Ode

by nate

comments by:

Shawn I Dave D. I Mike I Greg I Luke I

First Revision

a.

bus rolls in unexpectedly,
which is to say, sooner than
you might have anticipated.
near-imperceptible moment:
startling loss of bearings,
like pulling on a roll of toilet paper
and reaching the cardboard sleeve
and the last pathetic wispy shreds.
or the moment at which you
snap back into consciousness
after drifting off at the wheel.
really just a microsecond,
it soon passes and of course
you've arrived, it was bound to happen.

b.

wait inside the terminal, a term
the radiologist hates, his tongue curling
around the "er" as he rounds
the corner and her husband rises
warily from a purple chair and
"sir, the cancer is terminal," a
curse made all the worse
by a blur of internal rhyme.
drum yr fingers on yr knees,
check yr watch, and when she
walks towards you, she's radiant
and you're surprised to see her,
although you've been waiting for her
all this time.

c.

unseasonably warm day,
new york city. you talk
about the weather and mean it.
rain has glossed the pavement.
cabbies slow down as they see you,
and you wave them away
with proper nonchalance.
people hold newspapers folded
over their heads, for effect.
others step gingerly over curbside
puddles. she pretends not to notice
yr new mannerisms: the heavy-
handed metaphors, the coughing,
the obsession with incurable disease.

d.

dread fills the subway tunnels.
this is a phrase 
you have been rehearsing, for
such as time as this. she nods
seriously, although the urge must be
to roll her eyes back into her head
and make squelching noises.
you would smoke now, if you cd.
there are rats down here as big as cats,
you say. imagine being nibbled to death
by rats, you say. gross, she says
and makes a face. when the subway car
arrives, amidst a shroud of steam,
you feel vague and uninspired.

e.

in the village, at the art bar,
you comment frequently on the rod
stewart tunes which demarcate the crowd
as a collective demographic that isn't yours.
topic shifts to perceived difference
between "rural" and "urban" poet,
perhaps a fallacy; geography
as overrated and merely symptomatic.
robert hass said something,
she tells you, something about writing
poetry, about writing a poem.
"when in doubt," he said,
"praise something." you tell her
that's some terrific advice.



According to Shawn Walker:

Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 19:04:42 +0000 (GMT)
From: Shawn Walker 

I'm glad I occasionally get to read (even recently hear!) some new poetry
by you, Nate.  I'm always excited by the quick exact images and
overhearings you pull together in your I feel so natural in a sort of
pulsing rhythm insistently while strolling along sort of way.

So, having responded excitedly on one level, I want to ask some
questions, in the way that I want to ask questions of all poetry, in the
way that I want all poetry to ask questions right back at me:

Why does this poem exist?  How does it being in the world change it?

If I (we?) am excited and interested and there, where do I go from there?
If *there* isn't *here*, where is it, and is it somewhere I want to be or 
not?  Does the poem offer an answer or leave us in doubt (offering our due
praise)?  Should I be re-reading and offering some answers to my own
questions, or can I just ask them?

I wouldn't mind reading (as I am certainly asking) why people write what
and how and when and for where they do...

Shawn 


According to David Deifer:

here are my thoughts on ODE.

       --d.

a. what is all this?  so the bus pulls up a bit early, catching the
subject off guard.  it seems like the poet is playin a bit with the
subjectivity of the reader, as in

    ...sooner than
    you might have anticipated.
    ^^^
    and

    it soon passes and of course
    you've arrived, it was bound to happen.
    ^^^^^^

i am not sure what the intentions of the first stanza were. but if the
adjectives, adverbs, abstract nouns are eliminated and we are left with
the "things" (not words but real things, as in objects), what do we
have?

a bus that shows up early. and the pause it causes. the real objects
introduced are introduced in similies:

    like pulling on a roll of toilet paper     
    and reaching the cardboard sleeve
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   and the last pathetic wispy shreds.
                               ^^^^^^^
  leaving me to comment on the imagery:
  how bout a toilet on a bus?  that would pretty much sum it up.

b. this second stanza is gesticulating with sounds.  there is nothing
substantial here.  a bus terminal, a radiologist, a husband, a purple
chair, a quotation, "the start of a plot"

    and again with the "you".

