I've been reading a book of movie reviews by Pauline Kael and she's making me feel stupid. I am impressed by her ability hitch a variety of data to the ox-cart of some grand critical claim. I doubt most grand critical claims can hold up under scrutiny, but still I am envious of those writers who are fearless enough to nail their collars to the whim of the moment. My thinking is generally too gauzy for that: I nail it but the fabric rips loose every time I turn my head.



Reading Kael brought me to the question: how come the poetry in the New Yorker (which Kael wrote for) is hardly ever good? Usually I find it prettty namby-pamby, and I know a lot of other people who feel the same way. You would think that an outfit that pays pretty well would have its pick of all the poems in the universe. But I bet the flood of incoming mail can clog the gears of the editorial machine.



So here is a New Yorker poem that I thought was pretty good. The writers name is Dan Chiasson. I realize there's a style of poem I like that is not lyrical, is not song, is not suited to memory and repetition. More likely the poem is an essay that blooms from the general root of narrative. We don't have a word for it exactly. Here's one: Narrexpozyric.



My Ravine



How will you know what my poem is like

until you've gone down my ravine and seen



the box springs, mattresses, bookcases, and desks

the neighboring women's college dumps each year,



somebody's hair dryer, someone's Herodotus

a poem's dream landscape, one half Latin and



one half shit, the neighboring women's college shit?

Wheelbarrow upon wheelbarrow, a humpbacked



custodian hauls old dormitory furniture down

and launches it, watching it roll into the pile.



You won't know how my poem decides what's in,

what's out, what decorum means and doesn't mean,



until you follow him home after work, and see him

going wild all night imagining those girls' old beds.



You won't know what I'm trying for until you hear

how every fall in my back yard a swarm of deer



materializes, scavenging where the raspberries touched

the radishes, now plowed under, itching the lawn



for dandelions, stare at each other and wander

bewildered down my ravine and turn into skeletons.

Lines from this poem by John Berryman often come back to me, especially: "Do me glory, come the whole way across town." The poem foreshadows the poet's suicide, and so I have always wanted to know the history of it--was it a suicide note delivered in the form of a sonnet? Will anyone stumble on the blog with the answer?



Of course Berryman is known for his dream songs, whose form is sort of a variant, extended sonnet. I think I can easily commit this one to memory, but it scares me. Is this a poem I want in my head? I do love it, but loving it is part of the problem. It delights in its own nihilistic urge.



THE POET'S FINAL INSTRUCTIONS



Dog-tired, suisired, will now my body down

near Cedar Avenue in Minneap,

when my crime comes. I am blazing with hope.

Do me glory, come the whole way across town.



I couldn't rest from hell just anywhere,

in commonplaces. Choiring and strange my pall!

I might not lie still in the waste of St. Paul

or buy DAD's root beer; good signs I forgive.



Drop here, with honour due, my trunk and brain

among the passioning of my countrymen

unable to read, rich, proud of their tags

and proud of me. Assemble all my bags!

Bury me in a hole, and give a cheer,

near Cedar on Lake Street, where the used cars live.

I contracted some sort of voodoo staph infection, perhaps in Hawaii, and last week it took hold of me and brought me closer than I perhaps want to brought to issues of mortality. The inescapable subject is the body, and it is oppressive to be brought to the body again and again. You try to think "Freedom" and hear in response "Body!" You try to think "Art" and hear "No, Body!" You try to think "Love" and get "Body" and that is the real zinger, eh. That even love has to be tainted.



So here is a poem I treasure on the subject. It's by May Swenson, about whom I know not much but that she was from Utah and is somewhat recently deceased. Not to grieve, though--she did live to be quite old.



Question



Body my house

my horse my hound

what will I do

when you are fallen



Where will I sleep

How will I ride

What will I hunt



Where can I go

without my mount

all eager and quick

How will I Know

in thicket ahead

is danger or treasure

when Body my good

bright dog is dead



How will it be

to lie in the sky

without roof or door

and wind for an eye



With cloud for shift

how will I hide?