Work in Progress
(the) Sun (the) day
soon or late
the day the sun
will pop a decomposition composition
pop brilliance pop within it to expose it to
it it
suck
in in
return for
all the
suck
ing we have
done from
scares me to think about
now or
scares me to think about
then
sooner or later
but ill be dead before the sun explodes thank god thank god
soon or late
the day the sun
will pop a decomposition composition
pop brilliance pop within it to expose it to
it it
suck
in in
return for
all the
suck
ing we have
done from
scares me to think about
now or
scares me to think about
then
sooner or later
but ill be dead before the sun explodes thank god thank god
posted by Sturgeon General at 10:24 PM
8 Comments:
criticize please
or as the english say,
criticise please
Is 'Work in Progress' the title of the poem, or is it the label of your post? In reading for content and situating myself with relation to the work, this is an important question for me... though it reads fine either way.
The first thing that strikes me in all of the poems you have posted is your wonderful sense of play/wordplay. It often propells the work, yet still functions to reveal more serious commentary and content.
I do think that sometimes you teeter on the line between surface and content, though -- meaning that, in some places, the wordplay begins to distract from my reading of the content. This is certainly not inherently bad -- I, for one, am always in support of more abstract "mark-making," and if the writer wants me to stay near the surface, I'm happy to stay there. But I bring up this question in relation to your work because, as the reader, I'm not quite sure where you want me -- on the surface, or underneath, or somewhere in the middle -- and right now I'm somewhere in the middle, but closer to the marks and shapes on the surface. And, for some reason, I get the feeling that I might be missing something.
It is not the tension between surface and content that I find distracting here -- in fact I find it intriguing, and I think it's a good place to be. What I find distracting is my lack of conviction that that's where I'm supposed to be, and I wonder if tightening up the wordplay in certain places (so that it's only used with control and precision, not extraneously) would create a more solid experience for the reader.
That said, I think I tend to project questions of surface/content onto a lot of the work that I read/view because it is an issue that I am exploring and struggling with a lot in my own work, both written and visual (but particularly visual right now). I wonder if other readers are having the same experience, or if this is really more about my own reading?
Overall, I really like the piece. Particularly the odd sense of symmetry about it, which I interpret as a parallel between creation and apocolypse, with a violent, selfish and faintly apologetic course in between that gets us from one to the other. Is that some of what you are talking about? If it is, then reading 'Work in Progress' as the title of the poem seems fitting to me... I'd even say perfect, in fact.
A very interesting piece, well worth revisiting and tightening up to make it pop more brilliantly.
Thanks so much for the critique, some of the most honest and direct I'd say I've gotten on pinkos. Work in Progress is the title of the piece. But it is also a work in progress (in the case that I decide to work on it). You're absolutely right, though: it's hard for me to get past the superficial aspect of wordplay, and it ends up being more of a deterrant than a practical course. I suppose it's because I tend to fear revision, and I love the way poems sound in my head or out loud. I also dislike poems that are far too cryptic, and I think that is often times a result of relying too little on the superficial aspects of poetry (i.e. the sense that it is meant to be read). And just because the espresso is really strong doesn't mean its flavorful.
I've also despised poetry for quite a while, and I think that it was in response to this Latin class I took (from which I posted that analysis of Catullus). I just didn't get modernist poetry - to me it was like getting slapped in the face versus doing a complicated jigsaw puzzle. I felt like contemporary poetry had forgotten what it was supposed to be, what made poetry poetry in the first place. And to some extent I still think that's true, actually. But in the last few months, I have been exposed to a lot of good poetry (your own included, Inga) and I've had some real ecstatic moments, really akin to the same kind of satisfaction I got from reading classical poetry (actual epic poetry, the Aeneid, was what originally got me interested at that level).
Well, regardless of my past pretentions, I think what I need to do is think more when writing poetry, at least for the time being. What I like about writing, actually, is when I get into a space where I'm not thinking, the words are just flowing, dripping out onto the page. But that is only the result of merging the craft and the idea. So for now I need to pay more attention to the craft, let that develop consciously so that it will develop unconsciously. I'm just rambling. Thanks inga!
My answer to anyone who finds it difficult to approach contemporary poetry (particularly for fear that it has "forgotten" what makes poetry poetry) is Dean Young. I say this, not because I am so well read in comtemporary poetry as to presume I know how to teach it -- in fact, I'd say I'm only really familiar with maybe thirty or so contemporary poets --, but because Dean Young is a man who undeniably knows what makes poetry poetry, and he also happens to be the single poet who first let me into the genre in any meaningful way. Basically, I just can't help myself from recommending Dean Young to anyone who is breathing.
It's interesting to hear about the way that you've approached poetry, since I did it in precisely the opposite way. I never really got classical poetry or had any interest in it, and it was sort of out of nowhere (and a previous affinity to pablo neruda) that I decided to take a poetry workshop at Brown sophomore year. Something about the contemporary poets we were reading set something off in me -- Dean Young and Anne Carson in particular. They gave me those ecstatic moments you mention, and they put so many strange things in my head that I had to start writing them down, just to see how pretty or small or ridiculous they might look on paper.
