Poetry

What I'm reading...A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens

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I love Wallace Stevens. I count The Man with the Blue Guitar  and The Idea of Order at Key West as two of my favorite poems. They talk to me, as a writer. Stevens struck a chord with me very early; decades later, he's been a constant companion. Some of Stevens' poems seem impenetrable. That's never put me off; I always think of the last two lines from MacLeish's,  Ars Poetica : A poem should not mean / But be whenever a poem leaves me wondering. I find out what I can, and what's necessary sticks with me.

Finding out much about Stevens work became much easier with Eleanor Cook's, Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens. Cook is a Stevens' expert; this work takes Stevens' poems in chronological order and provides annotations and references. It's wonderful; I can't thank Eleanor Cook enough!

 

A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens - Eleanor Cook (Princeton University Press)

 

Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America) - Wallace Stevens

 


The Heart of Haiku, by Jane Hirshfield

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Jane Hirshfield's, The Heart of Haiku, is given a well deserved mention in an article by Dwight Garner in today's New York Times on Kindle Singles. A Kindle Single* is a new form that has found its readers: longer than an essay and shorter than a book, the Single is something that can usually be read in one sitting and savored forever -- at least, that's the case in Hirshfield's work on the poet Basho and the form he is famous for, the Haiku.

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*Kindle singles and e-books can be read on your computer; your smart phone; or other e-readers. You can download the free application software on Amazon.

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Here's my recommendation from the Amazon site:

I first encountered Jane Hirshfield's poetry in The Atlantic; it was June of 1996 that I read "Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight" on my computer and then heard her reading her poem on RealAudio -- the technology was new -- what a joy to hear a poem read by the poet in your own home! I was entranced, and thus began my journey. I found The Lives of the Heart: Poems and fell in love with her work. The true test of a poet's strength, for me, is if lines of their poetry come back to me unbidden -- I know, then, that the poetry has taken root. Hirshfield's poetry can make that claim. I have purchased several copies of Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry to hand out to friends; it is a book that I consider essential. We took turns reading poems from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women at the bedside of a loved one; those poems, those ancient voices, provided vessels for our grief. I will always be grateful that they were so thoughtfully woven together and made available in this anthology.

The essay on Basho is a gift of thought about form. There is nothing to do but accept the gift and bow to the generosity. It is wonderful.

 

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Hirshfield priced The Heart of Haiku at 99 cents -- a gift to the reader -- you owe it to yourself to buy one and send one to everyone you know.

 

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Hirshfield's newest book of poems, Come, Thief is available at Amazon.

Two of her poems are in the current issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin:

Two Poems

Three Mornings

Runner

What I'm reading...

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I start out my day with poetry. Wallace Stevens is always on hand. There is a richness there that constantly informs.  I return, again and again, to his poem, The Idea of Order at Key West:

  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172206

 

I also love The Man with the Blue Guitar. Stevens helped me understand the way an artist sees the visible world and gives it a mixture of voice and silence in witnessing it.

 

 

I first encountered Stevens' poetry in an anthology that included three of his poems: The Man with the Blue Guitar, The Emperor of Ice Cream,  and  Anecdote of the Jar. I didn't know what to make of them, but I was intrigued. Several lines stayed with me, which is the way poetry works with me. So I read more of his poems and I continue to read and reread them and understand them in different ways. Just as rereading a novel at different times of your life brings forth a whole new book, poems keep renewing themselves, or I come to them new. Over the years, in some strange alchemy, the lines feel grafted to my bones. I like to read his poems out loud. The experience is something like listening to music you love with headphones on; by giving it voice the work becomes embodied. It's a different sort of concentration and it allows more of the poem to sink in.