Rae Armantrout's "New"

Here's a take, or, at least, an informal but very interesting, interpretation of Rae Armantrout's poem New, by somebody called Steven Fama (no profile available). Rae Armantrout is one of the finalists for the US National Book Award.

New

If yellow
is the new black,

the new you
is a cartoon

spokesman
who blows his lines

around bumptious 3-D
Hondas,

apologizes often,
and remains cheerful.

*

The new pop song
is about getting real:

“You had a bad day.
The camera don’t lie.”

But they’re lying
to you
about the camera.

*

Since Fallujah
is the new Antigua,

sunlight nibbles
on pre-
charred

terrain
in the electric fireplace.

Harryette Mullen : interesting take on 2 lines

Here's a very good analysis of a poem by one American poet Harryette Mullen.

She just won the Academy of American Poets Fellowship 2009. 

Take a look at how ROBIN TREMBLAY-MCGAW, at X POETICS, interprets these lines:

Night moon star sun down gown.
Night moan stir sin dawn gown.

The Pick

Text by Leon Wing

Poem by Cecilia Woloch

The Pick

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,

breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,

and the rocks into dust,

and the dust into earth again.

I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence,

just watching him.

My father’s body glistened with sweat,

his arms flew like dark wings over his head.

He was turning the backyard into terraces,

breaking the hill into two flat plains.

I took for granted the power of him,

though it frightened me, too.

I watched as he swung the pick into the air

and brought it down hard

and changed the shape of the world,

and changed the shape of the world again.

*** 

Within the first line itself this poem is utilizing poetic rhythm judiciously.  Just observe the rising and regular rhythm in ‘I watched him swing ...’. This shows us the point just prior to the swinging of the pick, where the continuing rising rhythm now grows swifter with ‘..ing the pick in the sun’. Here, the pairs of non-stresses accelerate the action.

The second line uses r and k sounds to give us the sense of solid concrete breaking into smaller chunks of rock.   Also, observe the similar construct of the words ‘break’, ‘chunks’ and ‘rock’, and lesser so of ‘concrete’; but the it’s still there.

More fast breaking of rocks: in lines 3 and 4, where in 4 the swift rhythm is maintained till the first two-thirds of the line. Thereafter, the rhythm slows down as the concrete has broken into rocks, the rocks into dust and, finally, the dust into the earth.

Line 5 is the longest line because it identifies the protracted time the poet sat watching the action. This line breaks down – just like the rock-breaking – into line 6, into smaller components, of just three words.  Contrastingly the shortest – or smallest – line, it reflects the breaking down of larger elements into smaller ones.

This shortest line also marks the change from the breaking-rock action into a more observing mode. The child here sees the father as something as slick as a snake and as dark as a bat: she is a little afraid of him, of the power he can wield. But that passes, when she realizes how she has taken such power for granted, how someone could change a hill into plains, or change the world.

The last four lines repeat the action of the swinging of the pick, one last time.  The last two lines repeat, like a mirroring or rhyming action, with a final addendum, ‘again’.  This line also parallels line 4: ‘and the dust into earth again’

This says much about how all things change inevitably, and can break down into dust, like our bodies after we die and go under the ground.  Going back to the first four lines, we can now see how the repeating of ‘rock’ and ‘dust’ is emblematic of  the final send-off: dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

This might be a bit far-fetched, but when you take in the significance of the ‘dark wings’ to hint at an evil, like Satan, you could imagine the small-lettered ‘he’ as the big-lettered one, of the Almighty, who can wield the power to change the world, or who has done it as His creation.

***

About the poet Cecilia Woloch

Language Lessons

Text by Leon Wing
Poem by By Alexandra Teague

Language Lessons

The carpet in the kindergarten room
was alphabet blocks; all of us fidgeting
on bright, primary letters. On the shelf
sat that week's inflatable sound. The "th"
was shaped like a tooth. We sang
about brushing up and down, practiced
exhaling while touching our tongues
to our teeth. Next week, a puffy U
like an upside-down umbrella; the rest
of the alphabet deflated. Some days,
we saw parents through the windows
to the hallway sky. "Look, a fat lady,"
a boy beside me giggled. Until then
I'd only known my mother as beautiful.

Here’s a poem ‘seen’ from the point of view of a child, one who is attending kindergarten. The scenario in question here, in this poem, is a lesson in language.

If we still remember our own kindergarten years – those who went to one – most likely a young teacher would have brought out wooden blocks with the alphabets on their faces or sides, for the elucidation of the yet unmolded young minds.

In the case of this child in the poem, her teacher has placed such blocks on the floor, onto the classroom’s carpet. They probably wouldn’t have been such a lot that they cover up the entire stretch of the carpet. But for a little girl who is just learning the alphabet, they look like so. And, they seem so cartoonishly enormous, as though they are being sat on by tiny fidgety children. In the alliterations in "bright, primary", the b tells us what they are sitting on is hard, and the r that it is uncomfortable.

