SARCASTIC WILLY W./Edward Arlington Robinson/ON PUNCTUATION REDUX/Ed Coletti "Underground During Ages of Autocracy"/

 

David Madgalene wanted me to post this quote from Edward Arlington Robinson.

                "I starved for twenty years and, in my opinion, no one should write poetry

                unless 

                he is willing to starve for it." 

On first reading, I felt that Robinson perhaps was being a wee bit disingenuous and overly dramatic.  However, his quotation does fit in well with the rhetorical sentiment of Sarcastic Willy above!

Here is a fine old poem by his eminence.

Mr. Flood's Party

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night

Over the hill between the town below

And the forsaken upland hermitage

That held as much as he should ever know

On earth again of home, paused warily.

The road was his with not a native near;

And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,

For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon

Again, and we may not have many more;

The bird is on the wing, the poet says,

And you and I have said it here before.

Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light

The jug that he had gone so far to fill,

And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,

Since you propose it, I believe I will." 

(Read entire poem here)

On PUNCTUATION (Redux)

I trust that frequent readers of NMIP will recall me on the subject of how limiting punctuation affects the connotative functions of poetry. Yes, the reader (not to mention the writer who rereads his own poems) might have to work a bit harder but will be rewarded by discoveries in lines that refer to themselves and to other lines in different and fuller directions.

W.S. Merwin, by no means unique among poets who've increasingly turned away from the barriers imposed by punctuation, became my beacon in this regard.  The poet who first spoke with me specifically on the subject was Pat Nolan at the Big River Coffee 
Shop in Santa Rosa, CA.  While I did not adopt all of his ideas on the subject, I have, for roughly five years now, been a practitioner of poetry utilizing precious few of such stop-points in my verse. 

This linked article on the subject appeared in a recent issue of POETRY MAGAZINE. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.  — Plato

 

Underground During Ages of Autocracy

where all the writers and artists who depart

facebook twitter instagram and even email

begin painting and reciting in caves catacombs

and other hidden chambers from which

their material work emerges clandestinely   

being distributed by hand subversively

much the same as the works of

Gallileo Voltaire Pussy Riot Ai Wei Wei

Pasternak Solzhenitsyn Thamsanga Mnyele

Wally Serote Thomas Paine Mayakovski   

 

whose creations became entwined with struggle

as ferns with mosses and mushrooms surviving

even thriving in the cool obscurity of caves

where these poets of truth and even hope expanding

as ocular pupils beyond restraint by the iris

enabling oversight engendering action

more substantial than  the statesmen politicians

and silenced effigies of incendiary leaders

 

while all the more of us in our catacombs

study and write our muses continuing in us

 

Diogenes Socrates Plato Sappho Pindar

Hypatia of Alexandria Hildegard Von Bingen

Thomas Merton Teresa of Avila Salman Rushdie

 

No one knows how it all ends

with a bang a whimper a sigh

something there is senses an ending

to the all there is was or won’t be

the scent from funereal blossoms waving

 

          Ed Coletti in So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (Fall 2020)

Your responses to anything in this blog are most welcome and invited.  I've decided to switch away from  using the Blogger interface for this purpose.  Instead, please email me edcoletti AT gmail.com.  I look forward to hearing from you.