Jorie Graham - Salmon

I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
archaic,
not even hungry, not even endangered, driving deeper and deeper
into less. They leapt up falls, ladders,
and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river,
and a blue river traveling
in opposite directions.
They would not stop, resolution of will
and helplessness, as the eye
is helpless
when the image forms itself, upside-down, backward,
driving up into
the mind, and the world
unfastens itself
from the deep ocean of the given. . .Justice, aspen
leaves, mother attempting
suicide, the white night-flying moth
the ants dismantled bit by bit and carried in
right through the crack
in my wall. . . .How helpless
the still pool is,
upstream,
awaiting the gold blade
of their hurry. Once, indoors, a child,
I watched, at noon, through slatted wooden blinds,
a man and woman, naked, eyes closed,
climb onto each other,
on the terrace floor,
and ride--two gold currents
wrapping round and round each other, fastening,
unfastening. I hardly knew
what I saw. Whatever shadow there was in that world
it was the one each cast
onto the other,
the thin black seam
they seemed to be trying to work away
between them. I held my breath.
as far as I could tell, the work they did
with sweat and light
was good. I'd say
they traveled far in opposite
directions. What is the light
at the end of the day, deep, reddish-gold, bathing the walls,
the corridors, light that is no longer light, no longer clarifies,
illuminates, antique, freed from the body of
that air that carries it. What is it
for the space of time
where it is useless, merely
beautiful? When they were done, they made a distance
one from the other
and slept, outstretched,
on the warm tile
of the terrace floor,
smiling, faces pressed against the stone.      


"Salmon," from Erosion, begins with "I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run." Through a series of shifts, the adult narrator watching television transforms into a child watching lovers from the other side of a shuttered window. This final scene allows for a truly cathartic reckoning.
Such a gesture is reminiscent of the "sliding / beneath a big black wave" in Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room" -- the moment when observation turns metaphysical. However, Graham's poem further questions the girding, both physical and philosophical, of the psyche, and the disjunctive logic of "Salmon" seems more a natural process than the heightened questioning of Bishop's poem.

Graham goes much further with a formal complexity that seems to embrace disjunction as well as a structure relative to itself. When one considers the body of her work, it is a grand experiment of form she continually makes good on

William Carlos Williams - Smell

Oh strong-ridged and deeply hollowed
nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?
What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose,
always indiscriminate, always unashamed,
and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled
poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth
beneath them. With what deep thirst
we quicken our desires
to that rank odor of a passing springtime!
Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors
for something less unlovely? What girl will care
for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?
Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?
Must you have a part in everything


Traditionally, the world knows of five senses: Sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. Throughout time we have learned that each of the 5 senses consists of organs with specialized cells that have receptors for specific stimuli. These cells have links to the nervous system and thus to the brain. All of these senses are vital to human life, the top two are sight and hearing. In the world today, we hear about those who have no sight, and even those who have no hearing, but have you ever heard of those who have no smell!?
When I first read William Carlos Williams` poem, Smell! I was like what is he talking about!? I know poet’s are supposed to be crazy and all but really was this guy writing a poem about his nose? How odd, but then when I read it a few more times, I realized that he is not only writing about his nose but he is talking to his nose. He first begins by explaining what his nose is like, and then he goes on to ask it a question. He continues throughout the poem in this way, talking to his nose about all the different things it helps him to smell, the souring flowers, to the rank oder of a passing springtime, but then at the end I think he reaches his main message he is blaming his nose for continroulsy smelling everything. His nose is always in the way and must have a wiff of everything that is out there. I think this implys the famous phrase, keep you nose out of others busniess. At the very end the last two lines of the poem, he says

WCW - Spring Storm

The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water from a thousand runnels! It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters. Drop after drop it falls from the withered grass-stems of the overhanging embankment.

 

 

 

This is just a description of a spring thunderstorm, written in language as plain and direct as William Carlos Williams could manage.
William Carlos Williams thought that most poetry up until his time (the 1930's and later) was over-written. He thought that the words had got out of control, poets were just talking - instead of looking at things and telling precisely what they saw.
Williams set out to write a poem of plain description: making his language as ordinary, but also as precise, as a scientist would.
Often William Carlos Williams writes poems of dazzling clarity with his revolutionary technique.
Sometimes - as here - the clarity is there, but it does not dazzle.
It is a description of a storm, in as plain a language as the poet was able to find.

