2 Ed Coletti Poems/Of Podiums/Norman Ball "Being Difficult"/Tribute to Lilliput Review/Norman Ball Being Difficult/

Poets. How often do you feel this way?

2 Ed Coletti Poems

The Oblong Root

for Adelaide O’Connor Ehret

Going deaf, neither she

nor her hearing daughter

recognize the assertive

unconscious voice

exchanging “Pablo Neruda”

for “oblong root” or perhaps

for the  medulla oblongata

center of so much involuntary

assertiveness, her very breathing,

the beating of her great heart,

that fountain enabling her daughter,

these words that must mean

something greater than their sounds.

When it comes to shapes oblong,

poets prefer oval over rhomboid.

Because both lampreys and hagfish

possess a fully developed medulla

oblongata, half a billion years of

evolution formed this mother-wisdom

this connection between a great poet

and that most essential ancient

ancestor of her own brain

eventually bestowing the gift

of words on her daughter

who told mother that she’d won 

a prize now confused with an oblong root.

This sound the mother hazily heard

might have been the swishing of

a weed growing in dry rocky

pasture land outside Stoneham

near the marble quarry

or vibration off a German yellow sugar beet.

The very pith of plants also referred to

as their “medulla”  Yet mathematicians       

know the oblong root as an algebraic square.

All such fugues episodically

musically create all richness

all story all myth all family.

Even entire geographies as they exist

for midwestern endodontists who

in 2012 AD estimated

the typical cost of a root canal

in Oblong, Illinois to be

nineteen hundred-thirty-four dollars.

But, in terms of preference,

when it comes to oblong  contours

almost all poets and loving mothers

choosing the egg-shape over rhombus,

realize how one thing always leads to another,

even and perhaps especially,                    this.

loosening its hold on the clowns

yes it’s gone gone gone

gone gone away.

— Allen Ginsberg

such presentation as clowns make

ejecting from their tiny cars

like so many spermatazoan pilots

beating each other with

styrofoam clubs,

punches and judies

posed ponderous

play at love and pain

yesterday and today

lament their passing

enjoy their farcical pageantry

relate to Emmett Kelly’s tears

open hearts to take a whack

at each decade each life,

and it was as it happened

but memory’s perspective

gives moments their due

in such a big top’s

insanely frightful review.

(Published in Spillway June 2012)

  
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"Being Difficult" Selections from the Essay on Poetic Obscurity and Other Good Stuff by Norman Ball (see biography by pressing the "full article" link just below.

 These selections are from the full article which previously appeared in Rattle.

"The message to poets is, beware the kindness of strangers.  Those who would rescue a poem from 'incomprehensibility' may actually be advancing death-by explication.  Poetic logic is its own animal existing outside the bounds of relatable (i.e. conversational) understanding.  I'm guilty of offering dubious assistance in some of your prior efforts.  But I find myself developing a comfort level with your opacity...For me, part of the fascination of your poetry lies in  its willful inaccessiblity.  I'm convinced you've constructed more here than a good game of hide-and seek..."

"For too many readers, difficulty is a tiresome abomination, a code to be cracked.  They want their literary merit fed to them in bite-sized morsels."

"The Internet, for all its salutary effects on artistic collaboration and community, beckons with an immediacy that can be the undoing of careful composition.  In the penchant for immediacy, difficulty suffers...the technology itself tempts at rushing a poem out there before its time." 


" 'The Wasteland' gives up nothing over bagels and coffee.  Lovers rarely discuss it in bed.  Yet it feels like a poem, filling us with the overwhelming sense we are experiencing something.  There is no paragraphed synopsis to render this experience.  This is as it should be."


Now, enjoy the full article
 

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. If you do not have a Google account, log in under "Name/URL," (it's easy). Just the name (don't worry about the URL). Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.
 

Just 3 Reasons Why I Love  Lilliput Review and 

Why Everyone Should Subscribe

standing ovation
for the penniless poet:
a short walk to their cars


Mike Dillon
Indianola, WA 


While you were onstage reading another poem

A man carrying a garbage bag in the rain
performed the stations of the cross
and moved his lips in silent prayer.



Kyle Vaughn
Dallas, TX


Advice to the Aspiring Artist

Maintain a
distance.


Maintain a
great distance.


Run for
the hills.



John Bennett
Ellensburg, WA

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. If you do not have a Google account, log in under "Name/URL," (it's easy). Just the name (don't worry about the URL). Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.