THIS IS NOT WASHINGTON DC early draft 1/30/06
Posted: 31 January 2006
Word Count: 472
Summary: Prompt from Poetry Seminar: not confessional confessional poem based on a line quoted by Nell: "The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth" -- Jean Cocteau
Related Works: Metamorphism the Fifth Cycle • What Rough beast (Revised) •
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THIS IS NOT WASHINGTON DC
Sean Farragher
“The poet is a liar who always
speaks the truth.” – Jean Cocteau
Grit dries on the skin.
We smell cities larger
than the universe where
we were welcomed as
aliens long ago. Nothing
works. Toilets foul. We
gasp silently, incubate
the lung; grow fast flowers
women and men with
dark petals as glacial dancers
insinuate their loins, clap,
catch the merry-go-round
ring, and there is not failure.
Grit embed in skin when
terrified angels step up
lead line motorcade, a
direct touch, some one
observes mouth and hands
for “tells” – secrets from poker
games, or the map of mountain
trace, -- finding the ages before
strung out in great signs.
Billboards to advertise,
also lies to uproot grit
falls in place, marches
in swart steps, joins
warfare held in lungs --
how silly immune T cells
at the Ball show too much
ass, cleavage or their package
tightly bound in silk splits
the boundary or bulges
as a planetary object out
of space and simple talk.
There is no grit to clean
when the Roman baths
opened for the masses --
but the city clouds again.
It dies slowly, but never
to the end place of large
exponents. Revived by
corporate love bites
angular teeth that
leave signature and
the monuments,
Lincoln, Jefferson --
oh holy night Dr. King’s
crematorium is empty.
Washington’s brickbats
can not imitate life or
the prospect of some
cool journey across
from the last Congress
where Alice twirled her hair
and Stieglitz photographed
the child with his lens cap on
kept her free from the grit
and diamonds. Lewis did not know
the score. Legal arguments
reversed, reached the third circuit
Appellate Count to half cheers.
This is not Washington DC.
But a replica of some other
domain that barely succeeds
as impression or pantomime.
We cannot walk in London.
New York was never born.
Yesterday, I ran to Amsterdam
gathered the demons and art,
but there was only pleasure --
not jealousy or disreputable
talk about the swan song
of the earth bound with terra
in a package mailed with death.
We are not the earth. We do
not tremble, -- Terra was
bound, as she found her
master set forward displaced
as grit falls as clean snow.
I mold this snow woman twice
Each version works but fails
The third, marvelous, rides
upon my knee in street cars
call "Desire" as Williams
lifted the lid of the garbage
and smelled the wasted fish
without vinegar or ketchup.
No blood or acid pools there.
We bleed opposites with
left over cadaver arms; free
of spleen, humors and blood,
they are alive, of course,
and in this "Brave New World"
death doesn’t matter.
No one else can live but
the fallen sails and smashed bones.
first draft 1/30/06
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Comments by other Members
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 Xenny at 19:34 on 31 January 2006
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What I like most about it is the repetition of 'grit'. Without this I might have thrown my hands up in despair!
I still had real problems. Every time I felt I was getting into the poem you said something unexpected and it slipped away from me again.
Your comment about giving imagination power makes your poems easier for me to accept. Because I can think, 'maybe he doesn't *precisely* know what he means either'! (Don't upset me and tell me you do, absolutely, 100% of the time).
I do love the way you string these images/imaginings together, but I still can't help feeling I would be happier if you seemed to show more desire to connect with the reader, rather than impact on the reader. On the other hand, it's your poetry, and there is no rule that says poetry should be any one way over another.
Then again I feel like asking what it is you want to achieve with your poems. (This sounds antagonistic but I mean it very simply).
One thing I like, but I'm not absolutely sure I've got the right impression, is the way you don't seem to denounce anything completely (like there's always at least a hint of the fact that you're not in a position to say 'this is bad'). In this one though I have to say I wasn't so sure!
My favourite bits of this poem:
...Toilets foul. We
gasp silently, incubate
the lung;...
Yesterday, I ran to Amsterdam
gathered the demons and art,
but there was only pleasure --
I mold this snow woman twice
Each version works but fails
The third, marvelous, rides
upon my knee in street cars
call "Desire" as Williams
lifted the lid of the garbage
and smelled the wasted fish
without vinegar or ketchup.
Though the 'call' halted my reading as it seemed to stop the flow
I also liked
.......dancers
insinuate their loins, clap,
catch the merry-go-round
ring, and there is not failure.
