metaphors
, images and other possibilities
A dialogue with Chris Stroffolino
Aryanil
Mukherjee
Chris
Stroffolino, a contemporary North American poet, a pro-Beatnik who teaches
Shakespeare, and I, had been talking poetry and alighting on its peripherals in
an electronic mode for several months. The following is a recklessly edited
version of our pluralistic conversation.
Chris Stroffolino: Born
Aryanil:
My
first exposure to "post-language" poetry was a series of essays Mark
Wallace wrote, defining and introducing the term with crippling caution. We got
ourselves into a continuing conversation (that obviously went in all
directions) that lasted several months. Every time I spoke to Mark on that
topic he kept reminding me of the danger of "branding" poetry - I thought
I was trying to get an understanding of its traits.
Later,
when we were working together on his poems, I have asked the same questions to
Peter Gizzi - his reaction was much like yours. At times I get a sense that we
often engage in a lot of wasteful , wry theoritization
of poetry and poetics which does little to bring a book of poem closer to the
heart of the average reader.
I grew
up in a state where poetry had a very high public profile - someone like Walt
Whitman's picture would hang from the walls in virtually every home that had at
least high-school graduates. In the
Chris:
Yes,
it's weird about Mark....On one level he felt this need to coin the term and on
the other side he warns against it. He just should have never coined it
(perhaps he feared that if he didn't someone else would, kind of like WAR-ugh!)
Yes, I
totally agree with you about the problem of "theorization."
I'd even go further and say it may actually put up a bigger barrier to the
appreciation of the poem. I wrote at least one piece of prose that said this.
One of these pieces, called "Against Lineage," was originally going
to be published in a big academic book Mark was co-editing but then it was
nixed for inclusion (by a prominent poet who will remain nameless). I take that
as proof that what we are arguing here is rather dangerous to their
"profession."
At the
same time, I am well aware that much of my own poetry is likely to not be
appreciated by the "average reader" at least on the page at first. I
also know that when I give readings or performances of my work, I can reach
many more people than I can on the page. Somehow hearing the voice, and seeing
the performance, allows them to return to the page and appreciate it more at
least in my experience.
So yes,
there's a side of me that's very envious of the fact that in
Aryanil:
I am
learning piano too (at 38) along with my 8 year old son. I have never
heard Ginsberg sing. Back in the early sixties, when he lived in
Back to the language poetry talk. I wholeheartedly agree with you that branded or bannered
poetry movements quite often arise from an identity crisis; although these
identification problems are real and important and do help etching out the
whole anatomy of new generation writing, but the longer these banners last, the
more they plague a healthy criticism of contemporary poetry. I think
Surrealism, Dada, the English Romantic Revival, Cubism, Fauvism,
post-modern etc have attempted to present a rather dogmatic partisan view of
world poetry. Language poetry seems no exception to that. However, it does seem
important given the time it emerged and the context. I view Beat poetry with
a different perspective though ( I am so fond of
them) - Beat poetry seems to present more of a lifestyle and less of
a writing style. Corso is so different from Ginsberg, Snyder or Ferlinghetti
are so different from either of them. In
Chris :
I agree
with you that Beat could be a more useful category than most of the other ones
you named (I never figured out Fauvism!) because, yes, it is a lifestyle. In
this sense a little more like the later term
"punk." I think this is crucial distinction. To be honest, I find
myself much more sympathetic to the term "Beat" than I did when I was
30 (though not when I was 20, when the Beats were the first poets I took
seriously)-- largely because of their challenge to the
sanitized version of the American lifestyle, a lifestyle I tried to live, but
find myself alienated from (‘these are not my people’ as Joe South put it)--and
thus wanting to champion the alternative ethos of the Beats. My writing style
may be much more like Peter Gizzi's (or even, at times, Mark Wallace's)--but I
think one crucial difference between Peter and I is that my lifestyle is much
more beat-like than his---for better and worse, but I don’t want to be dogmatic
about it, for many things could change.