    drum yr fingers on yr knees,
         ^^^          ^^^
    check yr watch, and when she
          ^^
    walks towards you, she's radiant 
                  ^^^^
    and you're surprised to see her,
        ^^^^^^
    although you've been waiting for her
             ^^^^^^
    all this time.

   are the closing lines of the first 2 stanzas
   supposed to be profound in some way?

 i don't understand the purpose of this poem.  i am not sure what it is
 trying to accomplish or whether there is any utility here to scavenge.
 
 i am guessing that it's about death, an incurable disease.  and how it's
 a part of life and living with it.  but the poem doesn't provide place
 for these sentiments to cling to -- no real anchors.  after reading the
 poem, i can't recall any particular things that make it important,
 lasting images or scenes besides the tickling enunciation of a few lines. 

					--d.


From: mmagee@dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee)

On the heels of Dave D's wickedly ungenerous critique, here are a few of
my thoughts on what I think matters and what I think "means" in Ode.

a. To me this seems to me one of the stronger sections, the attempt to
"do" this "near-imperceptible moment" interests me; I think the 
particularity of "wispy shreds" is effective, and the end doesn't seem
to me so much an attempt to be "deep" as an attempt - and a largely
succesful one - to capture that sense that the line between boredom and a
much more serious  or ominous determinism has been blurred.

b.  This seems to further comlicate what's begun in a. by suggesting an
equally blurry line between *surprise* and determinism.  My one criticism
here being that I found "curse made all the worse / by a blur of internal
rhyme" a slightly two precious way to talk about this connection between
mood and language.

c.  this seems in a way the least succesful section, in part b/c the
relationship between thios man and woman, which we finally get in full
view, doesn't seem to be sufficiently worked out.  Which is to say, Nate,
you don't appear to have a completely clkear sense of how you feel about
these to people, or, more importantly, what they're role in the poem is..

d. this I like quite a bit, the somewhat pathetic (but effectively so)
need to hold onto this phrase regarding dread, which is both a need to say
and do something dreadful.  Like the word "squelching." I'd drop "you
say"from line 10.  And this time around, the sense of ending "uninspired
feels a little pressed.  By this time, I mean, we need to feel as readers
a sense of movement (life is a "chain of moods" as Emerson says, rather
than a single mood).

e.  I like the idea of ebnding on this ironic piece of advice; I wouldn't
say "Robert Hass" - its not important to the poem who said and thus
distracting - I have to stop as a reader and remember how I feel and what
I know about Hass.  So I'd just say "someone said something," an 
interestingly vague piece of gossip, and then change the third to last
line to "'when in doubt,' she says,".

So those are my impressions, I think there certainly is a poem here - the
big issue to me is to decide precisely what connection your drawing
bewteen this issue of Boredom/surprise/determinsim and these two people.
Since the poem seems to want to be, to some degree a narrative poem, those
issues matter.

-Mike. 



From: djanikia@dept.english.upenn.edu (Greg Djanikian)

Just a couple of observations on your poem, Nate.  I think it's an
ambitious poem, one which tries to explore the tension between romantic
exuberance and cynicism, or between our sometime predilection to praise
and our resitance to it.  Section b, I think, is pivotal, because it calls
up that tension so well, the speaker caught in his ruminations about
disease, hopelessness, the "er" echoing throughout in "terminal,"
"cancer," "yr," and yet how quickly the moment changes when he is
surprised not by the arrival of the doctor, in his mind's eye, but by his
lover stepping off the bus--a moment of being taken up by the moment.

The rest of the poem is a deflation of that moment, a spiraling downward
into misconnections, trivial conversations, and what is "radiant" is
replaced by what is monochromatic.  How far the speaker has traveled away
from his emotion in section b, as though his initial response at the bus
station pitched him too far in one direction and the rest of the day/night
is his tacit resistance to it, though perhaps too much so. The
complications, the tensions, of section b, seem reduced finally to a
cynical stance toward anything which can be praised, and praise itself
reduced to a rhetorical joke, wry.  

I guess the cynicism may be too reductive for me finally, an opacity hard
to see through. Maybe if it's modulated a little better elsewhere in
the poem, then I think the ending can work as is, freighted with tension.
But this is a very good draft.  Lots to work with.  Thanks.