But I wasn't sure about 'ring' being in there - I really like how it reads without it.
There were a few other bits which caught me as well, but you say this is a first draft so I'll wait and see what changes rather than picking them out.
<Added>
oops, sorry forgot to close the italics
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 Nell at 19:57 on 31 January 2006
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I'll try to fix them or the whole thread will go pear-shaped.
<Added>
Sean, I can't keep up with you. You seem to write poems more quickly than I'm able to get my head around them. I did read the previous one you posted for the confessional exercise but now that's gone and this one appears, and it seems there's material from that in this unless I'm losing the plot.
Can I say that this doesn't really feel confessional - to me it's more a poem in which you appear, a poem with a forceful message in similar vein to your others. When you said you were going to try the exercise I was hoping for the 'feline presence' and wondering what you'd make of it.
But as always, and not wanting to echo others' thoughts, I do find some amazing language and imagery in your work and sometimes feel that each poem contains material enough for a dozen more disciplined works. But I guess you're a one-off with your own agenda and will walk your own path, come what may.
Nell.
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Xenny at 20:00 on 31 January 2006
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Thanks Nell. Sorry about that - I didn't notice they'd remained for my edit too.
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Paul Isthmus at 00:44 on 04 February 2006
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Well, gee whizz. I find your poetry compelling Sean, I've checked out a few other examples of your work on the site and I have to say that I'm intrigued, and I enjoyed reading them. I'm compelled to say more because I don't know what I'm going to say.
Some of your images are excellent. In a lot of your other work, as for this one, the openings are very strong. I think this is because of the way your images make an impact. They hit you. I'm going to go for it and attempt a close reading, because that's my favourite way of doing it. I should really go to bed.
The title, this is not washington dc, ceci n'est pas une pipe - get ready for some political surrealism it says. Then the quote - get ready for some truth. There's a quote from Plato I like which is relevant in this context; 'Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.'
Grit dries on the skin.
We smell cities larger
than the universe where
we were welcomed as
aliens long ago.
Immediately controversial. Aliens long ago? Are we in the miasmic realm of the occult American corporate apocalypse? It feels that way. You're telling us the truth here though. Have you ever seen that book called 'Nothing in this book is true but it's exactly how things are'? Well, something in your poetry has the feeling of this. What saves it from dismissable quackery for me is the kalaidoscopic imagery and the force behind the words, which is always a step beyond.
Nothing
works. Toilets foul. We
gasp silently, incubate
the lung; grow fast flowers
women and men with
dark petals as glacial dancers
insinuate their loins, clap,
catch the merry-go-round
ring, and there is not failure.
This images are laced with the kind of artificial endeavours and their hopelessness and disconnection from things that need to be done (Toilets foul, but we can grow fast flowers) - and the social reality and relationships that arise from these endeavours, - there is not failure in the terms determined by them. Is this a semantic trick like saying 'no challenge' instead of 'no problem', like I saw on Louis Theroux? This first stanza is excellent. Nothing is what it is - there is not failure - evidently there is colossal failure, but as endeavor and judgement have become increasingly separate from basic things, there is only success in a kind of artificial environment where a clear goal is defined. Video game missions - and what does this do to relationships between the sexes? Go in with your wingman. Dark petals. So much going on here. And yet.. there's more. A lot more. I read it through once and haven't got a clue, so let's see where it goes...
Grit embed in skin when
terrified angels step up
lead line motorcade, a
direct touch, some one
observes mouth and hands
for “tells” – secrets from poker
games, or the map of mountain
trace, -- finding the ages before
strung out in great signs.
Grit is repeated - the line in the first stanza that seemed to exist before the real poem began, is the thread. What does this grit mean? Grit - like painful dust? it dries on your skin, embeds in your skin. Something pervasive that increases its impact in incremental stages. An irritant. Manmade grit. Salt for thawing frosty pavements (I prefer the word 'sidewalk'). It's everywhere, like the dust in His Dark Materials. It's fallout from something - something manmade. I have no clue about terrified angels and the rest of the imagery in this stanza though. What does it mean? If you are going to write imagistic poetry, you have to be really strict with what you throw in. There's political fear and gambling and money suggested... but I think these can be handled better somehow. The great signs bit at the end links nicely with the opening of the next stanza though
Billboards to advertise,
also lies to uproot grit
falls in place, marches
in swart steps, joins
warfare held in lungs --
how silly immune T cells
at the Ball show too much
ass, cleavage or their package
tightly bound in silk splits
the boundary or bulges
as a planetary object out
of space and simple talk.