One strategy I find helpful in weeding out the extraneous is this: Once you've written something, put it away for a few days and don't look at it. Then when you're ready to come back to it, sit down with a blank piece of paper and rewrite the entire thing from scratch. The two will of course look pretty different, and then when you compare them to one another, it can give you a lot of insight into how you can say the "same thing" -- or provoke the same feeling/idea -- in a different way. you may end up going back to the orignial in its entirety, but I find it a good way to approach revisions in my work on pieces that I am particularly hesitant about revising. It allows you to free yourself from the fear of damaging what is there, because you're starting anew, with nothing to damage. It also helps me escape the seduction of my own language -- meaning, it helps me detach myself from lines I'm particularly proud of, so that I can resist the tendency to fall back on them, thinking they're already perfect.
My drawing professor gave me some of the best advice of my life a few weeks ago, which is well worth repeating:
When you step back from a piece and you feel like it's the best you can do, and it's finished, and beautiful, and perfect, call it 25%. Then figure out how the fuck you're going to get the other 75% out of it. And then just for the hell of it, make it 150%, or, fuck it, 250%.
It's a very frightening thought and a daunting task, to say the least, but I think he's right, that the willingness to do so is probably, in the end, what makes an artist an artist.
I am struggling with this immensely in all of my work, and it's probably the most frustrating and difficult thing I've ever done. I think i'm now at the point where I can get something to 30 or 35%. Sometimes I go and go and ruin a piece that had been beautiful just two hours earlier, and I want to cry and rip the fucking thing up, and trying to call it a learning experience and not let it bother me feels laughable. It's as if I had just tattooed my skin blue only to learn that, actually, my skin looked much better when it was [natural]. And now i have this newfound knowledge, that my skin looks better [natural], and I've never been so sure of anything in my entire life. But, of course, my skin's still blue, which fucking sucks. What a painful way to learn, but what an infinite sense of conviction it can afford you in the end in figuring out exactly what it is upon which your happiness depends that you do.
(sorry, that was a really awkward sentence I ended on, and a really long comment as well. even a strange analogy. clearly, I'm procrastinating, but I do hope there was something worthwhile in there.)
Do you have any suggestions of ways that I can approach classical poetry in a meaningul way? I really haven't found any yet that gives me the same satisfaction as do my favorite contemporary poems/poets.
I'll be posting some Dean Young one of these days.
i've gotten a little carried away in my ideas about progress in art lately -- mainly, I'm trying to somehow convince myself that I can make it. I don't know if it can even be made, let alone by me. does anyone have thoughts on this? my fear is that the art of any moment in time comes about because it is precisely what the culture demands at that time and what the culture dictates. I think this is true, but where does that place the role of the artist? are we simply machines of the culture? is it possible to "own" our ideas? thoughts, please, someone?
(This no longer has anything to do with Sturgeon's piece *Work in Progress*, but I think it's that title in particular that makes me feel like this is an appropriate place to have this discussion.)
I think it is kind of an appropriate topic of conversation under this poem, because the poem is about the goal of the human race (when we are faced with inevitable destruction) and being sucked into that "progress" and taking part in the sucking of others into it. I think your question is whether or not art has a goal, and if it does, whether that goal is anti-cultural, pro-cultural, or just co-existential with culture. I'm not sure. I think art is a basic human need, in fact, perhaps even a basic human function. Also, I think what makes art art is its ability to be an object that recognizes itself. In that sense, I believe there are only three things in the world: art, fetish, and nature. Art recognizes itself as an object. Fetish disavows the fact that it is an object. Nature is pure object, charged with neither self-recognition nor self-denial. Humanity is a mix of all three. I like all sorts of art, but I think the role of the artist is to maintain art's separation from fetish and nature. Yet a lot of what I think gets called art is just fetish, so right now I think my goal as an artist (in film) is to make things that recognize their status as object. I just wrote a paper sort of about this actually. Watch Ousmane Sembene films (Black Girl or Xala are great) and you will see what I mean. I think he uses film as both fetish (as most crappy Hollywood films are: they disavow the fact that they are films, and instead pretend to be event, or nature), but then he does something to twist that ingrained disavowal so that by the end of the film, the audience is forced to go back and reappraise what they just saw, to re-read it on an intellectual level.
Does this make any sense? Let me know what you think about it.
why dont you post dean young, poetry's so cool
once i was really hungry someone fed me this dean young, it said:
...I believe
everyone should have the opportunity
to sift through dust and hair and find
an emerald. On the whole, I am in favor
of the sense that "things are more complicated
than one at first thought" which makes one
nervous often in a good, young-in-
the-fingertips way. You could be washing
your car, you could be gleaning naught
from the printed media while inside
is this flying then, gee, how did all
this fruit salad get here? But wait!
Can we ever be sure it is fruit salad
and not some sort of bomb? One gazes into
the other's eyes and sees the reflection
of one's regrettable nose but more importantly
a darkness that is seeing depth itself
unless one uses ophthalmological equipment
and then examines the retina and vascularization
and vitreous humor which in composition
is very akin to amniotic fluid. I can't remember
swimming without remembering almost drowning.
Either one is about to be frightened to death
or this is prelude to a kiss.
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