Commentaries

Obscure things have already been said (PoemTalk #53)

PoemTalk — Sun, 20 May 2012 14:19:50 +0000

Joan Retallack, "Not a Cage"

One day Joan Retallack decided it was time to discard some books and journals from her personal library. Among them were Martin Buber’s I and Thou; a collection of short stories by David Kranes (Utah Press, 1979) called Hunters in the Snow; a 1974 volume of poems by Richard Howard; a published interview with Rita Dove; 1981 issues of The Socialist Review and Georgia Review; an issue of the Chicago Review that included an important line of Dante; books of poetry by Maxine Kumin, Ai, Burt Hatlen and Thomas McGrath; a 1988 number of Gargoyle magazine in which was published a poem by Angel Gonzalez beginning “The most obscure things have already been said”; Nuns and Soldiers by Iris Murdoch; Explanation and Understanding by Georg Henrik von Wright (Cornell, 1971); and others. This act of elimination, which on the contrary turned out to be a recycling and an archiving, produced a poem she came to call “Not a Cage,” after John Cage.

Where the real exceeds the ideal (PoemTalk #52)

PoemTalk — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:54:10 +0000

Cole Swensen, "If a Garden of Numbers"

The Gardens of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Cole Swensen’s book Ours is a sequence of poems — or is perhaps best described as a poetic project. André Le Nôtre (1613-1700) was the principal gardener of King Louis XIV; he designed and led the construction of the park of the Palace of Versailles. The poems in Swensen’s book indicate a range of interests in Le Nôtre’s work and beyond, but his Gardens of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte are of special interest, and they are the topic of the poem we chose to discuss, “If a Garden of Numbers.” The poem, and our talk about it, raised a number of compelling questions. Are historical research and the lyric compatible?

PoemTalk commended in the "New York Times"

PoemTalk — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:24:04 +0000

Jacket2 and “PoemTalk” are recommended in a recent “What We're Reading” section of The New York Times.