evo devo four

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Evo Devo — Only Referring …

Going into the 2010s, I figured I had this poetry thing down …

Did the teenage angst thing; had a ton of fun learning vocabulary by randomness and wordplay; got some genuine life experience to write about; still enjoyed experimenting with all of the above; and developed a healthy stand up shtick to convey some of the fun to live audiences.

Oh yeah. I actually published a poetry book somewhere along the way too.

However, my main focus in writing is and always has been fiction. So when I had to give up my day job for health reasons and because I couldn’t take the thousand measly compromises I had to make everyday working for someone else anymore, what I sat down to write in my new freedom was fiction.

And a lot of it. See my Reality Fiction blog.

But that didn’t mean I gave up writing poetry entirely. I still turn it out in batches when the madness takes me. Apparently I had a great-great grandfather or something like that back in England who used to go regularly berserk during the full moon. 

I liken writing poetry much to that. It’s in the genes. Something occasionally you just have to do, until it’s out of your system again.

And I still like to experiment! About three years ago I came up with a whole new process.

I decided it was time for something that could be called uniquely Twenty-First Century poetry. Thinking about our culture, I tried to come up with a way to encapsulate that zeitgeist. We are so assaulted everyday by the media blasting images of everything and anything at us, all to make us think one thing while showing us something else, it occurred to me that it’s very difficult to think of anything uniquely original anymore out of your own head. Emphasized by any number of publishers I had contacted telling me just more of the same, please.

So I thought, how about a poem that doesn’t say anything discrete itself, but only refers to something else with every image and line?

I wrote a few like that before I moved on to something else. It’s kind of fun, actually. What you do first is make a list of what you want your poem to refer to. Then you turn the references into lines that may or may not fit in a poem. Then, if you’re me, you go all random again and try recombining things until they make enough sense to satisfy. Then you rewrite the whole thing again as if you meant it to sound that way in the first place.

This poem was based entirely on advertisements out in the general ether I’d seen over the previous week trying to get me to purchase something I didn’t need.

Exclaim!

Grievous wonder and recurring Miracle!

     Removed from Menu they still exist!

     Gadget holding soul on remote control only touch the screen

Culture driven by quickly on bus-side

     ballet blocked by passing vehicle Don’t Blink! oh well

     on the other side How Hot Can You Take It!

     blowing heads through roofs

STDs sold from the lips of pretty adolescents

     smiling on rapid public transport

     punishment for passengers not purchasing

     Their! Own! Personal! Vehicle! from a vast array of arrays

Be sure to eat before dining

     as our three-item menu delivered in smarmy voice script

     offers infinite variation in subtlety of preparation

     you may starve before deciding

     delight in necessary choice Because Who Must You Think You Are!

Music omnipresent megastar

     No Need For Human Contribution!

     voice-perfect fuzz pitched pro/ject

     select from our fourteen repetitive drum beats

     add tinkle synthesizer catchy little cutesy tunes

Sightlines queasy on always running Tee!Vees!

     valuable colours in perpetual motion enticing

     Always! Perfectly! Safe! to purchase without seeing first

Live! A Full Life! Today! on Gaming Screen Video!

     internal spinning hard disc of personal definition

     RAM not included no need for memory only now thrill me again

     like you did last second

Experience Experience! A limited time offer

     Today’s Wonder Life in 3D!

     no plot, no conflict, no intrigue, no meaning

     Necessary!

O the Mouth! metallic this week

     punched in lips injected crystal bright

     amour slides right off never lose that gleam all important

O the Eyes! perfect poundweary model’s eyelashes

     now cindered old growth forest

O the Hair! emerge blonde busty tanned and naked

     O the Miracle!

          On Special Today! On Special Today! On Special Today!

          special price on any item

          found not On Special Today!

     text all grown sincerely in Draper, Utah

          subscribe today and WIN!

          offer not valid in Alabama

Collect Valuable Atmosphere Points on Breather Reward Cards Today!

Pay on Credit. Warning: Life may appear larger than it is on screen.

The problem is, I find it harder to make lists of things for poems to refer to than just writing the actual poem. There’s always a catch.

