Greenfield Reviews

McSweeney's review of Carnage in the Lovetrees was quite problematic to me. The review was contradictory to everything that I had thought about the book. McSweeney states at the end of her review, "Greenfield’s achievement in A Carnage in the Lovetrees is to have created a readable, saturated universe of thinking, writing, and memory, in which no term provides purchase on another." Particularly the readable and saturated memory disturbs me. I must agree that Greenfield creates a saturated universe of thinking and writing but to me, that universe was unreadable and seemed to lack any sort of comprehensive memory. It seems to me that Greenfield's created universe is meant to be disturbing and incoherent.

I was surprised by the class discussion in which other students said that Greenfields poetry was calming and peaceful. McSweeney however agrees with this point saying, "in the firm hands of this poet, we do begin to recognize, to breathe heavy air, to feel, as an overwrought phrase in another poem has it, "the quarterlight dawn." But Greenfield’s overwroughtness is not contemptible, as it might be in the hands of another poet. Indeed, it is often lovely, and also useful." I understand what she means by breathing the heavy air and feeling it like "'the quarterlight dawn,'" but this was not a comforting or satisfying dawn. It was more of an eery, anxious, uncomfortable and tense dawn. In fact, this "quarterlight dawn" which she refers to from "Two In a Series of Encryption" seems especially tense and uncomfortable. McSweeney refers to this specific poem as "beautiful," a word that seems to be avoided in Greenfield's poetry. Beautiful is not a word I would use to describe this poem. Something along the lines of painful would do a better job of describing it for me.

However, this is not to discredit Greenfield because I believe that he may have had this intent with his poems. Jerome mentioned that he thought Greenfield's poetry was unconventional and we were having a tough time pinning down what made it unconventional. McSweeney comments on this idea of what is conventional in poetry saying, "Another of Greenfield’s habits is the shoehorning of boundless abstraction into the syntactic space conventionally reserved for the concrete, and vice versa." This placing of abstract in the space of concrete and concrete in the abstract may have been what Charlotte was referring to in her comment about the use of space in Greenfield's poems and what Jerome was referring to about unconventionality.

I had to try very hard to think of something that Greenfield's poems reminded me of. Then I remembered Jeffrey Lewis, a quite "unconventional" musician. His song, Texas, can be understood as a confessional poem of his relationship with his brother. It could be a pleasing song to some, but like Greenfield, the concept of the song is more enjoyable than the music itself.

Lyrics: http://lyrics.wikia.com/Jeffrey_Lewis:Texas

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx8vdcdHQrg

Carnage

Greenfield's collection of poems in A Carnage in the Love Trees tells a challenging depressing story. The poems are glimpses into a dark clouded world. While in some sense I felt sorry for Nick Flynn when I read his poetry, I did not feel this with Greenfield's poems. My emotions toward Greenfield's poetry was more upset and discontented. The loathing that carries on throughout all the poems becomes somewhat tired to me. I found this particularly in "Elegy For the Swing," "The Invention of the Drawing," "Conversion at Play," "Lament for the Mule," and in some sense all of the poems. The poems, while written in present tense, seem to be caught in the past. Greenfield laments over losses and makes the reader lament as well.


One thing I appreciate about Greenfield's poems is his use of physical structure. Some poems are crammed into a single spaced pargraph without any significant breaks while others are spread out all over the page and many pages. This use of structure creates a visual representation of what is being presented. For example, the poem "T" is written in one single paragraph. To me, this presents the image of a single story that takes place in one significant moment or collection of moments. There is no need to break apart this collection of moments because collectively, it presents Greenfield's desired image. Greenfield structures the poem, "Burn the Family Tree," much differently. This poem spans six pages and spaces the lines in no specific order. Some groups of lines are singled out and therefore assumed to have greater importance, power or meaning in the poem. He also uses extra spacing in between certain words on page 21 contributing to the emotion of the poem. Greenfield's use of structure is useful and powerful in conveying his message.


The poem, "Elegy for the Swing," was especially challenging for me to connect with and this line in particular stuck with me,

"The grievous device of the aesthete makes even the incest
beauteous, or censored from the composition" (15).

The aesthetic nature of the swing and its connection with the tree has always been a beautiful image to me. When I read this poem and this line, it made me upset and challenged my relationship with the swing which has always been a happy one. This feeling of being upset with Greenfield's poems was consistent with my reading of his poems. I'm not sure what to directly pin that feeling too. Greenfield's poems are a challenging expression of emotion to me.