Thanks
also for your account of Bengali poetry politics. Yes, it is a fascinating
topic, although sometimes I hate myself for wasting too much emotional and mental
energy thinking about the more unsavory (corrupt) sides of it all. I like the
Hoover anthology much more than the new Norton ‘contemporary’ one or the
Douglass Messerli anthology that came out around the same time....in part
because of its "broadband" or eclectic qualities (which, in my
opinion, is what made that Donald Allen anthology of 1959 so important, and why
it hasn't been repeated as the poetry scene has become more balkanized), but I
really never got the term "post-modern" in ANY of its usages. It's
even more vague and abstract than the other terms you mention (surrealism and
lang. po, for instance; at least those terms refer to an actual group of poets
who, at least at times, called themselves that). NOBODY agrees on post-modern.
One person's "post modern" writer is another's "modern."
Some say American"post-modern" is more like European
"modernism" and I think there's some truth in that. But then the
difference between "modern" and "modernist" (not to mention
‘modernity’) is also vague, and to top it all off, there's many who call
Shakespeare "modern" or "early-modern."
I want
to stay away from those terms; except in quotes (or as a joke)...
It's
interesting to see how other people define those terms. In your case, it seems
that the distinction (in Bengali) between "post-modern" and
"post-language" is used very differently than it seems to be used in
Chris:
I
guess, by this definition, I would probably characterize myself as more
"post-modern" than "post-language" so maybe the post-modern
group who you are now unpopular with would like my work more. Anyway, in
reading YOUR poetry I definitely saw your work as more what in Bengali would
probably be called "post-modern" (in a good way) than mere
"post-language." There's a wide range and a definite emotional investment
which seems to be lacking in much merely "post-language" poetry. I
just don't know why they all need to draw lines, with ins and outs, and hope I
am not doing it myself in trying to understand their terms.
Aryanil:
I see, you dedicated Stealer’s Wheel to your late mother. I'd
love to hear more about your mother, your
childhood...family...friends...elementary..school...teenage..red baloons…babyteeth..first love
... travel .. trips... bachelor parties...early poetic
excursions...sex ...music ...lonely NYC evening walks...and a whole lot more.
Chris:
My
mother would have turned 61 last month. She didn't even make it to 50. I think
she had a huge influence on me. I was definitely what one might call a
"mama's boy". She was a victim of being poor and female raised in the
1950s and medical ineptitude/incompetence. Ah,
Aryanil:
Does
"Stealer's wheel" have a special meaning ?
Chris:
"Stealer's
Wheel" was the name of a rock band that basically had one big hit around
1973 (and a minor follow up) fronted by Gerry "Baker Street" Rafferty
(I didn't know they were the same guy until later). The song was called
"Stuck In The Middle With You." I wrote the
poem ‘Stealer's Wheel’ in 1992 (actually read an early version of it for the
first time at a reading I did with Peter the day before my mom died).
Originally, the poem was going to be called "Stuck in the Middle" but
then I thought that that was not a good title so I changed it to the name of
the band that did the song. And then when I was putting together the book and
looking for titles it seemed like the best title for the book (as one blurbist
comments on the "circular" quality of many of the poems therein),
which is kind of funny because a) it's the oldest poem in the book and b) I
almost wasn't even going to put that poem in the book-- for various reasons.
But the title, to me, aside from the "story behind it" as I've told
you here, is interesting to me because it's VERY suggestive I think (and I like
the SOUND of it). What IS a Stealer's Wheel? Hmmmm... Maybe it WAS something
historically? A torture wheel they put petty thieves on? Maybe, it's like the
WHEEL OF KARMA? So, there's a few possibles. I'm sure there's more...
Aryanil:
You led
me to the poetry of Jennifer Moxley. I have had a rather bewildering time
acquainting myself with Moxley's poetry (just a handful by far) and some of her
net-essays. In the post-language wake, Moxley must have left the language poets
aghast. I find her old-fashioned; sentimentality and romanticism aside, her
poetry is too verbose, her language overtly metaphorical.........
maybe....actually I'm sure I'm missing something here...need you to help. Is it
a possibility that the defiance her reinvented lyric offers to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
poetry, sort of catapulted it.
