Barbara Guest

Barbara Guest 1920-2006

Barbara Guest was a member of a group called the New York school of poets, which was heavily influenced by modern art, like surrealism and abstract expressionism. Their works were made based on impulse, much like Jackson Pollock's impulsive art works. Because the New York School poets were influenced by surrealist art, there is a sense of the dream world in Barbara Guest's poem. There are underlying meanings to her words. Her style "often utilizes space as a way to draw attention to language."

"The Blue Stairs" 

There is no fear

in taking the first step

or the second

or the third

                                 having a position

                                 between several Popes

In fact the top

can be reached

without disaster

                                 precocious

The code

consists in noticing

the particular shade

of the staircase

                                 occasionally giving way

                                 to the emotions

It has been chosen

discriminately

To graduate

the dimensions

ease them into sight

                                 republic of space

Radiant deepness

a thumb

passed over it

                                 disarming

                                 as one who executes robbers

Waving the gnats

and the small giants

aside

                                 balancing

How to surprise

a community

by excellence

somehow it occurred

                                 living a public life

The original design

was completed

no one complained

In a few years

it was forgotten

                                 floating

It was framed

like any other work of art

not too ignobly

                                 kicking the ladder away

Now I shall tell you

why it is beautiful

Design: extraordinary

color:    cobalt blue

                                 secret platforms

Heels twist it

into shape

It has a fantastic area

made for a tread

that will ascend

Being humble

i.e. productive

Its purpose

is to take you upward

On an elevator

of human fingerprints

of the most delicate

fixity

Being practical

and knowing its denominator

To push

one foot ahead of the other

Being a composite

which sneers at marble

                                 all orthodox movements

It has discovered

in the creak of a footstep

the humility of sound

Spatially selective

using this counterfeit

of height

To substantiate

a method of progress

Reading stairs

as interpolation

in the problem of gradualness

                                 with heavy and pure logic

The master builder

acknowledges this

As do the artists

in their dormer rooms

                                 eternal banishment

Who are usually grateful

to anyone who prevents them

from taking a false step

And having reached the summit

would like to stay there

even if the stairs are withdrawn

Sorry sorry sorry I know that was long. But as mentioned previously, one of the first outstanding features of the poem is its structure. We can see the impulsivity in her work with the seemingly random arrangement of words. But the words do appear to be in a sort of stair shape, like each new stanza takes a step down, which I think we can assume to be intentional what with the title being "The Blue STAIRS" and all. The influence of abstract expressionism is also very evident in this poem with the sporadic placement of words. It seems like Barbara is just flinging words onto the page randomly just as Pollock would do with his paint. 

So for the poem itself, I think Barbara is mainly just talking about the symbolism of a staircase. Of how it symbolizes progress and ascension to better things in life. I'm sure it goes much deeper than that, but I may have been just the slightest bit thrown off by all the random words and phrases from the right-hand stanzas. 

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/barbara-guest

Also here's a bit of a Jackson Pollock-the famous Abstract Expressionist- since I mentioned him so many times in this. (Also note the handprints on the top).

Gwendolyn Brooks

SADIE AND MAUD

Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine toothed comb.

She didn't leave a tangle in
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chicks
In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie left as heritage
Her fine-toothed comb.)

Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.


Gwendolyn Brooks was an African American poet and a member of the Black Arts Movement. Much of her poetry deals with civil rights issues and involves politically charged energy and intensity characteristic of this particular era. In this poem, entitled "Sadie and Maud," we see the spontaneous, life-living woman contrasted with her sister (presumably), the live-by-the-books woman who ends up "living all alone/In this old house." This could be inferred to represent the various sides of society--Sadie as the modern, independent, and possibly somewhat rebellious end of society as compared to the traditional, more easily scandalized end. Brooks clearly condoned the independence and motivation of the Sadies of society, and likely considered herself one--particularly in regard to civil rights issues.

Ferlinghetti

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/don-t-let-that-horse/

For my poet I basically just chose the person with the coolest sounding name and that happened to be Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He was an American poet born in 1919. His poetic movement was beat poetry. 