Interestingly enough, the last so-called Twenty-First Century Poem I wrote was about certain cultural icons of the early Twentieth Century. As my fascination for Theda Bara and other idols of that era may be apparent in certain photographs I use to illustrate my blogs, I think there’s a certain sexy gothic darkness to a lot of the black and white entertainment produced at that time. So my supposed Twenty-First Century mentality ended up looking back primarily to a decadent mind set emerging from the late Nineteenth Century to define what was coming in the Twentieth, in this mini-epic.

Old Monsters

     The mask comes off as the diva hits the high note

and the skull faced maestro

gropes for her breast

     Dressing up the nakedness in gray marble

and black lace beauty

     The Ringmaster in square glasses

knows all the angles:

     “Come to The Club tonight!

You know we’re only waiting for you

the floor show’s about to begin

and what we all know really matters

is about to happen

with the drop of her silk-lined

panties!”

     Give her the beat, take away her clothes

slide on the pearls, dance on bananas

stare down the ebony elephant

ivory trunks and black and white

dancing one step two step

     Squealing delight in a high kicking line up

toes to the ceiling

thighs to the sky

     Siren husky voiced with fishnet legs

singing true love of women

enticing bewildering

bewildered men

     Never needing to speak with eyes open

mouth irresistibly eloquent

intriguing irresistible

fatal eyeshadow without fangs

     Austere Germanic visionary

plunders the space between light and shadow

in hope of renaming profit

all in the name of art

     So delighted to hear

that despite apparent meaning

and declared seriousness of intent

the soundtrack reaches for our groins

and leads the dance let us pirouette

now I’ll take your hand you take my

     Open it and see.

What emerges is not the doubt

but the curtain drawn aside

the face that says

what is required to be heard

while winking smirking at those who know

what’s really being let loose

let me kiss you Johnny

     A black dancing line

just above the black dancing eyes

perky jaunty better swept

     Damned hard always looking innocent

knowing full well that bare backed shimmy

really shows just a snatch of thatch

     A smile saying look at my heart of gold

while my robe falls to the floor

and you don’t notice

you’re painting my naked body

     Squealing in delight!

The high kicking line up!

Toes to the ceiling!

Thighs to the sky!

     The Queen in Black reclining beneath the silver

golden legs, breasts, shoulders and arms

never so naked

beneath those self-satisfied suicide eyes

     No need for violence when the Hyde-placed hand

draws the beauties of the night

into unwelcome embrace

both know neither can escape

     Cool eyed gaunt walker

silently reaching for the necessary satisfaction

she weeps and sleeps for

     The inevitable end played with a knife

and a look in his eyes

they weren’t supposed to know about

in 1916 but understood nevertheless

only all too well

     In profile so noble

but bend him over and watch his eyes grow clear

shadowed with just one drink

come to me my dear

I really don’t need to ask or say goodbye

your backwards introduction

to my good man Jack

     A man so ugly

there can be no question of action speak his name

shriek his name his name

a shriek screaming

     The chilling shadow brought to life

to suck the white from all the light

monster made perfect

     The Professor cries at mourning

waking the eternal report

     Don’t change the girl change your face

remove your arms and legs

and leave the grinning head she can’t resist

opening her legs to

     Jack smiles, Erik smiles, the Angel smiles,

Cleo smiles, Lulu smiles, Edward smiles,

Henry has forgotten how to smile,

Cesar smiles, Sven smiles, Trilby laughs,

Max grins, the Doctor is In, Josephine winks.

     You thought you were so happy romping naked

joking, smiling but only under my gaze

May I introduce you to the remainder

Of the 20th Century.

Put the blonde with the legs in the top hat

and the black lipstick

back with the panther on the leash

slip on the stiletto heel

and may the spirit dwell eternal!

I left poetry for about a year or so after that brief burst. Occasionally jotted a few lines or a few notes, but didn’t think seriously about the art again for awhile. Looked at something and sometimes thought I could make a poem out of that. But didn’t write much of it.

Then last summer, as I’ve illustrated elsewhere and earlier in this series, I became enthralled with the relation between photography and poetry. (“Photography and Poetry”/“Poetry and Photography”, December 2013) As I discussed at the time, I had it in mind to write a book of poetry based on photographs my wife and I took. But I didn’t think merely describing the same images as the photographs already artistically presented was much of an accomplishment. So I sought some other theme to hang the work on as well, to flesh it out in its own right.

