last poems

ADD Man – 30,000 Feet Above Wyoming

I spotted him in the security line - jittery, drinking a coffee, talking on a cell phone,
Loudly.
I knew he was trouble.

Immediately, I prayed a silent prayer for myself – that this man was not on my flight.

Apparently, it was ironic day in heaven.
Because ADD man sat right next to me.
Before the flight departed
He fielded four calls – made three.
He drank a coffee.
He read half a book (He was a speed reader, duh).
He chewed gym.
He ignored the safety speech.
He had chronic halitosis.

His energy was too much for him. It flowed in excess from his shaking legs.
Hey, Shaky McShakypants, can I help you take your Ritalin with a heaping helping of
Scope?

Even his urine was energized. It had to leave his body – often.
Up/down/up/down – I was in Catholic Church for spazzes.

He was Speedy Gonzales.
He was a gerbil on crack.

Oh, ADD man, What’s your hurry?
Take a load off.
Relax.

Sit somewhere else.

Lucky

They are in love with the majesty of violet mountains.
Enamored with the juts and crags.

Give me the open spaces of the plains.

I want a man with dirt in his teeth.
And tumbleweed on his grill.
Weathered laugh lines around his eyes
Hands rough from the wind.

Let’s drive for miles on a straight road
Moving forward – not up
Returning back – not down

There’s something to be said about consistency
To lives without peaks and valleys

They say there’s nothing here to love – nothing to see
So they move away from green pastures to purple mountains.

Let them go.

new poems

Here are the latest 550 poems. I will admit that I felt very uninspired this week. My poems are subpar. Sorry.


The Forgetting

It was on that September day, shortly after her 70th,
That they realized.

It was when they passed - on their way up her sidewalk - the unfamiliar face of the salesman
- on his way down her sidewalk.

She sat, with hands folded, in the kitchen of her small house.
She had purchased life insurance from the traveling salesman and had already forgotten that she'd written the check.
She had forgotten that she already had life insurance.

What's the correct phrasing here?

She had lost her mind?
Her mind had lost itself?

They chose the latter because then nothing - not time, not them, not her - bore the blame.
And what did it matter - in the end, there would be a collective loss.

They were all losing her.

Soon, they would be left with her,
but without her.

And, even though they weren't suprised that the "life insurance salesman" cashed the check,
They all knew that there is no such thing as life insurance.


Junk Mail (2 days)

I need to respond to all of my dear good friends who have been sending me junk mail.
Because It’s a great time to say hi and my X life is suffering.

Tom Forrest, for example, is anxiously awaiting to
Change my life and, wow, look, he’s got a 12 inch!

Good thing I received a notice regarding my camera
So that I can start taking better quality pictures with a 10.1 megapixel.
I’ll need that if I meet Tom. The Guinness Book will want visual confirmation.

I have a choice to make , though, because even though Tom sounds fabulous,
Don Cervantes contacted me, and he has a bigger pen1s for better s3x!

Choices, Choices.

Luckily, Roco the Star recommends 3 free bottles of man XL
Sam Newsome assures me that he wouldn’t be lying. No problem with man XL.

Basically, I need to stop making excuses and act now
Always remembering, as my dear good friend Ann Johnson reminds me,
that I am any man’s dream come true.

All writers must experience sparagmos

This is what I'm beginning to believe. In two poems I've looked at recently, both poets speak of sparagmos. And, Tennessee Williams alludes to experiencing something akin to sparagmos while he wrote. To some degree, then, in order to produce literature, I'm beginning to think that the author must experience a psychogical rending. Then, if the work is an extension of him or herself, the ensuing editing process would also be sparagmos.

Here are the poem excerpts.

"Kneeling Down to Peer into a Culvert" Robert Bly
"I am alone, with no duties, living as I live. / Then one morning a head like mine pokes from the water. / I fight - it's time, it's right - and am torn to pieces fighting."

"Homily" Jim Harrison
"He is rended, he rends himself, he dances, / he whirls so hard everything he is flies off. / He crumples as paper but rises daily from the dead."

