Nothing feels in our world:
Not the sparrow we gassed in the kitchen
that April when it frosted late. It wouldn't live.
I knew that, you convinced me anyway and
who wouldn't trust your strong voice, your large
hands, as you say, "It won't feel anything."
And what of that bird that we buried in Spring?
Who gets to claim its death--
the one who turned the oven on
or the one who left the room? .
Our lives are exercises in silence:
only perpetual pulsing knees make noise
up and down like a piston engine under the chairs.
What now? Who gets the surgeon sucked entrails
the ghost of could be, black as bile
silent as tongueless dogs.
Are they fed to those starving for anything?
Are they taxidermied, held in a museum
fiji mermaids:a nickel, an eyeful?
Are they captive in jars, swimming in
beautiful shades of amber, fostered
until, fully grown, they pull themselves out,
walk down the streets where we live
meet the eyes of who gave all they could:
Do I know you from somewhere?
When I put my hand on the stove
The skin bubbled in target formation.
It didn't hurt. No. Not that much.
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Lovely I say in a jealous rage....Lovely . ...(i might like to see the bird come back towards the end...but i like the ending as it is now...so...ignore me
ReplyDeleteps...feel free(or please) cut my stuff up if youve got the time
ReplyDelete....soda...purple stuff...sunny D!
I feel bad because when I go to say things about your stuff I get increasingly un-eloquent and all I can think to say is "Bowel is an awesome word." So give it time for me to stop being so fucking retarded.
ReplyDeleteYo, I deleted the first post because I wanted to add a lot when I read it over...so...here's the new one!:
ReplyDeleteMan--bowel IS an awesome word. That's pretty fucking eloquent.
And I also think this poem is quite beautiful. I fucking love the imagery--especially "pulsing knees" + "tongueless dogs" + fiji mermaids walking around downtown + "skin bubbled in target formation". Rad. I remember that poem you wrote with the line that was something like, "taut like bars of hymns"--I'm still flipping out over that. The end of the poem is gripping and devastating, too, in your special Kate Golcheski devastation method.
I want to say--in terms of "advice-giving/criticism", curiosity, and also just as a way of getting my ideas (in some form) on a flat surface--that, if this were my poem, at this point in its process I would start switching words around, in places that jumped out at me. Just like before, that sounds stupid--and I don't know how nonsensical/imaginary/weird you like to go, Kate. I'm curious about exactly how nonsensical/imaginary/weird (inarticulate, but I think you guys catch my drift) people who aren't me like to make their stuff. So, naturally, I'm curious as to how weird YOU like to make things. So, Kate: how weird do you like to make things? As in, where do aesthetics overlap? How much of it IS aesthetics? Taste? Craft? Personality? Etc. etc. What do you guys think?
I don't want to do my homework so I'm going to keep on writing this. A lot of the time, my first draft of a poem is shaped around a theme/subject/center of any kind that I wanted consciously to convey. I wanted it, then I tried it, then I look at it. I think one of the main reasons I got into cutting things up, moving things around, reading things backwards, was as a way to let go of my original intentions for a poem. All the poems that I've worked on enough to like with any substantial degree of certainty are pretty far away from what I was originally trying to say--that said, all those first drafts of mine were stilted and horribly inarticulate. That is not, I don't think, the case with this poem in particular. Also, I'm much happier with those poems for different/other reasons: in some cases, what they ended up being about or around was more interesting or dynamic; in others, less autobiographical (and, by virtue of this, more interesting); and in others, truly closer to what I was really trying to say. Not necessarily like, I tried to say "I love you, girlfriend" and it came out "Shall I compare thee..."--but more like I was trying to say "I love you girlfriend" and it came out "Can I eat/ what you give me. I/ have not earned it. Must/ I think of everything as earned." Not that good, because Robert Creeley wrote that. Anyway...let me be more specific.
Here's something I'd do in the first two lines:
Nothing feels in our kitchen:
Not the sparrow we gassed...
When I do this kind of shit to a poem, I feel very literally as if I'm turning a screw, or the winch of a vice. So, aside from "letting go" of intent and all that, which I wouldn't say is appropriate for every poem/poet, it's also a method for condensing/tightening/etc. Also, saying "Nothing feels in our kitchen" is a lot different from "nothing feels in our world"--but actually, as I'm writing that, I don't know if it's true. Here's another example:
Who gets to claim its oven--
Shit like that. I mean, the great thing about doing this kind of thing is that it's all already there. What do you, dude, and you, dudette, think?
Phew--what a post. I had to rush off to a tutoring appointment at the end, sorry it's so rough. Hopefully it's not as shitbrained as I recall it being.
ReplyDeleteso...yeah...what loren said...and .....pants!
ReplyDeletekate golcheski patented devastation.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteIt's funny you mentioned that poem with the line "taut as bars of hymns" which is a poem that I am very fond of and now that I think about it I think all of the critiques on it have sort of left it like a crippled mess of what I originally intended it to be.
That poem, just like this one, started with a single line that caught me off guard (here it is "surgeon suctioned entrails." there it was something about an air raid). Then it sort of developed its own narrative. In retooling and condensing and taking everyone's advice, that poem's narrative fell to the wayside, which, in that case, was too bad. I liked the center of that poem, it's heart place if you will, but it didn't work and that's sort of what everyone who looked at it said.Now that I'm thinking about it, I'll probably take it out and look it over again later.