Flynn Reviews and Confessional Poetry

In reading the reviews of Flynn I was struck by the contrasting arguments about his poetry. The overarching argument, which relates to the question I failed to address in my previous post, is where does the power and emotion in Flynn's poems come from. Calvin Bedient argues that Flynn's poetry lacks power because it is all in the past and poetry in the present. I believe that Bedient is missing the power of the poems by reading the poems as a narrative of Flynn's traumatic past. While Flynn is, in a way, telling the story of his past relations with his mother and father, the power comes from the unveiling of emotion and trauma. As Tony Hoagland states,

"The book's gift is not the sensationalism of the tale, but the delicate kiltered skill with which the poems collage anecdote and metaphor into allegory."

The sense of an "allegory" brings Flynn's accounts from the past to the present accentuating their metaphorical and symbolic power rather than the simply literal meaning of the poems. Flynn's story may be far in the past, however his emotions and the symbolic nature of his poems can be felt in the present.

Bedient refers to Flynn's poem, "Man dancing with a paper cup." Specifically the line stating, "a church bell ringing resonates long after the ear ceases to perceive it." Bedient states that the ringing church bell is inconsequential to the present and therefore lacks power. However, I believe that the power in the church bell can be tangible to the reader and therefore felt in the present. This symbolism and emotion brings Flynn's story to the present, where it possesses power and relevance to the lives of its readers.


In thinking about confessional poetry, the song King of Carrot Flowers pt. 1, by Neutral Milk Hotel came to mind. A boy describes the story of growing up with a girl and the traumatic experiences that they dealt with. Does this song/poem have power or is it just a story about the past? Does the music and/or the video give it more power than it might have simply as a poem? I'm still not sure... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDdyKklEHyY&feature=related

Some Ether

Nick Flynn creates tangible emotions in his auto-biographical poems. Flynn brings the concept of his mother and father to life through the use of his poems. Life and Death, and Flynn's personal relations with these ideas, seems to be the major concept of Some Ether. The poem's are powerful because of their use of imagery. While the objects that Flynn describes are not physically tangible, the mental image is clear and powerful. The reader can feel the tension in ongoing relationship with his parents. Although they have both died, Flynn continues to connect with them through his poetry. This tension-filled emotional relationship gives power and meaning to the objects that Flynn describes.


As we discussed in class, Flynn's poems beg the question, "who cares?" Why should I, the reader, care about Flynn's emotions? Is it because I was given the assignment to read the poems and therefore care about how Flynn feels about his mother's suicide. Flynn's expression of emotion has to relate to me for me to care about it. By illustrating the images of his relationship to his mother and father, Flynn connects to the reader and the reader can relate to Flynn's emotions. In the poem, Curse, I was especially moved by the idea of release.



Curse

Let the willows drop their branches, heavy with ice,
let the sound be a whipcrack across the fields.

Let each tree be felled, let them dynamite the stumps.

From now on you will have to keep moving, from now on
you will carry everything you own.

You will sleep beneath a payphone, dream of a room, a field.

Let the field burn clean, let your children beat the flames
with brooms.

You will feign sleep as the conductor passes.

The names of your children will break up in your mind.

Let the stones jam the plough, let the barn fall.

Let the paint leech into the well. (55)



The title of the poem, Curse, is illustrative of Flynn's relationship to his father and his father's release from family and life.
The poem, Prayer, follows up with this idea and Flynn's relationship with his mother.



Prayer

Who are you talking to? she asks, the room empty. (57)


This illustrates the tension between Flynn and his mother, and the ongoing impact of this relationship on Flynn. These emotions are made tangible by Flynn's use of imagery and relationships. This tension can be felt by the reader and this is what gives Flynn's poems power and emotion to me.

Climbing the Huge Oak in my Grandmother's Yard

Butane in my veins
Instead of blood
Provides nutrients to the forest that grows inside of me
Burning butane puts holes in my veins
These openings provide opportunities for new plant growth
And a cooler, bigger forest

When the forest grows too big it proceeds to emerge out of my face
So I shave my face with some mace in the dark
It hurts but is the only thing that can stop the butane enriched trees
Including bromelaids, mosses, ferns, nitrogen fixing lichens and the rare species of cocaine nose-jobs.

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