ART IS WHAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH

CHOCOLATE WAYS

 

I

Among the shelves

in the CVS

you inhabit an entire aisle.

II

I was of one mind

and that one mind

wanted one thing.

III

The autumn winds came

and I drank you hot.

IV

My lover and I are one.

My lover and you and I are one.

V

I do not know which I prefer—

the beautiful sweet or the beautiful dark.

VI

Winter came and iced the glass

and you turned into cream

and filled a cone.

VII

O thin men of Switzerland

why waste time skiing on the alps

when you should be toiling at the confectionary?

VIII

I know the sound of accents 

the syncopated taste of the streets.

I know the blackbirds singing

and you are in them all.

IX

You linger on the buds

of my tongue—before, during,

and after.

X

Bathed in the colors of earth

you are the ancient airs

on the lips of a poet about to sing.

XI

I arrive in Connecticut

with my Louis Vuitton luggage

and you buried deep within the trunk

and the snow about to fall.

XII

The air is moving

through the cedar trees.

XIII

The snow descends.

I unwrap you as a bar.

 

_____________________________

First off, I would like to confess that I did not do the assignment exactly as given. However, I have done five of Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments with "Chocolate Ways," and as such, I am hoping that the Landlords of the ModPo Universe will grant me special dispensation.
 

The five experiments are:

* Write a poem that reflects another poem, as in a mirror.

* Rewrite someone else's writing. Experiment with theft and plagiarism.
* Write the poem: Ways of Making Love. List them.
* Using phrases relating to one subject or idea, write about another,

pushing metaphor and simile as far as you can. 

* Write a work that intersperses love with landlords.

My intentions in writing "Chocolate Ways" are threefold—homage, spin-off, and gentle satire. 

In order to talk about my poem, I need to talk about "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens. Here's the poem:

 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

 

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

 

The Stevens poem is about many things, but for a point of reference, I will say it is a zen-like, imagistic meditation on the creative process. This is, as we say in ModPo, a metapoetic intepretation. "Chocolate Ways," on a metapoem level, uses chocolate as an image with variations, and transmogrifies the sweet into an essay on craving, creativity, obsession, and Eros. Stevens has blackbirds. I have chocolate. And while my poem is not literally called “Ways of Making Love,” there is plenty of that in the poem, and I do “list them” as Mayer suggests.

The easiest way to close read "Chocolate Ways" as a tribute to "Thirteen Ways" is to compare them stanza by stanza. Let's talk about what words and ideas I am mirroring.

 

The title. Both poems use the word “ways” and contain thirteen haiku-like stanzas.

I. The word “among” begins both poems. The object of interest is introduced: Steven’s blackbirds and my pronoun you, standing in for chocolate.

II. Stevens is of three minds. I am of one—“wanted one thing,” being consonant with craving and desire.

III. “Autumn winds” appear in both poems. Stevens presents the blackbirds whirling as part of a pantomime. “I drank you” in my poem verges on the erotic, an element which is largely confined in Stevens' to stanza number four.

I am using his ideas to talk about my ideas, and the ideas are different, and yet the same. "Thirteen Ways" illustrates alternate ways of looking at the same object, while "Chocolate Ways" fixates on want and longing through the metaphor of chocolate. A common denominator of obsession, and focus on the creative process underlines both poems. 

IV. Stevens has the hetero “a man and a woman,” in contrast to my “my lover and I,” which could connote a same sex relationship, and in my next line, "my lover and you and I," suggests a ménage à trois, or perhaps a duet accompanied by a bar of chocolate.

V. Stevens uses “beauty” twice. I use “beautiful” twice. My line, "I don't know which I prefer" is practically plagiarism.

VI. Steven uses “icicles.” I use “iced.” The idea of going from fall into winter is in both poems.

VII. “O thin men of Haddam,” Steven says. “O thin men of Switzerland,” I say. This is nearly a theft. Perhaps my lightest stanza and most outright move of satire.

VIII. Both poems use “accents.” In mine, “blackbirds” appear and sing in direct homage to Stevens.

There is no chocolate in this stanza, and the tone is slightly serious, and the humor has diminished.

IX. The correlation is one of ideas. The blackbird marks “the edge of one of many circles.” I use “before, during, and after,” which is clearly evocative, but also like Stevens, expresses this idea of an ongoing continuity.

X. Steven’s "bawds" in his phrase “bawds of euphony” sounds so similar to bards that bawds must surely refer to poets. In "Chocolate Ways," the poet is about to sing.

Even though chocolate in not mentioned, I do employ “the colors of the earth,” referencing the different colors of chocolate. Similarly, Stevens also uses a color in his stanza--green.

XI. Both poems use “Connecticut.” My use is satirical but not just satirical. Snow evokes Christmas, and the idea of Christmas in Connecticut is somewhat iconic.

