#2092 - today we come together to mourn hate

 

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today we come together to mourn hate

solemn and civic the occasion

 

 

and call it respect

 

all the haters come together for this

 

they say that hate was gentle

they say that hate was kind

a great listener

one in a million hate was

 

the goading one, vicious

spouting old empire – the slaves

and the kitchen chains, the slurs …

this Caligula cut down in his prime

the avatar apotheosis

the very spectacle of hate

 

and death was hate’s finest work too

he went down spewing forth hate at the time

hate to warm the hater’s heart

 

then there is a minute’s silence for hate

a private moment to reflect, for prayer

 

as if they were by tumbril come

hell loosed, all the devils here

monsters of the Id

 

some of hate’s mourners are overcome with emotion

they know very well though t hate rises again

they borrow from the gospel of light

take rote comfort there

as if angels were with them

 

one by one, to the rostrum

and far far better, so far from grace

the bladed tongue of privilege

weapons arrayed to praise

 

 

hate’s paroxysm in the public square

 

and all the haters mourn

they do it with the big lie

a lie that’s bigger than any of them

the greatest lie ever told

 

it’s bigger than the superbowl

the emperor is here as well

(thank God the emperor wears cloths)

 

they shoulder along hate’s coffin

keep the grave shallow

where hate will rise

 

theirs is sure and certain knowledge

 

and now we know

they come not to bury

but to praise hate

 

see these ones with the guns, with the money

come to tell us how hate was their fine friend

how reasonable hate was

how you can understand

it’s not so hard, is it?

because you’re a hater too

 

hate made you what you are

 

how the memory of hate must live forever

and put up a monument too

 

all the bad things you heard about hate

they tell us these things are untrue

 

a lovely pointed hat

a burning cross on the lawn

the noose

remember the Inquisition?

not so far back

 

delusion of the warrior

to think hate could be slain

 

 

now hate’s widow forgives the bullet

the fool who made the martyr

though a bullet could never kill

hate’s stronger than your guns

 

the widow takes up a cudgel

here’s a woe betide

you do know it’s all biblical

 

have you noticed how hate can turn on a dime?

 

some say excess of love until

hate’s a saint of the pantheon now

 

they come to bury hate, they say

with all pomp and malice aforethought

but hate still has a story to tell

 

we must be courteous and listen

lest haters take offence

they’re shy and shrinking in abomination

 

hate sits up smiling in his grave

 

we wouldn’t be here without him

that’s what some of them say

 

they’re singing their songs of hate

they’re praying for hate

 

they’re building hate’s legacy already

it’s a righteous fury they have

all the better to hate you with

unless, unless … you hate with us

you’re one of us, and made of hate

 

sword in the whip hand

plinth mounted

soon the statue of hate

is wherever you go

 

else punitive measures await

 

and yes

this is the greatest lie ever told

lie still telling today

tomorrow the lie will be bigger

you’ll see!

 

I will not show his picture

I will not say his name 

How to write a long poem #9 - Go in Fear of Abstractions

 

9.

GO IN FEAR OF ABSTRACTIONS

 

The small poem can be a scale model for the longer poem to come. And vice versa. The long rambling poem that might not be quite working (or not yet) may contain the perfect smaller poem (or poems). The secret ingredients here are time and distance. The formula to apply here is TIME = DISTANCE. You need to get away and to come back to the work/s fresh in order to get a sense of what will work, in order to know where you are.

 

That nasty fascist, Ezra Pound, had a number of important and helpful observations about writing and poetry. One of my favourites (I’m sure you’ve heard me quote it) is go in fear of abstractions.

 

Abstractions are the great deep and meaningful trap for all writers, but especially for poets. It makes sense that many poets are very interested in the big picture – life the universe and everything. (There are other poets more interested in the minutiae of life and matter… and there are those who want to join the micro to the macro. There are all sorts!) An excess of abstraction is however whatever is frequently wrong with poetry that is not working.

 

What’s abstract is far from the fact, far from sensory experience, from what we can know through seeing, through touch, through hearing, through smell, through taste. The poem dominated by abstraction is a case of ‘nothing to see here’.  And when there’s nothing to see, hear, touch, taste, smell – well, why bother being there? To engage a reader involves lending them sensate experience. Plot is helpful too. But even if nothing happens in a poem, you can be there if there’s something happening for your senses.  

 

Homo proponit – deus disponit!

(Man proposes – God disposes)

 

But here the roles are reversed!  You are the god of your poem. The reader makes short work of what can’t be experienced in your poem. ‘So long lives this…’ said Shakespeare, when he was praising his own craft. Most poems are much more mortal than their makers!

 

The poet makes a world but unless the reader can see/hear/touch/taste/smell it, well, it’s like that philosophical tree in the forest … falling, without a witness.

 

In a way it all comes down to the question of how much work you can expect your reader to do. How far apart can the dots be and the reader still able to join them?

 

The poem with too much abstraction is like a sky where everything is so many light years from everything else, that no one will see where they’re going and no one will ever arrive!

