Constant Reader discussion

I'm late with our weekly poem. We had weekend guests and I got focussed on them instead of here.

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George Starbuck (1931 - 1996)
George Starbuck's songs of protest are usually concerned with love, war, and the spiritual temper of the times. Starbuck's work is attractive because of its "witty, improvisational surface, slangy and familiar address, brilliant aural quality . . .," and adds that Starbuck may become a "spokesman for the bright, unhappy young men. . . ."

Thomas Gunn, on the other hand, believes that Starbuck "is not even very elegant," but, Louise Bogan writes, his daring satire "sets him off from the poets of generalized rebellion."

George Starbuck (1931-1996) was an American poet of the neo-formalist school. His work is marked by clever rhymes, witty asides, and the fusing of Romantic themes with cynicism towards modern life. Starbuck called his style of formalism SLABS, for Standard Length And Breadth Sonnets. He was not widely appreciated by mainstream culture during his lifetime, but in the few years since his death his work has earned favor from both literary critics and casual readers of poetry.

I hope I can get this posted in its correct format.

Nope. It won't work. Apparently goodreads can't digest pre-formatted html.

Here's a link where you can see it in its proper shape.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archi...

Thanks for posting this, Ruth, as a Yuletide morsel to consider on a brief break from holiday cooking .... I have two comments --

1. It would be fun perhaps (for some of us anyway) to listen in while John and Edward Ames from Gilead discuss the apparently heretical pantheistic implications of these lines:

iciclestuff adorn
all cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn!

To me this mention of a cuckcolded creation suggests that God has 'cheated on' Nature by his alliance with the mother of Jesus. Or ...?

2. Starbuck paints a lovely scene of the human dimension of weariness in his lines about the labor of mother and child:

a son born
now
now
while ox and ass and infant lie
together as poor creatures will
and tears of her exertion still
cling in the spent girl’s eye

back to the hot cider ...

I thought that perhaps the cuckolding of creation was the betrayal man does to Nature by bedecking the Christmas tree. But no doubt it refers to Joseph too, just as the "crown of horn" refers to the crown of thorns. The poem's Christian symbolism is used in a most inventive way. Mary's tears become the pangs of labour, and the baby lies with the ox and the ass.

You have to be impressed by the visualisation of the tree. The "O" for the decoration at the top, and the shorter line "It's a new day..." giving extra branching to the conifer. The octet (this is certainly a sonnet if one merely follows the rhyme scheme) is the tawdry decoration of the tree, the sextet the base with soil and roots, where real Christianity lies.

It would be interesting to trace the history of "pictorial poetry". The first example I can think of is George Herbert's "Easter Wings",

http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/...

In my own book of Herbert's verse this is laid out quite beautifully to represent the wings of angels. I wonder if this poem influenced Starbuck?

(I had not heard of George Starbuck before. Was that his real name?)

(Ruth, do you still collect the weekly poems from other ConstantReaders, or are they chosen in some other way?)

Incidentally, I think the whole page

http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/...

is well worth looking through.

Thanks Martin, it was interesting to see the different ways the Herbert poem is printed. Although he could have solved the whole problem by writing in Chinese.

And the answer to your question is yes. The weekly poems are nominated by the group. I gathered a list a few months ago and we've a ways to go on it yet.

I took it upon myself to nominate this poem, though. Starbuck is new to me, but from what I've read of the other poems on the site, I think I like his work.

Oh, I liked this poem. Quite a change from the usual Christmas verse and music. I especially laughed at the lines:

...no scapegrace of a sect
tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;

Can't imagine that as part of a Christmas Oratorio. And the image at the end,

...a great firework in the sky
drifts to the western hill.

was beautiful. A poem that celebrates language, and in a sly way, the Incarnation

tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;..."

Heehee. Puts me in mind of my daughter-in-law insisting on wiping up my stove last Sunday.

But what does it mean, "no scapegrace of a sect tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect"?

I do not understand it.

I took it to mean no sect thinking they can curry favor with god by tidying everything up and cramming Christianity into the proper boxes.

Very good. I now have the idea that "ashtrays" refers to the remains of burnt martyrs and heretics.

Wow, what a wild poem. I feel like it's very much over my head in wys...I had to read it several times.

(sorry to be late to discussion)

I feel as if there is a sugestion about gender roles in this poem. As if it is noting that a male gets to be the king or central figure but not to forget he sleeps near the ass. I see the line about the Daughter in Law Elect as she is put much lower than the son in the family dynamic. Lowering at her cleaning ashtrays...ah I do like what Martin says about her cleaning up the remains of burnt things...maybe the burnt essential incenses?

Women have not recieved the grace of gods...Women aren't able to find acceptance in the church (or temple or family) with serious roles except to clean up...oh yes and give birth...but no Goddesses allowed...

Ah yes, but does not the whole of Christianity suggest gender roles? Eve getting Adam into big trouble, Mary the perfect role model for wise virgins, and Mary Magdalen, the repentant sinner? Certainly it's a woman's job to clean out the ashtrays, just as, in Paradise Lost (let us celebrate the Milton quadricentennial!), Eve prepares lunch for Raphael and Adam while the archangel explains the need to watch out for Satan. Eve is too busy to listen, or rather the bits she hears mislead her. (According to Empson's reading of the poem, Eve would never have eat the apple if it had not been for Raphael's visit.)

Meanwhile I'm increasingly struck by the parallels between this poem and the poem by Herbert. Christmas for one, Easter for the other. I notice the students in Texas had the greatest difficulty understanding a poem of the 17th century. Constatnt Readers aren't the only ones ...

Yes, I guess Christianity or many modern practitioners seem to separate the gender roles. As a tourist of Christianity, I tend to see the women as intense goddesses. I mean to enter a catherdral...I remember the first time I saw a Mary statue...I was quite blown away. I was so impressed with how she was first and foremost and had a place of power.

I don't see the religions as so much pushing gender roles...as the people who use certain stories to repress genders roles. ..and the way the poet has forced the poem into a shape f a tree made me feel that we force words int shapes or new agendas. etc.

Now...where are these students in Texas you're talking about Martin...is that at the linked website? I guess I better not be so lazy and go look around the site you linked...

I am so busted!

:)

it's on the link to Herbert I put in above, Candy.

Yes, thanks Martin, I figured it out :) I'm making way through the site...

And coincidently...Geroge Herbert is in a small part of the book we are discussing for this motnh called Gilead!