Somewhere I got the idea of taking sunny holiday pictures and giving them an evil twist while writing about them. This ended up combining with my general drive for narrative, writing so much fiction these days, and I ended up telling a narrative verse meditation on a couple of  dysfunctional killers on the run. But the point was to keep it poetry. Not slip into mere descriptions of the photographs any given poem was based upon, or let it slide into something more like a novel either in its storytelling.

When it finally came together, it came together quickly.

Must have been a full moon.

Somewhat to my surprise though, as I suddenly found myself writing a lot of poetry in a short time, I ended up resorting to my online thesaurus to help me out with the vocabulary. Normally I avoid that sort of thing with a vengeance. Writers whose first resort is the thesaurus end up saying things like it is a cut above to bring into play supplementary rigorously meticulous designations, rather than it’s better to use more precise words.

So I made a rule for myself. Never use a word from the thesaurus that I might not have used anyway. Making some allowances for my fading memory and therefore ability to always draw the proper bon mot to mind immediately as I enjoy my late fifties.

I was happy with the results.

silent stranger

and at the heart of her transport

she detaches momentarily

mind soaring above

catching the elan

the four players

marking the silent fifth

the only one who matters

this is not her country to own,

not her man, not her child

though the girl may still be sister

to so much shared wilderness

but the one

at the centre

quietest

the great body of water

up to something

how she blindly gasps

a presence so massive

so unseen

last surge engulfing

alarming his gasp in finish

and the lake fills her

covers her

drenches her

allows her its love

enters her

her mate

in untamed bawl for rapture

I can’t find a publisher who’ll even take a look at the thing, but I like it.

we might have been up to little somethings

disappointed by only a single moon rising

she debates pros and cons,

the utterly tangential

unloved, left, loving

leaving …?

heard the waves break distant

upon her shores

spree and flee

binge and lunge

snatch and crash

wishing for the taste

of a vampire’s jugular

rough tongue

licking at her own

hand at play

in her endless waves

no steady state ecstasy

a steady climb

from the abyss to the void

with odd sanguinary intent

reminding her

she lives

along the way …

wanting now

she takes him,

not disturbing

the innocent

— why so? he has to ask

she pays in tears

hearing the waves break

distant …

So I’ve added to the repertoire I assigned myself at the beginning of this entry. Tried a new style. And discovered the potential of employing a larger narrative sense, to write about people other than myself but with concerns that are genuine. As I’m so much older than when I started, I have so much more experience and emotion to draw upon to assign them.

It took a long time to get to a place where I was happy with my poetry. Getting that damn needle through the camel’s eye. I’m there now. And still wondering where things might go yet, building on all that’s gone before.

Because, really, nobody ever actually writes a poem. You see one suddenly, as it bashes you over the head. And with any luck, in the confusion and uncanny clarity, you get some adequate words down to cover the moment before it’s gone.

***************

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week:

Theda Bara’s winning novelleta Thirty-One Across fills in its final answers, drawing to a close with the last two chapters posting this Friday, August 1st, and next Tuesday, August 5th, at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

In a seemingly random universe of suffering, despair, and petty compromise, can Theda find hope, happiness, or at least a half decent summer vacation property?

evo devo the real three

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Evo Devo — The Stand Up Poet

By 2005-2010 I’d come some distance in trying to develop my poetic sensibilities and style.

I’d expressed the usual frustrations as a teenager, plonking emotions that didn’t have that much behind them yet squack down on the page for all to see. And be bored by. In later life, I experimented with randomness and wordplay to develop a proficiency with vocabulary. I gained more life experience than I really wanted, and suddenly had plenty of material to write something genuinely substantial about. I developed and never lost a healthy sense of experimentation to fuel my imaginative offerings. And I had finally come to a point where I fused all these components together into a still evolving, richly rewarding approach to language and life.

Then, during this period in the twenty-oughts, I started doing fairly regular live poetry readings …

I’d done some previously in the old sick, pre-surgery days. But as with everything else from that period, my memories are a little blurry of the experience. But when I picked up the practice again, I was clear on two things.

Reading poetry to yourself and sitting in an audience trying to comprehend orally recited poetry are two very different things. And any given poem may play very differently depending upon which method you use to deliver it.