Don't let that horse

Don't let that horse
eat that violin

cried Chagall's mother

But he
kept right on
painting

And became famous

And kept on painting
The Horse With Violin In Mouth

And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
and rode away
waving the violin

And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across


And there were no strings
attached 

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I think that this poem was talking about how Chagall didn’t listen to what others said and how they said not to do it and he became a successful artist. The poem has not structure or even rhyme scheme. It also feels like a thought straight out of his head, unchanged, unedited. Which I feel is what he thinks people should be. 

Emily Dickinson

She does not look very hopeful.

In the sixth grade Mrs. Sims called me Emily Dickinson because I refused to read my poetry out loud. I was utterly offended but ever since then I have had a small fondness for Emily Dickinson. My sophomore year I was forced to memorize a poem in German but I rebelled and memorized one in English (too). I memorized Hope by Emily Dickinson. Although she wrote most of her poems during the Transcendentalist period, most of her poetry, including Hope, takes the form of the metaphysical period. Metaphysical poets like Andrew Marvel and others enchanted her, and she copied their style with her own “compressed wit and irony.”

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Much of her poetry was influenced by her upbringing in a Puritan New England town that encouraged Calvinist religions. Just like the Calvinist religion, her style tended to be preachy because of the influence the Bible and hymns had on her poetry. This poem also adheres to that structure. She preaches that hope is like a bird that remains at her side through the toughest times, and yet requires nothing of her. Dickinson’s wit shines through with her distinct word choice, especially with the word “abash” in the second stanza—a rather rough choice to describe the bird.

Charles Olson

I chose the poet Charles Olson (1910-1970). He was known as a part of the New American poets, among this group of poets was the Black Mountain School. Black Mountain poets were a group of poets cantered on Black Mountain College, they were also referred to as postmodern poets. The students who attended the Black Mountain College ended up being very influential later. All of the students share an interest in process over product. Olson is most famous for his collection of poems called "The Maximus Poems." There are over 300 so I chose one that I found interesting myself. This poem talks about the process of doing things, not what comes out of it. It talks more about "ingredients" of the products rather than the final product. In some stanzas, it seems as if it almost lists directions. For example, in the 2nd section, it says "the weight say, 58 carats each one of us, perforce our goldsmiths scale feather to feather added..." It is very descriptive, and so are a lot of other poems from this collection and from this time period.


I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You

Off-shore, by islands hidden in the blood
jewels & miracles, I, Maximus
a metal hot from boiling water, tell you
what is a lance, who obeys the figures of
the present dance

1
the thing you’re after
may lie around the bend
of the nest (second, time slain, the bird! the bird!
And there! (strong) thrust, the mast! flight
(of the bird
o kylix, o
Antony of Padua
sweep low, o bless

the roofs, the old ones, the gentle steep ones
on whose ridge-poles the gulls sit, from which they depart,

And the flake-racks
of my city!

2
love is form, and cannot be without
important substance (the weight
say, 58 carats each one of us, perforce
our goldsmith’s scale

feather to feather added
(and what is mineral, what
is curling hair, the string
you carry in your nervous beak, these

make bulk, these, in the end, are
the sum

(o my lady of good voyage
in whose arm, whose left arm rests
no boy but a carefully carved wood, a painted face, a schooner!
a delicate mast, as bow-sprit for

forwarding

3
the underpart is, though stemmed, uncertain
is, as sex is, as moneys are, facts!
facts, to be dealt with, as the sea is, the demand
that they be played by, that they only can be, that they must
be played by, said he, coldly, the
ear!

By ear, he sd.
But that which matters, that which insists, that which will last,
that! o my people, where shall you find it, how, where, where shall you listen
when all is become billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?

when even our bird, my roofs,
cannot be heard

when even you, when sound itself is neoned in?

when, on the hill, over the water
where she who used to sing,
when the water glowed,
black, gold, the tide
outward, at evening

when bells came like boats
over the oil-slicks, milkweed
hulls

And a man slumped,
attentionless,
against pink shingles

o sea city)

4
one loves only form,
and form only comes
into existence when
the thing is born

born of yourself, born
of hay and cotton struts,
of street-pickings, wharves, weeds
you carry in, my bird

of a bone of a fish
of a straw, or will
of a color, of a bell
of yourself, torn

5
love is not easy
but how shall you know,
New England, now
that pejorocracy is here, how
that street-cars, o Oregon, twitter
in the afternoon offend
a black-gold loin?

how shall you strike,
o swordsman, the blue-red black
when, last night, your aim
was mu-sick, mu-sick, mu-sick
And not the cribbage game?

