Last week in correspondence with Paul Breslin he likened the context an author uses in poetry (we were discussing elitism vs. populism) to the context songwriters and musicians use in their writing both lyrically and musically. Thinking like that helped me to understand the point he was making and I think I'll use a similar metaphor in my comments on this poem.

I do prefer more emotional content to the poetry I enjoy - it's just my personal preference in most cases - but not all. That said, I understand what the author was getting at, but the connection necessarily occured only on an intellectual level. There was no emotion in the language and I think it was deliberate. His reading was very non-passionate as well. So here's my musical reference: for me it was like listening to Albert Ayers or Keith Jarret jazz compositions - I can appreciate them for their virtuosity and technique, but in the end I would rather listen to Miles Davis (Birth of the Cool) or Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (anything and everything).

This poem was not Miles or Bela.

I do prefer more emotional content to the poetry I enjoy - it's just my personal preference in most cases - but not all. That said, I understand what the author was getting at, but the connection necessarily occured only on an intellectual level. There was no emotion in the language and I think it was deliberate. His reading was very non-passionate as well.

So here's my musical reference: for me it was like listening to Albert Ayers or Keith Jarret jazz compositions - I can appreciate them for their virtuosity and technique, but in the end I would rather listen to Miles Davis (Birth of the Cool) or Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (anything and everything).

schizoidman_21, if I read you correctly, I think you're saying it was a well-written poem, but you just didn't like it.

I think that's an important distinction to make. Just because someone doesn't like a particular poem doesn't necessarily mean it's a badly written poem.

For me, I try to figure out what a poem means, and then I decide if I like it or not.

However, over the years on the PoemsFray, I have also loosened up a bit and sometimes actually like a poem that "speaks to me" even if I don't completely understand it. But I try not to dislike a poem just because I don't understand it. I try to understand it or give up and walk away, w/o making a value judgment. (that's my ideal stance, anyway)

MA

Then he tosses in a middle section written by another poet which has this emotional aspect. He acknowledges the need for it - but it doesn't fit into the heavy math of the poem he is writing. Like if Keith Jarrett hired Ben Webster to take a solo.

I think falcon hit it exactly - the need to find an emotional side was there, even attempted, but fell flat. I might think of the poem differently had that connection clicked. (I knew Jarrett had 2 r's - was unsure about 2 t's - thanks for not calling me on it!). I do think I agree with those posters who think the over use of 'it, thing, death' among other words detracts from the writing itself, but I think that may be an extension of the non-personal style he was going for (if indeed he was) because I get no sense of the writer as a real person. I think it's an awfully big topic to address with broad 3rd person-type observations. Philosophically I can appreciate it, artistically I don't.

I think falcon hit it exactly - the need to find an emotional side was there, even attempted, but fell flat.

For me, the buttoned-up, spare tone and syntax pointed to a narrator trying desperately to maintain an even keel rather than fall apart. So, for me, the lack of emotion suggested a great deal of emotion. See, for example, classical Chinese poetry or --

THE WIDOW’S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME by William Carlos Williams

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turn away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

MA - I'm sorry but I have to disagree. The William Carlos Williams poem is full of emotion and personal observation which he connects to the larger, perhaps philosophical, vision. He uses the language artisically to give voice to the universal experience through personal observations and experiences. It is neither ambiguous nor rambling like this weeks selection.

The Williams poem is excellent to my ear - it is Miles or Bela.

Williams' poem deals in images. I think that, as Paul observed, this poem deals in syntax. Whether syntax is equivalent to neurology...is another question, and I admit asking it offers an image of or analogy to my own thought processes. My suggestion is that the complexity of Ferry's argument won't support emotional content without adding murk, so to suggest emotional content he turns to another century's style and thought. Maybe his backward glance is a bit envious...or again, that could just be me.