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Somewhat early after I started writing poetry, I became a little dismayed by the manner in which one rather large and self-important branch of the poetry crowd (you know, the MFA and academic proto–Beat Poets gone to school bunch) read their work. I believe I’ve spoken of this more than once. It seemed to me that most if not all of the poems at conferences and other in-group poets’ confabs were read as if they were written to be chants… you know, with a constant and often odd and unmusical… tinny, even…upswing at the end of lines, stanzas, and sense patterns whether the poem deserved it, benefitted from it, or was written in that way or not. It bugged me.
And while I have no way of knowing whether poems in similar settings continue to be vocally manhandled in this manner, having been relatively absent from such gatherings for the past… what?… 30 years or more? I would imagine it may still be the norm. One hopes not, but until I can afford the prohibitively and constantly escalating entry fee to any of these self-congratulatory cults (and one realizes, of course, that good, even great, poems can emerge in almost any environment) or regain an interest in doing so, I will probably never know.
Anyway… after I attended a highly lauded poetry conference many years ago, I decided to write a little series of poems that absolutely should be read in the chanting style that I had heard over and over again at the conference. I read those first chant poems during a multi-day writer’s shindig at the college I attended not long after I went to the conference. I was invited to read and happy to do so, excited to share my first attempt at chants that were written to be read as chants. Those first chants were all descriptions of various sex acts, I’m afraid. It’s possible that they were shocking or just considered woefully inappropriate. I tended to be naive about such things. Maybe they weren’t. I know I submitted them to the premier annual poetry contest in the city near the college and did not win (they have since been lost), though I did win that same contest several years later with a poem not written to be read as a chant… something about storms crossing Illinois corn like rakes.
I’ve continued to write these chants over the years. So here are two from years past that surfaced somewhat magically in the past few weeks. I encourage my readers to attempt to read these out loud, chant them… even in a whisper… if you can.
For those of you who live nearby, I’ll probably read these poems during the monthly (3rd Monday of each month) open reading at the “Poetess and Stranger” shop on Mitchell St in Petoskey (next door to the old Carnegie building), this coming Monday, the 18th, at 7pm.
By the way, the owner of “Poetess and Stranger” and Emcee of the evening’s readings, Sarah DiViasmeni, is a new poetry buddy of mine, and she kicks ass with her poems, I’m telling you. I believe she is starting her own Substack endeavor… more on this later.
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Chant: On the Death of the Liberal Class --"We have been robbed of a vocabulary to describe reality" —Christopher Hedges We had a bird a red bird sometimes in some seasons a white and golden bird we had a bird and the loss of the engines of its flight from the remnant forests where the moans of Sand River of Bear Paw Tribes enunciated the cold caved in around us fell from the ruins of the sky around us blew through the ghosts of the next massacre around us. they said we had a bird we walked under its astonished flight we found a place desire somewhere with orange roots and pears bright fruits of our holiness sex and the release the awesome letting go of our divisions of our heavy labors the short times our elders lived before they sat down and died It has all gone we had a bird the learned stopped walking first they lost the alchemy of the deep rose We knew trees but they turned back and these great woods oh these great godly Beech and Elm fell before the gold diggers the frackers the oil suckers that could not follow the flights of the greatest emancipators born since we could dream them into being there before us up on the mountain before a blind adherence to the sludge of our wreckage came home to us in sky after sky after sky war after war after war We wish we could save them the bird spinning into the ululating chasm of our grief but we became blind we could not see outside our tombs our itch for shadow treasure We had a bird a red bird in some seasons a white and golden bird It has gone with the predictability of rain we dug so deep to drink only to find it's bones
Chant from the Fen (to Ferron and Mary) Bowing grasses whirlpool grasses seed head grasses country of grass pools at its feet grasses with songs of wind voices grass loud as the river Swimming grasses before the big trees Sweet stem in my teeth Milkweed tumbrels up from long moving fronds thick with wild wheat pushing through violet Monarchs and bees in the history of names in stories of generations in places we find relation we animals rising up from oats and millet thatch and reed. Corn is grass last woman bloomed in a field of blooming seeds turquoise from the desert through the big grass through worlds of water wild river land of fens big waters’ water weeds over the big lake over the cold Manitou sea trade copper for corn for medicine for silver for seed further than anyone can see trade for heads of purple maize gemstone little sacred faces tools magic stories chert food and news high river turns a secret field to pond full of bowing hair and new amphibians low river and mudflats spout the most vivid green I slake my need for rhythms of edible weeds I take my birth in thick secrets of sedges of flowering grass I grant my dying voyage in a burning boat pushed out into the grassy rivers of the ancestors’ thatched lees: Fen Sedge Fish Frog Orchid Tumbrel Muskrat Muskeg Oriole Kestrel Otter Eagle Seed. Fen Sedge Fish Frog Orchid Tumbrel Muskrat Muskeg Oriole Kestrel Otter Eagle Seed
Damn Bob! So good, please read both, but Chant from the Fen especially, on Monday, I have a poem that braids perfectly with it!