Neruda, Neruda, Neruda...

It’s true; I’m a sucker for his poetry. I think it would be hard not to like, or even simply appreciate his work, but I’m biased. It may seem to someone that his work is solely devoted to the ideas of love, longing, and loneliness. With this in mind, it seems as though you have to be in love with the idea of love in order to love his work. This isn’t the case for me, as I’m not the biggest fan of poetry specifically about love anyway. Well, poetry about love between two people, because I have come to see that a lot of his odes profess love to simple objects. What I admire most about Neruda is his imagery. The way he can make you feel as though you are right there, whatever it is he may be talking about. Although his description of the human body is impeccable (The Insect), his Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market is just as expressive. His odes take the most mundane of objects (a lemon, ironing, olive-oil…) and break them down into lyric poetry that captivates and can simply leave a reader in awe. The structure of his poetry is also essential to the power behind it. The way in which he breaks up this thoughts, more specifically his words, (example: The Turtle), emphasize his emotional connection with whatever he is musing about. This is similar to the examples of enjambed poetry that we have read for class. I still wish I knew fluent Spanish so I could read Neruda's poetry in its rawest form, although I hope the translations do him justice. For now I’ll continue to reread translation after translation hoping I get the full effect.

Haiku

I read a book called Twice Told: Original Stories Inspired by Original Art, which is a series of short stories based off the sketches by Scott Hunt. One of the stories is "Just a Couple of Girls Talking Haiku" by Ron Koertge, this was the first time I had ever really experienced haiku. I found that I really enjoyed it, I find its a lot of fun to write haiku, as well as being kind of tricky. In English haiku is usually 17 syllables, comprised of three lines 5:7:5. Haiku can focus on whatever the author wishes, though originally it was mainly about the natural world. The Red Wing Black Bird A band of yellow: And flash of red my colors: Black but cheery bright.

Gary Snyder

I haven't read a lot of Gary Snyder's work--my loss.  I remember when I was an undergraduate at Illinois Central College and I took the American Literature survey course, my teacher really wanted me to read him and use him as an influence on my own work, even though I was too blocked at that time to really write anything (had I only known about Muse work . . . ).   We had to do an assignment, the specifics of which now elude me, but something about reporting on a long poem or a series of short poems by an author, and Mrs. Becker paired me up with Snyder, even though she new I was very (and I mean very) conservative in my taste, being under the spell of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and anything else that smacked of high culture, my Oz-land away from the dreary working class world in which I grew up.  I suspect she thought I'd resonate with Snyder's interest in Zen, which (at that time) I was also interested in, though really, I'd always resonated more with Taoism.  Anyway, I was to report on a long poem by him.  I tried to read it, and maybe I even got through the whole thing.  I was utterly against it, particularly the little symbols Snyder had put between sections of the poem, symbols that looked like Native American hieroglyphics; and the poem had something to do with Native American (I want to say Pueblo or Hopi) mythology.  For my nineteen-year old self, it wasn't European enough, not formal enough for my taste then.  But how we change:  now, though I am still a Europhile in terms of art and a lover of (so-called) high culture (still my Oz-land away from the sometimes-dreariness of being an itinerant teacher), now I really love Snyder and all he stands for in American poetry; and I love his fellow experimenters, those particularly who bring into their work shamanism or Zen or whatever--that's the material I now love more than anything else.  Of course I also like his form, especially his use of spaces within a line, a technique I've been using the past year or so.  Anyway, reading Snyder again for this class really brought back to me how much my taste has expanded in the past eighteen years.  

Spoken word poetry

This is Asia, a spoken word poet. Spoken word poetry involves the poet reciting their poetry, usually projecting alot of feeling. Poetry generally seems to be about things they've gone through. I've met this guy twice and love his stuff. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBR0tNtnRxw