Sorry, I have trouble reading poetry about drinking pee even if that's not exactly what it's about, so I skipped the rest of that one. I really liked her owl poem.
I know you only said to read the first poem at the second link but you'd started by saying we shouldn't necessarily trust your judgment and so I didn't but now I do.
I only count six Indiana Welcome Centers and I'm half-tempted to do some road trips to see which, if any, even have owls. It seems plausible that that would be a real thing.
1: Drinking pee? I didn't get that, but I'm the most ignorant of all.
I thought it was about pen envy.
Oh, it was, peep. I'm just very squeamish and stopped halfway through.
Of the 4 anecdotes I enjoyed the first two, but the last two baffled me.
Was the poet too squeamish to write out penis?
Tricia Lockwood is many things, but squeamish is not one of them.
Even so, though, when it's about piss it's about pissing, not drinking. The closest thing I see is "their wife is catching every word and every word is gold," and I mean you can certainly go ahead and have some urine-drinking associations there, but they're oblique rather than face-on (as it were). Also that's a bit past the halfway point.
3: State welcome centers are such a hilarious thing. I don't know why. I visit them whenever the opportunity presents.
The owl poem reminds me of this NSFW comic.
13: I've heard of her. I don't know her personally.
14: Oh. I thought you were hinting that she drank your pee.
She's well known for her sexts on Twitter.
16: Ok! I was pretty far off, but not entirely in the wrong ballpark.
Anyway, I enjoyed both of her poems without any having any confidence that I really understood them.
Lockwood's sexts are hilarious. I also recommend Greg Rrskine's.
I got Ruefle's much-praised essay collection recently and was pretty unimpressed. Don't know her poetry, though.
Three Dawn Songs in Summer
1.
The first long shadows in the fields
Are like mortal difficulty.
The first birdsong is not like that at all.
2.
The light in summer is very young and wholly unsupervised.
No one has made it sit down to breakfast.
It's the first one up, the first one out.
3.
Because he has opened his eyes, he must be light
And she, sleeping beside him, must be the visible,
One ringlet of her hair curled about her ear
Into which he whispers, "Wake up!"
"Wake up!" he whispers.
(I don't really dig the fact that in the third the dude is light and the woman is the visible, and that because the dude has already been assigned light so she must be that on which the light falls, BUT overall I like the poem.)
But he doesn't say that the dude is the light, etc., he says "he must be," so there's room for it to be otherwise.
On Hass generally, this is funny, if not everywhere tightly argued. If you don't read the whole thing, at least search for "cunt" and read the parts around that.
And now I'm in internet love with Tricia Lockwood.
10: I thought it remained metaphorically involved with something about blackberries and I quit. This is not legit criticism, mind you.
22: Two hours and ten minutes, after I'd finished a pot of coffee. I decided against the window option because the yellow snow would be really conspicuous in a place where a dog wouldn't be expected to be able to reach.
28: I take it your wife wasn't there either.
I don't usually take her to work. They won't pay her if I do.
I've visited state welcome centers, but only to discharge urine, not drink it.
I love that this thread has so far been almost entirely about the poem that ogged pointedly did not discuss in the OP.
24: that essay sort of makes me think that Hass might be the poor man's William Everson (who is himself, occasionally, the poor man's Robinson Jeffers).
(River-Root is not free from unintentionally humorous moments—among them Everson's fastidious noting that that the couple at its center are married and Catholic before getting down to business—but I don't think it has anything that bad.)
If you don't read the whole thing, at least search for "cunt" and read the parts around that.
This was good advice.
The other half of 33 and 34 is that Everson was quite good at deploying e.g. the names of birds, though one should be warned that after the first two stanzas the linked poem becomes rather dull and predictable.
Actually, it's better than I remembered. And the last stanza is very good as well.
I love Welcome Centers, and often return to them on later yrips
I love Welcome Centers, and often return to them on later yrips
I love that this thread has so far been almost entirely about the poem that ogged pointedly did not discuss in the OP.
He pointedly did not discuss two poems.
A prof once told me that Baudelaire is poetry for people who don't read poetry and I think Tricia Lockwood is in that category too. Baudelaire's venting spleen makes him accessible; Lockwood doesn't offer up a unitary literal interpretation quite so willingly but there's something consistently comic, urgent and carnal about her stuff that keeps me on the ride. Granted I've read many more tweets than poems.
a poem in which the poet is so enamored of himself and his sincerity that he is rendered quite tone-deaf to the comic pseudo-profundity of his lines
This, from the link in 24, is exactly what Mallory Ortberg and Patricia Lockwood are so delightfully lethal towards.
Poetry is the terriblest. Except for really good poetry.
Also I keep thinking Tricia Lockwood is a New Country star. Who am I thinking of? Oh, Trisha Yearwood.
The first one sounds like it's emulating translated Chinese poetry, but written directly in English. I wonder if it would be better if it was translated into Owl.
46. I couldn't help reading that as OWL, and immediately started wondering what the ontology would look like.
Writing poems in Spanish would be easier. Everything rhymes in Spanish.
Poems used to rhyme.
Rhyme? Newfangled rubbish!
47: Reminds me of Prufrock sent to a user profiling visualization
https://mobile.twitter.com/edwardtufte/status/550814856161796098
Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,
That expresseth but by fits
True conceit,
Spoiling senses of their treasure,
Cozening judgment with a measure,
But false weight;
Wresting words from their true calling,
Propping verse for fear of falling
To the ground;
Jointing syllabes, drowning letters,
Fast'ning vowels as with fetters
They were bound!
Soon as lazy thou wert known,
All good poetry hence was flown,
And art banish'd.
For a thousand years together
All Parnassus' green did wither,
And wit vanish'd.
Pegasus did fly away,
At the wells no Muse did stay,
But bewail'd
So to see the fountain dry,
And Apollo's music die,
All light failed!
Starveling rhymes did fill the stage;
Not a poet in an age
Worth crowning;
Not a work deserving bays,
Not a line deserving praise,
Pallas frowning;
Greek was free from rhyme's infection,
Happy Greek by this protection
Was not spoiled.
Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues,
Is not yet free from rhyme's wrongs,
But rests foiled.
Scarce the hill again doth flourish,
Scarce the world a wit doth nourish
To restore
Phoebus to his crown again,
And the Muses to their brain,
As before.
Vulgar languages that want
Words and sweetness, and be scant
Of true measure,
Tyrant rhyme hath so abused,
That they long since have refused
Other cæsure.
He that first invented thee,
May his joints tormented be,
Cramp'd forever.
Still may syllabes jar with time,
Still may reason war with rhyme,
Resting never.
May his sense when it would meet
The cold tumor in his feet,
Grow unsounder;
And his title be long fool,
That in rearing such a school
Was the founder.
If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;
Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd
By ear industrious, and attention meet:
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.
In Spakhill buried lies a man of mark
Who brought the obelisk to Central Park,
Redoubtable Commander H. H. Gorringe,
Whose name supplies the long-sought rhyme for 'orange'
What sort of poor vocabulary is't, that possesses nary noun
or verb to match the onth in August is the Year's eighth Month?
Michael Robbins is a Taylor Swift fan, it seems.
A big one, if his twitter feed is any indication.