Jorie Graham - Just Before

At some point in the day, as such, there was a pool.  Of

stillness.  One bent
to brush one's hair, and, lifting

again, there it was, the

opening—one glanced away from a mirror, and there, before
one's glance reached the

street, it was, dilation and breath—a name called out

in another's yard—a breeze from

where—the log collapsing inward of a sudden into its

hearth—it burning further, feathery—you hear it but you
don't

look up—yet there it

bloomed—an un-

learning—all byway no birthpain—dew—sand falling onto sand—a
threat

from which you shall have

no reprieve—then the

reprieve—Some felt it was freedom, or a split-second of
unearthliness—but no, it was far from un-

earthly, it was full of

earth, at first casually full, for some millennia, then

despertately full—of earth—of copper mines and thick
under-leaf-vein sucking in of

light, and isinglass, and dusty heat—wood-rings

bloating their tree-cells with more

life—and grass and weed and tree intermingling in the

undersoil—& the

earth's whole body round

filled with

uninterrupted continents of

burrowing—&earthwide miles of

tunnelling by the

mole, bark bettle, snail, spider, worm—& ants making
their cross-

nationstate cloths of

soil, & planetwide the

chewing of insect upon leaf—fish-mouth on krill,

the spinning of

coral, sponge, cocoon—this is what entered the pool of
stopped thought—a chain suspended in

the air of which

one link

for just an instant

turned to thought, then time, then heavy time, then

suddenly

air—a link of air!—& there was no standing army
anywhere,

& the sleeping bodies in the doorways in all

the cities of

what was then just

planet earth

were lifted up out of their sleeping

bags, & they walked

away, & the sensation of empire blew off the link

like pollen—just like that—off it went—into thin air—&
the athletes running their

games in Delphi entered the zone in the

long oval of the arena where you run in

shadow, where the killer crowd becomes

one sizzling hiss, where,

coming round that curve the slowness

happens, & it all goes

inaudible, & the fatigue the urgent sprint the lust

makes the you

fantastically alone, & the bees thrum the hillsides,
& all the blood that has been

wasted—all of it—gathers into deep coherent veins in the

earth

and calls itself

history—& we make it make

sense—

& we are asked to call it

good.

Authenticated by the reach of its perceptions and its sense of obligation, the self appears magnified, even aggrandised, in the poet's repeated reaching towards an indifferent but beloved infinity amid which humans oppress and slaughter each other. The suspicion grows that the important thing may somehow be not the thing seen or understood, but the fact that the self has seen it: the intended scale of things is in effect reversed. That this seems quite guileless makes it more worrying, though not unfamiliar.
There are precedents for Graham's work in the way America adapted Romanticism – in Whitman, for example – and in traditions of Protestant testimony.

William Carlos Williams - Peace on Earth

The Archer is wake!
The Swan is flying!
Gold against blue
An Arrow is lying.
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Bears are abroad!
The Eagle is screaming!
Gold against blue
Their eyes are gleaming!
Sleep!
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Sisters lie
With their arms intertwining;
Gold against blue
Their hair is shining!
The Serpent writhes!
Orion is listening!
Gold against blue
His sword is glistening!
Sleep!
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

 

The Arrival - William Carlos Williams

And yet one arrives somehow,
finds himself loosening the hooks of
her dress
in a strange bedroom--
feels the autumn
dropping its silk and linen leaves
about her ankles.
The tawdry veined body emerges
twisted upon itself
like a winter wind . . . !

William Carlos Williams

 

William Carlos Williams addresses several working-class themes that would include this renowned writer into the canon of working class literature. While often regarded as a writer of the professional-class, Williams dealt with themes very integral to the plight of the working class. These issues include: poverty, distrust of authority, work shaping one's life, urban blight, struggle, gender issues, and class consciousness.
From his occupation as a family practitioner, Williams had a wealth of first hand experience with those of the working class. Although an industrial town, Rutherford would be considered affluent compared to the surrounding North Jersey communities it served. Cities like Newark, Passaic, Kearny, Paterson, and Hackensack were where the immigrant and first generation Americans made their homes. These people were laborers, and they were Williams' patients. Robert Coles offers insight to Williams's life in William Carlos Williams: The Knack of Survival in America. He explains that when Williams was asked by a college professor where he got his language from Williams responded, "From the mouths of Polish mothers" .

