A Case of Substance Over Style: Milosz's Provinces

     Off and on for the past few years, I've been working my way through a voluminous edition of collected poems of the late, great Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. While I might post my impressions of the whole collection later, I've recently been thinking about some of his later poems. At present, I'm working my way through his 1991 volume Provinces. The poems are obviously the work of an old man (though he'd continue to publish for 10 more years), and the book came over a decade after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
     This later work is still characteristic Milosz both stylistically and thematically. Indeed, it's remarkable that Milosz's work stayed so steadily consistent in quality over such a long period. Working over such a long period as Milosz did, however, will inevitably bring some changes, and to my eye at least, his later work did display some subtle differences from his earlier pieces. Most notably, I found Milosz's earlier work to be much more appealing artistically - it had an energy and imagery that really propelled the work forward in a way you don't always find in his later poems. That said, however, I still oddly enough seem to be enjoying some of his later poems as much, if not more, than some of his earlier ones.
     I believe this is largely due to the subject matter of Milosz's work in Provinces. By and large, these poems are the philisophical musings of an old man pondering the transience of our mortal world and what happens when we pass from it. If you don't think mortality and aging is on his mind, then just look at a sampling of some of the lines that open poems in this volume: "You would like to hear how it is in old age?" ("A New Province"), "Your unhappy and silly youth" ("Youth"), "Listen, perhaps you will hear me, young man" ("Inheritor"), "In my old age I decided to visit places where I wandered long ago in my early youth" ("Return"), "When I die, I will see the lining of the world" ("Meaning").   
It's a theme common enough to poetry, granted, but Milosz here is grappling with the lofty subject with an apparent sincerity that is much more rare. It is this grappling that makes these poems so interesting, to me at least, even if the verse itself lacks some of the artistic integrity of his earlier pieces.
     You see, one of the things that bothers me about contemporary poetry is that often it's the opposite case. Many of the talented poets today, particularly those being cranked out by some of these MFA programs, seem to care more about the style of their poetry than the message that so often gets pushed to the background or diluted by their obscure renderings. Oftentimes, I even get the distinct impression that some of these poems start with the stylistic structure and then finds a subject to incorporate into it. It's a pet peeve when I read many literary journals today.
     Some of these later poems of Milosz are the complete opposite, and it's refreshing. In fact, let me close with one of the poems Milosz writes that seems to be just about that subject. It's called "Good Night," and in it, one senses that the poet is glad that he's at the stage of his career where he doesn't need to worry about the artistic reception to his poetry:

No duties. I don't have to be profound.
I don't have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: "You were running,
That's fine. It was the thing to do."
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs,
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That's better than examining one's private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It's here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell.

Pierre Peuchmaurd, Apparently Part of the 97%

          The most recent issue of Gulf Coast has an international bent to it, with several poems, stories, essays, artwork, and interviews either by or about international authors and artists. I plan to write a bit more about the issue later, but for now, I just wanted to discuss briefly the late Pierre Peuchmaurd (1948-2009), a French poet I encountered for the first time in this issue.

          Peuchmaurd had two poems in the journal, both translated by E. C. Belli – “It Will Come in My Left Lung” and “A Few of the Words I Was Mysteriously Allowed Until Now.” Both were very good. In fact, they’re two of my favorite pieces in the issue so far (though I’m only about halfway through). Like other French poets I’ve read, he shows a mastery for imagery and the subtleties of language. According to his contributor’s bio, early in his life he encountered André Breton, a large reason he spent his life creating surrealist pieces (although, to be honest, the two poems in Gulf Coast didn’t strike me as overly surrealist in the traditional sense of the word – a good thing, since I’m personally not always a fan of the movement).

          And, well . . . that’s about the extent I can write about him. Pierre Peuchmaurd is a good example of one of those international poets we don’t currently have a lot of access to here in the United States. Even trying to Google him – the old failsafe way of finding obscure information in this day and age – brought up practically nothing in English. I also searched Amazon to see what titles might be available by Peuchmaurd, and the site actually listed several, only all in French.

Like many other American poetry readers, I know I have trouble just keeping up with the many good poets we have writing in English here stateside. Yet sometimes I come across a good international poet like Peuchmaurd, and it just reminds me that there’s a whole world of poets out there and by limiting ourselves to those writing only in English, we are missing out on some great work.

