Anyone up for a good tree slamming?: on Olson & Creeley
I am admittedly a fan of Creeley, and somewhat a fan of Olson, and I say somewhat only because I know much less of his work. I was in a class where a student presented an AMAZING interpretive dance to The Kingfishers--while someone read the poem, she performed her amazing choreography percussed by intentionally exaggerated exahalations. Really, wow.
From then, The Kingfishers always has a place for me. And wierd for me because I'm not so much a nature person. I would normally hate a poem like this, and I don't. And whats great about this poem is that it's not just about nature. That's precisely why I don't hate it. But none of that makes sense, SO: here I see Prufrock & the party scene, a little of the Ancient Mariner, a little of Pound.
Immediately Olson takes us into the realm of an epic, the openning line an attempt at profundity, which I nearly agree with and in some ways don't. It's THE WILL which has me hesitating, which seems to give humanity too much credit, too much agency, that they make an attempt to do something, when much of change is a passive reaction to surroundings. (Perhaps humanity here isn't the right word, since I am viewing this through a rather American lens, since I am being most critical of a passive American mass in my assumptions). And also not agreeing in that so many things do not change, or at least do not change that rapidly, have not changed in the span from the writing of the Kingfishers til now. Beaurocracy & the dollar & white heterosexual males still rule America.
But Olson has a larger scale than just the bedroom where the man wakes, the pool, the birds. Mao, French, Italian. Or a smaller scale that the bedroom, the pool, the birds. His breath, his lungs. At the end of section 4: And what is the message? The message is a discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events distributed in time. The breath as discrete and continuous, at least until death, though Olson seems to herald even this decay as part of the cycle (where I would equate a life-cycle, earth-cycle with the cyclical nature of breath itself). And as they are fed and grow, the nest of excrement and decaying fish becomes a dripping, fetid mass. Where even they decay of elements in the nest is employed to bring life and shelter. (Another example: think compost). Later he writes of the birth of air, water, a state between the origin and the end, between birth and the beginning of another fetid nest.
From then, The Kingfishers always has a place for me. And wierd for me because I'm not so much a nature person. I would normally hate a poem like this, and I don't. And whats great about this poem is that it's not just about nature. That's precisely why I don't hate it. But none of that makes sense, SO: here I see Prufrock & the party scene, a little of the Ancient Mariner, a little of Pound.
Immediately Olson takes us into the realm of an epic, the openning line an attempt at profundity, which I nearly agree with and in some ways don't. It's THE WILL which has me hesitating, which seems to give humanity too much credit, too much agency, that they make an attempt to do something, when much of change is a passive reaction to surroundings. (Perhaps humanity here isn't the right word, since I am viewing this through a rather American lens, since I am being most critical of a passive American mass in my assumptions). And also not agreeing in that so many things do not change, or at least do not change that rapidly, have not changed in the span from the writing of the Kingfishers til now. Beaurocracy & the dollar & white heterosexual males still rule America.
But Olson has a larger scale than just the bedroom where the man wakes, the pool, the birds. Mao, French, Italian. Or a smaller scale that the bedroom, the pool, the birds. His breath, his lungs. At the end of section 4: And what is the message? The message is a discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events distributed in time. The breath as discrete and continuous, at least until death, though Olson seems to herald even this decay as part of the cycle (where I would equate a life-cycle, earth-cycle with the cyclical nature of breath itself). And as they are fed and grow, the nest of excrement and decaying fish becomes a dripping, fetid mass. Where even they decay of elements in the nest is employed to bring life and shelter. (Another example: think compost). Later he writes of the birth of air, water, a state between the origin and the end, between birth and the beginning of another fetid nest.
posted by Sean & Jennifer at 20:45
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home