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[HaroHalola]

Hello, Dave - TY; you've afforded to a lot to chew-on, happily, b/c this response will be a preamble/warm-up (nothing diminishing intended, simply some [timely] chronology) for LH, & T.I.S, et al?  Initially, "this kind (the Word keeps surfacing) of Poetry" (my Work) has been Published in mainstream & Avant Garde/experimental Journals, Anthologies, etc. in both Print & Online (Ezines); however, you are accurate in your assessment of the dearth of ubiquity, on two counts: a) Publishers do not, en masse want to take risks, b) they do not (by their declaim) "know" what to do with me (as if Publishing quality which piques the imagination was a mental stretch).

HaroHalola, actually a portmanteau of Hindi/Hawaiian, is not from Baltimore (T.I.S. establishes this in his comments), a happy enigma to myself, sometimes, bringin' in the signal; we have all "met," the Akashics attest to this, however I am humbled by the offer to contact (you may get some wild replies saying It's me, by going public; I assure you'll recognize me by the Haroisms).  Your prompts to "keep-on keepin'-on" are queued with my own intents, hopefully my views of the Morlde & styles of portrayal will continue to intrigue you, the valuables here, & my Self -   H'H./H.e.m.     

 

[HaroHalola]

LH - You have made the gambit on & off the board, which run the gamut; your "other" comments bear response, initially I see no critical reason to not address the scope of my Work, provided the assessment balanced by the facts.  No offense taken; I am ever eager to discuss, listen & learn from others' comments re: the resonance of the Poem/Poetry in the Readers' space; for why any Poet/Writer entertains the fellacious-albeit-arrogance his Poetry is created/disseminated in a vacuum smacks of blatant egoism.  We are here to message, hopefully through invention which prompts mentation & change (lol - Jesus, Buddha, Lenny Bruce, John Lennon, & both Dylans are chortling laments).

It would appear to me one's daily routine & concomitant vicissitudes are fodder & fuel, nay compelling, for the Writer's Pen!  Without my surroundings (again the "vacuum" reference) from where might I draw...? albeit the collective unconscious does provide channels for the open Creative process.

As for "Jessedressy," this would be the perception from the young girl's eyes, & a simple extrapolation to this mindset reveals same, hopes of emulation, & to wit another entende, vis-a-vis "Barbie;" "violate pianokey smudge," taken in the tenor of the Poem reveals a formative directive beneath which suffers the expression of expanding youth, thwarted, to wit, imagine attempting to play the piano with the caveat of assigning finger-prints to the keys?

TY for this opportunity to speak to my Work, & I certainly look forward to the further Posting of expression which vexes - lol,   H'H./H.e.m.

[Light Haven]

Haro, Thank You for all comments. I just don't think that "violate piano smudge" is going to work for most readers, even the pick of the litter. In my opinion it is a weak link in the poem. That is more of a feeling and I am sure I could torture myself into finding a logical argument that we could teeter totter on. Just doesn't feel right. Ask others. Otherwise the poem is very good. It drew me to reading it about five times which I do not do unless I feel it is worth it.

[Light Haven]

she
was just a girl
'splaying rubiauburn caracole
in dingy sunlight
as hungry danced 'round
hungry for something
 




she was just a girl

a daughter-mother
born
to skill & scullery
as the others danced
merry into dingy sunlight
hungry for something
she
& jessedressy

"she
& jessedressy" read this a number of times and concluded that jessedressy was the daughter of the aforementioned she. also, feeling of the word for me suggested a child, the child of the woman, but would have to labor to give you an explanation of why i think that.



she was just a girl

only
the strains of music assuaged,
like an unfamiliar bosom's
familiar melody,
to the wireless
or of the paucitous street
marconi 'n cheese

if "marconi" is a wireless reference as Dan suggested seemed it doesn't fit with the rest of the poem. what does marconi and wireless references have to do with the rest of the poem. thinking about macaronni and cheese and didn't even consider the marconi reference until Dan mentioned it. but think the word marconi doesn't fit with the rest of the poem.
never cheesy enough

she was just a girl

whirls, & whirled
of pirates & barons
abandoned
like a vested, barren jessedressy
"like a vested, barren jessedressy"

confusion here above there was a reference to she and jessedressy, two separate entities and now the she is the major figure and i know she has not become her daughter. the reference she and jessedressy and now the major "protagonist"  she is also jessedressy. can't be her daughter. again confused me while reading it.

