Tag short lyric poems

* in the clear with Jane Hirshfield

José Angel Araguz 2 Comments

Reading through an interview with poet Jane Hirshfield, I was moved by a concept she terms “clarity without simplicity”:

…Yes, being clear without being simple is one of the poetic qualities I most admire in the work of others, and one I hope finds a place in my own.

I feel like this is one of the qualities that I strive to celebrate here on the Influence.

The phrase itself is clearly unsimple. For me, it implies some effort between the poet and the reader, an effort to not only get the words right but to come to them directly. The poetry in the poem a sort of clearing you have to find your way to, and which the poet clears.

Hirshfield’s poem below shows some of this in action.

* gang-related *

* gang-related *

Tree – Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

***

Happy tapping!

Jose

p.s. Check out the Hirshfield interview, in which she also shares some insight into Zen and its influence on her life, here.

* in the trees with John Ashbery & new work

José Angel Araguz 4 Comments

After many walks in the snow the body learns a new rhythm. At least that’s what it’s felt like these past few weeks. I’ve got myself a mean snow trudge.

What I admire about John Ashbery is the way he can keep his line close to the shifts of not his mind but the mind of the poem. In the poem below, whose rhyming couplets have a music that sneaks up on you rather than chimes on in, I feel a recognition of what is termed “puzzling light.”

Not the kind of light that leaves you puzzled (past tense) but a sense of light as vision, where you look at something and keep seeing new things in it, puzzling out what there is.

Like steps in deep snow: each a different mark and feel.

* and miles to go and all that *

* and miles to go and all that *

Some Trees – John Ashbery

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

***

Happy accenting!

Jose

p.s. I am happy to announce that I have 3 poems in the latest issue of the Inflectionist Review. Check them out here. Special thanks to John Sibley Williams and A. Molotkov for giving these poems a home.