White_Rabbit:
Although Foobs may not thank me for saying this, I believe that Mr. Breslin shows us (technically) what contemporary poetry on Slate should be. He takes the same fundamental idea behind Mr. Donne's devotion (which is not in rhyme and meter but in formal prose) and puts it in a modern context (which has no rhyme or meter either but which uses the free verse format effectively to express its message). Nor do I think the the message leads nowhere, as Foobs seems to think. Where it leads, however, is to an ideological landscape that is barren and unsown compared to the one that Donne lived and died in. Meaninglessness in modern culture has taken its toll (no pun intended) on us all, and especially on modern poets.
Having said that, and acknowledging that "Siren" is not trying to overreach itself as an allegedly Great Poem, if poetry at its heart is "heightened speech", then this poem's "speech" is not very "high" -- indeed, it's pedestrian in spots. Its imagery is evocative for me -- especially in the middle and last sections -- but it could've been made more so, and I think I can make clear how this could be so.
One of Willard R. Espy's best examples of light verse sums up my attitude about what can be good, and what is usually bad, about the Tuesday Poems. I've cited it many times before, but I like to trot it out now and again:
YOU'D BE A POET, BUT YOU HEAR IT'S TOUGH?
You'd be a poet, but you hear it's tough?
No problem. Just be strict about one rule:
No high-flown words, unless your aim is fluff;
The hard thought needs the naked syllable.
For giggles, gauds like pseudoantidis-
establishment fulfill the purpose well;
But when you go for guts, the big words miss;
Trade "pandemonic regions" in for "hell".
…Important poems? Oh…excuse the snort…
Sack scansion, then -- and grammar, sense and rhyme.
They only lie around to spoil the sport --
They're potholes on the road to the sublime.
And poets with important things to say
Don't write Important Poems anyway.
Copyright © 1986 Willard R. Espy
Mr. Breslin certainly knows how to express the hard thought (function) with the naked syllable (form) -- pardon if these are not in fact good words to make my point clear -- but I believe even his poetry could benefit from a bit more "scansion, grammar, sense and rhyme" (as I'm sure Foobs will agree).
wr ()()
P.S.: Here's Mr. Breslin's poem again:
"Siren"
By Paul Breslin
Posted Tuesday, July 22, 2008, at 7:33 AM ET
Listen to Paul Breslin read this poem.
I could swear it is saying my name,
a human voice full of pain and anger:
it's the police come to arrest me
for a crime so long concealed
I forget its name. Or my father's ghost,
crying he might have lived
had I loved him better. It's my mother
folding her arms and saying take your anger
someplace else, it doesn't belong to me;
my wife asking Is this good-bye then?
Or my daughter in childhood saying
hoarsely through tears, Dad,
how can you say that to me?
So many things were almost the end.
At the fire station around the corner,
the engines are pulling away.
So little to separate us
from the one the siren is for,
whose house flies into the air as cinders,
who lies on his bed turning purple and clutching his heart.
