Cortazar’s Cronopios y Famas was a terrific, odd read. Sadly, my sixth edition from New Directions has page 69 reprinted on page 71, and so I’m missing a page that begins one of the stories in the baffling third section.

If you don’t have this book, get it and read the second chapter. Immediately. “The Tiger Lodgers” is brilliant, and the final story in “Unusual Occupations” is flat-out genius.

This sounds like hyperbole.

Bedtime. Hyperbolic dreams await.

(I won’t get a day off to write part of my essay tomorrow after all. Maybe Thursday. Boo.)

Two annotations down, one to go. I spent the better part of the day with Donald Justice, and feel like I have a pretty good handle on how he’s using repetition for both stasis and motion in “Psalm and Lament.” I have Tuesday off from work, so Weldon Kees is up next. I won’t be working on the essay at all tomorrow, because I’ll be in South Carolina for Granny’s 90th birthday. But, just in case, I’ll have Poetic Closure in the car with me. Just in case.

Have a wonderful day, Internet friends. I’ll see you on the flipside.

I know, you often think to yourself: “what is in Ross White’s mailbox today?” Well, I can answer that question for you.

First up, the new record by They Might Be Giants, entitled The Else. I ordered it off of their web site a few days ago, because they sent a note saying that there was a limited-edition EP included with the album. kept buying things from their web site is a Catch-22; the prices are affordable, but the shipping is extreme. Did I really need for this album to arrive from UPS? Not really. I would’ve been just as happy had it arrived in five to nine business days.

Next, two books from Amazon. One is entitled Poetic Closure: a Study of How Poems End by Barbara Herrnstein Smith. in particular looking for to the chapter on repetition. The other book is full of what looks like micro fiction — Julio Cortazar, Cronopios y Famas. All I really want to you about that book is that saying it into my voice recognition software has made me decide that I will never want to speak Spanish words to this program again.

Horse Less Press was good enough to send me Abraham Lincoln’s Death Scene, a chapbook by Zachary Schomburg. Granted, I sent them five dollars to do so, but still, it was good of them to send it. I finished reading about half of this book, and the verdict is still out. kept or is the phrase, “the jury is still out”? I can never remember. Something is still out there. It is an opinion.

Extras and Weeds? All in the same night? Heavenly!

I’m in a hotel tonight. I don’t tend to write well in hotels, but I’ll be plugging away at “Psalm and Lament” after dinner. If you see me on instant messenger, interrupt. I’ll be OK with it.

Preliminary findings: the repetition is useful. It’s usually the variation where the motion happens… but it can’t be propelled forward as forcefully without the repetitive stimulus.

I’m thinking that, if it’s allowable, I might look at Pinker’s The Langauge Instinct to speak to why repetition is so powerful. It’s fundamental to how we acquire language and I think that repetition in poetry speaks to that. Information repeated has a primal and incantatory power even when the repetition is subdued.

I’m burning the new Queens of the Stone Age for the trip out. Other motorists, if you see me in your rear view mirror, I’m not talking to myself. I’m rocking your face off.

For those keeping score:

Satirical Limericks 4, Great Poems 1, Parables 0

Famous Poems Re-written as Limericks

To wit:

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still.

I’m now eleven pages into my essay, which has been quite pleasant to write thus far. I’m hoping to knock out a minimum of one page on Donald Justice’s “Psalm and Lament” tonight to stay on target.

That’s the only one of the poems I’m working on that I haven’t posted yet, so here it is.

Psalm and Lament

In memory of my mother (1897-1974)
Hialeah, Florida

The clocks are sorry, the clocks are very sad.
One stops, one goes on striking the wrong hours.

And the grass burns terribly in the sun,
The grass turns yellow secretly at the roots.

Now suddenly the yard chairs look empty, the sky looks empty,
The sky looks vast and empty.

Out on Red Road the traffic continues; everything continues.
Nor does memory sleep; it goes on.

Out spring the butterflies of recollection,
And I think that for the first time I understand

The beautiful ordinary light of this patio
And even perhaps the dark rich earth of a heart.

(The bedclothes, they say, had been pulled down.
I will not describe it. I do not want to describe it.

No, but the sheets were drenched and twisted.
They were the very handkerchiefs of grief.)

Let summer come now with its schoolboy trumpets and fountains.
But the years are gone, the years are finally over.