This came home to me most strongly when I won both second place and an honourable mention in a local writing contest. The winners were naturally expected to perform their winning poems live. Going in, it was obvious to me and the judges, who had only read the two pieces to themselves, why the poem that took second place did that, and why the other one got only an honourable mention. Then I read them out loud to the audience.

Unexpectedly, the honourable mention, which was actually a more complex subject treated with more difficult language, had a lot more drama to it that a vocal performance enhanced tremendously. While the second place piece, a clearer story in simpler language told in rather a monotone, read flat out loud. Although lingering over its development as you read it to yourself is more pleasant than reading the honourable mention to yourself.

Weird.

So I realized that some poetry is better suited for performance than others. But performing poetry live at any time is always fraught with peril. Most people I’ve canvassed on the subject agree you can only concentrate hard enough to listen to even a good poet for about ten minutes max at a time. God forbid anyone try to give you a fifteen minute performance, or even worse a twenty minute plus. You can pretty much guarantee no one’ll really still be listening after twelve. And you can count on the fact no one will understand a thing you have to say past a certain point of saturation. Which comes quicker for some people than for others.

The strengths of poetry in written form rapidly become weaknesses when an audience has to try to follow the gist of things out loud. Half the time getting the meaning isn’t even that easy when you’re reading it to yourself, and there you can at least go over the difficult bits any number of times. Out loud the listener only has one shot at it. Should your audience blink, cough, or more likely, yawn at the wrong moment, you’re lost. So it seems to me when poetry is read out loud, the poem by itself is not enough. The performance of the poem becomes paramount.

Not that there aren’t plenty of poets who won’t try to carry the evening through sheer ego alone …

I’m constantly experimenting in what I like to read to people, and carefully noting reactions. It’s astonishing to me how I can go from having the audience hanging on my every word in one piece, to meeting a wall of blank stares with the very next poem I read, no one getting a thing. You have to pick your material very carefully.

The fact that every audience is different in what it can handle and respond to positively is another huge factor of course. Some are quite prepared for you to explore the deeper, more complex pieces. Others are only there for the laughs. Others only really respond to the little chatty bits between poems that explain and introduce, because the poetry itself is beyond them unless they have a written copy sitting in front of them to follow along with.

I discovered one evening that I can state quite plainly what I’m about to do in reading the poem I’m about to, making some great jokes about how those people are right who say poetry makes no sense, because the next one I’m about to read certainly doesn’t. And even though everyone laughs at the idea as I introduce it, when I read the poem and it becomes apparent I wasn’t lying, the audience dies. Confused by the fact that they genuinely can’t make sense of it, they no longer get the joke.

Tympanic Zen Brain

We found the halcyon bones

of the backstage bandit

filling the cameo ballroom — 

then the crowd arrives

whispering of mirrors

and hoodoo cayenne,

emphatic extract

from the midnight feast

halted discretely

by the spectral caress

of spirits walking among us.

We could tell

by the empathic jimjams 

reminding us of

unaccountable virtues

we long believed lost

behind smoking mirrors.

Light the rebel beacon,

signal the fustian fandango

and we will two-step

our orbicular nocturne.

Moonbones press tight against me

as you nightbloom

and I taste your lips

and thighs, reminiscent

of hemlock uncertainty.

There is a forgotten entrance.

I find my way again

as you lead me

through private portals.

With a hidden eye

you reveal a ruby sanctum,

the door an iron shriek

opening to reveal our

suddenly tragic hour.

The whimsical zombie

revels over our

hesitant zeitgeist.

Once more

we

sink back

into the

gaudy silhouette

of the

every day

tableau ...

Enjoyable as it is to play with, randomness isn’t always the answer, as I’ve mentioned before.

Oddly enough, however, I’ve found this one always goes over very well out loud. It’s fun to read, and people never have a problem appreciating the point.

Three Variations on an Icon:

Blackbeard’s Flag

i.

picture this — 

upon a field of black,

a white skeleton stands,

in his right hand,

he holds an hour glass,

in his left a spear

piercing a red heart

with three red blood-drops

falling

ii.

What was he on?

Bloodshot eyes,

beard up to just below ‘em

down again to his waist,

always carrying six pistols,

a cutlass in his teeth,

a sword in his hand,

hemp fuses smouldering fear

twisted in his beard and hair,

clambering over your gunwale

with those wild eyes

fixed upon your heart, egad;

and they say it took

twenty cutlass slashes,

five pistol shots,

and a slice across the jugular

to slow him down long enough

for Maynard to decapitate ‘im,

but that’s all right, that’s his metier,

he was a pirate for chrissake,

but that flag — 

the poetry of doom ...

