Nina Corwin, "On Listening to the Brahms Violin Sonata #1"

"...a grace note of magenta..."

Ekphrastic poetry is ode-like in that is a tribute to, an argument with a painting or sculpture or another poem. Or a sonata. It zooms in on a specific work of art, is inspired by the work or art as a whole, revels in its inspiration.

What strikes me about Nina Corwin's "On Listening to the Brahms Violin Sonata #1," beyond its breathtaking investigation into artistic choice, and its second sentence speeding along like a driver and a car freed to be their most cruising selves, is its exploration.

Respond to this poem's questioning, its suggestion and unabashed synesthesia--feeling the music as color.  Join Corwin and knowing the chords as hues--magenta, deep forest green. And those hues, as sounds, will play in our mouth. New images will appear, the chandelier, the chef with her cilantro, then textures offering a sense of, an equivalent.

Corwin shares her love of sound, of a specific piece of music, of the singular and exuberant freedom of listening when accompanied by speed and scenery.  This is a good poem. 


On Listening to the Brahms Violin Sonata #1

And just like that! Cruising up Route 94 with the classical radio station
crooning on all four speakers, when it gets to the moment of that certain
crescendo where the violin does what violins do so well, and the bow
catches the sinews inside my chest as if they were strings stretched across
an unfretted fingerboard, it strikes me that perhaps when Brahms composed
he chose his instruments the way a painter chooses colors, dabbing his
brush in a grace note of magenta because the violin can shimmy up a string
so sweet, maybe turning it over in his hands as he imagines the sound of
magenta rubbing up against the chords of a deep forest green, the way a
poet might choose a word, say, magenta because the sound curves against
the roof of the mouth, or the way a word like piano makes a kind of
corkscrew between the cheeks, how clutter clicks, and chandelier is sensual
and elegant at the same time, or how a chef picks a leaf of cilantro for its
clean line and timbre where taste meets texture curried up against a
cardamon pod, the contrapuntal harmonies when they echo with magenta or
piano, the chords they make together in a sentence or crooning on a car
radio, and it couldn't be flute or oboe, not here, this moment, but now, these
cadenzas, this final G major, now, the violin.
______

Nina Corwin. "On Listening to the Brahms Violin Sonata #1" first appeared in Poetry East, no. 52, Spring, 2004.

Praise for literary journals, craft, hard work, Fifth Wednesday, Alice George's 'Lysol'

Lysol advertising history is
bizarre with implications women
could use it as douche or
contraceptive. Ck. wikipedia. 

Literary journals are, individually, a surprise. An anthology of almost random work waiting discovery.

Since each "random work" is in truth selected, its seeming random quality is merely a perception of the reader, who most often well knows there is a God and that God is a poetry or fiction editor.

Moving without fanfare from third- to first-person, I, Sarah Sarai, take delight in roaming pages as if they were an easy or at least unfenced range, not knowing what I will find, feeling free to like, dislike, reconsider.

My peers, writers I'm published alongside in a journal whose God has blessed me by selecting my poem or story, can intimidate. Sometimes I'm nervous when I receive a contributor's copy in the mail (just talking print, here) and have to wait to investigate who has outshined me, revealed the meagerness of my craft.

When Vern Miller, publisher and editor of Fifth Wednesday, sent my contributor's copy over a year ago (Nina Corwin was God, a.k.a. Guest Poetry Editor) I didn't hesitate to read the issue. I can't tell you why I unselfconsciously dove in because I don't know.

I read for delight and also to be educated. To see how other writers resolve or work with issues that puzzle me. "Lysol" is a sweep of a poem, one long sentence, and that's what interests me in terms of craft--how does Alice George use conjunctions and prepositions (which in a one-sentence poem move things along), honestly. The ultimate answer is through rewrites and drafts. I don't know George, but I will stake my heart with a silver pen if that's not the case. The answer to most questions about writing is Work at it.

The poem makes the specific--a friend, conversation, emotion--universal. I feel I know the players. I feel. Words jump with tangential logic (. . .hers is deeply / unexpected [flood? basement? life? empty nest?] and out-of-control. . .).

Check out Alice George's poetry collection, This Must Be the Place. I don't know if she was aware of claims Lysol executives made early in the 1900s, but I read a woman's body in the poem before I knew of the history.


Lysol

Exhausted as jerky my friend
leans her head into the bright

salad I've made and tells about
ER shifts back to back and then

demands to know what kind
of Lysol I use to clean my basement

after it floods because hers is deeply
unexpected and out-of-control

and before I tell her nothing
we use nothing it's rain simply

triumphant around our ankles
before I offer her crackers

and volunteer as case in point
our cracked cave down below

I study the marks on her the way
her youngest son's leaving

has left her streaked with mud
and tears and now she somehow

wrings her clever hands
of answer she is mourning

the departure of the water
she swam in and I will be

there in a few years and vow
to be just so completely wrecked.

