Wooden sculpture of Wisława Szymborska in Szydłów
This weekend, I will be fortunate & privileged to participate in the Frost Place Studio Session, The Nation as Muse, lead by a poet I admire greatly, Dawn Potter. Before I take down some notes about some prep work for this upcoming class, I wanted to review my participation in the Iowa City Open Mic:
The event host, Laura, was extremely considerate in letting me take some time at the "mic" to read from one of my poems "Into the West." My friend from back home, Em, was also able to log in and hear my reading.
One of my favorite pieces read from Sunday was by one of the participants
David Duer, it was a Sestina, of all things! I've said it before & I'll say it again: I don't particularly enjoy formatted poetry (Rondels, Sestinas, Sonnets) because I don't like the feeling of being forced into using certain words or structures. But, David's piece used the first 6 words from the New York Times "Wordle" game to form the ending words for his piece--rather than choosing the words.
A sestina is a tricky thing, since you're using the same 6 end words for each stanza, in different line combinations--it can get to the point where the lines are structured in an awkward or forced way, rather than reading smoothly. In this case, even though the author didn't choose the words--but took them from a word game (I've never played Wordle) he took a risk--how would they interact inside the structure of a sestina? But, strangely--it worked out well. It made me want to try picking 6 random words through some totally arbitrary fashion to see if I could make them work together.
ANYWAY back to the The Nation As Muse. I am consciously deciding NOT to read the poems we'll be studying ahead of time--I'm not sure why but I want to approach them in the moment. Instead, I am reading about the poets themselves:
1. Czeslaw Milosz. I am not as familiar with Milosz as I am with Wislawa Szymborska, who is one of my favorite poets (and no not just because I have a thing for adorable old ladies). Reading about Milosz though, I think I would enjoy diving deeper into his body of work. Some of the most telling quotes from the Poetry Foundation overview, for me, are:
"Karl Jaspers, in an article for the Saturday Review, described The Captive Mind as “a significant historical document and analysis of the highest order … In astonishing gradations Milosz shows what happens to men subjected simultaneously to constant threat of annihilation and to the promptings of faith in a historical necessity which exerts apparently irresistible force and achieves enormous success. We are presented with a vivid picture of the forms of concealment, of inner transformation, of the sudden bolt to conversion, of the cleavage of man into two.”"
The quote above is intriguing to me because of the "constant threat of annihilation" and how that low hanging doom leads to "the cleavage of man into two." I will need to read The Captive Mind to understand what Karl Jaspers means by this.
"The story of Milosz’s odyssey from East to West is also recounted in his poetry. Milosz’s “entire effort,” Jonathan Galassi explained in the New York Times Book Review, “is directed toward a confrontation with experience—and not with personal experience alone, but with history in all its paradoxical horror and wonder.”
This is extremely prescient, the "paradoxical horror and wonder" as a result of the "confrontation with experience." The events happening right now (The Russian invasion of Ukraine) make these words easier to understand. The horror of the destruction, the invasion, and the wonder of how it's bringing strangers together in support of Ukraine. Even the wonder of how the people of Ukraine are being brought out of their homes & into such close contact with each other,
like these pictures show:
"Milosz stresses the importance of his nation’s cultural heritage and history in shaping his work. “My corner of Europe,” he states, “owing to the extraordinary and lethal events that have been occurring there, comparable only to violent earthquakes, affords a peculiar perspective. As a result, all of us who come from those parts appraise poetry slightly differently than do the majority of my audience, for we tend to view it as a witness and participant in one of mankind’s major transformations.” “For Milosz,” Helen Vendler explained in the New Yorker, “the person is irrevocably a person in history, and the interchange between external event and the individual life is the matrix of poetry.”
The bold here is mine. Eastern Europe has long been the troubled crossroads between East & West--and I am interested to learn how this historical perspective has shaped the language & emotional structures of Polish poetry. It also puts my own work into a broader perspective--what am I writing about? Myself, one human out of billions--and is that important?
Robert Hass, writing in the Washington Post Book World, called Herbert “an ironist and a minimalist who writes as if it were the task of the poet, in a world full of loud lies, to say what is irreducibly true in a level voice.” An ironist: a person who uses irony. Yes, I had to look it up. No, I didn't think this meant he was proficient with a clothes iron. I really love this description: "in a world full of loud lies, to say what is irreducibly true in a level voice." What an amazing way to describe Herbert, if that was the only "blurb" on the book jacket, I would be sold.