And there is only
This long desolation of flower-bordered sidewalks

That runs to the corner, turns, and goes on,
That disappears and goes on

Into the black oblivion of a neighborhood and a world
Without billboards or yesterdays.

Sometimes a sad moon comes and waters the roof tiles.
But the years are gone. There are no more years.

–Donald Justice

Those are all couplets– pardon the line wraps.

Jeremy just told me the story that Callie happened to mention my name in conversation and a co-worker said, “Ross White the poet?” I think this is the first time that’s happened to me. I’m thrilled, too… the noun at the end of that question is usually far more harsh.

It is no secret around the UNC campus that I love me some Matthea Harvey, so I was thrilled thrilled thrilled when an unnamed friend who works in an unnamed retail location brought me the uncorrected proof of this:

It is delicious. Well, the parts I have read. Much of it is Harvey’s delectable brand of prose poem, but when the reporter in her yields to the lyricist, you get something like this short poem:

Out of Order

Today it’s about truth and hope
and there are no ha-ha’s
between me and the living.
World, I’m no one
to complain about you.

The part of me (which may be all of me) which loves a good one-liner was thrilled to see her include this short one.

You Have My Eyes

Give them back.

Some good publishing news today: I have a short piece (some say fiction, some say poetry, I say tomato) in this month’s edition of Rumble.

This arrived in today’s mail (two copies in fact– one is for loaning to friends… but only the most trusted of friends):

Expect a few light days, blogwise. My carpal tunnel is acting up somewhat, and though speech recognition works fairly well, I have to do some mousing and typing for corrections. So, I’ll be focused on the essay.

Found Joe Wenderoth’s “The Endearment,” which was published as a chapbook by a press that went under. Wave Books bought the remaining stock, and I ordered two copies from them today. I like Wave Books quite a lot: they make keen Poetry Bus t-shirts and they have a farm where writers can work four hours a day in exchange for lodging while they write. I have suggested that Marielle do this. Also, they have published some poems by Lee Fulton in The Bedazzler.

Though I told myself I would take a day off before jumping right back into the poetic pursuits, by 3 PM I was already starting to think about the essay. I needed to make a visit to the doctor, because my arm has been bothering me somewhat, and to distract myself, I figured I would take a book not related to my work. The newest book on the shelf (well, at least the newest one I hadn’t read– Tua gave me a copy of Van Jordan’s new book, Quantum Lyrics, which I finished before I left Swannanoa) was James Longenbach’s The Resistance to Poetry.

While I was in the waiting room, though, I couldn’t help but make connections between one of his essays on line and the elements of syntactic repetition I’ll be looking at. His breakdown of how varying the ways in which syntax is parsed or broken across lines has direct relevance to the difficult syntax and enjambments of Merwin’s “Paul.”

So, since my pleasure reading had turned out to be essay reading, I went ahead and ditched the idea that I would give myself a full day off, and began writing a part of the essay this evening. I’m about two and a half pages in, which gets me to about line 12 of the poem. And I don’t feel like I’ve really gotten started yet.

I don’t think I’ll produce a monolith and then edit it down all semester, but I don’t think a 30 page essay is going to present a single problem at all.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll take a day off from poetry. My inbox at work is about 120 messages more full than it should be.

Here’s the Merwin poem, which was previously buried in my comments section.

Paul

Up the sea-dark avenue
at two in the morning a shadow
comes shouting oh
you mother-fucker I hate you Paul
echoes of feet and then
I hate you I hate you Paul

the old moon is sinking through
clouds beyond high wires and cornices
the buildings creak
drifting on the tunnelled hour the call
bounces ahead along
the street like a fleeing ball

there after each of the few
cars has passed over its words Paul you
can’t get away
I hate you with my feet in the Paul
street like a bell I know
you are there you nowhere Paul

I am coming after you
whatever you do whatever you
think I hate you
across the street into the doors all
the way through the frozen
windows up against the wall

listen to me I hate who
you are nobody else will ever
hate you the way
I do I always hated you Paul
the whole time thinking you
could hold out on me that small

invisible you but to
me listen there was nothing to you
I was onto
you fooling with me your slick tricks all
the while and I hate you
where you are everywhere Paul

I go on hating you through
the roar of the Paul subway the red
lights at the Paul
cross streets out of sight into the Paul
night that cannot be touched
nor brought back by hate at all.

That’s originally from Travels. Thanks, Metafilter.