How in tune are you to your own poetry?

[The_Fool]

I enjoy the jazz, blues especially talks to me.

 

[DeepAsleep]

I enjoy the jazz, blues especially talks to me.

On the subject of music and inspiration:

I've been going back, more and more, to post-rock:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0o8JCxjjpM

 

[Angeline]

I enjoy the jazz, blues especially talks to me.

We knew we understood this about each other when we discovered we both loved that Langston Hughes album.

 

[Angeline]

On the subject of music and inspiration:

I've been going back, more and more, to post-rock:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0o8JCxjjpM

What is post-rock? More linkage, por favor? (I am just a dumb hippie...)

 

[Tzara]

What is post-rock? More linkage, por favor? (I am just a dumb hippie...)

Wikipedia defines it thusly. Note that the notable "regional scenes" include Montreal, Iceland, Chicago, Louisville, and Glasgow.

Iceland? Hmmm.

It does mention these guys who are kinda cool, but remind me of an evening attenuated by too much indulgence with the active ingredient in hemp. I mean, they make Cowboy Junkies seem like thrash metal.

Yes, Ms. A, that is a Lou Reed song. On Miltown, perhaps, but still....

I do love being pointed at other music, though, so thanks, DA.

 

[Tzara]

I've been thinking (never a good thing - lol) about where we get our poetic influences and styles. I adore the absurdist and nonsense poets like Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, and I adore the darkness of poets like Poe. I don't write like them, but they do influence me in my short quip nihilistic lines. What are your favourite poets, how do they influence you and what do you take from them?

Oh, heck and hellation. I don't think I answered this. My influences change all the effin' time. If you'd asked me who influenced me in poetry 40 years ago (uh, not that you were, like, around then), I would have named Edward Estlin Cummings. At other times through the years, it would have been such different poets as Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Plath, Sexton, Millay, Shelley, Coleridge, MacLow, Knott, Olds, Stallings, C. K. Williams.

Geez. A whole shitload of others. WCW, Snodgrass, Berryman, Shakespeare.

I, like, forget them all.

Here's my off-the-cuff take of whom I'm most thinking about now:

• My much beloved Kenneth Koch, for his humor and bent vision, and for his lovely gentleness.
• Alan Dugan, for his humor and bent vision, and for his, um, unpleasantness.
• Kim Addonozio, for her excellent poetry and for other, more carnal, reasons.
• Marianne Moore, because she counts. (And liked baseball, and that funky hat.)

Close enough for now, anyway.

 

[Angeline]

Wikipedia defines it thusly. Note that the notable "regional scenes" include Montreal, Iceland, Chicago, Louisville, and Glasgow.

Iceland? Hmmm.

It does mention these guys who are kinda cool, but remind me of an evening attenuated by too much indulgence with the active ingredient in hemp. I mean, they make Cowboy Junkies seem like thrash metal.

Yes, Ms. A, that is a Lou Reed song. On Miltown, perhaps, but still....

I do love being pointed at other music, though, so thanks, DA.

Thank you. I could have looked it up, I know, but sometimes it's so lovely to be lazy and just ask.

Boy, I guess now I know what to listen to when I have insomnia. Actually Lou himself sounds like he's on Miltown sometimes, well in certain early VU stuff, but maybe that's John Cale's fault.

Eyez and I were in Blacksburg, Virginia a few days ago and I saw the Moog corporate headquarters. This music makes me think of Moog synthesizers.

Are you familiar with Hem and/or Ollabelle? I am really digging them both lately. The former is ethereal and the latter more carnal, but both great newer bands imo. And that's Levon Helm's daughter Amy singing lead in that Ollabelle clip. I think she's a chip off the old block, but way prettier.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

It does mention these guys who are kinda cool

I take it they're the band from Iceland, then?


LOL? Anybody?

 

[Tzara]

I take it they're the band from Iceland, then?


LOL? Anybody?

Sorry, no. East London.

 

[Tzara]

Thank you. I could have looked it up, I know, but sometimes it's so lovely to be lazy and just ask.

Of course it is. Why we all love the Internet.

Boy, I guess now I know what to listen to when I have insomnia. Actually Lou himself sounds like he's on Miltown sometimes, well in certain early VU stuff, but maybe that's John Cale's fault.

It is pretty sleepy. I don't know if they're always like that, though. That was the first cut that came up on YouTube, so I don't know if it was representative. I liked it, though. Though. though. zzzzz.



Mick and the boys had something to say about Miltown, by the way.

Eyez and I were in Blacksburg, Virginia a few days ago and I saw the Moog corporate headquarters. This music makes me think of Moog synthesizers.

Are you familiar with Hem and/or Ollabelle? I am really digging them both lately. The former is ethereal and the latter more carnal, but both great newer bands imo. And that's Levon Helm's daughter Amy singing lead in that Ollabelle clip. I think she's a chip off the old block, but way prettier.

No, unfamilar with all o'that, but off to listen. Have a safe trip back to Maine, if you aren't already there, and congrats on that house thing in Asheville.

And Charley, apologies for wandering off-topic. Kiss kiss?

