberg's poems to be coherent and unified. As a beginning poet, it helped me to see how very disparate subjects might be drawn together under the roof of one overarching concept-- a portrait of the contemporary world. Ginsberg writes about what he sees and experiences both in his mind and in the lived world. The discrepancies between the subject matters only serve to strengthen the overall concept of the work as a whole.

Book Review

Book: Tulips & Chimneys, E.E. Cummings

The book Tulips and Chimneys was e.e. cummings first published book of poetry. The publishing of this book marked Cummings arrival as a well read, and well criticized poet. The book gave readers the first taste of what it’s like to read poetry that completely ignores verse, rhyme, and punctuation. His work in this book exemplifies the Avant Garde style; Cummings was one of the first to really take it to the extremes. One of the aspects that make this book so fascinating is exactly that—Cummings uses radical syntax rather than a radical vocabulary in order to make his poetry peculiar.

The book is divided into two different sections with the first section, Tulips, and the second section, Chimneys. Generally, the poems in the first section of the book have a more lyrical feel to them. They are charged with description and emotion, laid out in an extremely lose free verse. The second sections calls attention towards more societal critiques, straying further away from the standard use of free verse and poetic rules.

My favorite poem in this collection is called “anyone lived in a pretty how town” His form isn’t too eccentric and he even has a bit of a rhyme scheme, but it’s his syntax that attracts me the most to it. Lines like, “spring summer autumn winter/ he sang his didn’t he danced his did” call to me in such a beautifully lyrical way. It’s a line that forces you to read over it again, until you are practically singing it with the rhythm that Cummings intended for. Stanza’s where he sticks to a rhyme scheme and definite form still hold the unavoidable creativity in his writing: “ When by now and tree by leaf/ she laughed his joy she cried his grief/bird by snow and stir by still/anyone’s any was all to her”. He uses simple technique—simple words---to create stories in a complex way. He says “he sang his didn’t he danced his did” instead of saying he was a lighthearted man who had flaws but celebrated all aspects of life, making sure to sing through all of the things he didn’t, or couldn’t, do. His diction is not only concise, but creative at the same time.

Although this book was published in 1923, the language he uses is still relevant today. His tone doesn’t seem archaic or outdated and that’s what I enjoy most about this book. I felt like I was taken through a sort of magical and majestic world of backwards sentences and tongue twisters. It is a fantastic collection of poetry.

Paul Allen

For this assignment I picked poems by Paul Allen. He put together a book of poems and called it American Crawl. It’s around 73 pages so not to long of a read. That was what I was going for. I find it hard sometimes to really get into something if it’s real long. But Paul’s book was quite short, so I feel most people looking for a short interesting read, this book would not be to bad of a start. First off the cover page for this book I thought was really cool. There is a picture of two humans and an alligator. The alligator being on the bottom is crawling along, just like the title. So are both the humans, they are on their stomachs to what looks to be crawling. His book is full of imagery and sound, which I didn’t expect to come from this book, but honestly I had no idea what to expect. He tells a story about a man through the life of a man. Each poem correlates to the next one, which creates his story. Which I thought was pretty cool, something I would not even begin to think about creating. The book was published in 1997 so it’s a relatively new book. It is written in modern language compared to something like Shakespeare it sounds like it’s a brand new book. The book starts out by a man telling you the story of one of his friends killing himself. Then it goes to the speaker and the reader reads about everything the main character is thinking in his head. It is very interesting and I found it to keep my attention long enough so that I could finish the book in one sitting. I found that Paul used a lot of punctuation. It made it flow much easier I thought and made me stop and pause more than I would have if there were no punctuation, so I enjoyed that. Some of the different poems are also laid out differently, for instance one poem is set up more like a regular book, where another is set up like a traditional poem. I thought that was pretty cool, both having the same effect on my interpretation of the different poems. They were able to flow together very nicely creating a very interesting end result. For those of you wanting an interesting poetic read I would recommend Paul’s book to you.