Category lyrical alignments

Richard Serra & what it comes down to

José Angel Araguz 2 Comments

This week I offer up a new lyrical alignment1. This time I’m working with a quote by artist, Richard Serra who died earlier this spring.

In what became “What It Comes Down To (below),” I found myself drawn to a counted verse approach, specifically working out couplets consisting of a 3 word line followed by a 4 word line. I like how Serra’s stark words breathe across couplets. Since he’s talking of obsession and repetition, both of them come through even further with the added white space.

What I get out of Serra’s words here deals mainly with presence. Obsession and repetition here relate to presence in that they are an insistence of it. Obsession insists on presence in terms of attention; repetition insists on presence by embodying it. Serra is making a point about how obsession leads to repetition, which is attention leading to embodiment.

So much of art as well as living feels split in this way. Whenever we make time to do our art, that is a decision of attention; the art that comes from it is embodiment. Whenever we make time to do things for ourselves–outside of obligations, paying bills, chores, etc.–a similar attention and embodiment occur.

But what is made present after all our efforts?

That’s the poetry of it, I believe.

What It Comes Down To

a found poem based on a quote by Richard Serra

Obsession is what
it comes down to.

It is difficult
to think without obsession,

and it is
impossible to create something

without a foundation
that is rigorous, incontrovertible,

and, in fact,
to some degree repetitive.

Repetition is the
ritual of obsession. Repetition

is a way
to jumpstart the indecision

of beginning. To
persevere and to begin

over and over
again is to continue

the obsession with
work. Work comes out

of work. In
order to work you

must already be
working.

Abrazos,

= José =

  1. For the record, what I term here as a lyrical alignment falls under the category of found poetry. I typically take a quote or excerpt of prose, then work it out into lines. I find that working with other people’s words allows you to focus on pacing, enjambment, breaks across line and stanzas, etc. without worrying about “saying” something.

    The cool thing has been said; this is just poetic celebration. ↩︎

lyrical alignment: Richard Rodriguez

José Angel Araguz 4 Comments

This week’s lyrical alignment is drawn from an interview with writer Richard Rodriguez conducted by Hector A. Torres for the book Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers (University of New Mexico Press).

louiskahnI came across the passage below from a journal entry during my third year doing the PhD. I remember being struck by Rodriguez’s apt and rich metaphor in response to being asked about style. Not only is the narrative he develops through anecdote compelling, but the way he pivots its meaning towards his own writing process at the end really hits home with me. It’s the kind of statement that acknowledges the form and method side of writing but also allows for the fluidity and surprise that lie at the heart of the best writing.

In setting the prose into verse, I settled on working with five words per line; while the poem ends unevenly outside this structure, it almost feels appropriate. The last line is four words long, and that space where the fifth word would be feels like a space where the reader is allowed to think about the question being asked at the end. This question, furthermore, is one of those wonderful questions that echoes itself back as not a question. Not sure how to articulate this last bit fully, other than to add that some questions can simultaneously sound like requests for an answer as well as like statements we’re unsure of.

Richard Rodriguez responds to the question “How do you define style for yourself?”

lyrical alignment by José Angel Araguz
drawn from an interview with Richard Rodriguez
conducted by Hector A. Torres

There was a great architect
called Louis Kahn, a wonderful
modernist architect. He had on
staff at his architectural firm

in Philadelphia a kind of
guru or a mystic or
something. This guy used to
go with him — I think

he was Buddhist — to these
architectural sites where they were
going to build the building
whether it was in Bangladesh

or Houston or wherever it
was. They would sit there
for several days and see
the same site from different

angles, several shadows, several times
of the day, and they
would ask the question: What
does this space want to

become? It seems to me
that’s all I ask when
I write. When I look
at the blank page, I’m

trying to decipher in it:
What does it want to
tell me? See, it’s almost
as though when I write

I’m cracking it open,  you
know what I’m saying?

from Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers, ed. Hector Torres (University of New Mexico Press)