to
citizenbest
restive for something
beyond vacancy
& vacated friends,
now coveted



she was just a girl

before
me,
of violate pianokey smudge:
what size?  critisize,

"critisize" couldn't get this one either. criti maybe a play on critter. again i tried to imagine what violate pianokey smudge would look like, then i imagined smudge on a piano key and that didn't do it for me, so this line in particular i decided not to give the benefit of the doubt to. also critisize, why would anyone want to criticize or size her. don't see how this is i guess a rhetorical question, critisize? who would want to critisize her. i think most people reading the poem feel sympathy for her. still didn't get why the question was being asked. or the comment or whatever. this also escaped me along with violate pianokey smudge. together i thought of them as a lapse. my assumption is if you puzzle the reader too much or without a solution to the puzzle that you are losing them and defeating the purpose of the communication.

home to eyes
streaked like windows
in her dingy sunlight
born to moaning,
when our cord was cut
she cried
plentimental
mother
is the necessity of invention

she was just a girl

two centenaries

Didn't get the two centenaries. how did she or jessiedressy suddenly become a 100 years old or some cousin of that. the rest flows from the idea of this figure i am sympathetic to, used by barons and pirates, etc,. looked like some women i have known who wouldn't have the vaguest idea of what we are writing about, would see no value in it, would eat lots of resentaplenties, and i have a good idea of where they would be eating. still don't get how she got to be a hundred years old, or the implication thereof. why make her a hundred suddenly. what led up to that.

rubiauburn caracole
too soon silvered
to bleach white
like marrowless bones
fed on resentaplenty...
wilting silk flowers
she
was just a girl

she was just a girl


There were so many strong lines in the poem which i, maybe the words marvelled at, is too strong an expression that i didn't bother to mention any of this. also, wonder if this nitpicking is of any value. on the other hand you may be interested in how i and perhaps other readers truthfully feel as they read your poems. these are the actual things that i found a little puzzling, but i doubt that very little in your poems happens by accident and you seem to want to go back and perfect. on the other hand my poems are sprinkled frequently with dead ends and careless, meaningless images and phrases. sorry, haro, but there it is again. i thought, this guy is a real poet, so who am i to criticize. also, don't know how you got the comments about piano smudge and jessydressy. didn't even think i posted those, or if i did i erased them immediately. as usual expect you will respond dead on, but there it is. would be glad to go into detail on any other poems you post that has elements that don't make sense to me.

one question i have is should poetry be attuned to the pick of the litter reader or should it hit among 10 percent or 20 percent or whatever. if you have to have six or seven notes at the bottom of a pound poem to make sense of what he has written does his poem still have artistic merit. i just wonder how good pound was sometimes. from my perspective the poetry establishment is a manifestation of a corrupt and warlike culture where 80% of all manufacturing goes to military expenditure. what kind of poetry would you expect out of a culture where 80% goes to that and what would they hold up as excellence in poetry.

[theirishsea]

Interesting discussion. I want to investigate the word "jessedressy" and the line  "violate pianokey smudge"

"violate" has to be an adjective, not a verb. It is an archaic word meaning violated. The pianokey, the music, the harmony was somehow violated by dissonance or unworthiness and the violation appears as a smudge---a dirty pianokey----some sin, musical or social left a smudge on the piano key. If that is the meaning, we do have to go back into the context of the poem. I will have to do that, and reading LH's take on it.

This language poetry is not easy. Haro I wish your prose would be more standard English and linear. The oblique may work in poetry but it does nothing but obfuscate a prose discussion. Critical prose has to be a tool of logic and clarity even when investigating the verbal dexterity of imagination in a poem.

I do have to read the exchange between H.H. and LH again and maybe a couple of times after that too to see what is being said exactly.

First, let's get to "jessedressy" This is probably a pun. One literal read would be "jesse dressy". Another would be jesse (as in just or "jest") dressy.

[theirishsea]

(I'm having trouble doing long posts, sorry)

First, let's get to "jessedressy" This is probably a pun. One literal read would be "jesse dressy". Another would be jesse (as in just or "jest") dressy.