(o Gloucester-man,
weave
your birds and fingers
new, your roof-tops,
clean shit upon racks
sunned on
American
braid
with others like you, such
extricable surface
as faun and oral,
satyr lesbos vase

o kill kill kill kill kill
those
who advertise you
out)

6
in! in! the bow-sprit, bird, the beak
in, the bend is, in, goes in, the form
that which you make, what holds, which is
the law of object, strut after strut, what you are, what you must be, what
the force can throw up, can, right now hereinafter erect,
the mast, the mast, the tender
mast!
The nest, I say, to you, I Maximus, say
under the hand, as I see it, over the waters
from this place where I am, where I hear,
can still hear

from where I carry you a feather
as though, sharp, I picked up
in the afternoon delivered you
a jewel,
it flashing more than a wing,
than any old romantic thing,
than memory, than place,
than anything other than that which you carry
than that which is,
call it a nest, around the head of, call it
the next second
than that which you
can do!

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176950

"Digging" by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it. 

Seamus Heaney's poems tended to combine elements from his heritage in northern Ireland and the landscape of the area in order to demonstrate what he thought it meant to be Irish or to be a writer. He reflected his identity through his use of imagery and his description of the rural areas. This can be seen in one of his most popular poems, "Digging" where the speaker talks of what his father and grandmother before him did and are doing, and how that reflects upon himself. He sees his writing as his way of continuing the hard work that his family did themselves. He uses the imagery of his father digging in the garden and the hard work that he puts into it, and then relates it to how he identifies himself, commenting of his writing that he'll "dig with it." In this way he tries to show how he is continuing in the same vein as his forebears - though what he does outwardly is different, he carries the same spirit within him to work.

(I don't suppose I wrote down what type of poet he was, so I simply pointed out what he typically wrote about and how this was one of his typical poems as said by the document, since he was included under "other notable poets" on that sheet)

Also, Seamus Heaney died last year on August 30th, so he's a fairly recent poet. (also it's really sad that he died just last year like wow he did live for 74 years but still man wow death)

Denise Levertov

The poet I chose was one I'd never heard of before (which probably isn't saying much) by the name of Denise Levertov. She was born in 1923, and wrote many books of poetry. The poem I chose is from her book O Taste And See: New Poems, which was published in 1964 and featured a lot of her more feminist writing. The poem is called "The Secret"(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178477):

The Secret

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

Two girls discover   

the secret of life   

in a sudden line of   

poetry.

I who don’t know the   

secret wrote   

the line. They   

told me

(through a third person)   

they had found it

but not what it was   

not even

what line it was. No doubt   

by now, more than a week   

later, they have forgotten   

the secret,

the line, the name of   

the poem. I love them   

for finding what   

I can’t find,

and for loving me   

for the line I wrote,   

and for forgetting it   

so that

a thousand times, till death   

finds them, they may   

discover it again, in other   

lines

in other   

happenings. And for   

wanting to know it,   

for

assuming there is   

such a secret, yes,   

for that   

most of all.

This poem was one I really liked, because it details something I actually do enjoy about poetry. Levertov uses fleeting stanzas and a motif of discovery to emphasize that the best thing about poetry is finding out an important truth over and over again. The stanzas are broken up because it relates back to her message. She enjoys the fact that as a poet, people can find messages even she didn't know were in there, and that even when they discover these truths, they are fleeting; "more than a week / later, they have forgotten / the secret" is, surprisingly, what Levertov loves about writing poetry. The repetition of the word "find" helps emphasize the message as well. The almost excessive use of "find" makes the reader believe that poetry is all about finding, about digging deeper into what subliminal messages could possibly exist. I agree with Levertov on this front, because I think it's cool to see people find things in your writing that you didn't see when you wrote it, whish is why I liked this poem so much.