Poetry, A Serious Joke

There is something about a joke well-told that feels like poetry to me. And a poem, lean, with every word weighed and a zinger to punch you in the gut, that reminds me of a joke.

Maybe not a giggle or belly laugh but even a grimace lights a dim bulb with illumination that could be a serious delight. Both the poet and comedian use juxtaposition to great advantage transporting the reader to unimaginable places.

An extra word can kill it, a giveaway makes it stumble. The way a poem breathes, the pregnant pause, inflection, a gesture all arrest attention. If the teller/author doesn’t believe it, it shows.

Jerry Seinfeld spoke about a joke he had told hundreds of times which always got a laugh. One night doing his stand-up monologue he started to doubt it in the middle of the story. He thought to himself that it really wasn’t very funny but he knew the words so well he would tell it anyway because it led into his next joke. When he got to the punch-line nobody laughed. His doubt crept in between the words. The teller cultivates his own voice and cannot falter…. just as in poetry.

The poem also lives between the words in inexplicable ways. The line breaks, enjambments and how it is laid out on the page can all be crucial elements, even by omission.

Great poets, like Emily Dickinson, celebrated life from her remote perch. It took society decades to catch up with her unpunctuated exuberance.

Poets approach their material obliquely, with a certain frisson, often with irony, using language in unexpected ways. Transformation can be an elongated, demanding stretch or leap, landing in the realm of the absurd. The serious joke re-states and affirms the conundrum, I can’t go on. I’ll go on; funny the way Beckett is funny.

Many contemporary poems are simple anecdotes with a jagged right-hand margin. Even if the subject is contemplative or grim there is a tension built up in the telling and a final release…just like a short tale told with wit. Neither a poem or a joke can be explained; it loses everything in translation. As T.S. Eliot said, the genius of poetry is that it can communicate before it is understood...just like a well-told joke.

The Political Divide

The Scalias party with the Ginsbergs every New Years Eve. Think all the things they must not talk about.

The two camps, like tribes, are sure of their righteousness. This probably describes 85% of the electorate. The undecided, generally low-information, fickle or cynical voters will determine our fate….if they bother to vote at all. We are in the hands of swing voters in swing states.

What moves these folks? Elections call into play the same function as buying a car or computer; associative images. Is this the man or message with whom I can identify? Will he quench my thirst, get me the beautiful woman or the house on the tree-lined street? Is he the guy who I want to look at for another four years or do I want a new face?

Americans are highly trained consumers sniffing out the hoax, the pretender, the hot air. Or we think we are. Then how did we end up with George W. Bush? The sellers more often than we’d like to think, out-think us. They know how to manipulate mass audiences using key words, repetitively, freighted with positives or negatives. Suddenly Saul Alinsky pours out of Gingrich’s mouth in every speech associating him with Obama as if he is test-marketing a new product. His audience never heard of Alinsky but knows he stands for Jewish, Russian, Trotsky, trouble-maker, not one of us.

We wait for our buzz words and they listen for theirs. We require a more compelling narrative. Everyone likes a good story. Republicans use the Puritan ethic fable; hard work is rewarded by God; idle hands are the devil’s tools. By extension this means that the unemployed are lazy and the handicapped are slackers, all taking advantage of a bleeding heart Liberal government. Crap galore, as my pharmacology professor use to say.

Liberals also have a story to tell which, I contend, has a more universal appeal. Rather than invoking Benjamin Franklin’s, God helps those who help themselves, which most Americans wrongly attribute to the Bible, we might remind others of Jesus’ words, to care for the least among us.

Americans are a compassionate people. We are taught to love our neighbors, to turn our other cheek, to accommodate diversity. We are charitable and empathic. And we do not have a truly meritorious ladder to climb. We have long recognized the role of government. I would argue that Republicans lie when they rant against government. Is that the same institution that grants fat Pentagon contracts, that sends troops abroad, overtly and covertly, to violate the sovereignty of other nations, the same government that offers oil and farm subsidies, the one that created our railroads and highways sprouting the Gilded Age, oil multinationals and giant automakers?

The Republican myth-makers obscure their greed and drive for un-bridled privilege, along with a twisted version of history which engenders fear and misdirected animus.

Can the great chasm between camps be closed or bridges erected? By any rational measure the 1% should not garner 50% support. The 99% who have been short-changed and deceived need to wake up and align themselves with their own Judeo-Christian values, if you will. The American model is an experiment in participatory government, not bestowed by the wealthy but acclaimed at the ballot box by the non-propertied, by woman and minorities…all of them denied, at first, by Conservatives. In time, the electorate/consumer will see that the house on the hill is not theirs.

Super Bowl

Even though Hallmark hasn't figured out how to cash in on it, the Super Bowl is our true national holiday, the Sunday set aside in which we pay homage to the two guiding principles of American life….aggression and consumerism, might and material goods. Hopefully the violence is benign and the advertising results in purchases sufficient to ratchet up the economy.