Jorie Graham - The Surface

The Surface

It has a hole in it. Not only where I

                                 concentrate.

The river still ribboning, twisting up,

into its re-

arrangements, chill enlightenments, tight-knotted

quickenings

and loosenings--whispered messages dissolving

the messengers--

the river still glinting-up into its handfuls, heapings.

glassy

forgettings under the river of

my attention--

and the river of my attention laying itself down--

bending,

reassembling--over the quick leaving-offs and windy

obstacles--

and the surface rippling under the wind's attention--

rippling over the accumulations, the slowed-down drifting

 

                                      permanences

of the cold

bed.

I say iridescent and I look down.

The leaves very still as they are carried.

 

 

There are so many different surfaces in the world. Whether it's rough or smooth, dry or wet, soft or hard. Surfaces hold us, things, everything. I believe they are essential to our survival. In Jorie Graham's poem "The Surface" she combines the surface, the river, with wind. A leave carried in the wind across the water. It's such a simple topic, but yet Graham's writing style is intriguing. The whispering of the wind is a secret message for us humans. The leaves are the messages, flying over the river's surface waiting to get collected and read. But when they hit the surface, they leave holes. The style of this poem is very appealing and new as well. 23 lines, some of them only contain on word. Graham uses a lot punctuation to set a mood for the poem. The various use of caesurae paces the poem. It's different, which I like. The word "iridescent" is italicized in the second to last line. Why? It's a beautiful word. It means the showing of various colors that seen to change when see from different directions. This perfectly applied to the water. The colors of the water change with every new position. That's what makes it so special.

 

Jorie Graham- Sundown

Sometimes the day light winces behind you and it is a great treasure in this case today a man on a horse in calm full gallop on Omaha over my left shoulder coming on fast but calm not audible to me at all until I turned back my head for no reason as if what lies behind one had whispered what can I do for you today and I had just turned to answer and the answer to my answer flooded from the front with the late sun he/they were driving into—gleaming— wet chest and upraised knees and light-struck hooves and thrust-out even breathing of the great beast—from just behind me, passing me—the rider looking straight ahead and yet smiling without looking at me as I smiled as we both smiled for the young animal, my feet in the breaking wave-edge, his hooves returning, as they begin to pass by, to the edge of the furling break, each tossed-up flake of ocean offered into the reddish luminosity—sparks—as they made their way, boring through to clear out life, a place where no one again is suddenly killed—regardless of the "cause"—no one—just this galloping forward with force through the low waves, seagulls scattering all round, their screeching and mewing rising like more bits of red foam, the horse's hooves now suddenly louder as it goes by and its prints on wet sand deep and immediately filled by thousands of sandfleas thrilled to the declivities in succession in the newly released beach—just at the right moment for some microscopic life to rise up through these cups in the hard upslant retreating ocean is revealing, sandfleas finding them just as light does, carving them out with shadow, and glow on each ridge, and water oozing up through the innermost cut of the hoofsteps, and when I shut my eyes now I am not like a blind person walking towards the lowering sun, the water loud at my right, but like a seeing person with her eyes shut putting her feet down one at a time on the earth.

This poem is another unique piece of Jorie Graham's poetry collection. The author of the poem is at the beach walking along, when a man on a horse comes up to her. Again Graham refers to the ocean/ water a lot. It is a reoccurring theme in most of her poems. She goes into details with the seagulls and the sand. This line in the poem, "and when I shut my eyes now I am not like a blind person" reminded me of A Friend Going Blind. She talks about hard subjects, but while connecting them with something calm (like the ocean) it makes it so much easier to  read about. This quote, "water oozing up through the innermost cut of the hoofsteps" is a great image that emerges when reading this line. It's such a simple line, but makes me think about it.

William Carlos Williams -

It is a small plant 
delicately branched and 
tapering conically 
to a point, each branch 
and the peak a wire for         
green pods, blind lanterns 
starting upward from 
the stalk each way to 
a pair of prickly edged blue 
flowerets: it is her regard,         
a little plant without leaves, 
a finished thing guarding 
its secret. Blue eyes— 
but there are twenty looks 
in one, alike as forty flowers         
on twenty stems—Blue eyes 
a little closed upon a wish 
achieved and half lost again, 
stemming back, garlanded 
with green sacks of         
satisfaction gone to seed, 
back to a straight stem—if 
one looks into you, trumpets—! 
No. It is the pale hollow of 
desire itself counting         
over and over the moneys of 
a stale achievement. Three 
small lavender imploring tips 
below and above them two 
slender colored arrows         
of disdain with anthers 
between them and 
at the edge of the goblet 
a white lip, to drink from—! 
And summer lifts her look         
forty times over, forty times 
over—namelessly.