This actually is a good opportunity for me to plug a blog I sometimes check out. The Three Percent Blog is a blog dedicated to modern and contemporary international literature. It takes its name from the fact that of the books published in the United States, only 3% of it is work in translation. And as the blog further points out, in terms of literary fiction and poetry, that number actually drops to around 0.7%. These numbers certainly are indicative of how self-contained we’ve become in our reading habits. To help break this habit, I certainly encourage everyone to go check out Three Percent. Whenever I head over there, I’m always finding cool new books I need to add to my list. They do some great work.

Order Out of the Chaos (Or Maybe Not): Scouring the Lists of 2011's Best Poetry Books

     Happy 2012, everyone!
     With the proliferation of lists that the year end brings, I got to wondering: why is it we're so obsessed with top 10 lists? Seriously, the media is full of them come December.
     On the one hand, I think the lists are places to focus debate and discussion. As readers, we like looking at these lists that distill the best of the best into a compact form and subsequently either having our views verified or else arguing against the compiler for their oversights. In today's online world, we even increasingly become a part of this debate, entering our comments and arguments underneath the original list for others to read and discuss.
     More importantly, however, I think these lists are helpful to us in an information-burdened society to try to bring some order out of the chaos. In terms of sheer volume, there simply is too much being put out there for any one human being to possibly get to it all. But look now - some helpful reviewer has brought together his or her top choices for books/cds/movies/whatever for the year! Now maybe we can be a reasonably informed citizen and at least know about these top releases. Maybe we can even find time in our schedule to check out at a couple of those that appeal to us. Personally, I know I've had friends who have decided they're going to make their way through the top 100 films of all time or similar lists. I think people like lists like these because they quickly and succinctly tell us (in that one source's opinion, at least) what we need to be aware of if we're cutting the crap and getting to the creme de la creme.
     At least that's the idea.
     But it doesn't always end up that way. Take, for example, the various lists that came out in the past few weeks describing the top poetry books of 2011. I actually initially came across just one of them (I can't remember which one). I know how tough it is keeping up with all the new releases, so I was interested to see what some of the top titles were in the past year. After reading the one list, I thought I'd check out some of others. Here's a sampling of some of the "best of" lists I encountered:

• Library Journal
• NPR
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Publishers Weekly
• Boston Globe
• Poetry Foundation staff picks

The interesting thing about these lists is the decided lack of consensus. Hardly any one list mentioned a book that was on another. I don't have exact figures, but say I looked at lists that added together included about 50 books. Of those, if you took out any repeat offenders, I would still say there were about 45 unique titles.
     Obviously, lists like these are subject to the tastes and whims of the reviewer(s). But still, the lack of consensus on these lists was somewhat surprising to me. Was it just an unusual year for poetry with no heavyweight titles that stood head-and-shoulders above the rest, or does it have something more to do with the poetry field in general, which is notably broad and diverse in its tastes? I'm guessing it's more the latter, as one's individual taste in poetry, as with certain other fields, is exceptionally subjective.
      Note that I don't think this is a bad thing. In fact, I find the poetry titles I often enjoy the most are ones that elicit groans in others. I just found the lack of consensus interesting, considering what these lists usually are intended for. The few titles that did show up on multiple lists were thus somewhat conspicuous and caught my eye. Just wanted to run over a couple of them briefly here. . .

Space, in Chains, by Laura Kasischke - This one has actually been on my radar for a few months now. When I got the Copper Canyon Press catalog/reader this past fall, I really liked the brief description and excerpt. The simple fact that it's a Copper Canyon release didn't hurt any either, as my two favorite poetry volumes from the last five years (Craig Arnold's Made Flesh and Ben Lerner's Mean Free Path) have both been CCP publications. I was sold right there. There's apparently been some buzz about this book as well, and it actually did show up on a few of these end-of-year lists. Plus, isn't that a Rothko painting on the cover? What's not to like? Freshly armed with an Amazon gift card from Christmas, I just ordered this book.

Life on Mars, by Tracy K. Smith - I confess that I'm fascinated by space, so naturally I'm a sucker for poems about space, especially when they sound as well done as these poems do. All reviews of Smith's volume indicate that it also rates high on the hipness scale.

Devotions, by Bruce Smith - Judging from the write-ups, this volume is one of those ones that seems difficult to describe to make it stand out (wouldn't it suck to have to try to write book descriptions for poetry books for a living?). Nonetheless, this is another book that has received consistently good praise across the board.