Chris:
Others
have had the same reaction to Moxley that you have had, people who I really
respect. I don't quite understand how people like my work and not hers(or, as is probably the case more often, like her work
and not like mine). But I don't think I can change anybody's mind about
it.I guess what I like is the fact that there's SUBSTANCE in her work(unlike quite a few contemporaries, even some with whom
she is associated). Moxley has a lot to say, and doesn't shy away from
wrestling with big themes of self-questioning, etc. while others might want to
provide easy answers.
I know
her work is more "formal" and "high" (or, one could say,
"repressed" or "careful") than much of mine, but I get a
sense of someone who really loves language, thought and feeling-- and feel much
more a kinship with her than others who might more superficially resemble me
(Wallace? I don't know....)
Aryanil:
I am
missing out on the quintessential here. True, however, that I haven't found
Moxley's work to mirror yours or vice versa but then I have my own hurdles too.
I am no expert at American poetry...just beginning to learn..
sketchily read some Blake, Plath, Frost, Whitman, Cummings in my teens...I have
no formal training in literature...like most Bengali poets of my
generation...graduated in Mechanical Engineering, did a PhD later on something
called Finite Element Analysis....engineering math stuff...not a fluent
exponent of the English language either...not to mention American
English...still write "labor" with a British "u"....
So you
can see I hope...
I look
for good poetry from female poets worldwide....all the time...but rarely have I
been charmed. Ingeborg Bachman I liked, at one time almost fell in love with
the burning, often squeamish sensitivity of Plath's "Ariel"...sniffed
at Diane Di Prima and Adrienne Rich- did like some...a bit of Lorde ...barely
one or two female poets from Bengali poetry, Debarati Mitra is one, my most
favorite.
Chris:
Have
you translated any Debarati Mitra? I’d like to see some of her work. And these
days, in
I guess
given my life situations as a single heterosexual male who is fascinated and
frustrated by the female gender, and who believes that one of the most
difficult, and challenging, tasks (and hopefully playful too) in life is for
the sexes to come to some kind of understanding--since, whether because of
nature or culture, we are extremely different, and misunderstandings abound,
and I think this is root of many evils, etc. I find myself interested in
feminism and in many ways very sympathetic to it, but I also find that not a
lot of women are really interested in dialoging with men on it these days...at
least in the poetry scene.
Aryanil:
Your e-mail hung me up
in the dark brooding clouds above my mirror size cubicle window...it rains so
much in Cincinnati dont know why people single out Seattle so much...I went
home for lunch today..it has been raining since the
last 3 days...I stepped into my latest crazeyard...our garden..two red dwarf dahlias died..my
solitary pink gerbera daisy looks as bleak as a primrose...too many insects
feasting on the white ones.
Was
cooking up a few discordant lines about a garden last night on my way back from
the grocery store. In Bengali, the word "garden" could be segmented into
two parts, two whole words - the first one would translate "or" and
the second part means "song". So this is how my first few line doze off -
a garden holds no tune
for us, no song
a garden holds no one, no
song
for a few that fly, alight
this garden is not so much
ours, its a make-up
for the house with those
red-yellow tapestries
of odorless lace at its
feet
a garden only holds green
but never a green flower
a garden holds none, no
god, no song
..................................................
What you say about women
writing today holds good about Bengali too - the one good thing that I see in
my language today is that now there are women who are breaking off the
continuum - there's an increase in fragmented writing, a single poem is running
off in many directions to catch the pulse of time, subjectivity is reduced.
It's getting to be more abundantly off-topic, something I enjoy a lot. All this
is welcome from my standpoint...women are at least trying to get away from
conventional forms of poetry writing. A poem is not about a topic or a theme. A
poem is an Iris that grew up to be an Iris.
Chris:
I like that---
I didn't know that.
In
English?
Hmmm GARDEN (audio pun
on "guardin")
GUARD DEN?
Your email is way more
poetic than mine....
I don't know names of
flowers
Are primroses pink? Are
they PRIM and PROPER roses? (prim is a weird word; i
wonder if that's how primroses got their name)
Aryanil:
More of a british flower I believe, symbol of a sick (actually
convalescing) soul, abound in British poetry - Rosetti, Donne, Byron....etc.