-William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams has always been known as an experimenter, an innovator, a revolutionary figure in American poetry. Yet in comparison to artists of his own time who sought a new environment for creativity as expatriates in Europe, Williams lived a remarkably conventional life. A doctor for more than forty years serving the New Jersey town of Rutherford, he relied on his patients, the America around him, and his own ebullient imagination to create a distinctively American verse. Often domestic in focus and "remarkable for its empathy, sympathy, its muscular and emotional identification with its subjects," Williams's poetry is also characteristically honest

Jorie Graham - Mind

The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop. What is it
they cast for? The poplars,
advancing or retreating,
lose their stature
equally, and yet stand firm,
making arrangements
in order to become
imaginary. The city
draws the mind in streets,
and streets compel it
from their intersections
where a little
belongs to no one. It is
what is driven through
all stationary portions
of the world, gravity's
stake in things, the leaves,
pressed against the dank
window of November
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edges give a bit
and soften. See how
then the picture becomes clear,
the mind entering the ground
more easily in pieces,
and all the richer for it.

Jorie Graham

 

In the first lines of "Mind," the speaker offers a metaphor for the mind, comparing it to "the slow overture of rain." Overture in this context denotes an orchestral introduction to a musical dramatic work. The speaker compares the way the mind moves from one perception to the next, one thought to the next, with the way an overture leads into the musical work itself. The mind is "unrelenting" because it never stops. It is "syncopated" (also a musical term) because, as in an overture, there is a shift to something else, maybe another perception, another subject, or another way of thinking. These lines comment both on the workings of the mind and the workings of this poem, which also shifts subjects. The speaker continues comparing the mind with natural phenomena. The speaker imagines that the hummingbird and the swallow perceive the world in.

 

Williams Carlos Williams - Approach of Winter

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden
                                   -William Carlos Williams



My intial reaction was that he was talking about the ruthlessness of winter and its grip on nature. Williams uses various adjectives to describe the scene of the poem.Williams's poetry here is very succinct. He is remarking how winter makes its presence known, and he uses imagery to show how it seems to seep into autumn, as leaves gradually fall off of trees, the air grows a little bit colder each day, and the ground hardens as you get closer to winter.

Jorie Graham - Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re- infolding, entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing motion that forces change-- this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself, also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go. I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never. It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never. - Jorie Graham      This poem, to me, starts off with her watching waves and sort of analyzing them. She takes the movemoents and actions of the waves and compares them to hard times of life. Graham uses the “unity” of minnows forming a “current”, to show that change in inevitable and it is something that she hopes to stay away from. Just as unity conforms the “minnows”, even that togetherness cannot prevent change in the world, it in inevitable and even nature must conform to that notion. When I first read this poem, I felt that it was entitled, “Prayer”, because she was so devastated and frustrated by change that she needed to look to a higher power to help her overcome her difficulties with the world. I thought that she looked to prayer, for god created the minnows and the nature surrounding her and the changes occuring within her world, therefore she would need the stability and calm that only a spiritual hope can achieve. However, while reading this poem a second time I got a completely different meaning. I felt her new message was that faith and change are both forced upon you. I get the feeling that she feels “trapped” because even faith can trap you and “change” your beliefs against your will. The main part of the poem that completely changed my view was when she stated, “motion that forces change—this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same.The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed”. I feel that she wants her own beliefs to remain intact, not the “faith” and the beliefs of others. I still feel that she is against change, but maybe in this case it is dealing with a change in her beliefs rather than change in general. I find it very interesting that she has such abstract yet meaningful poetry that I can find two completely different meanings from this poem. That is true talent.