There is nothing to get the blood circulating so much as rooting for our favorite gladiators. And if winning isn’t enough there is the betting; the point spread, the total score etc… Ten billion dollars is expected to be exchanged on this game by 200 million people. Once again it will be, by far, the most watched TV program of the year.

Too bad wars couldn’t be settled this way; wolfing down beer and pizza and no loss of life. The best part is that on Monday morning nothing will have changed. Everybody cares and then nobody cares.……..unless you bet and lost your shirt. Are we reaching the point when the existential questions of life are settled, once removed and with no consequences?

On the other hand there is the coming together. The living room becomes a sort of public space with animated discourse; some between friends, some directed at the TV set. For a few hours the political divide is bridged, class and race are set aside. New alliances are forged. A new occupy movement is sprung.

Another American phenomenon….99% of those in attendance in Indianapolis will be White. 90% of the players are Black. Bigots will live in Black skin jeering White opponents. But they’ll soon get over it.

Next month is March Madness followed by the NBA finals where a few racists may experience a humanistic awakening but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Some people, I’m told, mute the game and turn up the volume just for the commercials. A new species has emerged; avid viewers of advertising. Everything has become commodified. Our fantasies are marketed, bought and sold. The manipulated enjoying the manipulators.

Indeed, this has become a much-anticipated art form. What new products will be unveiled in astonishing ways that knock our jerseys off our backs? Forget the game. The enduring memory will be Apple’s latest or some new technology, without which, we never knew our remaining days could not be lived.

While all this is going on, about a dozen of us will gather for our monthly Salon, watch a film on great Directors, munch some morsels and talk about the issues raised or anything else on our mind …as long as it doesn’t get around to the game. Not that we are above such things, only off to the side.

Robinson Still Running

My friend insists Jackie Robinson was out. 

Yes and No, I say. 

He’s running still in fields of MLK’s dream 

since that ’55 Series, not only toward, but from. 

 He is running from the strange fruit of the noose, 

from white sheets and the back of the bus, 

a unanimous Supreme Court decision in his cleats. 

He carries generations on his back. 

His route is underground, an up-hill ninety feet, 

swung low to carry him home…. plate points north. 

And there is Yogi, the philosopher, Berra, of all people, 

who never said half of what he said. 

If there’s a fork in the road, take it, 

because nobody goes that way since it’s too crowded. 

Yogi understands the every which way of life. 

He lives in the in-between in a run-down 

between safe and out and when he speaks 

you listen hard and scratch your head. 

Yogi knew and Jackie knew they would collide, 

ball and cleats, cloud of dust, ump leaning, cameras flashing 

and another fifty thousand umps in the stands with perfect eyes. 

Jackie had done it eighteen times before. 

Not the fastest man coming down the line 

but he could slide falling away and hook, 

even late, he owned an inch of plate. 

Yogi tore off his mask then stomped and swore as if it really mattered. 

In ’54 the high court, all nine umps, ruled him safe to integrate. 

Jackie got a jump, already heading home. 

Baseball is a gentleman’s game, they say, 

watched by poets, followed for its geometry and stats, 

seen by hayseeds and men in straw hats 

with white shirts and skin to match. 

Jackie Robinson dared them all, 

brought color, moved it from the pasture to the hood. 

He stole hearts, snapped chains, swiped white bases 

and turned fans to see themselves.

Bank Job

The man behind me is wearing a ski mask and we aren’t skiing. He just locked the door. All I want is a roll of quarters. The wash is in the rinse cycle and I need three quarters for the drier. The voice from the ski mask tells everyone to get down on the floor and shut up. He doesn’t say, This is a stick-up. If he did I might start laughing. He’s waving a gun. No, I can’t describe it but I’ll take his word for it. I don’t know an Uzi from a water pistol. It’s a gun. I’ve never held one but I know one when I see it in movies. He tells the teller to hand over all her twenties and above. He doesn’t say denominations. I wonder if any bank robber ever used that word. She’s frozen….probably thinking whether she should reach for the panic button. I’m thinking, NO, that will bring the police and I’ll be a hostage, a human shield. I’ve never thought of myself as a human shield before. I’m not fond of near-death experiences. The ski mask is sweating. Give him the money, already, and get him out of here so I can dry my clothes. My pajamas will develop mildew. Maybe he has clothes in his Laudromat. The teller is behind bullet-proof glass, still hesitating, probably wondering if it is really bullet-proof. I’m wondering if I’m being recorded and how I look; I’m overdue for a haircut. He fires a shot at a surveillance camera. I’m impressed. Should I be planning my after-life or at least rehearsing some pithy and pungent last words? He is getting a crazy look in his eyes as if he is up on cough syrup and cappuccino. If I survive, the police will want to know the color behind the squint; sort of grey, sort of greenish blue. They might ask if his jeans were Levis or Wranglers. I don’t know. What about his sneakers? Nikes? Reeboks? I wonder if he has a getaway car. I’m trying to remember if Bonnie was Clyde’s driver or if they did their bank jobs together. I remember a lot of folks got killed. Imagine being an extra in that film, no lines, just a corpse. I wonder how many actors got their start as dead bodies working their way back to life in a long career. It must be hard holding your breath for the close-up or worse with a tag on your big toe laid out on a slab in the morgue. A teller at the merchant window slips a stack of twenties under the glass. I’m thinking, they must be specially marked bills with a GPS embedded in Andrew Jackson‘s mane. The manager next to me on the floor, yells, Now Go, as if that hadn’t occurred to the gunman. He grabs his pile of bills and heads for the door. He steps on my hand and excuses himself. Sorry man. His mother taught him manners. Maybe he just wants to pay off his student loan. I have his footprints in my palm. Exhibit A.