What was he on?

iii.

Accountants, Lawyers, Administrators,

Militarists, Priests, Teachers, Specialists,

Professional Athletes, Talk Show Hosts,

Upper and Lower Management,

Elitists of the World,

Beauty Consultants, Those Who Travel,

Those Who Do Not,

Volunteer Board Presidents,

Phone Solicitors, Politicians omigod,

Incompetents of Every Ilk and Profession,

Publishers, Critics, All the Hierarchies of Hell,

poets ...

This was said to be the meaning of his flag:

“You! All of you! See the hourglass?

Your sand has run out!

Blackbeard’s come to pierce your hearts!”

but isn’t it far more likely

he knew ... he knew ...

No one is Blackbeard for long, Mr. Teach.

So he hung the image aloft

of what he feared most:

Death looks you in the eye,

the sands of fate in hand,

and when the skeleton rattles your glass

you know you only have

the time left it will take

three drops of your heart’s blood

to reach the deck

to take as many as you can

of all the bastards down with you ...

Never enough.

Unsurprisingly, given my main intent that an audience should be entertained by a poetry reading first and foremost, I’ve slowly developed what might best be described as a stand up poet shtick. The focus is on humour. I still like to mix things up, with some serious stuff, some lyrical bits, and of course the experimental. But I’ve discovered humour pleases the audience best — when they can comprehend the joke. I’ve certainly had some poems I thought were hilarious fall flat on me too. It’s a constantly changeable experience, very difficult to predict in any way. There is some material I always feel safe with, though. Like these two, for example.

an insignificant little poem

words I’d like to eat but which probably taste like vegetables

aubergine and arugula – oh – those are vegetables

but there are others so tasty they might be dessert

aloof cascading scintilla

Reviews of “an insignificant little poem” by John H. Baillie

(Translated from the French)

“a disarming honesty often similar

to a kind of wholesome stupidity”

“piling stones on this ethereal construction

creates a cathedral between heaven and earth”

“this poem’s greatest merit

is that it is above all a poem”

“affirming the primacy of the real

is it the story of some poor soul,

a madman, degenerate or genius?

Is it an adventure or a love story?

But first of all, is it a poem?

It answers by asking the question,

‘Yes, but what is poetry?’”

“I love the superficial sincerity”

“sincerely superficial”

“lacking the obligatory

Brigitte Bardot nude scene”

“there is a certain type of poetry

practiced by imbeciles who are also cynics.

After reading the poem,

we feel less intelligent

than if we had never seen it at all”

“a poem for those terribly in the know”

“sharp and fluid, precise and vague,

this poem pierces the darkness

to reveal the dry, melancholy clarity

of remembrance beyond the shadows of oblivion”

“heavier than a fruitcake”

“the shocking incompetence,

the hilarious complacency of his bluff,

the vulgarity and intellectual vacuum”

“mediocre and fuzzy”

“sinister, shapeless, and ridiculous”

“empty, stupidly pretentious,

intellectually vapid”

“at first glance, a masterpiece”

“I don’t want to trash ‘an insignificant little poem’

under the pretext that the poem is,

in so many words, badly done,

badly written, badly conceived,

badly edited, badly rhymed,

just bad. It’s all of that, of course.

But it’s worse”

“In any case,

whether you like it or not,

it exists.”

(Plagiarized, paraphrased and otherwise plundered from contemporary reviews

of French New Wave movies.) 

So, even though I’m still working on it, I have managed to develop yet another dimension of the poetic experience for myself by establishing a performance style for live readings that really works for me. My proudest moment to date was an epic reading of a very long narrative poem on the local heavy metal scene that I performed in tandem with a video my son Dylan made to visualize the story. The combination of the two media went over extremely well, each complementing the other. We both found it interesting that a rather straight narrative poem made a complex visual component perfectly comprehensible to the audience.

So now that I had all that in place, was I satisfied?

Never. There’s always room for more perilous experimentation.

***************

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week:

Theda Bara’s winning novelletta Thirty-One Across continues this Friday at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Sorting out the rejection and acceptance. These things happen.