Poetic Juice
Subject:
Poems That Satisfy
Re:
"Robert Pinsky in The Fray"
From:
Kristine Domingo
Date: Fri
Oct 29
I doubt there are any more questions you have yet
to answer with regards to poets and poetry, you, or your poems, but for the
sake of obtaining a reply from you, here's a groupie's question: What poem of
yours has satisfied you the most?
(To reply, click
here.)
Subject:
Re: Poems That Satisfy
Re:
"Robert Pinsky in The Fray"
From:
Robert Pinsky
Date: Fri
Oct 29
Kristine, this is like a parent being asked to name
a favorite child. And to stretch that metaphor, the youngest one--the one just
finished--sometimes gives the greatest satisfaction.
Once, when I visited a writing class in a
medium-security prison, one of the inmates, urged by his classmates, recited by
memory my little poem "Exile." That was a satisfying moment. Entering another
person's memory with your words, perhaps a person quite different from
yourself, is in certain ways more glorious than any prize or title.
(To reply, click
here.)
[ U.S. Poet Laureate
Robert Pinsky is Slate's poetry
editor .]
Subject:
Starting the Poetic Engine
Re:
"Robert Pinsky in The Fray"
From:
James Kobielus
Date: Fri
Oct 29
As a general habit, how do you personally start
writing a new poem? Do you start with an interesting title and then write
around it? Or an interesting first line? Or the kernel of a core
subject/message? Or simply an abstract rhythm, cadence, or melody to which you
must give voice?
Once you start, how do you know you're done? When
does it feel complete?
(To reply, click
here.)
Subject:
Re: Starting the Poetic Engine
Re:
"Robert Pinsky in The Fray"
From:
Robert Pinsky
Date: Fri
Oct 29
A good question, but not only is everybody
different--many of us are different at different times of life, maybe even at
different times of day.
The best I can describe the process for me is that
it resembles noodling on a piano: I run rhythms and sentences--or maybe not
even sentences, the shapes of sentences--across one another, trying out
their sounds, and sometimes I get a tune-like combination of sound and syntax
that makes me want to go on, extend and refine it, as it comes to dredge
sustenance from the great pool of feelings and ideas that accumulates in a
life.
It's a physical process, because the voice is
physical. And everything I've said about germination applies to termination--a
silly rhyme I've just stumbled on--as well.
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Subject:
Scorsese's Aesthetic Genius
Re:
""
From:
Simon Warner
Date: Mon
Nov 1
I agree that Scorsese is probably the most
important director working in America today, but I find it less easy to pass
over his 1993 film The
Age of Innocence [as A.O. Scott does]. I
completely disagree that this film substitutes intensity for emotion. The point
about Raging Bull being difficult to watch many times is well made but
Age of Innocence improves with each viewing.
The film is the most beautiful thing I can remember
( Kundun comes close though). The subtlety of the direction is
breathtaking, with three moments standing out for me: the bursts of color
exploding onto the screen during the opera sequence; the steadicam shot of
Daniel Day Lewis entering the post-opera ball (with Joanne Woodward's sublime
voice-over); and my favorite, one quick external shot of Pfeiffer's house,
showing it seemingly in the middle of nowhere and saying more in a single shot
about her social exclusion than other directors could achieve in three pages of
dialogue. If you have not seem this gem recently I urge you to revisit it, it's
fantastic.
(To reply, click
here.)
Subject:
Re: Scorsese's Aesthetic Genius
Re:
""
From:
David Edelstein
Date: Mon
Nov 1
I can't speak for A.O. Scott, but I saw [ Age of
Innocence ] again a few months ago and found the technique that you admire
a distraction. A critic at the time described the movie admiringly as
"virile"--and I'm forced to agree. Scorsese is working so hard to show that he
can make a "women's picture" in a robust manner that he loses touch with his
supposed themes. And he doesn't begin to get inside his impotent male
protagonist's head. You're right the film is full of astonishing moments--stuff
as good on its own terms as anything Scorsese has done. But I wonder if anyone
even remembers what the film is supposed to be about.
Kundun , on the other hand, really is a
triumphant merging of form and content. I'm less enchanted by the content than
many, but I certainly respect Scorsese's struggle to alter his directorial
voice and usual amphetamine rhythms to portray the Dalai Lama.
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[ David Edelstein is Slate's movie critic. ]
Subject:
Re: Scorsese's Aesthetic Genius
Re:
""
From:
A.O. Scott
Date: Mon
Nov 1
I wish I'd had sufficient space to say more about
Age of Innocence --not to mention Kundun , After
Hours , and Goodfellas --but I pretty much agree with [Edelstein's]
take on it. It does indeed have virtuosic moments, but the central love
triangle is entirely inert. Scorsese just doesn't do courtship as well as he
does male friendship. I think that Age is a case, like Raging
Bull , of Scorsese overwhelming the audience with technique, and producing
visceral effects rather than emotional responses. (This is true of
Goodfellas as well, in my view--a completely exhilarating movie that
nonetheless has a certain coldness at its heart.)
Now, these effects are powerful, and the technical
command behind them is extraordinary--unparalleled, I'm willing to stipulate,
among American directors of Scorsese's generation. The argument of my piece is
that Scorsese is often hailed as a visionary on the basis of his technical
discipline and formal panache, but that in too many cases the vision seems
tired or blurred. I wish I'd had space and time to examine each of Scorsese's
films more closely, and to contextualize them to everyone's satisfaction, but
I've enjoyed following this discussion so far and look forward to more.
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here.)
Subject:
Chatterbox Lost in the Wilderness?
Re:
""
From:
Robert Lewis
Date:
Tues Nov 2
The account of Robert E. Lee's manservant [Rev. Wm.
Mack Lee] seems to be made up of whole cloth, as he recounts how Marse Robert
got mad at him only once during the entire Civil War--on July 3, 1863, down in
the Wilderness. As July 3rd was in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg, it
seems unlikely.
(To reply, click here.)
Subject: Re: Chatterbox Lost in the Wilderness?
Re:
""
From: Tim
Noah
Date: Wed
Nov 3
Several Civil War buffs have written to the Fray to
point out that in my Rev. Lee's memoir snippet can't possibly be true because
Robert E. Lee was at Gettysburg and Stonewall Jackson was dead on the specific
date Rev. Lee mentions.
My item correctly quoted Rev Lee's book, but it
[the book] was written when Rev. Lee was an old man and is obviously faulty on
this point. It's also possible that the error lay with the reporter whose
article Rev. Lee was quoting from in his book. (None of the above,
incidentally, has any bearing on Lee's usage of the word "bumfuzzled.")
(To reply, click
here.)
Subject:
O.J. the Alpha Male
Re:
""
From:
Gillis Heller
Date:
Tues Nov 2
The confluence of Gore's attempt to become an alpha
male and the death of Walter Payton brings to mind the now-macabre episode of
Saturday Night Live hosted by O.J. Simpson, the quintessential alpha. In
one skit, O.J. and a friend are watching football on TV and Walter Payton is
close to topping O.J.'s rushing record. O.J. tells his friend what a great
athlete Walter is and how he wishes the man all the best. And then he goes to
the kitchen for a beer and sticks pins into a Walter Payton voodoo doll.
"Payton is down, leg injury!" the sportscaster shouts.
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