My Back Is Back

I’ve never seen my back. I know it’s there as the posterior of my front and from an occasional itch as it begs for my backscratcher. And I know when it’s not up to the task of keeping me upright, like now.

Walking at a slight diagonal is not the worst thing. The most painful part is going from horizontal to vertical. Even sitting to standing can be a twelve step program. I suppose quadrupeds never dreamed of ambulating like apes.

About half my life ago I played basketball in the park most Sunday mornings. Predictably, I’d hobble home with sciatica on Sunday afternoons. At age forty I was delusional enough to think I was twenty. (I wonder if at age twenty I thought I was ten) It seemed like a small enough price to pay. It all came to a halt when I broke my ankle. But the real end happened when the other players started calling me, sir. The one thing I wasn’t looking for on the court was deference.

I made a decision at that time to opt for a sedentary life. Of course I was on my feet all day as a pharmacist racing around dispensing miracle healings. But I declared myself unavailable for athletic activity. I was going to save myself; my knees, my back and my ankles. It worked. Besides running off at the mouth and an occasional poetic leap I stay put. The stationary bike has taken me close to my 80th year.

Now and then I’ll get a back ache but not high back pain or middle back pain; only low back. It must be the seat of all my depression. But I’ve never been depressed; worried, yes, fearful, I’ll admit to that. Alright, I’ll stop carrying the woes of the world. Right now, I can’t even carry out the garbage.

In the meantime Peggy and other friends have had epidurals sufficient to keep many doctors in many Lexus. I know that spinal stenosis often comes with age. Surely that couldn’t apply to me, could it? Naw! This feels like a simple pain-above-the-ass. I could see a chiropractor who would crack me, sublax me and sell me a fistful of herbs and I’d be cured in seven days. Or I could do nothing and heal in a week.

For the long term I know I ought to be building up my stomach muscles but I’d walk a mile to avoid exercise. There may not be any long term and I hate to think of all that waste. I’m easily bored with regimens especially if they require effort. I’ll take my chances and wait for, Time, that great healer.

Poetry Criticism

There are two movie clichés that always make me chuckle.

Won’t you sit down? and, I can explain everything.

The first invites somebody in…even though I have never heard anyone put it that way. The second is the line said by a husband caught in bed with the other woman. It is usually movie code for, Give me a twenty minutes and I’ll think of something.

Every two weeks a group of four poets meet at our apartment to read their work and receive feedback. I’m allowed in because I serve the nuts and pour the drinks. I generally read a blog and offer my response to the other four poems. It ain’t easy.

Over lunch the other day with a friend who also hosts a poetry workshop the question came up how to criticize a poem. She wondered whether there was a website which suggested cogent language one might use. When I put the question to another poet-friend over lunch (we have a lot of lunches) yesterday she said something which hit home.

She felt that responding critically to a poem called upon the same faculty as relating to a friend. It entails close listening and entering into the other person’s world, suspending disbelief as well as a suspension of one’s own terms for the other. It’s a form of empathy; to meet the author, extend oneself, get on board, move with another’s cadence and take the imaginative leap.

Criticism is an unfortunate word. It implies negative thinking. Christopher Hampton, the British author, said that asking a writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it thinks about dogs. My use of criticism is the constructive variety.

Some poems seem intent on closing their portals, on confounding the reader or bringing in references known only to a select few. Sometimes I read a poem five times and only find an opening the sixth time around. That entering in process can be a mysterious aha moment, accompanied by an interior drum roll or zither.

I doubt if there is any special vocabulary needed; more a matter of courage to risk saying something dumb or hurtful or obvious to everyone else. Some poems cannot be explicated, in so many words. If a poem is the other woman, the movie guy caught with his pants down shouldn't even bother trying to explain everything.

In the late seventies I attended a ten day poetry gathering in Port Townsend, Washington. My teacher was Stanley Kunitz. In the next room the group was led by William Stafford. Two of my favorite people. Kunitz offered his wise words in a most eloquent but authoritarian manner. I sneaked into Stafford’s class one day to witness a different approach. His rule was, No praise, No blame. He drew out the poet to express what she wished for the poem and whether she felt she’d achieved it. The entire group was drawn in and the criticism was a generous offering, judgment withheld. Won’t you sit down inside my poem?

Meeting the poem as a friend is a transformational act. We get to move an imperceptible inch.