The second example is so reminiscent of the archetype of sparagmos that it's a little unnerving. It resonates with the tearing of flesh, the carnival associated with the Dionysian ritual, and the resurrection often associated with sparagmos.

Jim Harrison

I could be way off here. If I am, Jimmy will set me straight.

The title “The Theory and Practice of Rivers” struck a chord with me. As a teacher, I find that the terms theory and practice are often mutually exclusive – those who theorize don’t practice and those who teach (practice) don’t have time to do in-depth theorizing. They just have to teach. Rarely do the two meet. But, Jim Harrison seems to have achieved a praxis. He is able to theorize about rivers, birds, the moon, and dancing while living life on rivers, dancing, and watching birds. Then, he seems to incorporate both the living and the theory into his poetry, making a nice full and continuous circle.

Along with the familiar images of rivers, birds, the moon, and dancing, Harrison also uses the familiar ideas of love and death. But, one of the most interesting images that I saw recurring was the question mark, particularly in association with youth and children. In “Porpoise” he writes, “You see a school making love off Boca Grande/ the baby with his question mark staring / at us a few feet from the boat.” And in “Small Poem” is found “dead children fly off in the shape/ of question marks.” This was interesting. First, the shape of the question mark is very suggestive and, in a way, ethereal, like the flame of a candle or a wisp of smoke. It’s not unusual that he would pair the question mark with children as that is what they are often found doing. In the first example, I am left questioning what he means. But, in the second example, he is the one who is questioning why children have to die. I noticed that he dedicated his collection to Gloria Ellen Harrison 1964-1979 and naturally wondered if that was his daughter. So, like the joining of theory and practice, he seems to be achieving another kind of praxis here – the children are question marks, I am questioning, he is questioning. The image is the child, who questions. His questions leave me questioning.

I’m not sure if “The Times Atlas” is one of my favorite poems, but I really appreciated some of the lines. “Camus said / it rained so hard even the sea was wet.” Does that mean that it didn’t rain hard at all? The sea is already pretty wet. I also appreciated the simplicity of the line “Meanwhile the weather is no longer amusing” because he appears to be speaking of more than the weather. Something is no longer a joke; no one is laughing.

My favorite poem was “Homily” with its combination of commonsensical, humorous, and poignant advice. “Dance with yourself with all your heart / and soul, and occasionally others, but don’t / eat all the berries birds eat or you’ll die.” And, instead of giving “how to” advice about love, he tells us how not to fall in love. The don’t advice I found most notable was not to be “a cow floundering / in quicksand while the other cows watch / without particular interest, backwards / off a crumbling cornice.” This was intriguing for several reasons. First, I found it odd that he chose a cow because the natural images he usually chooses aren’t domesticated – they’re wild and free - like birds and porpoises. At the same time, however, the cows not in the quicksand are meeting a similarly disastrous fate. While one cow is drowning in love, the others, fearfully backing away from it yet, I think, feigning indifference, are also going to die, just a little less hideously.

poetry

Answers

“If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?” Mary Oliver

The little girl taps my knee, pointing up,
“Look, Mel, it’s God.”
I bend my neck back, my face upward to geese winging in chevron formation
against the broken clouds and the sun’s rays, pale yellow.

I am stopped short
She sees God.
Can I?

I am no match for her 5-year-old hope.

And, I am certainly no match for this image
Of the geese, the girl,
and God in the rays of the sun.

I turn again to the sky,
Full of the questions that come to me mostly on spring days.


If Sylvia Plath Were a Valley Girl

Dad – I totally don’t get it.
I mean, when you kicked the bucket
I was way bummed.
I was thinking, “As if! Like, oh my God!”

So, I went to the mall
And met a bitchin’ version of you.
His name was Ted. He was totally awesome;
he was tubular.
And, so, like when he asked me to marry him, I said, “Fer Sure.”
But, I was sooo bummed
Because, dad, he turned out to
grody to the max, a classic barfbag.
Like you.

I thought about doing myself in
But, seriously, dad
I couldn’t kill myself without, like
Totally messing up my hair
Or my nails
Or my face
I mean, gag me with a spoon.