Bla bla bla. Anyway, I do like retaining the sort of straight sensible narrative in what I'm writing.What I write is different from you or Brian and I wouldn't want to write like you and you wouldn't want to write like me. With that being said, the goal is always to be new and exciting and to turn things on its head. I am too young and I have too little to do to not be adventurous especially when it comes to words on paper or drinking monkey hair tea (which is delicious). So reworking it, making it abstract, pushing it farther from the narrative, I don't see how that could be a bad thing knowing that no matter how abstract and bizarre I rewrite, it will always be a Kate Poem.
AND (afterthought!) I think being unwilling to deconstruct, experiment, push the language for the sake of saving the original intent of a poem results in boring and trite work. I think when you push then intent becomes more fine-tuned. It's like writing a research paper but less boring. Like your example with the Creeley poem-- pushing further it's not just a poem about loving someone. It become multi-dimensional. I think we all want our work to be more complex than just a simple thought. This poem, for instance, could simply be a poem about an abortion, but that's trite and uninteresting and I would like to push it further from that central point--which I tried to do in writing it, but outside observers always see things more clearly. But in terms of how your suggestions would be helpful to me, yeah, point me in new directions because even if I don't use them, they're interesting.
ReplyDeleteMy number one fear when I sit down and I start poems like this one or like the Easter poem is that I'm going to end up sounding like certain girls in our workshop that I will not name because I don't want to be that catty person but you know who I'm talking about wink wink. Like, these are definitely poems from a female perspective that easily melts into melodrama and cliche and becomes just not interesting. And it's not like, "Oh man this poem sucks" but you've heard it before. So in the interest of not sounding like that, getting out of my comfort zone is necessity. And that's really what I'm trying to do right now--especially since I'm not doing much else. McDaddy's critique of my portfolio was actually that I was writing filler poems and in between things and that I need to really get it out on the table and so yeah. Blablabla, I'm surprised if you've read all of this.
so, in an effort to join in the saying more than one(and in my case sometimes less) coherent sentence conversation going on here...i must say kate..and this is not to blow smoke up any particular orifice or whatnot, but im a bit shocked to hear..or read textually in sans serif...that you feared your works becoming like that of (or sounding vaguely like)those unnamed females..assumably 'talex imbas'..and that other girl with the hair thing... or whoever....
ReplyDeletei personally(and this means big things because im important and whatnot) felt that even when you chose to deliberately/clearly write behind the lens or filter or footlocker or yarnball of the female perspective, there was still always a little scariness (in the good way..cause there is no bad way) sewn in with the femininininity (sp?). even when the innocence or girl-itude or woman-ousity was in the forefront of the speaker/main character..there was always a butcher knife...or a grey wall...figuratively of course....
your biggest stregnth, i think..but im kinda retarded...[so you might be a computer simulation].. is that you could balance 2 seemingly opposing sentiments...gore/love...genuine- grace/decay...and whatnot
no, you do not write like loren, or myself(though im not sure now what i write like either..)or gralex simbas and that IS IS IS a good thing. so be adventurous..cause we're like what...16..17 tops? we're youngish..and some subject of a pat benetar anthem or two..so yeah..keep bein all...you know...word..poetry...lines...ish.
"anyway...lorens right..cause you've got cool words to work with...so putting cool words next to other cool words is like...cooler"~brock snyder
but seriously..mess around with what you got and if it dont work it dont work..if it do...then well
*the following post should self destruct as its author is.
Right on people. The good news is we can all save 90 drafts of every poem we write on our computers and (hopefully) our hard drives won't be full. Then, of course, you might need to generate a funkyweird database for all the drafts of a single poem, but that makes you a writer and--even better--pretty eccentric.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it's interesting you brought up the issue of "femininity in poems," because it wasn't something I had thought of, really. I mean, femininity isn't something that should be, like, "handled" "carefully" or whatehaveyou, at least not any more than should "abortion" or "wearing a shirt" or "working on a construction site." Right? I mean, I have to disagree that the female perspective melts into melodrama/cliche more easily than other perspectives...and I might suggest that the so-called "female" perspectives (as well as the "male"/ "religious"/ "poetic"/ "whatever else" perspectives) claimed by some of our acquaintances are susceptible to cliche out of an apparently baseless fidelity to a "perspective" defined/ codified by MTV or Fred Pollack or etc. etc. I agree with Brian that one of the most wonderful elements of your poetic instinct (as I see it) is its commitment to acknowledging complexity in human experience, without which a poem can't hope to approach anything lasting or important. That seems a little harsh, or maybe even narrow-minded, but it's an idea open to revision, of course.
OK anyway, you know the deal.
narrow-minded maybe, but i gotta tend to agree...poetry if nothing else ..at its basic naked underthesheetsness..is finding a way to communicate the complexities that exist around us which we cant seem to grasp/cope with/understand by any other means...not through baseball or knitting or sex or pastry..well maybe sex...but through language the confusion is presented and that in turn leads to some kind of understanding of the complexities and intricacies we witness...anus meat balloon farmer....
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't jump to discount pastry, either.
ReplyDeleteAlso, anus meat balloon farmer.
So, this is like the new livejournal?
ReplyDeletegate kolcheski would be a funny yet awesome name........
ReplyDelete1. pastry > sex. There. I said it.
ReplyDelete2. taylor, this is much like livejournal but fullof poems and only loren and brian read it.
3. kolcheski is too russian for my liking
4. anus meat balloon farmer.