Greg 


From: Luke Szyrmer Nate and all, Let this be a summary of my reading, interpretation, crtitique of Nate's poem, which hasn't been improved upon as far as the workshop knows. Many of the questions are rhetorical, so don't answer everything, for your own sake. > a. > > bus rolls in unexpectedly, why bus? why not bus? what does bus mean in relation to the poem's subject matter/theme? > which is to say, sooner than > you might have anticipated. > near-imperceptible moment: > startling loss of bearings, You effectively force the reader into a loss of bearings after this last line... > like pulling on a roll of toilet paper > and reaching the cardboard sleeve > and the last pathetic wispy shreds. Getting scatalogical-why? The danger here is making it sound cheap, ie having no purpose except for intended 'shock value', which isn't shocking for world-weary literati anyway. > or the moment at which you > snap back into consciousness > after drifting off at the wheel. driver or rider at the wheel? nice ambiguity. Reader/writer relationship theme here? sleeping and drifting off while reading or writing.... > really just a microsecond, > it soon passes and of course > you've arrived, it was bound to happen. I've had bad spills on buses before, so it's not that 'bound' to me. > b. > > wait inside the terminal, a term the terminal structural pun appears here > the radiologist hates, his tongue curling The doctor and medicine discussion begins here. We have a term hating doctor, a medicine man who hates a word or words in general. > around the "er" as he rounds > the corner and her husband rises > warily from a purple chair and > "sir, the cancer is terminal," a cancer-very heavy, especially compared to preceding frivolities, esp. because it's terminal. Medicine is unhelpful. > curse made all the worse > by a blur of internal rhyme. is self consciousness worthwhile? pretentious? realistic? > drum yr fingers on yr knees, > check yr watch, and when she cute apostropheless contraction > walks towards you, she's radiant > and you're surprised to see her, > although you've been waiting for her > all this time. So now we have the husband's spirit leaving the world, entering a spiritual state somewhere between reality and afterlife. Astral plane existence? OR, we're back to the bus. the bus just makes me think of the simpsons' bus and bus driver, but I'll spare you the pointless free association. > c. > > unseasonably warm day, > new york city. you talk > about the weather and mean it. Another frivolous to serious movement, but less abrupt. Maybe this should precede the cancerous discussion.... > rain has glossed the pavement. gloss implies water gives superficiality.... > cabbies slow down as they see you, > and you wave them away > with proper nonchalance. Why do cabbies slow down? Are you walking with your arm rigidly attached to your body in a 120 degree angle away from your torso? Is the you an attractive she, presuming the cab-drivers are male? Why are you proper? > people hold newspapers folded > over their heads, for effect. > others step gingerly over curbside > puddles. Back to dealing with rain, and it's distorting normal life. > she pretends not to notice > yr new mannerisms: the heavy- > handed metaphors, the coughing, > the obsession with incurable disease. Is there a change of location in there last four lines? Back to dealing with disease, presumably including cancer. Manners show up again, sort of. Behavior, and its appropriateness, is another topic here. > d. > > dread fills the subway tunnels. Change of transportation. Appropriate with the jerks in geographic location this poem seems to have. > this is a phrase > you have been rehearsing, for > such as time as this. Rehearsal reinforces appropriate behavior patters....but > she nods > seriously, although the urge must be > to roll her eyes back into her head > and make squelching noises. it doesn't seem to here. Or maybe squelching is appropriate among, or actually between two(?) friends or lovers. > you would smoke now, if you cd. Seems random. BTW, can't you smoke while waiting for a subway to come, even if you can't inside the subway itself? > there are rats down here as big as cats, > you say. imagine being nibbled to death > by rats, you say. gross, she says > and makes a face. when the subway car > arrives, amidst a shroud of steam, Woah, is this turn of the century subway technology or what? Maybe this does take place then. But that wouldn't seem appropriate with the modern (1980s-90s) feel of the cancer patient's dying. > you feel vague and uninspired. The subway did it to you? > e. > > in the village, at the art bar, > you comment frequently on the rod > stewart tunes which demarcate the crowd > as a collective demographic that isn't yours. I originally thought this was a comment about marketing, but now I see the more appropriate meaning. > topic shifts to perceived difference > between "rural" and "urban" poet, > perhaps a fallacy; geography > as overrated and merely symptomatic. rural/urban and geography replace the movement theme. Details abstracted. Is geography an appropriate word? Are you talking about the location or the study of it? I see you removed the Rock of Gibraltar which appeared in an earlier draft. > robert hass said something, > she tells you, something about writing > poetry, about writing a poem. Why did you suddenly become expressively inefficient? Your ratio of content to words drops significantly in these three lines. Are you trying to pad away Robert Haas into a safer place, so his sudden appearance doesn't seem as shocking, so that the reader can recollect what (s)he knows about Robert Haas? > "when in doubt," he said, > "praise something." you tell her At the first hubverse meeting, you said that is the theme of the poem, namely the your suspicious analysis of advice about what to write when suspicious, for those who missed that meeting. Considering the discussions of behavior/manners, disease/medicine, transportation/movement/geography, toilet paper, marketing, music, frivolity against a backdrop of deathly seriousness, how do you feel about your poem's praising? It seems to me you don't go out of your way to praise anything, except maybe the simple moments in life that frivolously entertain your imagination. I think the poem is great if vied part by part, but I don't seem to get a larger message throughout the poem that unifies it, although I may be missing something. A structural reorganization may be in order. Longer pieces require more structural editing: what I've learned from my own writing. That's why they require more ambition. Once you get a theme, gently subverting it is good so that it's not too obvious. Take my methodical recommendations and discard them if you don't like them or use them if they're helpful. Luke
From: Luke Szyrmer Nate, After reading everyone else's comments just after I finished writing my own, I came up with some more blurbs. First, I liked the poem and found it challenging, and that was presumably intended on your part. I second Greg Djanikian's motion, embedded within a lyrical reading reading of your poem, that it's an excellent draft, leaving you much to work with should you choose to improve it. Luke
From: nchinen@dept.english.upenn.edu (Nathan T Chinen) Hey all, Here's the revision of "Ode," as read on Saturday night's "LIVE." (no, that's not "Saturday Night Live.") I tried to incorporate some of the comments that Shawn, Mike, Greg & Luke made over the listserv. Here goes: N. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ode a. bus rolls in unexpectedly, which is to say, sooner than you might have anticipated. near-imperceptible moment, startling loss of bearings: beige curtains of a hotel room only vaguely familiar by the glare of midmorning; or the moment at which you snap back into consciousness after drifting off at the wheel. really just a microsecond, it soon passes and of course you've arrived, it was bound to happen. b. wait inside the terminal, a term reserved for certain circumstances; terminal a word the radiologist has learned to hate, his tongue curling around "er" as he rounds the corner and her husband rises from a turquoise chair, features creased with uncertainty and hope, searching for the perfect word. drum yr fingers on yr knees, check yr watch, and when she walks towards you, she's radiant and you're surprised to see her, although you've been waiting for her all this time. c. unseasonably warm day, new york city. you talk about the weather and mean it. rain has slicked the pavement. headlights over the glassy streets, always in pairs. a few degrees cooler and snowflakes would rest on her eyelashes, flickering as she blinks. you pass a newsstand, all those thousands of words lined up in rows. a sidewalk florist tosses his cigarette aside with a casual sidearm motion. she steps over a curbside puddle, grins. d. dread fills the subway tunnels. this is a phrase you have been rehearsing, for such as time as this. she nods seriously, although the urge must be to roll her eyes and groan. there are rats down here as big as cats, you say. imagine being nibbled to death by rats, you say. gross, she says and makes a face. the subway car slows as it approaches the platform. you hold yr breath in hopes that the doors will stop just right, swishing open at your feet. e. in the village, at the art bar, you comment on the rod stewart tunes which demarcate the crowd as a demographic that isn't yours. topic shifts to perceived differences between "rural" and "urban" poet, perhaps a fallacy; geography as overrated and merely symptomatic. television over the bar flickers urgently but noiselessly. writing a poem is like unraveling a mystery, you say. when in doubt, she says, praise something. yes, you tell her, that's some terrific advice.