In the first usage the question is "who is Jesse?" I believe for most uses "Jesse" is a boy's name and the name, like in the tree of Jesse, appears in the Bible as a male name. The usual female name, I think, is spelled "Jessie", which is, originally, short for Jessica. "Jesse" here has to be slang or a nickname for a girl-woman. I have no trouble with Jesse being both a daughter and a mother---one and the same person both roles. Who is "jesse"? Why the name "jesse"? I don't know yet. Is it some kind of childish pejorative nickname---"look at Jesse dressy (putting on airs). Maybe. A vested, barren jessedressy would fit with that assessment. (I do have to get back to the overall poem and the context because I'm dealing on the micro level of words and not overall meanings.)

One outlaw the jesse could refer to is Jesse James but that Jesse is male and though an outlaw not a literal pirate.
I haven't figured out what jesse is alluded to. Jezebel? Jesse for Jezzy? I'm going to have to go back to the poem & read it again.

[theirishsea]

In the 1st stanza "she" and "jessedressy" appear to be two people. One dancing with the other or side by side. Maybe this refers obliquely to a stripper or go-go girl or a prostitute (the 3 are not necessarily the same or follow from one another).

Is this poem a lament for a girl met in a dingy nightclub, maybe a go-go girl or something. The narrator fell for her but it didn't work out, too many problems. She was just a girl from the narrator's past. He is filled with nostalgia and sorrow for both himself in not having a significant or fulfilling relationship with her and for the type of life that aged her, that she couldn't or wouldn't leave. Is that the overall meaning?

I have to agree with LH about "centenaries". A centenary is a hundred years. Perhaps the role of the womabn in the present industrial society---role as dancer, barmaid or whatnot is 200 years old but it seems superfluous. I am reconsidering "paucitous" as well. There could be a better and more fulfilling adjective there. It suggests "paucity" but "paucity" itself is a weak word---pretentious and not gut-level descriptive or highly suggestive as many of the other words and phrases are.


But there is another consideration. Next post I'll take that up.

[theirishsea]

If the style of this poetry is Language poetry of a sort the goal of the writing may not be to signify anything particular but to sugest a cloud of possible meanings for a reader to determine. Perhaps it is a Rorschach verbalism. What is John Ashbery's poetry? I'm far from an expert in it, but perhaps what I thought to be a dead end in poetry has sprouted eyes like a potato in a glass of water. Perhaps a whole aesthetic ultimately derives not from denotation and connotation but from something else---a crackle of suggestiveness. Words are like the images of dreams and suggest something in the rational life but in this type of poetry do not give meaning as we traditionally know it but present the irrational with half-perceptions and moving (as opposed to stationary) descriptions. Is the poetry a game, a jest of sorts? Is it kin to the absurdities of the visual arts?
Traditional meaning and the institutions that carry it are suspect in society---at least to people who question and think and see the contradictions of perceived experience and philosophical, social and religious belief. The arts have accelerated  their jettisoning of the centuries old traditions. Perhaps art, literature (not music yet?) have become clever exercises of whimsical but serious intent. Science tries to declaw mysteries. Perhaps Language poetry wants to create viable mythological creatures (called poems). Such poetry  creates its own rules. Words are shadows that put monsters and chimeras on the wall. Mankind makes his own poems and today more willfully than ever before. Perhaps Language poetry is an expression of cognitive dissonance (barring a term from the past).

[theirishsea]

The last couple of posts have been inadequate. Maybe my assessment of Language poetry might have some validity. I'd welcome other views just so we can get at the truth.

On Haro's poem---the words don't sit still. Often they are blurs but often they are hybrids that take a reader in several directions. They is brilliant wordsmithing and image-making, but perhaps also some charlatanism too, conscious or unconscious.

This poem is more conventional in overall structure than most of Haro's work. The refrain "she was just a girl" tie this poem down to the image of a girl and the narrator's reaction and feelings about her. Is the girl real? Is the girl a symbol? An archetype? It doesn't matter. The shadow of a girl pervades this poem. Successful poem? It is a maddening poem in that it has much promise but also, it appears, missteps.

I'm throwing this discussion back on the floor for anybody who cares to take it up. I think it is an important discussion about the nature and direction of poetry. I hope the discussion continues.

[theirishsea]

One last thing---the title? What does MH mean?