So, whatever, dude.
I’m totally over it. I’m through.

more sparagmos

I've been thinking about how to organize my paper on sparagmos and about where to go from where I am...which is here. :)

The primary question I think I need to address is what is being displaced when sparagmos gets displaced? And, is this true when sparagmos also involves omophagia?

It seems to me (and to some of the articles I've been reading) that sparagmos has different purposes.
1. Taking apart to eventually reassemble
2. Taking apart to have it become a part of you (usually involving omophagia)
3. Taking apart as a form of communication - a statement
Then, I think I need to think about these ideas.
4. Some authors seem to think that we're moving from the sparagmos of gods to the sparagmos of scapegoats? Why?
5. What if the sparagmos is self-inflicted?

I'm planning on looking at several works, including Suddenly, Last Summer; King Lear; The Bible; Silence of the Lambs.

I also think I need to look at the difference between sparagmos in comedy and tragedy, taking another look at Frye.

Last, but not least, what is the connection between carnival and sparagmos?

That's it.

help me, please

I am reading an article entitled "The Sparagmos of Myth Is the Naked Lunch of Mode: Modern Literature As the Age of Frye and Borges." How does Northrop Frye's definition and explanation of modes fit with this title? Insight, anyone?

contemporary poetry

Hmmm…what is contemporary poetry? Trying to define contemporary poetry is problematic for me on several levels. First, the word “contemporary” is tricky. How old can the poetry be to not be contemporary or, in other words, how new should it be? I’ve always thought that poetry written in the 60s is contemporary, but considering that it is now 2007, some of that poetry would be about 50. In other words, if that poetry were a human, it would be a little over middle-aged; if it were a dog, it’d be dead.
Also, contemporary poetry is different depending on the poet. This, I think, is one of the keys to being contemporary, in a tricky kind of way. In order to be contemporary, the style of the poetry probably does not conform to a strict rhyme or rhythm. Or, if it does, it probably does in a cagey and/or satirical sort of way.
Another possible hallmark of contemporary poetry, not that this is exclusive to contemporary poetry, seems to be that contemporary poetry makes the reader work a little harder to extract meaning. Even in poetry that we think is accessible, like that of Billy Collins, upon second or third or fourth readings, there are levels of meaning and connection that are revealed.
Then, there are the poems of Michael Earl Craig and Sandra Alcosser, difficult for other reasons: Craig, because he seems “normal” but then decidedly is not; and, Alcosser, because I feel the need to scrub her humid, suffocating imagery out of my brain after it has been soaked in her sexually twisted bayou.
I liked all of the poets this week (Oliver, Stafford, Plath, Snyder). I probably haven’t read enough of their work to say this, but I found myself playing the Sesame Street Game: “One of these things is not like the other; one of these things just isn’t the same.” And, unfortunately for her, it seems that Plath is the odd man out. Komunyakaa may also join Sylvia in being kicked off Poetry Survivor, but for different reasons. Oliver, Stafford and Snyder all seem to find a restorative awe in nature. This is evident in “Song of the Builders” by Mary Oliver and also in a round-a-bout sort of way in “Singapore.” “Singapore,” along with “Ask Me” by William Stafford, just happen to be two of my favorite poems ever, by the way. Gary Snyder’s “Hay for Horses” and “For All” seem to express a similar sentiment about nature.
I just don’t see this happening with Sylvia Plath. In fact, if we were to take “For All” by Gary Snyder and put a Plath simplistic and probably grossly unfair spin on it, I think it may go a little something like this.

For All
Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

For Daddy
Ah to be almost dead
On any foggy day
Cutting my thumb
Barefoot, toe big as a Frisco Seal
Holding pills, gas oven on
No sunshine, hot ice in my brain
Overcast England
….
I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to my daddy
Of the bastard with the Mein Kampf look
And to the love of the rack and the screw
One pretty red heart
Bitten in two
Under my gauze Ku Klux Klan babushka
With my red hair, dirty girl, thumb stump, I rise and eat men like air.

Above all, the other three poets seem hopeful, and this hopefulness seems connected to the inspiring and awesome scope of nature. Sylvia – light on the hopeful, heavy on the hopeless. Sylvia, the tribe has spoken.

