So I had a post to my guest book from somebody promoting a porno site--my friend Vivian (webmistress) reminded me that by now somebody has no doubt invented a program that sleuths through the guest book company's program so that more porn and more penis enlargement snake oil can infiltrate more aspects of our culture. And who are those men who desire to enlarge their penises anyway--no one I know is fessing up. But back to the guest book--the penetration gave me the heebie-jeebies, electronic though it be. So I scrapped the guest book feature, whose orange font I did not like anyway.



My pal Tim and I returned to Seattle a third time in as many months to see the poet David Kirby. I like his work very much--a Henry James scholar, he can cull from a big database, of high culture and low. Plus he is extremely entertaining, and accessible, which got me thinking about the whole subject of accessibility--the May/June issue of American Poetry Review contained an essay by a guy named F.D. Reeve, who wrote against accessible poetry as it is typified by (his clique) Billy Collins, Lawrence Raab and Tony Hoagland. It just so happens that I like these guys' poems in particular, which in turn got me thinking: so am I stupid? The mysterious Mr. Reeve was writing in rebuttal to a Collins essay I hadn't read that appeared in Poetry magazine. Collins' complaint was against the use of autobiography in poems, or so I gathered. In the APR essay at least, autobiography and accessibility were being conflated. That makes a dim sort of sense, in that autobiographical/confessional poetry was born in mid-century in response to T.S. Eliot's inaugurating a breed of poem that was 1) challenging academically and 2) devoid of autobiographical life (contrast Yeats or Hardy) ("poetry is an escape from personality"--this is Eliot I think in "Tradition and the Individual Talent.") So I guess we may never untangle the two sins, or virtues, depending on your inclination.



Whenever people want to talk about the virtues of working in what is called the "confessional" autobiographical mode, they inevitably come around to Sylvia Plath's poem, "Daddy." This is a memorable poem (a good one for memorizing too) in that it breaks many rules and points up the truth to my rule about rules: if you're going to break them then you have to break them profoundly so that the rule is utterly smashed. But too bad for Plath that she is remembered for her few somewhat hysterical poems at the expense of the many fine more meditative pieces that she wrote.



I wanted to try to learn a favorite poem of hers, which I'll type out now. By the way, the blog is coming along slowly because I truly am trying to memorize poems.



Black Rook in Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there

Hunches a wet black rook

Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.

I do not expect a miracle

Or an accident



To set the sight on fire

In my eye, nor seek

Any more in the desultory weather some design,

Gut let spotted leaves fall as they fall,

Without ceremony, or portent



Although, I admit, I desire,

Occasionally some backtalk

From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain.

A certain minor light may still

Leap incandescent



Out of kitchen table or chair

As if a celestial burning took

Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then--

Thus hallowing an interval

Otherwise inconsequent



By bestowing largesse, honor,

One might say love. At any rate, I now walk

Wary (for it could happen

Even in this dull ruinous landscape); skeptical,

Yet politic; ignorant



Of whatever angel may choose to flare

Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook

Ordering its black feathers can so shine

As to seize my senses, haul

My eyelids up, and grant



A brief respite from fear

Of total neutrality. With luck,

Trekking stubborn through this season

Of fatigue, I shall

Patch together a content



Of sorts. Miracles occur,

If you care to call those spasmodic

Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,

The long wait for the angel,

For that rare, random descent.





(it was not until I typed out this poem that I saw the form: line endings in all stanzas match. So I am stupid.