 

[Tzara]

[T]hat's Levon Helm's daughter Amy singing lead in that Ollabelle clip. I think she's a chip off the old block, but way prettier.

Is that bass guy playing a slide? Cool!

Amy reminds me a bit of a young Bonnie Bramlett, but that may just be me. Nice clip.

Since that post-rock article mentioned PiL, I'll just link in this, which I first bought on EP.

Yeah. I know what that says about my judgment.

Calm down, everybody. Geez.

 

[CharleyH]

Oh, heck and hellation. I don't think I answered this. My influences change all the effin' time. If you'd asked me who influenced me in poetry 40 years ago (uh, not that you were, like, around then), I would have named Edward Estlin Cummings. At other times through the years, it would have been such different poets as Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Plath, Sexton, Millay, Shelley, Coleridge, MacLow, Knott, Olds, Stallings, C. K. Williams.

Geez. A whole shitload of others. WCW, Snodgrass, Berryman, Shakespeare.

I, like, forget them all.

Here's my off-the-cuff take of whom I'm most thinking about now:

• My much beloved Kenneth Koch, for his humor and bent vision, and for his lovely gentleness.
• Alan Dugan, for his humor and bent vision, and for his, um, unpleasantness.
• Kim Addonozio, for her excellent poetry and for other, more carnal, reasons.
• Marianne Moore, because she counts. (And liked baseball, and that funky hat.)

Close enough for now, anyway.

S'ok, thanks for answering now. I adore other voices and hearing about other experiences, or influences in this case.

I was thinking about this a bit more deeply. Poe was a definite interest to me as a got-along-with-everyone but didn't quite-wanna-fit-any-clique teen who wrote a lot of poetry, drew a lot of pictures, smoked a lot of pot and enjoyed Bauhaus and Sinead O'Conner as much as the Bangles and Etta James. Don't get me wrong, The Raven remains amongst my faves, but my taste has changed since that point in my life.

I am so with you on how influences change over time. I had a theory when I was in grade 13. Grade 13 was sort of the equivalent of pre-Uni-prep in Canada and I was 18 years old at the time. I was in an art class and we were to do a major 'art' project for the year and asked to journal our progress. However, the teacher, in order to assess our progress, occasionally asked us to answer specific questions in so many words to write in our journals. One of those questions was: who are your influences?

I didn't know what to say. My art was a bit influenced by this and a bit influenced by that. My answer was 'all artists' and then I wrote a history of how all artistic influences from Warhol (my major influence at the time) could be systematically traced back to the wall paintings in Lascaux (the only pre-historic ones I was aware of at that time).

I'd forgotten about that until your post, Tzara. Thank you for reminding me.

Since that point in my life and since the explosion of the Internet, I think poetic influence comes from more that just poetry or specific poets. How does everyone weigh in on this?

 

[Tzara]

Since that point in my life and since the explosion of the Internet, I think poetic influence comes from more than just poetry or specific poets. How does everyone weigh in on this?

Well, "influence" is a word that can mean all kinds of stuff. The poem I wrote for UYS's Annikey challenge originated with my reading John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and my wanting, based on that book, to use the wonderful, Communispeak word "revanchist" in a poem.

So, is that influence? I dunno. It influenced the content of that poem, though, besides just the title.

Don't mean it's a good poem, of course, but it did influence my writing it.

For overall influences in how I think, how I approach art, how I approach writing, how I approach, well, anything, I think I'd have to name the American composer/visual artist/poet/essayist John Cage and the Anglo-Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein as über-bigtime influencers. These two guys, and their various influencees, hangers-on, guys I found while doping around their Internet connections (like the logical positivists, the "happening" folks, Feyerabend, Rauschenberg, even (fer gawd's sake) Milton Babbitt and N. Russell Hanson) are all way influential in my thought, such as it is.

I know. I'm being sophomoric.

Whatever. Influence is everywhere, and often something that caught you years ago.

I think.

I think.







So what's the weather like in Porto? Better, undoubtedly, than Seattle.

Oh, just looked. Maybe not.

Paece.

 

[butters]

I think.

I think.

you think

therefore you is

 

[Epmd607]

Karl Popper and the Vienna Circle definitely impinges on my daily life. This morning I couldn't promise my wife I'd bring her a sandwich for lunch without Carnap and Waismann mocking the expression of my intention.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

I think poetic influence comes from more that just poetry or specific poets. How does everyone weigh in on this?

Agree.

I suppose if poems are like dreams, then there is outside source material mixed with some sort of internal processing.

Other poems, it seems to me, would be just another grouping of outside material. Quite an important grouping, I suppose, because no matter what kind of poetry one is doing, one is working a form that has been established by the history of poetry. If a person ends up with a piece that does not resemble some form established by the history of poetry, then what they have done is arguably not "poetry."

I believe my personal challenge lately has been to be more true to all the influences and internal things that want to express themselves through me, which at times could be awfully embarrassing. Not to say that it all needs to see the light of day, but I think there's a way of honoring all of life through poetry, whether it be laying on a sofa watching a made-for-tv movie in a boring beige apartment or falling in love in some terribly romantic city.