The speaker of my poem arrives with Louis Vuitton luggage. And how would one describe the color of Vuitton? Chocolate. Like the blackbird, chocolate has to find a way to get in every stanza.

XII. Stevens says, “The river is moving.” I say, “The air is moving.” I borrow the word “cedar” from stanza thirteen of "Thirteen Ways." Another theft. I've stolen a lot.

Chocolate is not in my stanza because by this time chocolate is everywhere in the same way that Frank O'Hara can write about orange without mentioning orange.

XIII. In both poems, it starts to snow. In mine, the poem ends as sex begins, or maybe, just maybe, the speaker is going to eat a bar of chocolate, or perhaps, it is both.

I think by now I’ve proven that I’ve done all five of Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments. Wait, you say, what about using landlords? Darlings, you’re right, I didn’t use landlords in my poem, but I did use it in this essay. After all, to quote another twentieth-century icon, Andy Warhol, “Art is what you can get away with.” Did I?

 

Ars Poetica,

James

Website: www.robertochristiano.weebly.com

WINNER OF THE WRITER'S CENTER OF BETHESDA HALLOWEEN AWARD

WINNER OF THE WRITER'S CENTER HALLOWEEN AWARD

Just hours ago, I was notified that I won the Halloween Award from my alma mater--The Writer's Center of Bethesda--for my scary, satirical poem, The Eater of Poetry. You can read the poem on their website. I have always loved Halloween so this is particularly gratifying. http://www.writer.org/writingcontest

No Things But Ideas: A Portrait of Frank O’Hara’s “Why I Am Not a Painter”

Why I Am Not a Painter

 

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

 

 

Frank O’Hara’s poetry versus painting poem opens simply. It is a declarative sentence that will unfold into a declarative poem. Particularly note the present tense, which will remain constant as a tennis net between two players. The question why introduces the second line, and with that question, the challenge is set down before the jousters. O’Hara takes up the gauntlet, and since he is the poet, our expectation is that he will answer by telling us why poetry is better—at least for him.

 

O’Hara affection for painters is obvious. He says he would rather be one, and then, before you know it, he is drinking with one. Goldberg is clearly a friend. How casual and upfront the verb phrasing is here: I drop in, I drink, we drink, I look up. Everything is very immediate, very everyday, a bit prosaic, and sounds like something out of Dick and Jane. Goldberg, however, is drinking while working, or at least drinking during his work day. When O’Hara creates his poems in stanza three, he will not be imbibing, he will be thinking.  

 

As the second stanza continues, O’Hara makes a obvious observation: sardines are a prominent part of the painting. The actual word SARDINES stands out. How could it not? It’s the only word in the stanza that is all in caps. When O’Hara creates his poems on orange, orange is not in caps, at least not until the end. Another word here that has a lot of coverage is go. Between go and going, there are six appearances of the verb, five of which occur in stanza two. One feels the activity of painting going on—the slash and flash of color and brush—the action in the action paintings of Goldberg. Painting is an act of doing. The stanza closes with the completion of SARDINES, but oddly enough, all that’s left of the fishes are the letters that spell the word.

 

The last stanza showcases O’Hara’s creative process. He begins by thinking—it’s a mental construct, or should I say, a work of mental construction. O’Hara is thinking about something a painter might contemplate as well. A color: orange. He writes a line about orange, that soon turns into words, not lines. Here, he is playing off the meanings of line. Line is a basic tool in the painter’s kit, and therefore, of no use to O’Hara. Days go by is the only phrase that is exactly repeated from stanza two. O’Hara is interjecting a note of similarity between the two processes, which I would summarize as art takes time. In the end of this quirky story, O’Hara writes twelve poems called ORANGES, without mentioning orange, that express the terribleness of life. Goldberg’s SARDINES still has the word “sardines” in it, but unlike ORANGES, no clue is given as to the meaning or content of the painting. Abstraction wins out over the representational. We have a reversal, a chiasmus, of Williams’ famous quote, no ideas but in things—no things but ideas.

 

 

DECISIONS AND REVISIONS

INTRO: Here are two versions of "Young Woman at a Window" by William Carlos Williams. In the second version, Williams adheres more steadfastly to the ideas of the imagist movement. My essay for my Modern American Poetry class examines and cross-examines the differences between the two. For more information on the imagist movement, link to Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5658

Young Woman at a Window  (version 1)

 

While she sits
there

with tears on
her cheek

her cheek on
her hand

this little child
who robs her

knows nothing of
his theft

but rubs his
nose

 

Young Woman at a Window  (version 2)

 

She sits with
tears on

her cheek
her cheek on

her hand
the child

in her lap
his nose

pressed
to the glass

 

 

DECISIONS AND REVISIONS

or

MIDDLE-AGED POET AT A WINDOW

 

