Deaf Be the Falcon Options

[Guest_sandiegopoet_*]

Deaf Be the Falcon

It is all about pushing language.
All about the cloud of meanings
that dance around a pith of tiny letters
like electrons around a nucleus.
About taking hold of them.
The artist applies a field, the tongs
of gravity or magnetism, the chemistry
of other infinitesimal suns and planets
tactically near. And the shape
of the cloud gets tucked in here,
stretched out there, the way
a stratospheric wind reconstructs
a towering cumulus. The artist feels
like a god: inscrutable and omni.

The reader reaches into the text
only to find that the upper-left whazzit
has three buttons missing
and the lower-right thingamabob
has been twisted a quarter turn
and stuffed beneath the azure doodad
with the pocket clip. Not wanting
to appear like a fool or ignoramus,
the reader nods and strokes her chin
in a near-flawless imitation
of comprehension. But of course
it is now de rigueur for things to fall apart,
for the center not to hold, for mere
anarchy to be loosed upon the page.

* * * * * * * * * *

[Alan]

Dear Fred,

Well now. I do not really get what you are aiming at, yet I find the half-completed journey quite interesting !

One thing I can say is that cutting out quite a few words will tighten the whole thing up :

It's all about pushing language;
[] about the cloud of meanings
that dance around a pith of tiny letters
like electrons around their nucleus.
About taking hold of them,
appling a field, the tongs
of gravity or magnetism, the chemistry
of [] infinitesimal suns and planets
tactically near.

Where there is bold I have made a change, [] indicates a cut.

All offered because I think there is something there that some polishing will reveal ! You may of course ignore all I offer, this has to remain your work.

Love
Alan

[Guest_ohsteve_*]

Fred, I loved the first stanza, although I think you could break it into at least two, maybe three. The second stanza left me scratching at my head as to where you were going. I semi-understood it but it seemed like a complete 90 degree turn off from the first. I would have love you to continue on from the first and complete the direction I felt it going. And I loved the title but what does the poem and the title have to do with each other? No connection there for me, anyways. I think that Alan may be right in cutting some of your words to help tighten. I might take that second verse and see if you could make it it's own poem, and rethink an ending for the first. Of course as Alan said this is just MHO and you can use or not as it is your poem.
Steve

[Guest_sandiegopoet_*]

Hint to readers -- and thanks for the two comments so far -- in order to understand the poem it is necessary to know "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. Both the title and the divergent second stanza will then become clearer.

Also, the poem is an ars poetica.

Fred

[merle]

Hi Fred -

Thanks for the hint and lesson. After doing some homework, I thought I'd attempt a comment. Keep in mind I'll be stroking my chin the whole time. It almost seems that this could be two ars poeticas, one for writing poetry and one for reading. I did read Yeat's poem and drew some connections (at least I think I did). Does the Deaf Falcon refer to the writer who ignores the rules for writing poetry? And for not following the rules the poem is really crap rather than the artistic piece the writer feels he's created?
I'm not worried about looking foolish, I'm trying to learn. I'll sit at my school desk until class is in session.

[Sekhmet]

Hello Fred - A suggestion. It would help the uninitiated if, when you intend to draw upon a poem by a well known writer as inspiration for your latest verse, you mentioned the fact at the time of the original posting.
We, at MM, are a mixed band. Many members are highly knowledgeable - but some, like myself, are still learning about poetry, and the rules and regs of verse writing.
I read your poem - and thought, 'That's clever! - But what on earth is he talking about?' And passed on to other, more accessible verses. Had I realized that a knowledge of Yeats was important - I could have progressed further.
Then, to confuse me further, you lapse into Latin. We didn't do Latin at Sparrow Farm Road, Secondry Modern. As the wonderful Dudley More said, 'I could've done the Judgin', if only I'd 'ad the Latin.'
Is,for example, 'ars poetica' the same a, 'poetical arse'?
Leo

[Psyche]

Hello & welcome to MM, Fred!

I don't think we've met before, anyway. I can see that we'll learn a lot from you. I do know some Latin, but thought I'd be helpful by pasting this from the Free Dictionary down below this website.

ars poetica:
1. a treatise on the art of poetry or poetics.
2. (initial capital letter, italics) a poem (c20 b.c.) by Horace, setting forth his precepts for the art of poetry.

I understand the first part of your poem to be an outside observer's views of the feelings, thoughts & toil of the poet.
An analogy with the scientist-observer studying the behavior of neutrons and all that. Not really as objective as science would have it, so it is with the watcher of the poet. He assumes the poet feels omnipotent. He can't help being subjective, it's the way things work. Otherwise we'd know The Mind of God...LOL....

Then it's the readers turn. You've certainly made a decisive twist in the language mode, but I find it interesting as well as amusing. Here again, you have the outside observer assuming a lot of things, and I'm just now at the place where you write:

Not wanting
to appear like a fool or ignoramus,
the reader nods and strokes her chin
in a near-flawless imitation
of comprehension.

Her??? Hmmm..... well, never mind!

My question at the finale is whether she doesn't understand anything because the poem is a mound of rubbish, or whether maybe she's not quite so dumb, but feels she's out of her depth because maybe the author is famous and she should make some pretense of knowledge. Like when you walk into a gallery and stare at paintings you hate, but everybody is using wise artist's lingo that means nothing....or something like that!

I warn you that I have preferred to guess at the way you've gone with this piece, and perhaps tomorrow read up The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats. I never read Introductions to novels or poetry collections until I've finished the book in question, that way I'm not biased in any sort of way, and can later go back to see what the reviewer wrote.

I agree with the others that you could perhaps do some clipping here and there to tighten it up. But I'm off to grab some grub now!

Back soon,
Psyche (Sylvia)

[Guest_sandiegopoet_*]

Leo, thanks for stopping by and commenting.

Yeats' "The Second Coming" is considered by a great many critics (e.g. Camille Paglia) to be one of the best poems written in the English language in the 20th century. I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that most serious readers of poetry would be familiar with the poem. I myself read it for the first time in 1966 or 1967 when I was working on my B.A. in English Literature at San Diego State University.

Ars poetica is a common term that refers to "the art of poetry" or "on the nature of poetry." For example, in Billy Collins' recent book The Trouble with Poetry the headliner poem "The Trouble with Poetry" is an ars poetica.

**********

Merle -- thanks for your comments.

**********

To Leo, Merle, and others,

By "pushing language" I mean stretching the meanings of words through use of secondary or tertiary meanings, strange fusions and juxtapositions, obscure allusions, etc. with the intent of making sure that every line of the poem reeks of novelty and ingenuity. A poem with lots of pushed language is usually hard to understand -- and frequently elitist, though the authors of such poems will nearly always deny this. I have written elsewhere, in essay form, that "pushed language" largely comes about when writers try to instill originality and novelty at every turn in the poem. Since in 2009, most of the common, or even uncommon, word combinations have been used and reused many times, this forces the writer to stretch the language almost to its breaking point to sound original.

As an example of pushed language I have cited elsewhere the first two lines of a poem appearing in the June, 2008 issue of Poetry.

[opening lines of "4:13 AM" by Jill Alexander Essbaum]

The shift of sleepwalks and suicides.
The occasion of owls and a demi-lune fog.

**********

Now . . . to my poem!!

The first stanza of the poem speaks in irony, by advocating the pushing of language. The second stanza deals with how the reader tries to cope with a poem teeming with pushed language.

Fred