Carnival

According to Hillman, revelry (music, carnival, circus, clown) represents "riotous rebellion (revel/rebel), discord" (175). He also contends that these types of dreams are more common than you may think. Even if there is no carnival or circus scene in the dream, if your dream is literally or figuratively "upside-down," then an element of carnival is present.

A couple of interesting ideas.

1. Carnival comes from the words meaning "putting away the meat, or flesh." In addition to the flesh reference, carnival and sparagmos are further related. Hillman says that when "Dionysos entered Thebes, there was also this kind of terror and excitment. Identities became uncertain. Young women left their family attachments and personal relationships to take to the streets and the hills"(177).

2. "Where else but the circus will we ever see the underworld in daylight?" (178).

3. Aren't your dreams like circuses or carnivals? A bunch of freaky people come in the middle of the night and set up camp in the middle of town.

4. Clowns - Hillman has an interesting take on clowns. He says that the "comic spirit masquerades in all things we do and say; we are each a joke and do not need to put on a white face"(180). by this, he means that we don't have to become clowns, we just need to learn what the clown has to teach us - like "making an art of our senseless repetitions, putting on the face of death that llows the dream world in and watching it turn ordinary objects into amazing images" (180).

5. Listen carefully to ALL music in your dreams - not just literal music in the dreams, but the music of the dream itself - its phrasing, rhythm, themes, etc.

Prose poetry

Here are some rough copies of some prose poetry. At this point, these are definitely not my final copies, but I thought I'd post them anyway.

Divine Punishment

After her son died, she wouldn’t take communion, though she sat in the back of the church every Sunday. She refused to approach the altar. She refused to kneel. She refused to let touch her lips the body and blood of an indifferent god. In her mind, well-intentioned, well-worn clichés. Well-intentioned, well-worn, useless. “Everything happens for a reason.” She intentionally held words like these in her mouth, leaving no room for the bread. Or the wine. She pursed her lips and gagged. Every Christmas since then, her house held no evergreen tree. Instead, she chose a colorless day. A brutal, cold, and windy prairie winter day. Alone, far up in the north country, she bent against the wind. She knelt beside the barbed wire fence to retrieve a large tumbleweed. This tumbleweed would stay in the middle of the living room well after the new year. Her protest.


Therapy

“If you are your problem,” the therapist intoned, “then, stop thinking about yourself.”
One – mountains. Think about the mountain. (no, not about how your mother wouldn’t let you go to summer camp) How the mountain holds the forest on its back. The mountain is worn by time. It ages gracefully.
Two – trees. Think about trees. (no, not about what kind you would be) Think about how a flock of birds emerge from the spring branches. You didn’t even know the birds were there. You didn’t recognize them as birds while they were in the tree. But, now aflight, they are not an extension of the branch, they are birds, and there are hundreds of them.
Three – clouds. Think about clouds. (no, not about the dark one hanging over your head) Think about the motion of clouds. The clouds change and move on effortlessly.
Mountains. Trees. Clouds. It’s really very simple. Put yourself in the back of your mind. Keep yourself there.

Olena Kalytiak Davis

Of the poets we last read, Olena Kalytiak Davis really appealed to me. In “A Small Number” and “Six Apologies, Lord,” I appreciated her deft manipulation of repetition. Often, her spacing and line breaks caught me off-guard. And, even though I don’t pretend to understand everything that she’s writing, I have the feeling that with studied attention, some sort of understanding would be within my reach. She doesn’t have sewing machines flying out of aliens’ ears or elephants tap dancing on toilet seats….and I appreciate that.

Olena Kalytiak Davis
Six Apologies, Lord
I Have Loved My Horrible Self, Lord.
I Rose, Lord, And I Rose, Lord, And I
Dropt. Your Requirements, Lord. 'Spite Your Requirements, Lord.
I Have Loved the Low Voltage Of The Moon, Lord,
Until There Was No Moon Intensity Left, Lord, No Moon
Intensity Left
For You, Lord. I Have Loved The Frivolous, The Fleeting, The
Frightful
Clouds, Lord. I Have Loved Clouds! Do Not Forgive Me, Do Not
Forgive Me Lordandlover, Harborandmaster, Guardianandbread,
Do Not.
Hold Me, Lord, O, Hold Me

Accountable, Lord. I Am
Accountable. Lord,

Lord It Over Me,
Lord It Over Me, Lord. Feed Me

Hope, Lord. Feed Me
Hope, Lord, Or Break My Teeth.