___________
Alice George, pub. in Fifth Wednesday Journal, Spring 2009, Issue 4.

Blurb and Be Blurbed: or, as ye blurb . . .

Blurb is not an attractive word. Visually it is at best whimsical, a bulging clown. Audibly it is the anti-onomatopoeia. A bl-ur-b is written in praise?

But it is.

From Wikipedia: "The concept of a 'brief statement praising a literary product' dates back to medieval literature of Egypt from the 14th century. The concept was known as taqriz in medieval Arabic literature." From medieval Arabic literature to God’s ears.

Movie blurbs are laughable—there are so many “best” movies of the year according to blurbs, Oscar ballots could be bound books rather than short lists.

As for fiction, I once heard an author—a good writer—at a reading—state he didn’t have time to read the books he blurbed. Maybe he was being flip?

It’s blurbs on back covers of poetry collections that interests me here, although I never gave them much thought until I had to ask poets to “blurb me.” I asked five and four agreed. (Their comments are at the end of this entry.) I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t admire their work and when I read the comments, I found temporary residence in another world where Sarah Sarai is a temple goddess of 3,000 loving arms and one heart, where chocolate is iridescent, where seersucker is the fabric of royalty.

The Future Is Happy is a first book. The fact that four poets were willing to link their names with mine made my present happy.

I don’t know that blurbs are necessarily useful or even necessary in helping me select books I like. Even if admired and beloved John Ashbery or Rita Dove recommend a book I’m not necessarily going to buy or like it. Taste is individual.

An acquaintance commented, on a social networking site, “Attention poetry publishers: when sending promo for a new book, don't even bother sending blurbs. Blurbs are bullshit and everyone knows it. Send sample poems and some kind of description. Really. A movie trailer shows scenes from a movie, right? Common sense. And poetry books are way more expensive than movie tix.”

My reaction was immediate and kneejerk, not to the sentiment (such as it is) but to the sweeping generalization. “Blurbs are bullshit and everyone knows it.” Are they? They reveal writing quality of the blurber at the very least, but also can convey a sense of WHY someone liked the book. Even briefer, they give a sense of the book.

This same poet added, “I just think it's a stupid custom, largely unquestioned although everyone I know mocks them.” EVERYONE?

Anyway. I'm not a total idiot. Every field is fixed at times by which I mean, some poets write praise they don't mean. I have read stupid blurbs of generic praise. I have doubted some poets ever internalized Camp Fire Girl, Girl Scout or Boy Scout codes of honesty.

You know. I was going to write my reaction to the blurbs on my book but realized I would be blurbing the blurbs which might invite another blogger to blurb the blurbs of my blurbs. Search on the BlazeVOX [books] catalog for a blurb written by one Sarah Sarai (for Charles Freeland’s Eros & (Fill in the Blank).

And, ta-dah, here are mine:

Sarah Sarai’s poems are charged with the terrible presence of the now and the dangerous fact of words. This is poetry as it should be. Scary, strange, generous, intensely in a physical world while illuminating an unimaginable spiritual world. This is writing that sings. The song it sings is the song of our hearts.

—Jack Wiler (Fun Being Me, I Have No Clue)

With both wit and tenderness, Sarah Sarai rigorously navigates the dialectics of knowledge and not knowing, thinking and being, the fantastic and the quotidian, the spiritual and the earthy, in language that is by turns crisp and lush. These are heady, whip-smart, funny and moving poems in which time becomes fluid and vertical—high-rise pageant of art, ephemera, filigree and memory through which our physical and temporal bodies spark and fall much too quickly.

—Lee Ann Roripaugh (On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year; Year of the Snake; Beyond Heart Mountain)

How often we hear it: "No ideas but in things." But Sarai throws pie in the face of such doctrine, and a tasty pie it is. Here, abstractions such as connection, morality and "sloppy forgiveness" form the crust of her work. But the filling, juicy with the polymorphous perversity of a living breathing world, teems with a compote of voices, textures, colors. Socrates, James Brown, Anna Karenina are tossed together with bebop, chili peppers and "100 billion neurons nipping maybe 268 mph." So much to chew on! The poet serves it all with an uncommon heart and broad-ranging intellect. The result is writing which is naked, urgent, frisky and sublime.

—Nina Corwin (Conversations with Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints; Inhabiting the Body: A Collection of Poetry and Art by Women-editor; Fifth Wednesday Journal-poetry editor)

Sarah Sarai’s poetry is hot-wired and hip-swivel all the way up the spine! Emily Dickinson is Jewish and Moses breaks tablets for stellar sex. She’s retained the best of modernism (especially that syncopated variable foot Charlie Parker bop in the word-love) and moved onto new red earth for her own vision. Eat this book! It’s terrific.

—Doug Anderson (The Moon Reflected Fire; Blues for Unemployed Secret Police; Keep Your Head Down-a memoir)

Buy The Future Is Happy from Amazon or Small Press Distribution.

Links to reviews are HERE!

 

See also: Polonius on Acid (re: art of the blurb)