Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Responses to Week 5 Readings

Please post your comments in reaction to the readings by Puckett, Oppen, Roethke, and Conte here. I know it's a busy reading week, but don't worry, we'll get back to writing next week. Thanks to Crystal for posting Etude 4!
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4 comments:

  1. RussFebruary 11, 2009 at 10:39 AM

    Oppen is a word genius. On Being Numerous is probably the best collection of poems ever made. Jerusalem the Golden by Reznikoff gives it a run for the money, but Oppen wins in the end.

    Want to know a secret? Poem 16 is a direct quote from Kierkegaard. He's everywhere, you cannot escape him, might as well give in.

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  2. eFebruary 11, 2009 at 11:48 AM

    I have to admit I was quite surprised that I liked Puckett as much as I did, but for some reason I really enjoyed it. Perhaps it's the sheer density and vividness of the language he uses: he has an incredible vocabulary. One of the ones that particularly pleased me was "Cameo". Each word fits perfectly to form the image, and the title itself fits with the poem so well (I must admit that I often don't understand Puckett's titles). I know that this is prose poetry, but the fact that "conceit" is on a line by itself seemed particularly significant to me: somehow echoing both the self-contained pride of a natural object and Donne-esque metaphor.

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  3. RussFebruary 11, 2009 at 1:01 PM

    i have to agree noell. i have heard caleb read one of his poems before and i found it pretty decently unappealing. but going through this book, i found myself falling for him. his language use does seem to, at least for me, be the primary contributor to this. his vocab is able to create really vivid images and im a big fan of his use of "you". half his poems are about "you" and i love the plays on that characterization. he definitely seems to have a strong grasp of weaving narratives into poetic language.

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  4. Not that GirlFebruary 26, 2009 at 2:45 PM

    Out of all of them Rothke was by far my favorite. I know that we discussed him "failing" in class because his form and content were not perfectly synchronized, but I have yet to be entirely won over by this particular measurement of POEMFAIL and POWEMWIN.

    I don't know how I feel about Oppen directly quoting Kierkagaard. It goes against the grain of what I consider to be creative authenticity. Yeah, it's neat, but it feels shallow. I also felt that Oppen's use of form to illustrate (or indeed supersede content) was a little heavy handed.

    I will agree with both Noell and Russy-Russ about Puckett's vocabulary. It is what drew me into the text and made it worth reading. The fact that Hinterlands was in prose was also appealing to me.

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