Break My Teeth, Sir.
In This My Mouth.

The poem “Six Apologies, Lord” immediately gripped me. I want to know what six things she could have done that could require apology. Why would she apologize for loving clouds? And why is every word capitalized? Although she is apologizing to “Lord,” I’m not sure if this Lord is actually God or a metaphorical, representational God – her husband, her father – herself? My thinking is led down the husband/male figure path due to the fact that the lines “I Rose, Lord, And I Rose, Lord, And I /Dropt. Your Requirements, Lord” is reminiscent of Emily Dickinson, of whom I am a fan. “She rose to his requirement, dropped / the playthings of her life / to take the honorable work / of woman and of wife. / I aught she missed in her new day / Of amplitude, or awe, / Or first prospective, or the gold / in using wore away, / it lay unmentioned, as the sea / Develops pearl and weed, / but only to himself is known/ the Fathoms they abide.” Also, the words that have been combined “lordandlover” hold some meaning, as does the abrupt switch to "Sir. " The poem itself, again, has a hypnotizing, mesmerizing effect on me. I just love it.

A Small Number
So far, have managed, Not
Much. So far, a few fractures, a few factions, a Few
Friends. So far, a husband, a husbandry, Nothing
Too complex, so far, followed the Simple
Instructions. Read them twice. So far, memorized three Moments,
Buried a couple deaths, those turning faces. So far, two or Three
Sonnets. So far, some berrigan and Some
Keats. So far, a scanty list. So far, a dark wood. So far, Anti-
Thesis and then, maybe, a little thesis. So far, a small Number
Of emily’s letters. So far, tim not dead. So far, Matt
Not dead. So far, jim. So far, Love
And love, not so far. Not so love. So far, no-Hope.
So far, all face. So far, scrapped and scraped, but Not
With grace. So far, not Very.

I also enjoyed “A Small Number.” When I read this poem, I had just finished reading Sandra Alcosser’s poem “My Number,” which also intrigued me. But, I prefer Kalytiak Davis’s style to that of Alcosser. Again, I think I spot an Emily Dickinson reference in the line about “A small number of emily’s letters.” Like in “Six Apologies. Lord,” she so defly manipulates words that her repetition is mesmerizing. Her up-front linguistic style, I think, is largely responsible for catching me off guard. I am lulled into a kind of false sense of simplicity due to the word choices and repetition. Content-wise, it seems that she may be trying to put a value on her life by making a list – and finding her list and her life lacking. By the end of the poem, where she is listing off people who are “not dead,” I am totally sucked in. Totally. Just the wording connotes that she expects tim, Matt, and jim to not be among the living for as long as she – her expectation seems to be that they will soon join another list, becoming another small number.

The Sparagmos Game

Let's play "The Sparagmos Game." It's fun for the whole family - especially if you're an ancient Greek family. Here's how you play. I'll post pictures. You decide if the pictures contain or are examples of sparagmos (ritual tearing of flesh). Ready? Remember, displacement and/or omophagia (eating the flesh) may be involved.

1.

This is Mike Tyson biting Evander Holyfield's ear, and Evander Holyfield's ear in the aftermath. Sparagmos?

I think so.

2.

These are grandmothers holding their grandchildren. Sparagmos?

Well, unfortunately, these innocent-looking grandmas probably just said something like, "You're so cute, I could just eat you up, sweetheart." So, sparagmos? Yep. Displaced? I think so.

3.

This is a WWII map. Sparagmos?

Did you guess no? Well, you were probably wrong. Sure, it's not literal sparagmos, but neither was the grandma example. This, I think, could be classified as an example of geographic sparagmos. Countries were conquered (swallowed up) and then rent asunder by those who were victorious.

You're doing well, though. Two left. Keep up the good work.

4.

Cheese. Not sparagmos.

5.

