<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Dear Poeticians,</div><div><br></div><div>We met last Friday for our first discussion of Susan Stewart and her most recent collection of poems, Red Rover. Susan Stewart will join us for our second discussion of her work on April 29th from 3-5 in room 116 of the Whitney Humanities Center (our last session of the semester/year!). From our first discussion, a set of questions were assembled that have been forwarded to her. These will help structure our conversation on the 29th, though of course the exchange will be a dialogue, so the questions are really just prompts. I'll past the se below. Also, since it just appeared in my inbox, I'll paste a poem of Stewart's that just appeared on the Boston Review website. How's that for cutting edge timeliness!</div><div><br></div><div>Also, if you have time today, you might stop by at the Beinecke at 4 pm. Two of our regular WGCP members--Cooper Wilhelm and Ilan Ben-Meir--are part of a group reading of Yale student poets.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>And our own Gray Jacobik has a very interesting interview/response about "How a Poem Happens" here <a href="http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2011/04/gray-jacobik.html">http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2011/04/gray-jacobik.html</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Onward!</div><div>Richard Deming, Group Co-coordinator</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Questions from Yale
Poetics Group for April 29<sup>th</sup>, 2011 <o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Whitney Humanities
Center Room 116, 3-5 PM.<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Throughout <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Red
Rover</i> (beginning even with the title), one sees references to children’s
games, echoes of nursery rhymes, allusions to mythology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Given that your doctorate is in folklore,
what do you see the role of poetry to be in maintaining and disseminating
certain cultural modes and models?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>To push this further, is your poetry a participation in/a continuance of
these older modes and practices (including older, traditional lyric modes)? Or
is it a recuperation? A redemption? This has some bearing on the opening
paragraphs, too, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Poetry and the Fate
of the Senses</i> and your discussion there of poetry’s defense against the encroaching
“oblivion of darkness” (indeed, many of us had to review some of the games that
get mentioned—including Red Rover). And what is that darkness, ultimately?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>At the center of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">Red Rover</i> stands an elegy for the victims of the Amish school
massacre in 2006. Is there a certain way of reading all of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">Red Rover</i> as elegiac in terms of its sense of wanting to draw upon
cultural history? Was this something you were aware of in structuring the book?
Again, this question is tied to the notion of how you conceptualize a
relationship of your work to tradition.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>In your practice as a poet (and in light of the
preceding questions) how do you protect your work from slipping into nostalgia
(acknowledging the past without valorizing it for its own sake)?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>What are the responsibilities of the
contemporary poet in terms of writing (from, with, within) the present moment?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Red Rover is a game of invocation and even,
perhaps, incantation—as names are called, summoning players to join the other
side (unless they break the line).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Do you see the work as performing a larger lyric address or invocation?
What or who is being summoned?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And
to what end?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>Included in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Red
Rover</i> is “Songs for Adam”, which had originally been commissioned by the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as “moon at morning,” which was part of an
artist’s book by Enid Mark. What is your thinking about the process of
collaboration?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And does that
collaboration shape how these poems are situated in Red Rover? In other words,
pulled from that collaborative context, do you see these poems as different
somehow?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What is their
relationship to the original context?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:
Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Red
Rover</i> you include translations and cited material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Do you see these as
collaborations?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You do mark the
source material, but only in notes at the back of the collection, so reading
straight through many readers wouldn’t necessarily recognize the debt or source
of these poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Are you enacting
some sense of inheritance and lineage?</p>
<!--EndFragment-->
</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>++++++++++++++</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><h3 class="article_title">Piano Music for a Silent Movie</h3> <span class="article_author"><em>Susan Stewart</em></span>
<story><p><br><br>The gossips whisper their reproaches—<br>
was it my fault I was too young for the war?<br><br>
A muddy rain spoils every picnic‚<br>
but the fields are thirsty‚ the farmers are poor.<br><br>
My talent lies in kissing and pretending‚<br>
and climbing barefoot up a trellis in the dark.<br><br>
The neighbors are sharpening their pitchforks‚<br>
though no one dares to tell us. In the park<br><br>
I found her note pinned to a linden‚<br>
her hair ribbon snagged in a pine<br><br>
—All the world worries a lover<br>
when all the world seems like a sign.<br><br>
I crossed the weedy river<br>
and floated along to her door.<br><br>
She promised me a portrait of the roses:<br>
Forever Pearl‚ and Malakoff’s Tour‚<br><br>
Gloire de Dijon‚ and Marechal‚<br>
the Souvenir of Malmaison;<br><br>
I promised her nothing but trouble—<br>
my être had no raison.<br><br>
Her hens pecked the grain from my pockets;<br>
her cat ate the butter-fat.<br><br>
You needed a coupon for coffee‚ so I <br>
brought her some cherries in my hat.<br><br>
She stowed her watercolors in the rowboat—<br>
I threw my books in the stern;<br><br>
The oars dripped blue across our shoes<br>
and we banked in a bed of ferns.<br><br>
The crazy maid shattered the porch roof<br>
while the merry-go-round never stopped.<br><br>
Cannon pounded in the distance<br>
(or was it thunder?)—every ear felt the pop.<br><br>
As for us‚ we were always falling‚ deeper<br>
than the tides and the moon‚<br><br>
Deeper than the quarry and the well‚<br>
and the shadows that hide at noon.<br><br>
All this frenzy set the cocks a-crowing—<br>
she let me pick the table and the chair‚<br><br>
The olive-wood glowed to embers:<br>
she let me let down her hair.<br><br>
“I kissed his ear and his elbow‚” she sang‚<br>
and the silky side of his thigh.<br><br>
I kissed his knees‚ I kissed his lips<br>
and then he waved goodbye.”<br><br>
Our little spirit flitted‚ <br>
as fast and light as a moth.<br><br>
“Shameful‚” they said‚ “unlawful<br>
—a troth‚ in the end‚ is a troth.”<br><br>
Love is a lapse and lovers liars‚<br>
the father weeps‚ the mother sighs.<br><br>
The wagons are circling <br>
below the bedroom floor.<br><br>
One laughs too much‚ <br>
the other cries.<br><br>
The honeysuckle lost its honey<br>
and the hens took their grain indoors.<br><br>
Frost leveled the ferny banks<br>
and ice grew thick on the oars.<br><br>
I saw her face in the water.<br>
I saw his face in the glass.<br><br>
Some of us live in the present‚ <br>
and some of us live in the past‚<br><br>
But it’s the bootblacks marching toward the future<br>
who trample the summer grass.<br><br>
The gossips whisper their reproaches—<br>
was it my fault I was too young for the war?<br><br>
A muddy rain spoils every picnic‚<br>
but the fields are thirsty‚ the farmers are poor.</p><div><br></div><div><a href="http://bostonreview.net/NPM/susan_stewart.php">http://bostonreview.net/NPM/susan_stewart.php</a></div></story></div></body></html>