 

 

 

Concretizing an abstraction – anchoring the idea in experience

 

In this exercise, we give a poem an abstract theme, but observe the discipline of writing about it (or taking that theme as a point of departure) without  resorting to abstraction at all in the body of a poem.

 

Choose one of the following abstractions for your theme (or add your own to the list)

 

death

love

the good

the bad

the ugly

grief

joy

hope

anger

freedom

poetry/ the poem

 

Note that these are topics and not titles. You might want to give the poem a riddling quality by NOT disclosing, from the outset, what it’s about …

 

Try to create a poem that deals with one of these topics without using a single abstraction … i.e. present the reader with images (that work for any of the five senses), with events

Tell the reader what is happening or has happened or will happen, what can be seen, touched, heard, smelt, tasted…

 

When you’ve created a draft, go over it with a fine toothed comb to make sure that abstraction hasn’t crept in… It’s actually harder to avoid than you might think.

 

Think of Dickinson’s ‘hope is the thing with feathers’ … how with those few words we are immediately on a journey… we might not be able to guess where we’ll end up, but we can see where we’re going and feel that we’re on the way …

Dickinson is really the gold standard in this activity – think of ‘I’m nobody. Who are you?’ It’s all rather abstract until we meet the frogs and then we know exactly where we are!

 

Keep it simple!  Find the most straightforward possible image to express what you want to express about the abstract idea with which you have chosen to deal.

 

Apply Brecht’s principle here, (as expressed in what is often cited as his second last poem)  –

 

And I always thought the simplest words must be enough.

When I say how things are, everyone’s heart must be torn to shreds.

You’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself.

Surely you see that?

#2091 - one more for the birds

 

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one more for the birds

 

as loud as light

         flit

their world is all the outward air

 

lizardly cloud with a tail up there

 

so many songs

the one day bright

 

as to a proof

 

so many more than us they are

five to one

little dinosaurs

 

at twig’s, at leaf’s end

see into our otherland

 

and raucous

sing the windows wide

 

they tell themselves to snakes

 

in out of treefold

hard partying

 

and have we told laughter?

 

they dance into the upper reaches

 

and ten k’s high

though some ask why

 

what’s mortality to them?

 

time is the cliff from which all fall

 

a forest’s afoot in these wings

#2090 - escape from clock clutches

 

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escape from the clock clutches

hic et nunc

 

time was once upon us where

the whim tick

and the whisper tock

 

tumble of wheels all around

 

once we were in the machine

with the socks

 

rust hands the creatures come to perch

 

turning of the leaves unlike

 

now hoof it

hand over heart

climb out of the trouble

 

it was a grief told into light

 

hour absent where we sing

and make my voice a wilderness

 

get yourself into the picture

paint from a corner out

#2089 - poem in real time

 

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poem in real time

for wise surprise

 

door ajar

a draft

 

by hand

dream these streets again we’ve borrowed

 

days, a busk – too much of me

 

and birds float through

 

a first thing in the heart

seeping stain

come tongues, taste

 

bake it up – serve bright

 

a cigarette, the train comes

 

the fallen words brushed aside

 

in the yestering

nostalge it – sing

 

bones of it

a wisp away

 

my paean to life, the marvel

under lock and key

 

where pick up speed

 

the poem is reached by ladders and ropes

a burnished cloud at the head

 

machine for idiots, the day

nights dreamt and gone

 

and some fool fly comes in to die

must have let it in

dance around the object till

 

not so much lo and behold

as get a wriggle on

#2088 - it will be our country when

 

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it will be our country when

 

nor us nor them

all things being equal

 

ignorance our veil

when the grieving’s done

 

forgiven, forgive

here’s another attack of the heart

 

when sorry makes amends

fences fall

 

learn to live with the trees

no song but meant

 

when the smoke is over

everyone tells their story

 

no differences of skin, of kin

when the flags have flown away 

#2087 - a parable of words

 

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a parable of words

for wise surprise

 

keep me awake

be my guest

 

pictures are drifting

in, out

see through my head

you don’t

 

words wake me

as if destined to

a line, a shape, patch of colour

 

there is a slick, a stain, of them

 

words are forming up into a list

follow me round

the faithful words

imprinted as from birth

 

who knows which next?

and last

 

words are fire

how far can we see into them?

 

wear us as the tree

the gut

all on our merry way

 

you know the old story of been before

trim whisker, toe

turn on tap till warm

 

each thing to its word – a multitude

sermon for sad eyes

 

all around the tongue

hard to choke down

always parts of something bigger

 

I weigh them down with a stone for the sea

yet fly like fish

 

there may be nothing to them

beat airily

 

how they stand out from time!

set the wheels just so

 

two tin cans a length of string

 

off with their clothes

and pander to

 

solicit the sausage

be brief

 

one is a strange little insect

one is a day of the week

 

left rote

there’s the matter of conviction  

 

the writing on the wall’s a sign

white flag, trench, more mud

 

and here’s my treaty with them then

 

let sleep be my surrender

 

yours sincerely

mine