poem#9: ORGANIC FORM/THE FIELD POEM

Read Levertov's essay HERE --4 pages (easier to "get" than Olson's Projective Verse, and also influential)

1  THE BURNING (excerpt from WATERLILY FIRE)

by Muriel Rukeyser

Girl grown woman     fire     mother of fire

I go to the stone street turning to fire.     Voices

Go screaming     Fire     to the green glass wall.

And there where my youth flies blazing into fire

The     dance     of sane and insane images, noon

Of seasons and days.     Noontime of my one hour.

Saw down the bright noon street the crooked faces

Among the tall daylight in the city of change.

The scene has walls     stone     glass     all my gone life

One wall a web through which the moment walks

And I am open, and the opened hour

The world as water-garden     lying behind it.

In a city of stone, necessity of fountains,

Forces water fallen on glass, men with their axes.

An arm of flame reaches from water-green glass,

Behind the wall I know waterlilies

Drinking their light, transforming light and our eyes

Skythrown under water, clouds under those flowers,

Walls standing on all things stand in a city noon

Who will not believe a waterlily fire.

Whatever can happen in a city of stone,

Whatever can come to a wall can come to this wall.

I walk in the river of crisis toward the real,

I pass guards, finding the center of my fear

And you, Dick, endlessly my friend during storm.

The arm of flame striking through the wall of form.

[in Just-]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee

Ellen West (excerpt)

BY FRANK BIDART

I love sweets,—
                      heaven
would be dying on a bed of vanilla ice cream ...

But my true self
is thin, all profile

and effortless gestures, the sort of blond
elegant girl whose
                            body is the image of her soul.

—My doctors tell me I must give up
this ideal;
                  but I
WILL NOT ... cannot.

Only to my husband I’m not simply a “case.”

But he is a fool. He married
meat, and thought it was a wife.

.            .            .

Why am I a girl?

I ask my doctors, and they tell me they
don’t know, that it is just “given.”

But it has such
implications—;
                      and sometimes,   

I even feel like a girl. 


Assignment: DUE THURSDAY IN CLASS.  Write -- as Levertov suggests-- "open-mouthed in the temple of life" while using the page as a compositional field. Freedom of form offers so many choices that it can be paralyzing--both Olson and Levertov say to write from this place you must be terribly attentive to your impulses -- able to sense their nuances -- to go when they say go, stop when they say stop.  This is more an exercise in process than in product.  If you need a subject, make it SPRING or HOW IT FEELS TO BE IN YOUR BODY.  In other words, keep the subject matter close at hand, so that attending to it is much like listening to yourself think/feel/be.

I'll send you some Wallace Stevens later this week in prep for next week's assignment. Best O' Luck.