The various topics and exercises posted by Carolyn before we
met, appearing on the right side as a list of Pages, are obviously in no way
intended to be rigid or exhaustive.
That said, as I read through them, I was wondering about the value of
trying to write to a particular form or theme, to be part of that particular
tradition or community, or for any other reason—as opposed to simply writing
without concern for the “constraints” of such guides and prompts.
As an example, when I read the amazing Larry Levis poem,
“Sensationalism,” posted on the Ekphrasis page, I was reminded of a poem I
wrote (“Study in Subordination”) some years back after reading a collection of Levis’s work (I
think it was The Selected Levis). I am setting it out below just to better
illustrate my question. If I were
trying to fit my poem into a category, I suppose it comes closest to ekphrasis
(broadly construed, written in response to, or at least in the wake of reading, a collection of his poetry, and no
one poem in particular). I don’t
think that I consciously thought of it this way when I wrote it, and I suspect it
would need something more or different to really “qualify” as ekphrastic,
assuming there is some reason to have such a goal.
My question really is prompted by the mental leap, the
association, I made reading the Levis poem on the “Ekphrastic Poem” page
shortly before reading Carolyn’s “Poets Mourning Poets” Page. Levis died in 1996, well before I wrote my poem. I could as well have written Study in Subordination as an elegy
(perhaps I should say, more overtly as an elegy, as I suppose it has elements or hints of
the elegiac). Maybe I would have
been influenced to do so had I read Carolyn’s post of Casey Cep’s “Poets
Mourning Poets” before I wrote it.
The question I am throwing out is: Should I have?
Setting aside questions of how well I might have pulled it off, or of
the merits of what I actually did write—or lack thereof—would there be some
inherent value in approaching this poem with the clear intent to write an
elegy? Would it be more
meaningful? More likely to have a
life (if it ever left my drawer)?
More of a contribution to some tradition we might like to feel part of
as poets? Would it (potentially)
be more likely to be better as an obvious elegy, or, for that matter, if it
were more consciously and clearly ekphrastic, rather than something that is
neither, or hybrid? Would it be good to revise it in one clear direction or the
other?
I am not looking for a critique of a particular poem (though
I am always happy to hear how others respond, and have thick skin). My aim is really to have a small
discussion about the larger questions prompted by the juxtaposition of
categories, themes, and forms in our Blog Pages, and what virtues there may be
in being intentional about writing toward these, as opposed to giving the
creative process free rein, and finding that we have become part of one of
these formal traditions more serendipitously (and therefore probably less
completely or “successfully”), or that we have not written something more formally identifiable.
Study in Subordination
The
poetry of Larry Levis is laden
with
subordinate clauses, hanging like
pregnant
clusters on málaga vines
that
don’t know if they’ll end up wine
or
raisins, not that either is inherently
better,
it just is, or isn’t,
each
is other, and neither, and it
doesn’t
matter, unless, maybe you
are
Caravaggio, looking for diversion
from
painting thieves and saints, John
the
Baptist—or John in the Wilderness,
as
if that body would be any less, stripped
of
its name or given another
capriciously,
not malevolently,
to
see if names mattered—or
an
apostle, incredulous and faithful,
timidly
probing with his apologetic
finger
into a flap of skin in the living
reliquary
of Christ’s torso—presumably
a
souvenir left the Friday before
by
a centurion’s lance—trying to divine
the
line between quick and dead, and
you
think maybe you’ll switch to fruits
today,
a boy with a basket of fruit to be
precise,
muscular shoulder, clavicle and
neck
forming an intriguing delta and peaches
you’d
like to sink your beard and tongue
into,
in which case you might care
if
they are grapes or raisins, since raisins
won’t
show up as well in a basket of painted fruit,
which
already has to compete with that look
on
the young boy’s face that leaves us
wondering
what he and Caravaggio do
after
he sets his basket down for the day,
the
newest oils quieting upon the canvas, or
like—hang
with me here, still in similes
for
Levis-like subordinate clauses—
death,
insinuating itself between each
breathing
in and exhalation and in
interstices
between words, between
the
letters of each word, black ink soiling
yet
defining the snowy solitude of each
page,
as several cousins, half
the
neighbors, a snare drummer and
the
odd horn player line the edges
of
the field, wetting their pantlegs
in
the dewy night grass, spooking
the
piebald mare grazing the next pasture,
headlights
of their tractors and pickups
illuminating
hardening furrows of
freshly
disced topsoil and a final
father-son
outing, a cosmic game
of
rocks, scissors, paper—words cutting
snowflake
patterns in folds of death,
driven
snow filling chiseled epitaphs,
ashes
of redoubtable death covering both
anxious
snow and trembling words
like
a thin down comforter.
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