[Light Haven]

"The last couple of posts have been inadequate. Maybe my assessment of Language poetry might have some validity. I'd welcome other views just so we can get at the truth."

Dan, i disagree with you on some points. Haro's poetry to me most of the time is the clearest expression on this website. that is how i receive it and that is how i think it is intended. i also include his comments. if the arbiters of poetic fashion, the sum of poetic consciousness that controls the spigots of what is published give a  thumbs up by publishing him then many people will give him more weight and respect. as usual, in my opinion the poetry stands on its own, in the vitality and originality of imagery i don't think there is anything on this website that matches it. this poem to me makes up for what i don't get in the poem by the tone of the poem which is about a love affair with someone who i suspect Haro would identify as coming from the heart of the morlde. we may think we are a little removed from them but we are rubbing stomachs with them every day as we buy our pack of gum at the safeway checkout or meet them at the club. these are the ones who live and suffer and are forgotten for the most part. this poem is about a relationship Haro had and I think it is painfully honest and writing about it here is maybe not what i should be doing. to me it's out there, an honest confession of what happened, and what happens to people like jessedressy. again, in my opinion nothing on this website comes close to the honest expression of feeling combined with memorable imagery. this is by the way one of the few poems of Haro's that i could nit pick. you and i probably nitpick every poem but do not comment for one reason or another. there was a particularly excellent poet posting here for a while, a woman poet, and she simply left, i'm pretty sure in response to one of the comments of one of the poets. Haro is as far as I can tell employing a new way of writing poetry, if there is such a thing, with communicative success.  i once heard a harmonica solo by bob dylan, and it was amazing but there was what seemed like one bad note in the whole thing that bothered me, but he didn't rerecord. he just left it there in the middle of all of this beauty. the painter onib olmedo who i have a website of said to me one time, art doesn't have to make you feel good, if you are unsettled or don't feel right about it that's o.k. too. however, i happened to google the word Haro and found a post that Haro had made where he was requesting that the webmaster try to keep all of the punctuation, spelling etc. exactly as he wrote it so i don't think there is a careless word in this poem. i think Haro has carefully checked out evey word in this poem and nothing in it has been left the way it is by mistake. there is a reason for every word. i've noted what doesn't work for me but that is my take.

[Light Haven]

here is one final take i have. i imagine Haro's poetry as like the poetry of a jazz musician and also his replies. i play harmonica by ear, listened to a fair amount of blues when i was younger, but cannot read music and cannot hear what is going on in a song as far as breaking it down and appreciating structure which i am sure would help me appreciate the structure. now imagine i am invited up to the stage to play with a group of top jazz muscians, i still have a good ear, but they start moving back and forth and spontaneously and not so spontaneously start sending each other back riffs that they appreciate and play off. also combine that with an outstanding memory that allows them to bring back riffs that occurred earlier in the piece along with references to the body of almost all the great and not so great jazz that has been played. in the meantime i am sitting there with my harmonica, with a not so good memory, unable to remember the words of most songs, and without the knowledge of what came before and what is happening right now on the stage. at that point someone nods to me and says "take it newcomb". i would be lost, and within a note or two i would feel very uncomfortable as the rest tried to cover for me and it would become very apparent that i should never have sat down on the stage. i didn't honor the past or the future and should stay at home and keep playing along with records or take the time and the real work to learn "it" and then maybe it would be time to sit in. i think to a certain extent "Haro's" poetry is "it", and i don't think he can be blamed for being in touch with the past and the present of poetry more than us and also combine that with the "ear" for poetry and the musical sense that shows through; did we do the work? it's like academics in a certain field, within a few sentences they know whether you should be back in a 101 class or that you should be "hanging out" with them. i of course think nothing prevents us from taking a chair on the stage, but for the most part, based on the posts of other poets on this website i do not think we have done our homework. Haro's  occasional references to latin, french, archaic words and not so archaic words, and invented words i strongly do not feel is an affectation or intentional or unintentional obfuscation. that is the way he is writing it as it comes up. my assumption through all of his postings is that he is in touch with a much greater knowledge base to play his "jazz",  and the words that we have to look up on google are on the tips of his fingers. we would have to labor to come up with any of these images which are very effective,  and i would throw down the gauntlet. just try to imitate him. "caracole rubiauburn" put together etc.. i believe these are the words that spontaneously occur to him and that those are the "notes" that he has at his command. if that is how he plays it "out" into the sky, so be it and more power to him. Because we don't have these notes at our command doesn't mean we can sit out in the audience and say "i don't get this music" or "he should play more simply and more accessibly". i think Haro is playing his sax solo and inviting us up on the stage without any derision or unnecessary obfuscation. he is simply saying, "come on up" " does anyone want to play with me?". i think there were some weak notes in the poem, but that is my take.