 

    In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

                                                                         T. S. Eliot

“Young Woman at a Window”—the very title calls to mind painting. In fact, it is the title of a painting by Paul Gaugin—an impressionistic painting of a young woman wistfully gazing at the viewer, the window behind her open to a glorious mottled sky. The painting here by William Carlos Williams is shorn of the softness of impressionism. There is no kind wash of delicate hues blending gently into another. This poem is more like the clinical observation of a psychoanalyst—the doctor stating what he observes. And isn’t observation the prerequisite of a good doctor? If you do not observe correctly and dispassionately, then you do not diagnose correctly. And so, with “Young Woman at a Window,” my dear ModPos, we enter deeply into one of the primary markers of the imagist manifesto. Clarity, not charity.

Here, Professor Al, by presenting two versions, graciously allows us to watch, like student interns in a operating theatre, the intense, delicate, tricky surgery of revision. What is happening here? What is being cut away? When the poem is moved into the recovery room, what has changed and why?

On an obvious level, there are fewer words in version two. We have gone from twenty-nine to twenty-three words. Only six words less, you might say, but in a poem of this brevity, six words are a lot. Just as in haiku (also an image centric genre), there is a condensing and paring and cutting process. No excess is permitted. Only what is precise and necessary is allowed. Immediately, we notice the absence of the words “robs” and “theft,” but what does that signify?

Let us proceed to the heart of the procedure. What has been removed is the interpretation of the images. In version one, we associate the young woman’s crying with the child because we are explicitly told the child has robbed her—indeed, he has committed a “theft.” The child is oblivious to the young woman because he “knows nothing.” Even the act of rubbing his nose places the child in a different world--a world of indifference. Williams tells us how to interpret what he has shown us. She is crying because the child has robbed her of her life, and the child could care less.

In version two, the doctor’s test results version, we are handed the images and left to interpret the facts on our own. The child’s nose is pressed to the glass this time—an image of opposition. He is not in her arms or reclining on her breast. (Such sweetness would never do.) Even though this is an image of conflict, it is not interpreted for us. There is no theft. There is no robbery. There is simply his schnoze angled against the glass. Because we are presented with two unadorned images—the weeping young woman and the child with a contrary gesture—we are left to diagnose the pairing. She weeps because she is bound to the child, and the child wants none of it. Perhaps the child too wants to be unbound.

 

 

 

ModPo Class / MODERN AMERICAN POETRY / Emily Dickinson Essay

After many years, I have decided to take a class--a MOOC class to be specific. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. I am taking Modern American Poetry taught by Al Filreis from the University of Pennsylvania. I've just finished my first essay on Emily Dickinson poem, "I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed." Here is the poem, followed by my essay, followed by Professor Als' comments.

I taste a liquor never brewed [edit]
I taste a liquor never brewed --
From Tankards scooped in Pearl --
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of Air -- am I --
And Debauchee of Dew --
Reeling -- thro
endless summer days --
From inns of Molten Blue --

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door --
When Butterflies -- renounce their "drams" --
I shall but drink the
more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats --
And Saints -- to windows run
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the -- Sun 
-------------------------------------------------------

Alternate Spirituality in Emily Dickinson’s “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed”
or
Getting Drunk Off Nature
  If I believe it then it’s religion.
If you believe it then it’s myth.
–Kenneth C. Davis,
Don’t Know Much About Mythology


Right from the start, I taste a liquor never brewed, enters into an extraordinary realm. Dickinson begins with the impossible. You cannot taste liquor never brewed. There is a parallel here with I dwell in possibility—a fairer house than prose. I am unaware of any house built with bricks and planks of prose. The language of the impossible is extended to the next phrase--from tankards scooped in pearl. Well, if you have a tankard lined in pearl, that’s got to be a collector’s item. Dickinson wants to take us on a journey beyond the possible into a world of her interiority of infinite possibility.

This metaphysical ecstatic state is manifested through the imagery of inebriation—the word inebriate is even used. We know from stanza one that this liquor is fairly potent stuff—more potent than any vat along the Rhine. In the second stanza, she refers to herself as the debauchee. This is followed by reeling, and even more drinking, and concludes with calling herself a little tippler.

Nature is the drink of choice in this case. She is drunk from sheer air--inebriate of air--and dew--debauchee of dew--and reels from summer days--endless summer days. Not only is Emily drunk, so are her pals in nature. We have the drunken bee and the butterflies with their drams. Her identification with nature is absolute—this is her
religion.  

With stanza three, we have the returning rhetoric of the impossible. Landlords do not turn out bees from foxgloves, and butterflies do not renounce drams—at least not in my backyard. Indeed, such behavior is "unnatural." By extension and implication, Emily is also expected to behave in a way that is unnatural and not
go frolicking about in nature like a drunken wanton. Like the bee and butterfly, she is subject to the landlords. (ED puts landlords in quotation marks.) But who are these enforcers of the unnatural?