Dont know how they got their name, but they are hazy pinkish roses that
describe nothing but a faded scene.
Chris:
oh yeah I always forget
about the "flowers-as-symbols" thing. I always think of Ophelia, who
was into that. And it makes sense of that Laura Riding poem that
ends with "nor are the primroses unwelcome" (I'll have to check
on the title of the poem for you.). Someday I should perhaps study this
iconography more.
Aryanil:
I like real full-blooded
red roses, like we see in
Chris:
And someday I'll have to
get to
I especially like
"odorless lace at its feet"
and the seeming
equation of god and song...
"A poem is an iris
that grew up to be an iris"
and an iris is a kind of
flower (i don't know the name of)
and also part of the eye (i
don't know which)....
why are there no flowers
called retinas?
or are there?
I am an ignorant man...
What is the relation of
"word" and "thing"
or, better, what is the
relationship of the word "thing" to reality?
Aryanil:
Thank you. This poem is
only in the making.
No line has been laid
down for good.
Chris:
Let me see it as it
finishes.....
Aryanil:
You wrote - why are
there no flowers called retinas?
That's curious nuance.
Could I "install" this line in my poem ?
Chris:
Of course you may. The
flower goes with the eye (or the nose...ah, but i am allergic! but i don't mind
sneezing. in fact, it's close to
orgasm. it's
the watery eyes and stuffy throat that bugs...)
Aryanil:
Your observation was
interesting - that female poets dont tend to discuss
feminism with men. My stance is very similar on the subject. My nextbook of
poems, which I am yet to title has a section towards
the tail end consisting of 16 poems I took 12 years to write.
"BimalBimalaa" -is the title of that section. Two names;
"Bimal" is a male name - the word means pure or unblemished,
"Bimalaa" means the same, but is a female name. The poem-series is
about these two asexual individuals and a world seen through their eyes - a
world that's genderless in the spirit of observation. Bimal Bimalaa are
friends, partners, husband-wife, two gay men, two lesbian women, two 7-year
olds, two kings, two queens, two wordcrafters, two singers, two hermaphrodites
singing in the streets of Calcutta; so vividly described by Ginsberg in his
"Indian Journal"....the asexual is no different from the bisexual to
me.
roses..since
my daisies are dying
Chris:
BIMAL/BIMALAA sounds
quite fascinating in a mythic way. For me all those interesting questions and thoughts and
feelings about the complementarity of male and female and the so called
"male and female" principles, whether asexual, autosexual, bisexual,
whether solitary or social---the yin and yang interest which I'm very
fascinated by, and it sometimes gets into the question of EVIL for me. I mean,
if one rejects, or at least severely interrogates the whole "western"
philosophical systems of manichean dualism and figures the relation of two
forces in the world in a way that's complementary---day (often traditionally
linked with male) and night (often traditionally linked with female), life and
death, affection and anger, etc--then how does one deal with the question of
evil. Evil becomes ignorance. I.E. George W. Bush and Chaney, etc., aren't
evil, they are just ignorant, and realize they are not acting in their own
self-interest when they accrue lands and money and oil and worldly
"power" at the expense of others. Is this a sufficient moral, or ethical stance? Hmmmm....
Aryanil:
I like the thematic
focus slowly and gradually drifting; sometimes sharply changing like a
"jump-cut". But not an array (or disarray ?)of
fragmented words. The way poetry has been happening to me over the past 3/4
years is that moments would arrive to me (poetic occassions, as I call them)
and I would jot down my thoughts, sometimes even have time to compose a couplet
or so. Obviously not the same kind of thought-theme would you expect each
day...so when I look back at these fast transcriptions a month later...I notice
reflections on several thoughts, motifs..often
subjects, visuals, feelings etc. I would scoop out 15-20 lines from that bunch
and rewrite them into the body of a single poem. This is natural writing to me as this is
exactly how poetry and my thoughts occurred to me. This is exactly how, this
supersonic life let's me write poetry. Also, all these
multidirectional thoughts are my own, so I do see that invisible thread of
continuity amidst those lines. Mind is as random as a weathercock thesedays,
but as you can see, I mean the same weathercock.
