A little lighter

First of all, I'm glad I'm not the only one that was dissapointed in our poetry-lacking summer. However, I will say that I tend to gravitate towards more concrete poetry, rather than abstract. I enjoy thinking about a theme or image, but at the same time I like being able to sit down at the end of the day and say, yeah, I get that.

"And always an audience / for all this slaughter and laughter--"

Since I signed up for a class on the poet Jorie Graham, I've gotten pretty much obsessed. She says she comes from Wallace Stevens, yet her images have more of a solid foundation in reality. She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and absorbed Derrida's postmodern philosophy into almost all of her poetry. Given that, even a cursory glance at Omaha will reveal double meanings and oppositions that are not too opposed--"...always an audience / for all this slaughter and laughter," for one. So, I've got a couple of opinions about Omaha, but I hope it just gets the ball rolling. Not that everything here has to be war poetry.

The constant play on the theater of war is the most politically potent message. Even in the title, Omaha, there is the sense of being far removed. Omaha, in the center of the United States, was also the name of the center of the bloodiest scene in World War II--Omaha Beach, the site of the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day. At once, it is so far removed and yet inextricable from the violence. The phrase "balconied gods" evokes the indifference of those higher up, and she pulls us into the current time with "As I tell you this / the stage grows very dark." The next lines reverse the balcony/stage metaphor, putting the violence at the upper floor of an American city. The powerlessness of those below suddenly becomes the powerlessness of those above, and there are then her true feelings--that even the "balconied gods" cannot get the killing to end.

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Last summer, there was this great idea that we--not sure exactly who, but at least Joy, Alyssa, and I--had where we get together and have dinner and read some poetry. But, as we quickly realized, no one, ourselves included, wants to learn when the sun is out. So, now that we're back in Salem/Spokane/Seattle, I think that we can do better. Mainly because we're avoiding homework. Post your thoughts about poems, or post a poem that you want us to read. Hey, even post a short story. I have a lot of homework to avoid doing.

Omaha - Jorie Graham

OMAHA

(Lowest Tide, Coefficient 105, Full Moon)

You can enlarge your soul but it is to receive what?
Did you say the thing they were expecting you to say?
Well then, see, how easy it is to be somebody else.
Like someone you see who looks like yourself in a dream,
for instance. What is it you look like. Your face,
is it there in your hands now, or down in the water?
If in the water, can you still pick it up, put it back on,
or is that trick lost? Reflect. Quick. Have you that vacancy 
         in you
which can be forced to collaborate?
Have you that vacancy which can be occupied,
and by what, and for how long, and at what
cost, pray, tell. Oh speak. Say TAKE YOUR MEDICINE.
Or PRETEND YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S ALL
ABOUT. Or whatever else it is you would have us
know. MY HOW YOU'VE GROWN would be ok,
but I'm not sure how you'd mean us to take that.
TAKE THAT. WHO ARE THOSE THERE.
Everything looks suddenly frighteningly reassuring.
As if the gods were rummaging through their drawers for this brief
spell, which feels like rain to us, so one can imagine
humming a little song, nothing, for just this tiny interval,
behind one's back. But look, even as we feel free
to live as if in their absence, for just this little while,
look how our mania continues to strut, oblivious. Ours,
in spite of us. What is this we are?
Even the balconied-ones have their limits.
Tolerance. Boredom. One comes out to the edge now with a blue
            wand,
I look up. Don't draw too close.
Do you think she has a different power. She waves
the thing. Others scamper away as she reaches the rail
and leans out over us. Waves and waves of blue
seem to scatter from the tip of her wand. "You
are fools" is said by the waves, but in another tongue.
"Anaesthesized by greed" is also let loose.
Some among us think they rise triumphant by just
drawing the next breath. As I tell you this
the stage grows very dark, I can hardly make her out.
The perspective is that of an American city, where one
is peering from street level to an unfindable upper floor.
A noisy place where it seems all of this
should have been long obvious to us from the start.
When "good" and "evil" had fresh paint on them,
performing for us on their various pedestals,
and you, you could look into any store window
and see the offspring of the two
right there, dead center, from any sidewalk,
a certain resemblance to some actor--waves now, waves rolling
            eternally,
of men, some dead, some still alive, being swept in, being rammed in--
Agency! What is that? The drowned wash in to receive
their bullets, the living wash in to receive
theirs. They cannot really be told
apart. Not from up there where the firing originates.
Not from up there where it's a scene in a movie.
There never was an alternative.
No one after a point could have stood up and walked
         away
in fear. No. No fear. Not anymore. These are the givens:
       poverty, greed, un-
expectedness. The bubble of the now being emitted from the
        blossoming
then. That's all. Maybe disappearance--as of the moon
to the horror of the men already in dark.
And always the one, far away, sitting charred and absent-
minded, on his throne. And always an audience
for all this slaughter and laughter--
"later on." The last few decades at any given moment
a leaf that drops. Some twig left
bare. The change upon us. But the fall--the falling
         of it
even after it is done--the fall: continues.
Because there is no way to get the killing to end.