You can't just use as many images as you can possibly cram in! Some of them are so good - 'warfare held in lungs' echoes neatly with the incubate the lung line above. This is what works - you do it with grit and lungs... obviously you can't do it for everything.
There is a funny kind of justification in art of all kinds these days that you can make which I don't actually think is viable or at all acceptable anymore, on a very serious level. I could justify this poem as overfacing the reader and therefore echoing the overfacing quality or nature of modern life, where there is too much, a kind of mess - and so the poem, reflecting this, is valid. Or you could justify a boring play by saying it's about boredom, and creates that effect in the viewer. But this is just lazy, a postmodern hangover, and also it dumbs down art and spoils the transformative effect that art can have, and by extension and reflection, human beings can have. I believe the lazy synopsis of postmodern axioms (what you might pick up in, say, a semester's light reading so you hav something to say in a seminar at university) actually removes facilty and imagination in individuals and makes them feel hopeless and ineffectual in the world. And I'm not saying that everything must have an overt, socially constructive message like 'racism is bad' or 'don't kill whales' - this is just as bad and dumbs down too. But I do believe that a work of art of any kind, done well, can act as a kind of 'engine of transformation' - empowering the reader, rather than confounding them - this is how art changes the world, if it does such a thing. What exactly did Auden mean when he said 'poetry makes nothing happen' - that it is divorced from life - or that it has a magical effect - it can make movement or 'happeningness' - from nothing.
Sean, I'm going to have to give up my close reading at this stage and go to bed. I think your stuff is great, but you need to cut! Give the images some room to breathe - if you are making a point about the suffocating effect of too much imagery (which I don't think you are) then you would still need to change it. I had an idea of a few things you were saying, possibly, in the first stanza. The rest, reading through, are so chock full it is impossible to find a place within the poem to look at it - because you're standing on another image. It's like a high speed lift in a skyscraper going down from the top floor to the basement, crowded with torn magazines and papers reading each other. So give it some space. Then the images will start acting of their own accord. There is one section you seem to attempt to do this, almost as an aside; perhaps the lift doors open a second only to reveal a glass screen, behind which you appear with a plaque, Dylan style, which reads
This is not Washington DC.
But a replica of some other
domain that barely succeeds
as impression or pantomime.
You just come right out and say it... and the images don't stick to it. The doors close, the images try to use this key to decode themselves before the lift hurtles into the basement for the inevitable and terrifying crash - or power cut and gradual starvation, in which the images eat each other.
As this, it kind of works, maybe.. but I think it could be better. Hard to say how. A deliberated culling of some of the imagery perhaps. Maybe one of them could get out of the lift, open out not as possibilities in the mind of the reader, but as a line within the poem that offers a more refined distillation, leading to deeper, more specific contemplation in reading.
I could spend more time on this - this is me discussing my thoughts and not finalised criticism. The images, I'm sure, could yield up more, open out into bigger pictures in themselves, but what I say above is what this poem does to me now. The fact that I want to spend more time on it is testament that, whatever criticism might be levelled, it remains compelling - what remains more importantly, I feel, is Xenny's question - what do you want to achieve with it?
Paul I
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Paul Isthmus at 00:52 on 04 February 2006
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Sean, just read through again and seen some more - the insinuated loins and dark petals with the showing too much ass and packages bound in split silk.. and planet groin...aliens... yeah... and then more. It yields. Good stuff. You require a lot of reading! Will do more in depth before I comment next time. Then in more of a position to say something really useful.
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seanfarragher at 14:27 on 04 February 2006
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I appreciate very much, Paul, the deep criticism. I write in layers, or as much as words become layers, so the imagery may need to be cut a bit. I see the connections, and to say what they are would slow the poem. I don't have a pound to edit my work as Eliot did in the Wasteland. Have you seen that famous editing....
What do I want to do. I want to write the music of words that reflect my political depression. No, I want to, as you have done, think about how a poem, the virtual world and actual mass connect.
I am dismayed how many Americans do not have any sense of history. I am not talking about the university crowd (even there they do not see past now) -- I mean not knowing anything (NOTHING) about how we arrived.
During President's BUSH's State of the Union Address the other night I found myself screaming at the man like he could hear.
My son thought I was going mad (and he sees it in a similar way)
Again, thanks
Again, what I want from my writing. I write because I must, and I want to create poems that when read aloud or read for depth have impact on a reader. I don't want to convince. I want to encourage thought, their thought.
Sean
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