Back from Bread Loaf, back in Santa Barbara and the world smells like flowers. It's something I notice when I leave and come back. In contrast, when I've been here awhile continuously, not something I notice so much. There are other things I'm grateful for upon returning: how good my shower is, the joy of sleeping in my own bed, the comfort of my house.
I am both hyperaware of the world and wanting to shut it out. Also, I'm already back to work, spending my labor on shit I don't really care about—but the weather is beautiful and mortgages aren't cheap and code is easy.
This week, so many poets and poems filling my heart and my head. My workshop was stellar. Everyone just so talented. I felt honored just to be there.
Ok ok. I have to brag a little. You know that thing Paul does on the Great British Baking Show when he is really impressed and likes something?
I had one poem in workshop that was getting suggestions and Tomás Q. Morín, who was our cohort facilitator along with Margaret Ross, told the class "I wouldn't change a word." Me, looking around at everyone with a shit face of did you clock that? 😂 It was a nice moment. One I'm going to remember. Mostly because I love flattery.
Two poems I want to share this week, and then we can talk about a new first draft I wrote. The first one from Jack Spicer, who is quickly becoming a poet I've mistakenly slept on. I mean, fuck me—read this:
“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”
Jack Spicer
Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.
I've mentioned before Ocean Vuong's paraphrased quote that "writing is listening to the universe". And since we all stand on the shoulders of giants, even Ocean Vuong, it should be noted that Jack Spicer wrote what he described as "dictated poetry". From the Poetry Foundation:
From his 1957 book After Lorca onward, Spicer wrote what he described as “dictated” poetry. For Spicer, the poet acts as a receptive host for language, rather than as an agent of self-expression. In his 1965 Vancouver Lectures, he illustrated this process by claiming he received his poetry from “Martian” sources, from the dead, and by likening the poet to a radio receiving transmissions. As Gizzi states in his introduction to The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, “[The] game between the material and invisible worlds places the poet in the embarrassing position of merely following orders from the beyond. But, Spicer reassures his young audience, the best condition for the poem is one of not-knowing, and the poet has a better chance of that with dictation than with self-expression. The better the poem, the less responsible the poet is for it. So Spicer wages battle with the creative ego in terms that remain provocative in an age still searching for poetic authenticity and identity.”
And before Spicer, there was Pessoa, a Portuguese poet who wrote under his own name and 75 others, called heteronyms. While the concept of heteronyms contains nuance distinctive from dictated poetry, it's still a form of listening to the universe.
I'd highly recommend a trip to Lisbon. Pessoa is everywhere.
Spicer's poem starts so simply, flawlessly morphing into an ars poetica. It becomes more than the ocean. More than an extended metaphor. I'd be surprised if it took more than 15 minutes to write and yet…
The second poem is from Kim Addonizio.
You with the Crack Running Through You
Kim Addonizio
I can seep in, I can dry clear.
And yes it would still be there.
And no I couldn’t hold you forever.
But isn’t it drafty at night,
alone in that canyon
with the wind of the mind
dragging its debris—
I wanted to put
my mouth on you
and draw out whatever toxin…
—but I understand. There are limits
to love. Here is a flower
that needs no water.
It can grow anywhere,
nourished on nothing.
And yes.
The ending here took my breath away. Like, what the fuck does that mean? Hope? A call for healing? Probably something different to everyone, which is an extremely powerful technique if done correctly. Two perfect words which contain entire universes and timelines and meaning.
