I've read a couple of Dana's essays, but too long back to remember enough to comment intelligently. I do remember however that they were competently written. I believe they were about poetry, and how it turned into the thing it is today., i.e.--maybe--a vehicle for academics to help one another accumulate publishing credits? A shot in the dark really. I am also not in a position to comment fairly on his poetry, because I'm insufficiently well acquainted with it. But again, the little I've seen has been well written. I never leap to conclusions before collecting a fair amount of evidence. Well, unless the first sample encountered is disqualifying enough to justify a definite thumbs down. Your assessment strikes me as premature, as made too early, before giving its subject a fair examination. But for all I know you've read everything he's published. I confess I favor the radically countercultural, what denies and contradicts society's sacred assumptions, which though false, will tolerate no public dissent.
I think this poem captures the difficulties of making it to the other side of suffering, from early enchantment to disenchantment, and finally, the re-enchantment everyone strives for (but which few manage to find).
The poet found his way to the other side!
And we are among the beneficiaries, in the same way we all profit from Dante having made it from the underworld to paradise. In a word: the garden is not lost; it dwells within.
Believe it or not I'm slowly doing the same. Just at the moment I'm working on a poem beginning with a declaration that 'Christ had it easy'! (I do like to shock people.) Or, at least, have them experience, at second hand, some of the shocks I've had to cope with.
The question is: where do you put the comma (which has presumably been deliberately omitted). Here:
'So many trees to kiss, or argue under'
or here
'So many trees, to kiss or argue under'?
The ambiguity is presumably deliberate. But to my mind it doesn't quite come off. The first alternative being too absurd. If he'd said something like 'snog' instead of 'kiss' it night have worked. Since it's difficult to snog with a tree if not impossible. (And you do snog *with* you don't just snog.) But I can imagine someone kissing a tree, in the same way that some people hug them.
Interestingly enough you might say 'argue *over*' if you were only referring to the trees. In that case one imagines two people taking it in turns to kiss the trees and then argue about them. A sort of battle over the trees. Fraught with the commission of various arborial infidelities. (Has a tree ever been cited as a co-respondent?)
P.S. Comma question. A legitimate question maybe, where it should go. I see kiss and argue as paired, as a set; I don't sense that "argue" was meant to be paired with "under." So I chose the second comma placement. But I like the line better unpunctuated.
So do I. It was just minor quibble. But I'm very careful of such things in my own work. Though sometimes I admit I do give up in despair. As I also admit I love double-entendres. But prefer them to be well-targeted.
I suspect if the author is concerned about your quibble, he might alter the line--but possibly he doesn't tune into this channel and thus won't hear about it.
I daresay - and even hope - he did think about it, and decided he might just about get away with it. But that really was the best he could manage pro tem.
The trouble is that some of one's best things come precisely from circumventing such quibbles. And every time you do circumvent such a quibble the muse smiles on you more benignly. And begins to load you down with more and more of her blessings.
The line didn't snag me at all. Its meaning must've been immediately clear to me. Just two things the pair might've done under a tree: smooch or disagree. One could read it your way, but I'm guessing most would read it mine. I don't regard it as a grammar mistake or oversight. Possibly ambiguity was intended, or an extra level of meaning, but if so, that didn't cross my mind originally and still doesn't. The poem is directly expressed throughout, i.e. not in the kind of style in which I'd expect fo find ambiguities or secret subtleties. Anyway to me it just names two things doable under trees.
That well-turned tale told by somebody sharing my name is one I never tell, not in spoken speech. As to written speech, when it's a transcription of inner feeling, unfortunately any pain it records doesn't exit the sensorium along with the words. It would be nice it it did though.
"The trick" is one I can't perform, life being the antithesis of a blessing. Everyone here is a lifelong victim from birth, like everyone who was ever here. The beauties you see all around you are bait set by your worst enemy. Fortunately a few have noticed this through the course of history, and decried the fact. But the generality's view, as Hume observed, must always prevail.
Ah if only we could contemplate that beauty with complete serenity. I mean without ever longing to possess it in any way. Merely grateful for the fact that it is there. A sort of present. A present without a past or a future.
Isn't that the essence of wisdom? And isn't wisdom what poetry's all about? Memorable wisdom.
That is what makes this a significant poem. It extracts wisdom from memory. And finds in it a beautiful present. For which it's eternally grateful.
And so it transcends time and enters the timeless...
To say it less obiquely, allied with irresistibleness, a quality a master bait would have to have. I like your phrase master bait, which is apt. Goya certainly saw through and beyond beauty. Many of his sketches can only be regarded with horror. He must've had xray vision.
I read you as ironic, and if correctlly, it elicits a chuckle.
David, I know you believe Dana Gioia to be a great poet. I see his poetry as casual ramblings toward a rather mundane ending. Yours is much better.
I wrote the second Poet Poet profile because you asked me to. Don't I deserve some kind of rejection response?