It’s quite interesting to observe that the first line cuts off – or runs-on, enjambes – at “room/ was ...”. The adult would have been taught to use a more active verb than “was”. However, a child still learning the language is expected to use something more static, like “was”, because she cannot think of a stronger word, or verb, yet. And, probably, also, a child always sees things as they are.

She is in empathy with her other classmates who are in a similar quandary. They are all fidgetting, unsure about the letters. This is made emblematic with the use of a semi-colon, instead of the normal comma to delineate a subordinate clause. We can imagine the confused child: is it a comma? is it a full-stop? Also, the incomplete syntax of the phrase following the semi-colon shows that they have all given up on completing a full sentence, after that punctuation.

The point of view, after the full-stop, is from the floor she is sitting on, when she looks up to see that week’s word or part of a word. Of course, she cannot envision or hear the sound that word makes. She just sees the alphabet as a tooth. For a child the alphabets look like a tooth, an umbrella, and other inflated and deflated objects.

And, learning how to make the correct sounds from these letters can take so much effort for a child: "touching our tongues/ to our teeth". The t sounds show this, the th showing the final strain to reach the teeth with the tip of the tongue. And later, they have to contend with sounds difficult to get around the tongue with, like the U (say "eweee"); so much acrobatics, too, ("upside-down umbrella") with the u's and r's. Then, they'll get a reprieve with deflated sounds : the f sounds in "alphabet deflated".

Now, at this point of the poem we see the significance of the use of "was" in line two. As I already mentioned, a child always sees things as they are. The last four lines illustrate this:

Imagine the shock this child gets when one of her classmates, a boy, suddenly is able to see things as they really are. He has seen her mother through the windows as she really is, a fat woman, and not as the beautiful woman she has alway known her to be.

The point of this poem is, this is one of the first of many lessons about how we use language. For instance, we can be polite and not hurt somebody's feelings by couching our language in vague terms. Or we can cut to the chase, as it were, and come right out with the ugly truth. Like, "You suck at this, at that", "You look fat in that dress".

***

To know more about the poet Alexandra Teague, click here.

Night in Day

Text by Leon Wing

Poem by Joseph Stroud

Night in Day

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light's great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun--
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

***

Here, in the East, now, it’s humidity, at times scorching heat, then unexpected heavy rain, even when the sun has been shining brightly. This month, in the west, it was the summer solstice, particularly on the 21st, when Americans see the sun at the northernmost point, when it is the furthest from the equator.

Like our unwavering light in our East, the West’s summer solstice is “the day of light’s great/triumph”. This is the triumph of standing at the tallest reaches of the sky. In this poem there is a battle of ascendancy from “night”, which doesn’t want to surrender to “light”.

The direct oppositeness – and opposition - of each of light’s and night’s stances is reflected in the first two words of lines one and two. The run-on at “over”, in the first line, has the OH sound. The caesura, or pause, in the second line, between the full-stop and “So”, marks the repeat of this sound. Another punctuation, the colon, helps point to another repeat of the sound, in “crows”, which end-points, decidedly with a full-stop.

“Night” is personalised – or rather, de-personalised – by calling “night” “it”. “it” repeats in “itself”, where “itself” is repeated. “Night”’s vowels are short i's. Yes, even “light” has the same kind. But that’s because they are direct opposites, linked by their similar rhyme, and, also, “night” insinuates itself into “light”. Look at the i's buried in “obsidian”, and at how “night”’s dark colours are inherent in obisidian and crows. The connection of lava in obsidian suggests the heat and burning of Hell, and crows can be a symbol of darkness, when they sometimes eat carrion, the dead.

In the end, “light” is winning, with the 3rd last line repeating the U sound of “sun” in “triumph”, “sunflowers”, “guzzle” and “sun”. The dash at the end of this line mimics the “we”s dash to “guzzle” at the burst and released “watermelon”, which has benefited from “light”, and remove the dark bits in it, the “black seeds”. “we” “spit” these into the “grass”, which repeats the A sound of “trap”, so that it is finally “night” that is trapped (“night glistening”) inside “grass”, which is green and above the ground, like “watermelon”.

***

Joseph Stroud is awarded the Witter Bynner Fellowship of the Library of Congress and the Pushcart Prize for his poetry. He has published In the Sleep of Rivers, Signatures, Below Cold Mountain, Country of Light and Of This World: New And Selected Poems.

Spinning

Text by Leon Wing
Poem by Kevin Griffith

Spinning

I hold my two-year-old son
under his arms and start to twirl.
His feet sway away from me
and the day becomes a blur.
Everything I own is flying into space:
yard toys, sandbox, tools,
garage and house,
and, finally, the years of my life.

When we stop, my son is a grown man,
and I am very old. We stagger
back into each other's arms
one last time, two lost friends
heavy with drink,
remembering the good old days.

***

Any parent who has brought up a child would concur with the sentiments in this poem, about how time flies (I know, how trite this sounds) as he grows up.