This is Osiris. (Hint: He was chopped into 14 pieces and scattered.) Sparagmos?

Did you guess yes? We'll you're most decidedly correct.

Good job today! Maybe we can play again next week! (The accuracy of my responses has yet to be determined.)

windmills of my mind

I guess Chaundera ( the quixotic windmills), Arianna ( the labyrinth-talk), Ed (inspiring speech on circles), Charity ( blog on reality), and Wayne (for just being Wayne) all, in some way, made me think of the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crowne Affair. Doesn't it all relate to class? (I deleted some repetitious portions.)

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever-spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half-forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that I said
Lovers walking along the shore,
Leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of this song
Half-remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever-spinning wheel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Surreal poetry

If Mondays were Sundays

It all started simply enough
A small and cozy white house, A man, A woman
A child named Sammy.
Or a child named Betsy.
Or a child named (write your name here).

But, then something went terribly wrong
You were just trying to wash your face.
With the click-clack typewriter
The slippery soap squirted from your hand.

With the whales spouting nonsense
Margaret aimlessly whistled Dixie
On a shore long forgotten

The Light switch

If there were no pizza for breakfast
I would make you soup
Tomato soup
While we laughed instead of cried at our poverty

Cats’ tails twist on the veranda
The slaves will sweat for supper
Cotton mouths like Uncle Tom
Thanksgiving for the turkeys this year.

And Stan won’t come back
If the light is off
But the power failed
And tomorrow has come

Today’s News

The world is mother-of-pearl
With the fallen snow
When she steps outsideto gather the news of the day.

Sitting at the table and feeling vaguely content.
The news is white and black
Outside the falling water
Swirling through the galaxy
Where wingless birds fly on featherless wings

Africa is traced by yellow on the map.
And blossoms of cherries bloom in the mirror
She is cracked and old
But, the luck will be good.

I wonder what became of me?

sparagmos, sparagmos

Sparagmos, Sparagmos, you're tearing me apart. You're ripping out my heart. I feel like I've been torn to shreds.

Sparagmos is apparently everyhwere.

Dr. Keeler read us "Kneeling Down to Peer into a Culvert" by Robert Bly in 550 today. The end of it reads, " I am alone, with no duties, living as I live. / Then one morning a head like mine pokes from the water. /I fight—it’s time, it’s right—and am torn to pieces fighting."

Tennesse Williams includes the concept in Suddenly Last Summer where "Each male protagonist is pursued, ripped apart, and consumed by the members of a community he sexually infiltrated. The truth about each sparagmos (rending) and omophagia (raw-eating) is uncovered in similar scenes between “psychotherapist” and amnesia victim. But while the truth brings destruction to each murdered man’s mother, only in Suddenly Last Summer is anyone saved by the awful revelation (Janice Siegel, “Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer and Euripides’ Bacchae,” IJCT 11 (2004-2005), pp. 538-570).

We figuratively incorporate sparagmos, I think, in many cultural ways, including, but not limited to wills (particularly contested ones) and how we treat celebrities and political figures. Of course, it's present in the eucharist and in the myth of Dionysus.

Sue tells me sparagmos is in the myth of Isis and Osiris. Dr. Sexson referred me to Ovid's Metamorphosis. Let me know if you have any hot leads for me.

deja vu

Today, I illuminated Kacie, Jamie, Arianna, Jimmy and Ed about my deju vu epiphany. I was thinking that if archetypes repeat themselves continuously and ubiquitously- in literature, in dreams, in life - then deja vu could be nothing more than our recognition/recollection of and fitting into an archetype. And...since, according to Hillman, people in dreams are just spirits who take on the appearance of those we know, deja vu is just the repetition of an archetype which is now personalized and tailored to us.

So...deja vu is not us remembering something that happened to us; deja vu is us tapping into an unconscious archetype. I don't know if that makes sense to any of you, but it makes great sense to me and my very strong, weight-lifting brain.

Jamie tried to give me some "logical" and "realistic" scientific explanation about how deja vu is just our brains misfiring and sending our short-term memories into our long-term memories or some scientific mumbo-jumbo like that. But, I'm not buying it. My explanation is far more credible. :)

Frye - popular culture chart

This is a site that Dr. Sexson recommended to me and that all of you may find useful.

http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/dial/sfclass/Fryechar.htm

It brings Frye's categories into popular culture.

