Neon Clocks USA

We've been having some interesting discussions about poems, poetry, and poetics on the PoetryEtc list -- some of it focused around my own recent work. Frederick Pollack offered some thorough and pointed criticism of my poems -- and my 'kind' of poetry. 

What is my kind of poetry? Mainstream, I gather. Lyrical, perhaps. Not, certainly, his favorite sort.

While I'm unlikely to change the kind of poetry I write, Frederick's critiques and perspective are being very helpful. I find myself thinking, for the first time in too long, about what I'm doing, and why; how I do it, and to what end. I've been lazy lately. The poems have come too easily, and I've posted them too quickly.

I read poems, and I read books about writing poems; but I don't often read, or think much about, criticism or theory. Perhaps, twenty years in, it's past time.

Frederick's advice:

Two tips: 1. Distinguish between your genuinely subjective experience and your narrowly autobiographical experience.  The former is what counts.  As I said before, neither "I" nor "you" (nor parents, siblings, Aunt Tilly etc.) are at all important in themselves; only as functions of a poem and how it engineers its reader's experience. 2: Realize that a narrative, a story, is a metaphor.  In a narrative poem, the guiding incident is the poem's metaphor.  (Stylistically, therefore, there should be as few other metaphors as possible.)

While the first point is familiar to me, the second brought me up short. Not regarding narrative poetry, which I seldom attempt, but regarding what I do write. I thought about how image-heavy my poems tend to be. Then I looked around the room.

My house is just the same. Every wall is covered with art. Every room, even the bathrooms, the kitchen, the closet/ dressing room. Tables and shelves are covered with books, magazines, artifacts. There are goldfish in the garden, parakeets in the sunroom, a small aquarium in the living room, and cats and dogs wherever they please. Everywhere, memories, totems, collections. Also dust, dishes, and pet hair.

I conclude that my house, and my poems, reflect my mind: cluttered, personal, eclectic. Dusty. And I wonder -- have you noticed such correlations in your own writing? Do your poems look like your house, minimalistic, or traditional, or Bohemian, or . . . ?  Would an attempt to change the style of your writing be like an attempt to change the style of your rooms? And would that be easily done, or not?

I love my house, and don't plan to change it. But you might expect to see some experimentation here.

When I began looking for spots of black in our home suited to Anna's photo challenge, I had no idea how many objects I'd find.  If you didn't know better, you'd think my house was something straight out of Gotham City!

The panels that accompany this topper were featured in Project Green; the curtains hang both in our kitchen and in the sitting room opposite it.

Blacktop

One of the most daring, dramatic and, thankfully, satisfying home improvements undertaken the past year was painting not one, but two, of our ceilings BLACK (our entrance foyer and downstairs bathroom).  Please forgive the dizzifying angle here; it was the best way to give you a peek at the ceilings in context of the room (plus, the walls feature more black themselves!).

My precious I'm addicted, not proud.  Until I sip my morning ritual,
you may not want to run into me.



Night-time sleep aid, may be habit forming Originally bought to use at the beach when late-night revelers threatened my dreams, we liked it so much it's come as constant of a companion as Aussie; whose mid-night barking, incidentally, is drowned out, too.


Big Time

No matter where you sit in our kitchen, you'll always have plenty of time :).

Light shadows

I walked past our dining room one morning and thought the lights were on; I guess they were in a manner of speaking--the sun was peeking in, casting shadows of everything in its path.  This is one of a pair of lamps in the room, black with pineapple gold accents.

 

While I've been partying at BlogHop '08, I've missed a few days of writing and finding subjects for my favorite photographic projects.  I'll be back to normal this week (no snark allowed) and I'm please to announce Pensieve's Poetic License will return.  In the meantime, please visit Anna Carson for more Project Black participants or to post your own.