In the beginning of the first stanza Griffith uses internal rhyming (“hold”, “old”) to foreground his refusal to accept that his child is growing older. He again uses a similar manoeuvre in the next sentence, from line two to three, with “sway away” and “day”.

The juxtaposition of “sway” and “away”, especially the repeating of “way”, mimics a spinning around from one spot and coming back to it again, and again. The H, S and F sounds of “His feet” , in turn, mimic the air through which the little boy is spun around. The rush of air, with the F sound of “from” settles with the M sounds of “from me”.

The repeated AY sound of those rhymes, in “space”, also makes us see here that the days are moving away, with blurring speed, growing older, as it were. Not only are the years of his son growing up spinning away, also those of his life are doing likewise, into an expanse of growing older.

In the first line of the second stanza, Griffith uses again the settling mimicry of the M sounds of line three, here, in “grown man”. He prepares the foretaste for this with "stop" and a pause with a comma, and the M of "my".

“grown” connects to “own” in stanza one. Also, the O sound in “grown” links that in “old” of line one. This connection is confirmed when its sound is concretised in “old”, in the stanza’s second line, and underpinned by “very”. A full-stop literally stops time, and the reading breaks with a pause, as if father and son are being stopped short. Both “stagger” at a powerful run-on, practically the only one in the entire poem, to “back”, in the starting of the next line. It’s almost as if Time has granted them a return (“back”) to the “old” days, when his son was the little boy he was holding. This affords them a final embrace, a holding on to, as if they’ve found each other after being flung into the space of time, of growing.

While “two” in stanza one intimates a splitting, a separating of father and son, its use here is the reverse. There is still a splitting with the use of “two” here, but this is a good thing, as “one” becomes “two”, forging a father-son bonding. A spin-around, a twirling, each now becomes a “one”. Whatever are being lost in stanza one is made up for by being more than father and son, by being friends now.

In the penultimate line, “drink” puts one in mind of how “Everything” of the father flew into space, went “flying”, as they are “remembering”. The departing line is final with the repeating of “old” and “day”, placed side by side, like a father and son together.

***

Kevin Griffith teaches English as Associate Professor of English at Capital University. He is also a faculty member in the Legal Research and Writing Program at the Law School. He was awarded the Columbus Literary Award in Poetry from the Greater Columbus Arts Council and two Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist's Fellowships in Poetry.

He has published Paradise Refunded (Backwaters Press, 1999); Someone Had to Live (San Diego Poets Press, 1994); The Common Courage Reader: Essays for an Informed Democracy (Common Courage Press, 2000); and over 200 poems in journals like Chelsea and Mid-American.

Earbud

Text by Leon Wing

Poem by Bill Holm

Earbud

Earbud--a tiny marble sheathed in foam
to wear like an interior earring so you
can enjoy private noises wherever you go,
protected from any sudden silence.
Only check your batteries, then copy
a thousand secret songs and stories
on the tiny pod you carry in your pocket.
You are safe now from other noises made
by other people, other machines, by chance,
noises you have not chosen as your own.
To get your attention, I touch your arm
to show you the tornado or the polar bear.
Sometimes I catch you humming or talking to the air
as if to a shrunken lover waiting in your ear.


For the generation who’d rather listen to music in the form of MP3, rather than as music issuing from large speakers and spinning from a CD, the earbud is one of a pair, each a “tiny marble sheathed in foam”, as Bill Holm puts it, in his poem.

The way Holms refers to it - you stick it into each ear, much like “an interior earring”, for enjoying “private noises” – it is nothing you would want to show off openly. It’s an object to hide behind, to be “protected from sudden silence”; which says plenty about the brashness and loudness of such a society.

Holm uses the s alliteration in "sudden silence", to make more audible, for the reader, the abrupt hushness of no sound. He also repeats this alliteration in "secret songs and stories". But this time the collocation has a different effect. The "songs and stories" are audible only to the wearer of the earbuds.

For old people who needs to protect themselves from silence, like deafness, the earbud is like their ear piece which near-deaf people wear, who also require to “check your batteries”.

Holm views the earbud, and its concomitant “pod” (the iPod) as something you hide “in your pocket”, just like the “secret songs and stories”. Like a pod you are cocooned, protected, in your own “private noises”, not those from “other people, other machines, by chance,/ noises you have not chosen as your own.” The earbud does not belong with a social environment of sharing and communicating, as the triple repeats of other suggests.

Another triple set of repeats, of noises, works similarly to the s alliterations of lines 4 and 6. While the wearer might assume that other noises would encroach into her audo privacy, the observer (non-wearer) considers the tinny sounds from her earbuds noises.

Just like wearers of those ear pieces for amplifying sounds for the hard of hearing, earbud wearers sometimes have to be communicated to tactilely (“I touch your arm”). They can be so immersed in their own private world (“humming or talking to the air”), they have a narrow view of the other world, the natural one, particularly (“the tornado or the polar bear”). Their view of their own world is similarly reduced (“shrunken lover”).