William Carlos Williams: The Dance

In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling
about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.
- William Carlos Williams
 

This poem was hard for me to undestand at first. My initial reaction about the poem was that it was about some kind of exotic dancers that he wasnt so fond of. I kind of got a sense of lust in the words though. Upon further research, I learned that a kermesse was originally a special celebration on the feast day of the saint who stood as patron for the town or village in which it occurred. So it is safe to presume that he made these obsevations about dancers while at a party or celebration. I also learned that this poem is attached to a painting, in which he uses the poem to describe the scene in the painting. Accoding to analysis at the University of Minnesota, the poem s also fast and rollicking. We're not supposed to pause at the end of each line, as we are with some poems, but rather to keep reading, to keep the dance going. This technique of running over lines is called "enjambment," and Williams uses it here to create through form the sense of motion and circularity he describes in the poem. (Source: University of Minnesota). As I read the poem a 2nd time I realized that he actually refers to the painting. The name of the painting "Brueghels" I posted the picture abovee accurately accesses what is occuring in the picture. From the dancers to each detail of what he wrote in his poem. The last thing I would like to add, thouugh, is that for some reason I thought that the scene would have been taking place inside. (I thought this before I saw the painting)

Jorie Graham: San Sepolcro

     In this blue light I can take you there, snow having made me a world of bone seen through to. This is my house, my section of Etruscan wall, my neighbor's lemontrees, and, just below the lower church, the airplane factory. A rooster crows all day from mist outside the walls. There's milk on the air, ice on the oily lemonskins. How clean the mind is, holy grave. It is this girl by Piero della Francesca, unbuttoning her blue dress, her mantle of weather, to go into labor. Come, we can go in. It is before the birth of god. No one has risen yet to the museums, to the assembly line--bodies and wings--to the open air market. This is what the living do: go in. It's a long way. And the dress keeps opening from eternity to privacy, quickening. Inside, at the heart, is tragedy, the present moment forever stillborn, but going in, each breath is a button coming undone, something terribly nimble-fingered finding all of the stops.  - Jorie Graham
 

 

      My initial reaction to reading this poem was that, in the beginning, she basically set the scene of the poem and then goes into the story. I conceived that it was about a woman is giving birth but that the she is having complication or that the baby is a still born. I was surprised at the nature of the content of the poem. To me, it was aimed toward a more mature reader. There was not much informatioon on this poem on the internet. Leaving me to only infer more about this poem. Some symbols I noticed is, blue light, Etruscan, lemontrees, church, and the airplane factory. All of these represent seperate things. Since there was not much information on this poem, I cannot only infer what these symbols mean. I believe the theme that stands out the most, though, is the rooster. I say this because a rooster can represent so many things. It can represent the onset of something new, such as a day. It can also represent a signal, such as an alarm. I think that the rooster connects to the new life or beginning of the babies life, or a signal of distress of the complication of the pregnancy. I did find out that San Sepolcro is a city in Italy. I think that it is pretty safe to inferthat the poem takes place in this town in Italy. I also found out that a famous structure in Sansepolcro is a church. Which might be the church she is referring to in the poem.

Williams Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
 - Williams Carlos Williams

     This poem is simple yet meaningful. The opening lines set the tone for the rest of the poem. Since the poem is composed of one sentence broken up at various intervals, it is truthful to say that "so much depends upon" each line of the poem. This is so because the form of the poem is also its meaning. This may seem confusing, but by the end of the poem the image of the wheelbarrow is seen as the actual poem, as in a painting when one sees an image of an apple, the apple represents an actual object in reality, but since it is part of a painting the apple also becomes the actual piece of art. These lines are also important because they introduce the idea that "so much depends upon" the wheelbarrow. There is also alot of symbolism in the poem. The image of the red wheelbarrow is pretty darn powerful. We see it very clearly in our minds, and all our speaker has to do to paint the image for us is to tell that it is a "red wheelbarrow." If that isn't magic, we don't know what is. William does a great job in creating a vivid image in our minds of the picture of what the poem is trying to get us to imagine. I really like the simplicity and straight forwardness of the poem. It kind of represents me as a person, very straight forward and simple. One of the themes of this poem is Man and the Natural World. We see a harmonious relationship between an manmade object (reflective of the human world) and nature. The red wheelbarrow sits unused and neglected, while rain seems to wash it clean and make it look brand spanking new. Chickens hang out with the wheelbarrow and keep it company. It almost seems like this wheelbarrow is part of nature. The absence of humans in this scene makes us feel the wheelbarrow's loneliness and makes us appreciate nature for paying attention to the wheelbarrow. (Source: http://www.shmoop.com/red-wheelbarrow/man-the-natural-world-theme.html)