Sam Hamill: "Ars Poetica"

PREFACE: ARS POETICA

Some say the poem's
best made from natural speech
from the inner life.
I say, That is sometimes true.
The poem's a natural thing.

Some say the poem
should rise into purest song,
a formality,
articulate expression
achieved through complex structures

derived from classics--
which also is true enough.
Let the song arise
as it will.  Learn to revise
the life.  Beware.  Disguises

rise up everywhere:
most dangerously, self-in-
fatuation.  "More
poets fail," Pound declared,
"from lack of character than

from lack of talent."
Some insist the poem is
heaven-sent, claiming
angelic heirs.  The poem,
I believe, is a failure

elevated in-
to triumph, a form of truth
wrought from mortal flesh
and blood that will soon perish,
but which--for one brief moment

or an hour--reveals
the tragic human spirit
in the very act
of imagining itself
cured of the sickness of self.

The poem cannot,
finally, be explained nor
defined.  The true gift
poetry bestows begins
and ends with humility

before the task.  All
the suffering of this world
can be truly felt,
absorbed adn transcended, just
by the act of listening

to that deepest voice
speaking from within.  Forget
hagiography.
All the great masters are dead.
Forget rime and irony.

Forget words, meter,
diction, whole syllabaries--
the literary.
The heart by way of the ear.
What's that you wanted to say?

--SAM HAMILL



from Gratitude,
BOA Editions, Ltd.
Rochester, NY  1998


(This one is for Eric, a very welcome house-guest)

Clough: "In the Depths"

IN THE DEPTHS

It is not sweet content, be sure,
That moves the nobler Muse to song,
Yet when could truth come whole and pure
From hearts that inly writhe with wrong?

’Tis not the calm and peaceful breast
That sees or reads the problem true;
They only know on whom it has prest
Too hard to hope to solve it too.

Our ills are worse than at their ease
These blameless happy souls suspect,
They only study the disease,
Alas, who live not to detect.

--Arthur Hugh Clough

What Nisus Said

Nisus ait: 'dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,
Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?'


Nisus said, Do the gods add this heat to the mind,
Euryalus, or does a man's own dire desire become a god to him?

-- Virgil's Aeneid IX, 184-185
(my translation)

Not as Obvious as It Ought to Be

Teach the book on its merits, not on its laurels.

(And by book, I mean anything.  I mean specific books first, of course, the ones by Homer and Melville and Austen and Shakespeare and whomever is popular in the moment, but I certainly mean anything also.)

In The Fog

Four Friends Fog-Fishing,
Hope and a Hook,
or Existential Crisis #4?

Anchoring Reflections

On Thursday, I was free diving from the kayak in Mendocino waters, and I anchored my kayak to a strand of kelp as usual. I swam about for 10 minutes, and at that point I noticed my kayak floating past me. Obviously, my careful securing had failed. Luckily, the kayak had not been pulled in the opposite direction by currents or by tide, but the kayak seemed to be following me, which I appreciated. The sea urchins had done such a number eating all of the usual kelp in the area that I ended up clamping my kayak's kelp-anchor line to my weight belt instead and pulling the kayak behind me as I swam about, taking photos of the urchins and the kelp and what have you. Fortunately, the surge had calmed and this cove was out of the main line of the swell, or I could easily have ended up getting brained by the kayak as I surfaced for breath. Only as I swam in the shallows looking for bits of mother-of-pearl did I realize (as I should have previously) how much my rather weighty kayak could have done me damage just from the action of the surge. At that point, the rather cold water had penetrated the rather thin wetsuit, and I realized that I was quite cold. So, I climbed onto my kayak, pulled out the wool cap and the fleece I'd packed, and attempted to warm up. I need a new wetsuit, I think, and I need to consider more carefully how I anchor my boat.

Gemini: Stone and Foam

Gemini, Sleeping--A Mask:
sculpture mix;
denim, transparent brown, and clear glazing,
layered.

Nautical Know-How

"Before you try to steer,
learn to row."

--Aristophanes

via Peter Green
and his novel about Lucius Cornelius Sulla,
Roman dictator,
The Sword of Pleasure

Tom Waits: What Good Writing Is Meant To Do

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and elevate."

--Tom Waits

(From a 2001 Vanity Fair article . . . featuring an interview between Tom Waits and J.T. LeRoy:
"Strange Innocence".)

Recommended Reading: Greenberg's "Four Fish"

Julia Whitty, Diving, and Manysidedness: Highly Recommended

The current reading in my English 1As.

Check out Julia Whitty's blog at http://deepbluehome.blogspot.com/

Salmon Season

Tree-Spirit

I Have A Kelp Tattoo

Printer's Devil

One of my poems in print.  

Eelfish Eyes Are Smiling

The Eelfish: 
sculpture mix; jade, green, and blue glazing, layered.

I swear that up until he came out of the kiln this last time all glazed I was thinking he was a grim beast.

Linda Gregg's "All The Different Kinds Of Years"

ARRIVING AGAIN AND AGAIN WITHOUT NOTICING

I remember all the different kinds of years,

angry, or brokenhearted, or afraid.

I remember feeling like that 

walking up the mountain along the dirt path

to my broken house on the island.

And long years of waiting in Massachusetts.

The winter walking and hot summer walking.

I finally fell in love with all of it:

dirt, night, rock and far views.

It's strange that my heart is full

now as my desire was then.

--Linda Gregg

(My pal Meredith sent me this poem years ago for my 45th birthday.)

Wisdom Sleeps

 Wisdom: sculpture mix, unglazed; copper wire.

Crabwise

Fount Of Wisdom, Well Of Compassion

I've always imagined the Grail to be made of clay.