Re: Cherkovski's "Doctor Satan"

the broken quality
of the affection
it is in the affection
both personal and mythic:
what can one smoke on the hill
outside the halls
where heaven and hell--?

the merging of meadow and word
made time heavy
in the shade where Mencius
sat to read the Master

and the clipped phrases of :
'"Cock crow!" she says.
He says: "'Tis dark."
"Up, sir" she says,
"Up, see, get out
and shoot the geese that be flyin' about."'
predate Europe and all her albas.

But I listen
as your words shuttle
froe where you were—
tunnels beneath the Louvre

to feint accents
of a not-so-young France
and measure with slowness
the obverse of tranquility
in your lines

to bow,
East, beyond the gate,
and South,
to greybeard
holding off lethargy
with a loaf.

A good read Pete, even with the vague references.

Les

Some good poems are like 'fill in the blanks': meaning fill them in with your own experiences. Some 'vague reference' are vague so that the reader will go out and do something, even if that means, look stuff up, like "What color war Aphrodite's underwear?', or 'where was Buddha enlightened?' and stuff like that...which is on the trivial, factual level. some of those blanks have to be filled in with less trivial stuff, like 'Why is you particular life so hard?' or
'Does it matter that everyone else is having a hard time today?'-- that kind of non-factual stuff.

With this poem and others I have posted lately, they demand that I know more than I might have known last month, even on a factual level, like, 'What are the contents of the poem this is in response to?' Maybe Neeli Cherkovski will tell us in his next book. Or we might actually need to read Ezra Pounds translation, "The Confucian Odes' again, so we have more than a vague idea of what Neeli was talking about, which I did have to do, since I haven't read that since 1986.

So, sometimes, when I write a poem, I ask myself, "Which blanks do my reader have to fill in in order to read this poem?" If the answer to that question is, "The reader has to know something from my personal experience that it is unreasonable for her/him to know at all, it is not a public poem. It does not work in public. If the answer can be found by introspection on the part of the reader or through the adventure of going someplace [which Chervovski's poems often require] or being cognizant of some tradition or another...physics, Bali dancing, Sumerian clay practices [which Arguelles' poems sometime demand], then it is the reader's job to find out what she can or cannot know. Most of the rest is up to the poet. Some people hate Pound for this reason. And I write other kinds of poems...lyrical, introspective, exercises in breathing...in addition to the above kind of poem because I think poetry is wider than the demands of any one kind of poem.

amo et avanti,

Peter

p.s. One test of my recent responses to other people's poems is...do they come across as poems, do they act like poems, do they work at all without the reader having to read the other poem? If ye, I think they work. If no, then I have to try something else for that audience.

btw, I do not understand some of the references in Cherkovki's or Arguelles' recent poem. I refuse to let that keep me from understanding their poems...at least in part.

To me reading a poem with obscure references is like reading this poem by T.S. Eliot:

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.




Les

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2013 11:22PM by les712.

Is all 'obscurity' to be avoided?

btw, Did you look for the most obscure poem you could find? Are all works in other languages necessarily to be avoided? How can I keep from learning the wrong lesson from such an example?

Is all 'obscurity' to be avoided?

Frankly, no.

But if obscurity is the point, then the author of such necessarily eliminates part of their audience.

As to the choice of this poem, I like Eliot so I just picked one of his which illustrated my point.

Les

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2013 11:27PM by les712.

When I was writing to you last time, Les, I almost mentioned that you had taught me to Google, thus giving me access to such things as a 'translation' of Eliot's poem. btw, I, too, find this 'Re: Cherkovski's Satan' poem of mine more obscure than I am comfortable with..considering I don't give the reader opportunity to hear what his poem says about crawling in those tunnels or his collection of poems modeled after Pound's Confucian Odes.

amo et avanti,

Peter

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2013 10:10PM by petersz.

I said to myself, "Move on, Peter, if Jemenfoutiste means'I don't give a crap.'

Touché

Les

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2013 11:33PM by les712.

I found that in the Urban Dictionary...nothing else even close in the more mainstream places.

Is Cherkovski the Polish navigator from the Enterprise?

I always thought he thought he was Russian, 210. Any ways, Neeli is the guy who wrote the intro to my second book. Sends me poems by email every once in a while.

from Wikipedia:

Neeli Cherkovski
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Neeli Cherkovski
Born 1945 (age 67–68)
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Residence San Francisco, California, U.S.
Occupation Writer, poet

Neeli Cherkovski: (born Nelson Cherry, 1945, Santa Monica, California, Cherkovski grew up in San Bernardino, California. Cherkovski has resided in San Francisco since 1975 where he is known as a poet and memoirist. In the 1970s he was a political consultant in the Riverside area who came to San Francisco to work on the staff of then-State Senator George Moscone. He has written biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, and Charles Bukowski[1] with whom he co-edited the Los Angeles zine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns..[2] Cherkovski produced the first San Francisco Poetry Festival, and in the early-1990s helped to found Café Arts Month, a yearly event celebrating San Francisco’s cafe culture.

Poetry critic Gerald Nicosia said of Cherkovski, "...in the end, what stamps Cherkovski’s poetry as unique is its unbounded lyricism, a lyrical gift easily greater than that of any other poet of his generation."[3]

Cherkovski is the author of Whitman's Wild Children, a collection of essays about twelve poets he has known: Michael McClure, Charles Bukowski, John Wieners, James Broughton, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, Jack Micheline, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This book combines biography, personal stories, and poetry analyses.

Cherkovski was a writer-in-residence at the New College of California in San Francisco.[citation needed] He taught literature and philosophy there until the school closed in 2008. Cherkovski's body of poetry includes Animal, Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Leaning Against Time, for which he was awarded the 15th Annual PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2005. Neeli's papers are housed at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Bibliography

Don't Make a Move (Tecumseh Press, 1974)
The Waters Reborn (Red Hill Press, 1975)
Public Notice (Beatitude, 1975)
Ferlinghetti, a biography (DoubleDay, 1979)
Love Proof (Green Light Press, 1980)
Juggler Within (Harwood Alley Monographs, 1983)
Clear Wind (Avant Books, 1984)
Whitman's Wild Children (Lapis Press, 1989)
Hank: The Life of Charles Bukowski (Random House, 1991)
Animal (Pantograph Press, 1996)
Elegy for Bob Kaufman (Sun Dog Press, 1996)
Leaning Against Time (R.L. Crow Publications, 2004)
Naming the Nameless (Sore Dove Press, 2004)
From the Canyon Outward (R.L. Crow Publications, 2009)]

"From the Middle Woods" New Native Press, 2011