Poetry Response : Mirror Image

Mirror Image by Louise Gluck

Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as
the image of my father, whose life
was spent like this,
thinking of death to the exclusion
of other sensual mtters, so in the end that life
was easy to give up, since
it contained nothing: even
my mother's voice couldn't make him
change or turn back
as he believed
that once you can't love another human being
you have no place in the world.


Many a time I've looked at my reflection in a dark window and thought about what it was that stared back at me.  It's a powerful and intimately relateable image to segway into the personal introspective thoughts of the poem, though it seems somewhat unrelated to the message apart from saying that Louise reminds himself of his father in the ways the poem describes.  It's a cold, grim notion to me, imagining willfully going through life with the intention of taking no pleasure in it so as not not miss it when it is lost, almost disturbing to the point of morbidity.  The fact that the author is reminded of these aspects of his father when looking at himself, particularly in reference to his relationship with his mother, does not speak in his favor, unless he somehow values the kind of zen budhist philosophy of transcending earthly attachments to achieve enlightenment, but there is no indication that that is the case.
I find the structure of the poem a bit hap-hazard if it exists at all.  It is more an artistically descriptive sentence about a life philosophy than a poem in many respects, and there seems to be little reason to the line splits.  Perhapse the poem was translated from a foreign language, given the umlaut in the author's last name, and the structure makes more sense in the original language.  Nonetheless, I find this poem very thought provoking.

Poetry Response : Bloodletting by Saul Williams

This poem struck a tender cord with me.  I'd never heard the poetry of Saul Williams before, but it seemed that everything he said in this poem was something I had been trying to articulate myself but had never succeeded.  The intensity, the anger presented in it I feel I've always been afraid of expressing because of the backlash I've always received by offending people.  It's so evocative and authoritative like a call to arms or a manifesto of those scorned by the cancerous nature of the modern world who realize that as long as people conservatively and fearfully cling to the failed and barbaric ways of the past the future will be no less grim, but that also realize that nothing can be done within moral reason to change the minds of those who cling to these ways.  The one line "wisdom no longer comes with age" speaks so loudly to this point that it gave me goosebumps when I first heard it.  The music laid over the poem is hard to ignore in describing the tone of the message.  Very reminiscent of Rage Against the Magine, it is dark and angry without being really sinister.  The imagery and the phrasing as the poem progresses grows more and more violent and intense, as does the reading, to the point that I am caught up in the tone and feel I can hardly take in the message as quickly as it is being read.  I listened to the poem dozens of time and every time I feel I pull something else from the complicated storm of powerful phrases.  By the end it's hard for me to pick out precisely what Saul is advocating, weather it be spirituality or the abandonment thereof.  The words are general enough to be universally applicable, but his personal meaning is something I'm really interested in.

Poetry Response : Lateralus by Tool (Maynard James Keenan)

 Lateralus by Tool is a fascinating work that turned me on to the band as soon as I'd heard it.  Though the music is phenomenal, my appreciation for the band is the deeply poetic nature of their lyrics.  This song, in particular, well demonstrates the kind of unique experimentation the band is famous for.  The imagery and message aside, the really fascinating part of this poem is how the phrasing is arranged by number of syllables to adhere to the Fibonacci sequence of numbers that form the classic spiral of exponential increase found in nature (among other number sequences they've used) and that this concept is actually central to the message of the poem.  To illustrate this, I've taken the lyrics and arranged them as they are emphasized in the number of syllables per line, numbering them to better show the sequence.  Apart from haiku I see very few poems with this this kind of intentional syllable arrangement, and it's definitely something I'd like to try for myself.

 

1)  Black 

1)  then 

2)  white are 

3)  all I see 

5)  in my infancy.
8)  red and yellow then came to be, 

5)  reaching out to me.
3)  lets me see.

13)  As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
8)  drawn beyond the lines of reason.
5)  Push the envelope. 

3)  Watch it bend.

Over thinking, 

over analyzing 

separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, 

missing opportunities 

and I must
Feed my will 

to feel my moment 

drawing way outside the lines.