“In Poland,” Herbert once stated, “we think of the poet as prophet; he is not merely a maker of verbal forms or an imitator of reality. The poet expresses the deepest feelings and the widest awareness of people. … The language of poetry differs from the language of politics. And, after all, poetry lives longer than any conceivable political crisis. The poet looks over a broad terrain and over vast stretches of time. He makes observations on the problems of his own time, to be sure, but he is a partisan only in the sense that he is a partisan of the truth. He arouses doubts and uncertainties and brings everything into question.”
The poet as prophet is a nice counterpart to the name of this weekend's class: The Nation as Muse. Also this makes me rethink my more political poetry I've been writing of late. It's timely, perhaps, but poetry
does and will live longer "than any conceivable political crisis" so perhaps I should refocus on:
what does this political moment say about us as a people? Rather than berate or condemn, etc. Also this line: "he is a partisan only in the sense that he is a partisan of the truth." Republican, Democrat, no, no, no, be a partisan for what is "irreducibly true," David!
Still, poetry has limited influence. Speaking to Jacek Trznadel in Partisan Review, Herbert explained: “It is vanity to think that one can influence the course of history by writing poetry. It is not the barometer that changes the weather.”
I LOVE THIS AND I HATE THIS. "IT IS VANITY TO THINK THAT ONE CAN INFLUENCE THE COURSE OF HISTORY BY WRITING POETRY. IT IS NOT THE BAROMETER THAT CHANGES THE WEATHER." OK sorry for shouting but this really hit home for me--I don't need to worry about trying to change the world with my verse, I can be happy to be a small, individual barometer for the weather of my time--that's all I need be!
Miller also sees Herbert’s humor as “a way of resisting the dehumanizing and impersonal language of the state. … Keeping a sense of humor means keeping a private language and avoiding the total politicization of the self.”
Herbert’s poetry is also laced with biblical and Greek mythological allusions. Miller contends that “the lens of myth reduces the glare of contemporary experience, placing it in a perspective that enables [Herbert] to view it without losing his sanity and sense of humor.” He also points out that the use of myth “liberates [Herbert] from the confines of particular historical events. … At the same time the use of myth fleshes out the thin bones of the satire, making it sly and elegant, not obvious and heavy-handed.”
The use of biblical & Greek mythological allusions are like the lingua franca for nerdy or bookish folks. Like, most of us HAD to read the bible and many of us WANTED to dive into Greek myths. The archetypes, the timeless stories, the colorful and imaginative explanations for natural events. But the way Herbert uses this to "flesh out the thin bones of the satire, making it sly and elegant" is a way of thinking about allusions that I had not previously.
3.
Wislawa Szymborska. First, let me just complain quickly about how much shorter Wislawa's bio is compared to Milosz & Herbert. Where's the respect?! Anyway:
In the New York Times Book Review, Stanislaw Baranczak wrote, “The typical lyrical situation on which a Szymborska poem is founded is the confrontation between the directly stated or implied opinion on an issue and the question that raises doubt about its validity. The opinion not only reflects some widely shared belief or is representative of some widespread mind-set, but also, as a rule, has a certain doctrinaire ring to it: the philosophy behind it is usually speculative, anti-empirical, prone to hasty generalizations, collectivist, dogmatic and intolerant.”
When I was studying Wislawa (yes, we're on a first name basis, DEAL WITH ME) in college, David Wojahn, my poetry professor, made a point to draw our attention to her ironic precision--how she said what she could to avoid State Censorship and how canny readers could she what she was pointing to. The above quote is something new to me, "the typical lyrical situation" being that of a duel between the directly stated/implied position and the question "that raises doubt about its validity." Which means I'm not reading & re-reading Wislawa with the discernment she is owed!
4. Adam Zagajewski. A quick note, Adam passed away recently, last March. From Poetry Foundation bio:
Writing of Zagajewski’s 1991 collection, Canvas, poet and reviewer Robert Pinsky commented that the poems are “about the presence of the past in ordinary life: history not as chronicle of the dead, or an anima to be illuminated by some doctrine, but as an immense, sometimes subtle force inhering in what people see and feel every day—and in the ways we see and feel.”
I think this is an evocative description of Zagajewski's poetry: "history not as a chronicle of the dead" but as a "immense, sometimes subtle force inhering in what people see and feel every day." I don't frequently think about how history bears down on the present moment, how it shapes how I see and feel--but it feels like a true statement from Pinsky not just about Zagajewski's work, but about life in general.
OK, that feels like enough prep work in terms of studying the poets whose work we'll be studying this weekend. I am more excited now than before for this class!
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