Chris:
I APPRECIATE YOUR
THOUGHTS ON YOUR PROCESS here. I do that sometimes too, and I didn't mean to
sound unsympathetic to the jump-cut jottings of a supersonic life. To me, it's
always a matter of the particular poem and the particular mood or needs I have
at the moment of reading it. It's why I don't want to be a poetry critic
anymore. But what you say makes sense...
Aryanil:
Back in India, I lived
for about 3 years in a small industrial town called Jamshedpur – fell in love
with a group of radical middle age poets - the KAURAB group - KAURAB was the
name of the literary mag they published.I edit an online version of that mag
today (http://kaurab.tripod.com)
...KAURAB created be a big bang on parallel literary movements that occurred
in
These poets, then
unaware of Snyder-Kerouac trips to the Big Sur , would
arrange similar poetry camps or poetry trekking events where 3/4 poets would
spend a few days in a remote natural place...read/scream/eat/write new poetry,
dig into each other's poetic preoccupation, discuss poetry from dawn to dawn -
and they did all that they would constantly tape their conversations, or do a
fast transcription. Later KAURAB magazine would publish an edition of such
poetry trekking camps. I would love to do something like that with you at Big
Chris:
Let me know when you're
here at Big
Aryanil:
Its interesting, but really
relevant that my name reminded you of the Aryans and thus Hitler. But you know
what, The idiot never thought what a sun could do if
it burned too long on white Aryan skin.
Chris:
THE IDIOT also had dark
hair didn't he---so by his own programme would have HAD TO EXTERMINATE HIMSELF!
If only he did it 10 years earlier! sick sick sick....
Aryanil:
Let me throw a few
one-liners here that will etch out my first thoughts about your poetry.....
.....they are very
different from the kind of poetry I practise
.....I have rarely read
a poet like you, who relies so little on visuals
.....you do lure the
reader to get into your thinking game
.....your poetry makes
few references to the details of contemporary American life, and that adds more
translatability to it.
Chris:
I'm glad to hear these
one-liners, especially that you felt lured and that those poems might be more
translatable...
Aryanil:
...the best wife is
usually the third...(courtesy Bach).. has it consciously occurred to you anytime that it is
important to point out differences than likeness in your use of metaphors. What
makes an image an image ? A metaphor a metaphor ? Do they bind like weed and rock
? is one the other eye beside the right eye ?
Chris:
As for
your third question, YES. Others have also pointed out that my use of metaphor tends to do
something different than many other people's use of metaphor. That instead of "yoking disimilars" together that at
times my metaphors seem to serve an opposite function. I'm very
interested in the possibility of metaphors to be BI-DIRECTIONAL. That a
metaphor creates some linkage that wasn't there before and that is greater than
the sum of its parts. So, for instance, "love is a rose" or
"love is a dog from hell" is not simply defining love in terms of a
rose or dog, but also DOING something to the ROSE-DOG, and that tension, that
movement by analogy into the ineffable becomes both greater and lesser than
literal prose equivalence.
Likewise, image and
metaphor sometimes become each other. A lot of this has to do with the question
of whether words refer to things or to themselves. In rhetoric and language
perhaps many more things are possible than in reality. In language, one can
"deconstruct" binaries, prove them "merely rhetorical, but in
"real life" one finds them sometimes more recalcitrant.
So, for instance, there's a lot of things in my poetry similar to this line
from Ashbery---"you loved cats for the pleasure of letting them out of the
bag." In American English, "to let the cat out of the bag" is a
rhetorical phrase for which I don't know if there is an equivalent in Bengali--as
you may already know, it means, to "give a secret away". But at the
same time, it is as much of a real CAT as any other use of the word. At least potentially so---so my language sometimes goes back and
forth between the "literal" use of the term and the, er, CULTURAL
HISTORY of the word. I try to only use this "device" when I
feel it can work both ways. I'm very interested in PUNS and CLICHES, the poetic
possibilities of them. Sometimes I've used them not so judiciously. We
all have our "clunkers". I don't know if this helps....