1)  Black 

1)  then 

2)  white are

3)  all I see 

5)  in my infancy.
8)  red and yellow then came to be, 

5)  reaching out to me.
3)  lets me see 

2)  there is

1)  so 

1)  much 

2)  more and 

3)  beckons me 

5)  to look through to these 

8)  infinite possibilities.
13)  As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
8)  drawn outside the lines of reason.
5)  Push the envelope. 

3)  Watch it bend.

4)  Over thinking, 

6)  over analyzing 

9)  separates the body from the mind.
8)  Withering my intuition, 

7)  missing opportunities 

3)  and I must

3)  Feed my will 

5)  to feel my moment 

7)  urging me to cross the line.

9)  Reaching out to embrace the random.
11)  Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.

4)  I embrace my 

4)  desire to

3)  embrace my

4)  desire to
5)  feel the rhythm, to 

4)  feel connected
7)  enough to step aside and 

6)  weep like a widow to 

5)  feel inspired, to 

6)  fathom the power, to 

6)  witness the beauty, to 

6)  bathe in the fountain, to 

6)  swing on the spiral
7)  of our divinity and 

5)  still be a human.

8)  And with my feet upon the ground 

8)  I lose myself between the sounds 

8)  and open wide to suck it in,
8)  I feel it move across my skin.
8)  I'm reaching up and reaching out,
8)  I'm reaching for the random or 

8)  what ever will bewilder me

8)  what ever will bewilder me.

8)  And following our will and wind 

8)  we may just go where no one's been.
8)  We'll ride the spiral to the end 

8)  and may just go where no one's been.

Spiral out. Keep going, going...

::Look At Our Eyes::


Ripples
Imperfections
The mirror is a sheet of hot water

Frozen in time
Melting in the motion
Of the falling rain

Let's Run away
And take with us
Not even our memories

How deep can we sink?
How far is the bottom?
Or can we even bear to reach it?

To set our feet on the cold, flat ground
And stare into the infinite eyes
The absence twice as real as we

The day we see it we will surely die
And if we look away or even blink
We will lose ourselves in the void

Or so we've been told
But hold open our quivering eyes
And we may see our honest reflection

:: POEM REVISION ::


The Willow
by PJ Kempen


The Willow overgrown
envelops your home
with its blonde, wild maiden-hair
Monolithic
Atop the quiet hill.

Its roots spread out
like your raw, muddy toes
through the cool grass
beneath its canopy.

Stillness
The summer wind embraces you.
Warm silk on bare arms and legs.

Run your hands through the branches.
Grip to feel them pull back.

Hope in secret
that they'll pull you up
and out of context.

Somewhere not bathed
in the sepia fog of childish ignorance
or the neon glare of the imaginary.
 
But you always let go.


-

Peer through the branches.
To glimpse a world outside
hidden, forbidden
worth fighting to see
because you must fight to see it
and you do.

with a child's hands
a mouth filled with words
you flee the quiet hill
to find something more  real.
and you do.

What you find confirms
all of your fears
That all that made sense was pretend
that all you believed in was wrong
that all you despised was law.


-

Now alone
In holy disillusion
If you could but grip
and feel the branches pull back
would you wish them to take you to the quiet hill

to bathe again
in the sepia fog

in the neon glare
under the cool maiden-hair
canopy of the willow?

You always let go.

:: Renaissance By Fire ::
by PJ Kempen 

Labor for an uncertain cause
Hands made raw

Somber, I inhale
Rejoicing in the smoke
of the burning works of the fathers

We must burn it all
And leave nothing that was

Ritual sacrifice of the obsolete
to the new gods
Reason
Self

Start again amid the fallen ashes
and the ancient stones
Survivors of fires scrutiny

Charred and tired
Those silent truths that will not burn
Face them to the new North of understanding

We will build it all again
In our own flawed image
To fall or stand as it will
Only to say that it was ours.

To hell with your words.
We will find our own truth.

:: What's Left To Mourn ::
by PJ Kempen

She pressed her cheek against the silken cloth

Draped over her dark waving hair.

The dim evening light sank in the room like dust.

Cool Shadows danced on her skin.

Still and silent she sat in her father's vacant, unmade bed

Mourning the man who died long ago

Hoping she managed to ease the pain

Of an ending which lingered too long.

George Pratt, Tiffany, 2012