Beginning with seraphs topped with snowy hats, the idea of the love of nature as a spiritual  drunkenness is challenged by a new metaphor--landlords as the guardsmen of conventional religiosity. Notice the word is landlord, not landlady. Clergy was all male in ED’s day. The seraphs with those hats could easily be bishops with miters. And then we have the saints running to windows. Here we are in a church, and the congregants are gawking out the window at Emily--the little tippler—who is outside (outside not inside)—and
leaning against the--what?—the sun. Notice how the last dash is in ungrammatical position. You can’t have the followed by a dash. This puts in a pause that accentuates that last one syllable word. But the word is not
son, as in Christ--it is sun as in nature. Because the words are homonyms, we cannot help but think son when ED uses sun. This puts a lot of emphasis on sun. Emily is the non-traditionalist, the outsider, the woman in the
world of priestly men, the writer who puts in a dash where no dashes are allowed, who finds her alternate spirituality in nature.


Professor Al: James, this is one of the best essays I've read in this bunch. You really are able to follow the shifting
flow of the conceits, and you have a sense that they are the key to understanding the formal way in which the poem itself is reeling. Really well done. 

WHAT'S NEW: Beurre Blanc in the current issue of The Northern Virginia Review

My story, Beurre Blanc, about a young woman recovering (or perhaps not recovering) from a tumultous breakup while studying classic French cooking in Paris, is in the current issue of The Northern Virginia Review.  http://blogs.nvcc.edu/tnvr/

MORE NEW NEWS: Gavea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry (2013 Edition)

I have been anthologized.  Gavea-Brown, a publisher out of Brown University, has chosen my Pushcart nominated poem, Why I Sang At Dinner, along with four others, for this anthology.
http://tinyurl.com/k6ug6oz


back cover:
 “…Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

These words, engraved
on a bronze plaque and mounted in the Statue of Liberty in 1903, have become
emblematic of the American experience. They are the words of Emma Lazarus, a
poet who like the twenty-three other poets represented in this anthology, could
acknowledge, and at times perhaps even embrace, Portuguese roots while forging
an indisputably American identity.

Portuguese-American poets are a varied
group – in theme and style as well as in geographic distribution. What they have
in common, in addition to the ancestral link, is that they are American poets.
Their work falls within the traditions of the best in that
category.

Two Poems in the current issue of SOLO NOVO

Solo Novo, the literary journal, has a theme issue entitled 122 days, referring to "poems written & about live and events between September 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011."  My poems, Sky Blue, about the 9/11 anniversary, and What Do You Think Of, a humorous take on news overload, are featured. http://tinyurl.com/m28c49v

WHAT'S NEXTGavea-Brown has published twelve of my poems in the last three
years.  Three new poems will be included in this year's issue
of Gavea-Brown--A Bilingual Journal of Portuguese-American Studies and
Letters.
http://tinyurl.com/k6ug6oz

MY WRITING STORY

My writing story began with a 35 year career in acting, starting at the age of 10. An early play, Please Hold, about an automated secretary, won a playwrighting competition for high school students. Armed with a BA in Drama from George Mason University (1981), I was active in the Washington DC theatre/film/television scene. I coscripted the films, Dr. Billy Saves DC and Flowers from Albert, which aired on Metrovision TV. Two short plays, The Hamster of Happiness and On a Train Riding into the Night, were produced at the Source Theatre in DC. During the day, I worked as a library technician at the Library of Congress, where I heard many great writers (Coleman Barks reading Rumi, Yvetushenko, Peter Taylor, and Sharon Olds stand out). In 1994, I began studying creative writing in earnest at the Writer's Center of Bethesda where I took classes for ten years. I was fortunate to have Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Taylor as my teacher in poetic forms. The class was called The Answerable Form. My poetry was first published in Red River Review, followed by Gavea-Brown, A Bilingual Journal of Portuguese-American Studies and Letters, The Sow's Ear, The Hiram Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Solo Novo. Gavea-Brown, published out of Brown University, publishes my work on a regular basis. I am included their anthology, The Gavea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poets. A lot of my material for Gavea-Brown derives from my father's story as a Portuguese immigrant. In 2009 my poem, Why I Sang at Dinner, was published in Prairie Schooner and subsequently nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. In 2010 The Northern Virginia Review published my story, The Care of Roses, and awarded it their Fiction Prize. My story, Beurre Blanc, a story of cooking and heartbreak, is in the current issue. My chief aim as a writer is to continually publish fiction, poetry, and drama. My current mentor is Anne Becker, poet in residence at the Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center and former Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland (Yes, Takoma Park has a Poet Laureate).