The Surreal Michael Earl Craig

Part of the Wikipedia definition of surrealism goes like this. Surrealism is a movement “asserting that liberation of the human mind …can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the ‘unconscious mind’ to the attainment of a dream-like state different from, or ultimately ‘truer’ than, everyday reality.”
I have to say, I didn’t feel particularly liberated after reading Craig’s collection of poems – confused, sometimes – disturbed, sometimes – but never liberated. Let me open the door to my mind and walk you through what might be my typical reaction to one of his poems.

“I’m Glad I Found The Horse Doc”
(Oh…a poem about a vet)

Another day, not
even drinking coffee on
the toilet makes me smile.
(ha ha ha – that’s a funny example, but probably a pleasant-enough
experience to make one smile.)

Today so apparent: someone
Should have kicked Kinski’s
Nosferatu in the nuts
HARD.
(ha, ha – that’s funny, too. I should know who Nosferatu is.
I better google it)
Or duct-taped him
to a pool table & raped him with a carrot.
(WHAT? Weren’t we just trying to think pleasant thoughts about
coffee and toilets?)

As a unit of nourishment
my cheeseburger comes at me
through the drive-up window.
(How'd we get to the drive-thru, and who calls a burger a unit?
How does it come at him?)

& later the local horse doc with
a fleck of placenta on his cheek
I put a hand on his shoulder
(He’s got placenta on his cheek?
How does Craig know it’s placenta?
I’m confused.)
I tell him “draw a face on
the side of your hand you’ll have a friend all day.”
Who says this to a grown man? I’ll
bet that the vet responded, “My
friend feels like punching you, jerk.”)

He tell me “one man’s journey
the inverse of another’s”
(Huh?)

So, this is pretty typical of my experience. Despite my foreknowledge that the poetry was surreal, I tricked myself into believing that the next poem would be a nice, realistic piece. This is probably attributable to several factors. First, according to English 510, my expectation of realism comes from the society around me, where everything must be “real.” I buy into that. Also, the poems contributed to all the trickiness by starting out somewhat normally. Then, out of nowhere, children would be licking bookshelves, brain-eating parasites would be headed for cake, and unfortunate people would be plagued with a particularly nasty asshole type of halitosis. What? Yep, you’ve lost me. Contrary to my mind being liberated, it’s just somewhat confounded. This is not to say that I hate the poems; I liked more than several of them, including “In the Januaried Mountains” and “I Rattled Off to Work Today.” I even liked “The Accomplished Hand” – that is, until the crowd turned into an angry amoeba about to beat the hairless woman.
Yep. All in all, I’m left wondering, Am I supposed to understand these and don’t? Is there some logic here? Ultimately, I don’t feel quite as bad as Craig does, like “a turd washed up on the shore of a quiet lake at a child’s birthday party,” “like one of the world’s largest assholes,” or “like a seahorse with his throat slit.” But, I don’t feel real great, either.

Dream persons - Hillman p.59-64

Here are notes from Hillman's section on dream persons. Please enjoy.

THE PERSONS I ENGAGE WITH IN DREAMS ARE NEITHER REPRESENTATIONS OF THEIR LIVING SELVES NOR PARTS OF MYSELF. THEY ARE SHADOW IMAGES THAT FILL ARCHETYPAL ROLES; THEY ARE MASKS, IN THE HOLLOW OF WHICH IS A NUMEN (SPIRIT)

3 approaches to dream persons
1. Freudian “Other people are essential for understanding dream persons” (takes you back to the actuality of the day)
Freud’s method of interpretation projects people in dreams back over the bridge into the dream day
2. Jungian “My personality is essential for understanding dream persons” (takes you back to subject as an expression of a person’s complexes)
Jung’s method takes the dream people into the subject of the dreamer – they become an expression of my psychic traits
In neither method do we ever truly leave the personal aspect of the dream persons- we remain engaged in the upperworld
3. Archetypal – “Only the persons of the dreams are essential for understanding the persons in the dream” (takes you back to the underworld of psychic images. They become mythic beings – not mainly by amplifying their mythic parallels but by seeing through to the imaginative persons within the personal masks)

Shadow figure or shades are not the people themselves or even the people’s essence
(older brother example – neither the actual brother nor the older, responsible traits)
Because the older brother is now a shade in the underworld, he is a purely psychic form
Teacher example in a dream is not only some intellectual potential of my psychic wholeness. More deeply, this figure is the archetypal mentor who, for now, in this dream, wears the robes of this schoolteacher or that professor.