Blessings,
Bobby
I've read a couple of Dana's essays, but too long back to remember enough to comment intelligently. I do remember however that they were competently written. I believe they were about poetry, and how it turned into the thing it is today., i.e.--maybe--a vehicle for academics to help one another accumulate publishing credits? A shot in the dark really. I am also not in a position to comment fairly on his poetry, because I'm insufficiently well acquainted with it. But again, the little I've seen has been well written. I never leap to conclusions before collecting a fair amount of evidence. Well, unless the first sample encountered is disqualifying enough to justify a definite thumbs down. Your assessment strikes me as premature, as made too early, before giving its subject a fair examination. But for all I know you've read everything he's published. I confess I favor the radically countercultural, what denies and contradicts society's sacred assumptions, which though false, will tolerate no public dissent.
Were you singled out to write something that you did wrote but never got published? If so, an explanation is owed.
David's very choosey.
So full of good things it's difficult to know where to begin.
But the third line of the second verse is ambiguous in a way that isn't really very helpful. Who or what is being kissed?
I think this poem captures the difficulties of making it to the other side of suffering, from early enchantment to disenchantment, and finally, the re-enchantment everyone strives for (but which few manage to find).
The poet found his way to the other side!
And we are among the beneficiaries, in the same way we all profit from Dante having made it from the underworld to paradise. In a word: the garden is not lost; it dwells within.
Believe it or not I'm slowly doing the same. Just at the moment I'm working on a poem beginning with a declaration that 'Christ had it easy'! (I do like to shock people.) Or, at least, have them experience, at second hand, some of the shocks I've had to cope with.
Trees they either kiss or argue under, the line's entirely clear to me. No what was kissed under them. Definitely a who. And likely someone loved.
The line actually goes:
'So many trees to kiss or argue under'
The question is: where do you put the comma (which has presumably been deliberately omitted). Here:
'So many trees to kiss, or argue under'
or here
'So many trees, to kiss or argue under'?
The ambiguity is presumably deliberate. But to my mind it doesn't quite come off. The first alternative being too absurd. If he'd said something like 'snog' instead of 'kiss' it night have worked. Since it's difficult to snog with a tree if not impossible. (And you do snog *with* you don't just snog.) But I can imagine someone kissing a tree, in the same way that some people hug them.
Interestingly enough you might say 'argue *over*' if you were only referring to the trees. In that case one imagines two people taking it in turns to kiss the trees and then argue about them. A sort of battle over the trees. Fraught with the commission of various arborial infidelities. (Has a tree ever been cited as a co-respondent?)
P.S. Comma question. A legitimate question maybe, where it should go. I see kiss and argue as paired, as a set; I don't sense that "argue" was meant to be paired with "under." So I chose the second comma placement. But I like the line better unpunctuated.
So do I. It was just minor quibble. But I'm very careful of such things in my own work. Though sometimes I admit I do give up in despair. As I also admit I love double-entendres. But prefer them to be well-targeted.
I suspect if the author is concerned about your quibble, he might alter the line--but possibly he doesn't tune into this channel and thus won't hear about it.
I daresay - and even hope - he did think about it, and decided he might just about get away with it. But that really was the best he could manage pro tem.
The trouble is that some of one's best things come precisely from circumventing such quibbles. And every time you do circumvent such a quibble the muse smiles on you more benignly. And begins to load you down with more and more of her blessings.
At least that's been my experience.
The line didn't snag me at all. Its meaning must've been immediately clear to me. Just two things the pair might've done under a tree: smooch or disagree. One could read it your way, but I'm guessing most would read it mine. I don't regard it as a grammar mistake or oversight. Possibly ambiguity was intended, or an extra level of meaning, but if so, that didn't cross my mind originally and still doesn't. The poem is directly expressed throughout, i.e. not in the kind of style in which I'd expect fo find ambiguities or secret subtleties. Anyway to me it just names two things doable under trees.
You'd be surprised at the things you can do under trees. As well as on them. And above them.
That well-turned tale told by somebody sharing my name is one I never tell, not in spoken speech. As to written speech, when it's a transcription of inner feeling, unfortunately any pain it records doesn't exit the sensorium along with the words. It would be nice it it did though.
"The trick" is one I can't perform, life being the antithesis of a blessing. Everyone here is a lifelong victim from birth, like everyone who was ever here. The beauties you see all around you are bait set by your worst enemy. Fortunately a few have noticed this through the course of history, and decried the fact. But the generality's view, as Hume observed, must always prevail.
Ah if only we could contemplate that beauty with complete serenity. I mean without ever longing to possess it in any way. Merely grateful for the fact that it is there. A sort of present. A present without a past or a future.
Isn't that the essence of wisdom? And isn't wisdom what poetry's all about? Memorable wisdom.
That is what makes this a significant poem. It extracts wisdom from memory. And finds in it a beautiful present. For which it's eternally grateful.
And so it transcends time and enters the timeless...
Depends on what you regard beauty as being. I regard it as bait.
Yes. The master bait perhaps. But for an artist it is surely the end rather than the beginning. And is closely allied with truth and goodness.
To say it less obiquely, allied with irresistibleness, a quality a master bait would have to have. I like your phrase master bait, which is apt. Goya certainly saw through and beyond beauty. Many of his sketches can only be regarded with horror. He must've had xray vision.
I read you as ironic, and if correctlly, it elicits a chuckle.