on the last May day
caffeine – coffee, chocolate
spirals in the blood

I am so glad I don’t have to grade student papers

Especially aware of margins lately

No plastic haloes for sale
just wings
and crowns

I am incapacitated
have nothing but dirt
honey and oatmeal

Haibun is a combination of prose and haiku poetry, sometimes described as ‘a narrative of epiphany’.

from Haibun journal

Recognizing haibun. I was categorizing my entries in this log and found several that I labeled as “poems” even though they were only “poem” at the end, the beginnings being prose meanderings. The meanderings led to the poem, in a sensation of gathering or sudden opening to light or a warmth or a blossom.

I am enthusiastic about the way the poetic language appears and is distinctively different, but related, to the everyday lingo or “journal entry” that went before.

Sheila Murphy’s haibun

Can’t find John Ashbery’s six haibun online.

mysteriouslessness

the state of being mysteriousless

I wrote this phrase the other day, not sure if I was quoting or where I came up with it, and I meant it in a negative way, but upon flashing by it again today, I have changed my mind and begin to think a hollow poem might be quite a wonderful thing

From an interview with david baptiste-chirot

i can remember when i very first made rubBEings–quite clearly–and the way they function has not changed at all–other than having lived with them through time. i have come to be very grateful to/with them–as through acutely difficult times i have been able to make contact with a form of notation in the world and be in a shared communication with it. a notation which is there hidden in plain sight! i, at times, seek to be out of conventional language–as within it one feels very much trapped, tortured almost at times–so the yearning for an outside–yet at same time–a place where one may join in and find a means of one’s own being a part of the ongoing conversation–something that brings one forth into. . .an immense continuum, one might call it, is a yearning for freedom. in a way one feels this all around one, this kind of reaching out–so this form is really a means of finding that “shock of recognition” right here. “look under your feet” as Chuang-Tzu says.

John Yau, “The Poet as Art Critic,” American Poetry Review, May/June 2005

I liked this article a lot. I had to underline a boatload of sentences, sentences that struck me with extreme validity:

Often, after summing up the subject he is reviewing, he steps back and argues eloquently for both the difficult and the impossible.

All too often, these states of illuminated insight are familiar and border on cliché. The revelation is not something the poet discovers in the process of writing, but is something he or she already possesses, and must figure out how to package. Such poems are full of detachable symbols and images, triggers that set off the reader’s sympathetic Pavlovian response.

Reminds me of a lot of buck-up poetry I’ve encountered, poetry therapy poetry, do this-do that poetry.

We live in a quandary… a question of deciding how much the outer reality is our reality, how far we can advance into it and still keep a toe-hold on the inner, private one. [JA]

Has me wondering if I’ve gone too far into the outer reality. I’ve less than a bare toe-hold on the inner, private one.

Their [Ashbery's and O'Hara's] criticism isn’t theory driven, but object driven. … both pay close attention to what is in front of them, which is not all that easy or simple to do.

I’d like to apply this to poetry criticism. Just take a look at the poem in front of you (not all that easy or simple to do).

He wasn’t a trained art historian, which is why his work at MoMA was so refreshing and has never been duplicated: Innocence and joy cannot be duplicated. [Hilton Als, on O'Hara]

“it is not an abstraction, but an object made by and for the senses.” [Ashbery reviewing Brice Marden's paintings]

Love thinking about a poem as an object made by and for the senses

In other words, he isn’t interested in abstraction as an idealized state, but in something messier and closer to life.

Ashbery has submerged his personality in favor of something that is seemingly objective and distanced.

I relate very much to this submerging of personality. This quote mistakenly implies that he worked to submerge his personality. I don’t think he does it that intentionally. It’s just what his introversion demands. And some of the constructions made to explain it are just for convenience. Putting “his personality” in his poems would be along the lines of a lie for Ashbery. I understand that very well.

This understanding feels very freeing, like wanting to jump around and play all day in the fields of introversion.

Within this situation of absence, particularly of moral authority, the writer has two choices: write poems as if there still exists a collective language or try to write poems that achieve complete autonomy. Ashbery chose the latter.

Very exciting comment. What is going on here? Are we trying to build a new collective language? Or just throwing everything to the winds in completely disparate alternative realities? What the hell is complete autonomy in view of a lack of moral authority? I can make a comparison with religion. In the absence of my Catholicism, do I create my own religion? What good is a one-person religion? There is still some project to do with the group. What is it?

Edwin Dickinson – eeriness and vivacity

Jean Hélion, They Shall Not Have Me

Look these guys up.

I realize today that it is the abstract which is reasonable and possible. And that it is the pursuit of reality which is madness, the ideal, the impossible. [Hélion]

The new software makes me happy. It has something to do with building something.

I am SO TENTATIVE. Tentative fingers and tentative toes, letting go, moving move-aling move-along.

I want to write about everything. Inscribe everything. Say it, see it, silent, soil it.

The Want to Grasp
is great

The Achieve of
is lacking

The Want to Paint
is splatter

The wall is
unprimed
plain