Aryanil:
At this point I still
haven't started any translation yet...just beginning to gather the feathers
that'll make the crown....melting ricotta for the cheesecake. I am slow, my
poetry mates complain...but I do a much better job than most of them as I
believe. One poet a year for translations...and with you ....I seem to have
found the self I'd like best on my mirror...so it is taking time.
Chris:
I have your translation
of "fish story" proudly displayed on my office
door, on the off chance that
someone who knows Bengali might stop by
Aryanil:
Quite
a few things to talk about this morning. About "polarized
metaphors" first. I think, especially during the mid-eighties and
all throughout the nineties up until today many Bengali (and I believe many
world poets) poets have tried to explore and renew the world of imagery. As
poets, we find a metaphor quintessential and unavoidable. But they can be as
choking and restrictive as non-metaphors. Moreover, we always want to mean
"more" and mean "new". So there is a struggle to find a new
context, a new mode of usage. Some negate it, some stretch their limits, some
like me, tend to connect them to other words that are phonetically similar - all
we are trying to do here is inform the reader about the many "other"
possibilities that exist around a given element.
Chris:
Yes, as for that
approach. Lately, sometimes I find myself needing to check it a little
more---it does seem to be often the way I've become habituated to writing and
thinking---especially in poetry, or it's
"natural." In any event, I do sometimes get a thrill in editing many
of those "polarized metaphors" out, and writing something that seems
more straightforward. A question for you---why do you think (those) Bengali
poets, including yourself, also use that device? What do you think it provides
your poetry?
Aryanil:
A favorite poet of mine
from the fifties, Swadesh Sen, writes -
"Whose van, an
empty van runs through the forest department"
or
"
The
apple is asleep. Use your teeth, wake him up"
In the first line, he
hints at an autumn forest. A visual. The trees are all
bare; an empty van from the state forest department make
its way through the woods. He takes the van, the forest department, the
emptiness, the baldness of autumn and mixes them into a smoothie - the
metaphors are all there, like the spice in the curry that can't be identified,
felt on its own.
Chris:
I like the lines you
quote from Swadesh Sen, regardless of the fact that I've seen similar
"devices" in many poems. While the first is more
"modernist" perhaps in its attempt to negotiate an antagonism between
"nature" and "technological 'progress'," the second has a
slightly different emphasis---more perennial, and perhaps deeper, in a way that
it exists in contemporary poetry but also in Zen Koans or things like the
Tao-Te Ching. No "technology" but "teeth and imagination here.
Both strategies for me can still be very useful for a poet today.
Aryanil:
Another poet, Barin Ghosal,writes about a friend, Bijan -
"The name of
Bijan's environ is Bijan
The thunder struck, even
its lightening mattress
couldn't jolt the friendship
The name of Bijan's
environ is Bijan"
Equating the metaphor to
itself is another technique. I have seen that a lot in WCW, and I was so much
impressed to see someone do that in 1916. WCW, according to me, was quite a
phenomenon in american and world poetry. I get really
pained when I see people from literary arts who
haven't read him or even heard of him. Too bad, that Pound and Elliot
overshadowed him. Pound's poetry was long dead,
Elliot, quite old-fashioned but WCW can still be a lesson to most young poets
of our time. What do you think ?
Chris:
As for Barin Ghosal's
quatrain, the "lightening mattress" image/metaphor, is tweaked to the
point of "pun"--and makes me think/feel the difference between
"thunder" and "lightning". The repetition (which kind of reminds
me of some Stein) of the first line focuses the attention on the profundity of
that idea, and in a way provides a kind of "lightening mattress" to
the friendship that is evoked in the poem--that this friendship is not firmly
grounded, and that Bijan is a remarkable character who understands and acts as
if his soul, as Pasternak would say, is in "others" as much as
himself. I like the way it achieves that for me.
Yes, I always thought,
of the American modernists, that Williams was more profound and less
backward-looking than Pound and Eliot. of the American
modernists, I also prefer Stevens, Riding, Stein, Moore, Crane, e.e.cummings,
and others, to Pound and to much of Eliot. I think Pound in particular is one
of the most overrated of the 20th century. I also think in some ways
"American Modernism" itself is largely overrated among many American
contemporary poets I know. There have been some notable reactions to it---the
Beats, much
---X---X---X---X---