Like in Homeric hymns, the god appears to the dreamer in the guise of a living friend.
(Egyptian) At the psychic level of existence, the essential image of our personal self, who is our shadow soul, is at the same time an image of a God.
In dreams, we are visited by nymphs, heroes and gods shapes like our friends of last evening.

The essence of the person is in the name.
One of the ways of restoring the “embracing vision of the myth” to the persons of last evening who have entered the dream is to look at their names. In their names are their souls.

Names are things in themselves – they do not represent something else where embodied by the name, but they are presentations of the mind to itself of its own presence. The name is the divine logos clothed in the person of the dream. We must find names for the figures or look more deeply into the names that are given. P.63

Embracing vision of the myth
No longer: Ego casting Shadow after it; instead, a shade literalizing an ego in front of it and behind which it can remain hidden.
Shadow figures in dreams – we should regard them LESS through their relations with the world and more as a reflection of the shades

550 poems

I preferred Jimmy’s poem “Prophet Township” to mine, so I used it for my starting point.

“Nostalgia”

In those days, people weren’t granted the luxury of prolonged grieving,
Even if their present was lived in life’s valleys.
There was no time for deeper questions
Or deeper pain
With work to be done.

A pause by you will not pause life.

While you sit in your chair with your head in your hands,
The snow will still be falling.
The fire left unstoked and unfed will be burning down to ashes.
Questions won’t keep you warm.

Divinity?
Yes, there’s a loved one in the attic until spring,
But thinking about it won’t get you “through till spring.”
Folded hands won’t break the ice on the horse trough.

Right now the ground is too hard to probe for the meaning of life
Or death
Especially when you have to actually live one in order to stay a step ahead of the other.

Those questions are better left for spring.


I had a really hard time finding a poem I hated, let alone one I disliked intensely. I settled on one that confounded me, “Some Last Questions” by W.S. Merwin. I'm sure that if I give it enough thoughtful contemplation, I will like it. In fact, after rereading it a couple times, this is becoming the case. But, I still don't completely understand it, and I find his imagery disturbing. I’m fairly certain that he’s talking about the dead body. But, I also think he’s using multiple definitions of some words, like feet (stumps, like the one’s attached to auction paddles) and hands (farm-hands or deck-hands). Nonetheless, I still don’t entirely understand it.

“Some Last Questions”

What is the head
A. Ash
What are the eyes
A. The wells have fallen in and have
Inhabitants
What are the feet
A. Thumbs left after the auction
No what are the feet
A. Under them the impossible road is moving
Down which the broken necked mice push
Balls of blood with their noses
What is the tongue
A. The black coat that fell off the wall
With sleeves trying to say something
What are the hands
A. Paid
No what are the hands
A. Climbing back down the museum wall
To their ancestors the extinct shrews that will
Have left a message
What is the silence
A. As though it had a right to more
Who are the compatriots
A. They make the stars of bone

I don’t feel right satirizing this poem because there is undoubtedly a beautiful and deeper meaning that I, in my superficiality and ignorance, am missing. So, I’ve decided to take his approach, but address the body as it is living, instead of as it is dead.

What is the head
A. Means to insight
What are the eyes
A. Full of and for sight – therefore insightful, too
What are the feet
A. Marching in a poetic unit
No what are the feet
A. Under them many roads are moving
They are a solid base
What is the tongue
A. A flash of fire that licks up the wall
No what is the tongue
A. Tasting
What are the hands
A. Holding on and letting go
What is the silence
A. As if noise were better
Who are the compatriots
A. They make the silence more precious