when you write your poetry dan, you probably write it out frequently the way it comes, and afterwards i suspect you say to yourself, is this true, is this straight from the heart, and can this be improved upon. i also suspect that sometimes you write quickly and it is coming straight out of where you are. i know with my own poems in a few cases, repeat few cases,  i write it as i feel it and afterwards i nitpick and feel like i can't improve on it. to me that is my true poetry, and my best poetry. my above comments on the "jazz" poetry is where i stop for now. Would be interested in getting some of Haro's music, assume there are recordings, because according to his bio he is a muscian and vocalist. By the way, this is pretty much how i reacted to the first poems i read by him, "this is jazz, you gotta do your homework." By the way Haro, my priority is rehabbing houses. i get in here at 6:00, write a poem maybe or see what is going on on PIB and begin the work of the day. that is where i am for better or worse.

[theirishsea]

LH, Haro's poetry is a mixture of the brilliant and the baffling. I am not by any means denying his brilliance but Ezra Pound was brilliant. Some of his poetry is written in Greek. Does that make the poem better? Do arcane references make a poem better because they intellectually dazzle? Only when the intellect is used as a tool in the composition of a poem, then it is a virtue.

I think a reader should investigate obscure phrasing to get the meaning to further appreciate the poem. I don't think we are disagreeing here. Also H.E.M. does not have to explain his poems to us but it is the reader's job to explain the meaning of a poem to himself.

I only partially buy into the cult of jazz in poetry. I'm not totally enamoured with Dylan Thomas or Gerard Manley Hopkins. And Finnegan's Wake and Tristram Shandy---large eccentricities? I'm not saying I'm against them but they are almost literary "singularities".

Because something is different and not readily understood, doesn't make it good. When we analyze the new, the strange, the striking, and then open its secrets---or some of them---then we can rejoice in the experience. Not total understanding but not total mystification, not a leap of faith for something with no evidence but our own goodwill.

[theirishsea]

(posting problems are cutting my entries short)

Poetry should communicate. Traditional poetry has denotation and connotation. The imagery shoulsd appeal to the senses. I am reluctant to give up rich sensuous imagery for pristine cerebral machinations. This isn't Haro's poetry but more Language poetry as I see it----conglomerations of words---verbal ping pong. However, Haro's poetry has something of the Language poetry's method. He coins words---many times brilliantly. Sometimes not so.

LH, are we agreeing and disagreeing on the same point---Haro's writing is both brilliant and flawed. Can you hold an author to a standard of theoretical perfection? Especially one that takes chances? No. However, the reader must investigate phrases and passages that are obscure to him/her.

What does a poem mean? What was intended---if it can be surmised? What is it saying to the average reader if there is some commonality that can be drawn? What is it saying to the particular reading making the investigation/comments. It isn't all intellect. Poems communicate. One of criticism's goal is to find out what is being communicated.

[theirishsea]

I always find Haro's poetry intriguing. Yes, in most poems you can get the general gist but often the poems twist oddly---notes that get left stranded in the wake of a poem---or at least require a bit of explication to find out what is going on.

I'm not enamoured with the cult of jazz in poetry. Just because something happens spontaneously doesn't make it right. I am as interested in the world which language attempts to shadow as I am in language itself.

Most of the poems on PIB---as most poems anywhere---are conventional and like church hymns---trite abstractions, though poetry often contains real emotion but emotion bowdlerlized (sp?) with godawful abstraction. Haro's poetry avoids that pitfall. His work is always intriguing. It involves effort to understand. Mental laziness won't get it. That rubiauburn caracole phrase is interesting---brilliant but it has to be examined or it is gibberish. Readers have to get into poems---now readers can be as flawed as poets, but it is an interaction. Poems, poets, readers are trying to experience the world and attemting to transcend the limitations of being.