neat stuff to read

AiurZ

United States429 Posts

February 17 2013 02:00 GMT

i got really excited about mira gonzalez first poetry collection "i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together" and i preordered it and waited for a really long time for it to get to my house so that i could read it. i had a couple of poems already and was a little bit "wary".

i got it on wednesday and i was really excited and i read it in one sitting. its ok though because it's short.

here are two poems from her book:
http://muumuuhouse.com/mg.poetry3.html

here are two more poems from her book:
http://www.metazen.ca/?p=10921

here are two more poems from her book, and also an article about her:
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/a-black-flag-kid-wrote-a-book-of-poems-mira-gonzalez

there are many interesting things that happen in this collection. a lot of interesting things are going on. reading this book made me think "what do i like about poetry" and "what is poetry". it is an interesting idea while also studying "poetics" and "prosody" and at the same time "working on my manuscript". i am dealing with poetry on many different "levels"

the middle section of "heartbroken people with extreme personality flaws" (i think that it is in one of those links) i thought was very good, lines like

"I will kiss you everywhere and recklessly/ under an avocado tree in the hole I dug in my dad's backyard when I was seven"

and there is more, specific mentions of bones etc. i think that this is a very good line and it reminds me of some of the feelings i would get reading pablo neruda's 20 love poems for the first time. i am deeply concerned with the relationships between people when i am reading and writing. the title of the collection "i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together" seems to indicate that it is about relationships, but also mira talks about being alone.

the title poem is really good, she says "my hands would be too small to effectively touch you".

some interesting poems where mira goes from her typically first person viewpoint into writing in second person, i have noticed before in some poems typical "craft" moments where i imagine the author sitting in a workshop with the poem etc. and people talking about "craft" things and feel embarrassed like catching a glimpse of someone's naked skin unintentionally, a flash of a shoulder blade or thigh or something, and these moments sometimes also bother me on the "poem" level outside of this feeling. i feel like people should strive to be less "writerly" when they are writing. switching into the second person feels like it could be a moment of "craftiness" but i dont get this impression at all in these poems by mira gonzalez and it makes me feel "good"/"comfortable" with reading them when i think i might otherwise be so.

even beyond all of this i feel that there is some nicely strange words that help cultivate a sense of "strangeness" and "detachment from reality". it is at once terrifying and sad but also sweet and beautiful and tender. i talked to my friend about these poems and he said that he felt sad for the poet because he wasn't sure how much of her "brand" was "her" but that there had to be a certain degree of "closeness to reality". i usually hate "blurbs" on the backs of books but i felt like tao lins "blurb" for this collection was very good and described the way i felt about the book very well.

i know that people don't really "read poetry" or "buy poetry books" anymore, but i really feel that poets like mira gonzalez are doing a lot of work to take poetry away from the way we traditionally perceive poetry and place us instead in a realm poetry could be/should be read by normal everyday people and that they would/could/should enjoy it as well.

i can PM some more selections but really just kind of wanted a space to talk about "poetry" and "poetics" perhaps re: this collection but really just in general because i know that my "sentiments" towards poetry aren't necessarily "in common with" other people who read poetry but i still enjoy talking about it and thinking about the perspectives of other people.

Dienosore

Brunei Darussalam622 Posts

February 17 2013 03:49 GMT

plz dont use " " unless you are directly quoting someone T_T

Fishgle

United States2174 Posts

February 17 2013 12:31 GMT

"my hands would be too small to effectively touch you".

reminds me of the ee cummings poem, somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond.

I disagree with you about people needing to write less "writerly". The best parts of Mira's poems seem to be the writerly parts, ie the last stanza of “the main purpose of the heart is to make heart sounds”. The rest of it is so direct it feels distant and emotionless. I mean I agree that lots of poetry errs on the obtuse side, but the prosaic parts of these poems are forgettable.

I like thinking of poetry as simply a moment of life that could have been forgotten, but was remembered instead. I like the idea of it being disposable, and not full of god as it once was, and still is assumed to be. I'm ok if the kitchen sink gets tossed in every now and then. But at the same time, I agree with Ezra Pound when he said

As for 'Every man his own poet', the more every man knows about poetry the better. I believe in every one writing poetry who wants to; most do. I believe in every man knowing enough of music to play 'God bless our home' on the harmonium, but I do not believe in every man giving concerts and printing his sin.

I really don't think any good modern/contemporary is very difficult to read/understand anyway. It's just preassumed to be archaic and dense, perhaps due to the way it is studied in school.

As for Mira's poems, I don't feel like they resolve into anything, or have any focus. there's some interesting things going on, but nothing that sticks with me. Not my style of poetry, I guess.

AiurZ

United States429 Posts

February 17 2013 19:59 GMT

taken by themselves and out of context of the collection and also even taken out of context with her 'brand' i understand why you would feel that way

i feel like the more 'ordinary'/'forgettable' parts in miras poetry is important in the same sort of way that regular meter is important in older/more formal poetry in that it creates a backdrop from which the poet can modulate. i think that the poems published in the links above are probably poems that are best able to 'stand alone' but also ask of the reader to either know who mira is ie her web presence or aim to intrigue the reader to read further into mira etc.

i think that feeling the poems are without 'resolve' or 'focus' is indicative of the poet and the way that the poet feels about the world/reality ie when reading this collection i felt less like the poems were moral/ethical in any sense or trying to teach me anything about life or humans or anything in a broad sense but instead just being poems, just being mira, and just this perspective/feeling towards life developed through these experiences. the phrases that i enjoy best, the combinations of words that move me most (i dont know if its in the poems i posted above because im operating out of the book, but in one poem she writes "you were laying on top of him/ touching his mouth with your mouth sometimes") are phrases in which i feel in myself and identify with re: isolation, feeling alone, feeling detached from reality, being young/depressed/not knowing anything about the world and not knowing how i really 'feel' or even that i 'feel' at all.

i didnt explain myself about being 'writerly' but i hardly ever enjoy reading something when i am aware of the author writing it, aware of the writer 'workshopping' it, or having the feeling that the author is aware of writing and seems to want me to also realize that there is an author and that they are writing things. theres two kinds of looks that im imagining re: catching a glimpse of the poet being a poet. the first is this kind of 'writerly' thing that im not explaining well, and the second is how i feel about these poems by mira gonzalez, and also (to draw from a more 'literary' example) would be in the waste land, in a game of chess, the exchange between ts eliot and his wife when he writes "and we shall play a game of chess/ (the ivory men make company between us)/ pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door", the line in parenthesis edited out in the published version but originally written and sometimes read, but this moment of tenderness and human-ness and we catch a kind of "glimpse" of the poet, of his frustrations/anxieties/real relationships in a way that doesn't seem contrived but instead organic and natural and something that we 'feel' as being true and honest.

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