Eric McHenry chose Andrew Feld and Pimone Triplett as a dual entry in this week’s Poetry Chain. (You can read a lovely juxtaposition of journal entries by Feld and Triplett here.) At noon, we read Triplett’s poem, and now it’s time for Feld’s.
We have already read McHenry’s reasons for choosing Feld, but here’s a little more information. He’s the editor-in-chief and poetry editor of The Seattle Review. Several websites point out that he is the recipient of “a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, the “Discovery,” The Nation Award, and two Pushcart Prizes.” He’s the author of Citizen, an award-winning book of poetry.
But of course, we all know that the poetry is what matters. So here is Andrew Feld’s poem:
Little Viral Song
Always the fear was the infection
Would shift from them to us.
So the sad piles of chicken flesh
In West Timor and Bangladesh
Gave us that certain, sad frisson
One feels near the apocalypse.One feels, near the apocalypse,
A little less than one—
A chill you can warm your hands on.
As the infection zeros in
From the East, one feels jaundiced.
The end would come from that direction.The end will come from that direction
One is already inclined
Toward. In suburban Maryland,
The epicenter of my mind,
The die-off of the crows and ravens
Made me think: here? in Kensington?And even here in Washington
We watch them, shivering
Inside the zero’s open eye
Of our wide-screen television
(They are sick, they must die) (and no birds sing).
So long to the great wingéd migration.So long to the great wingéd migration:
Now harbinger, instead
Of spectacle of the world’s renewal.
What should the likes of us do,
Crawling between toilet and bed?
And there are other, worse, symptoms.Among the other, worse, symptoms
Is an embarrassing
Tumescence, the chthonic thrill
Of apocalyptic porn, the chill.
One feels the zero homing in.
Always, the fear is the infection.
Thanks to Eric McHenry and many thanks to Andrew Feld and Pimone Triplett. Next Friday at noon, we’ll find out who they’ve chosen for the next link in the Seattle Poetry Chain.
I love how this poem implicates both reader and speaker in the othering. Also the selection of locations for the “piles of chicken flesh” supports the idea that this is about more than bird flu (and that perhaps the flesh only appears to be that of chickens).
“And no birds sing” is Keats.
Good poem!
Nitpick: wingèd, not wingéd.
That comment is a joke, right?
Pimone and Andrew were both my professors when I got my MFA at UW. They’re both really smart, they’re super knowledgeable about poetry and criticism, movements and sub-movements, styles of verse etc. And I think neither one of them is a very good poet.
Let me explain, I’m not going to do a typical rant, slog style about it sucks because it sucks. I’ve read books by both of them and I love poetry (after all I went into debt to go to school for it).
The problems with Feld and Triplett’s work is endemic to contemporary poetry in general and one of the reasons why it’s so completely irrelevant to even high culture. That is, it imposes on itself a sobriety, a stiff architecture of importance that drains the poem from being something interesting and vital into a procedural exercise. It’s kind of like modern jazz. In general, most modern jazz groups are very boring. They have a pattern and they studiously follow it and the listener studiously appreciates it because it’s jazz, the great American tradition. But even if the music (or the poems) is highly competent and proficient and is an “intelligent” and “original” work, its method is still bound to a stultifying intellectual hagiography.
I remember Andrew Feld once said in a class that the truest poets would be an poet/academic/critic/because they would have the intelligence to be aware of their literary tradition and that would give the work more integrity. “Like you?” is what I sarcastically thought.
That speaks to the elitism that underlines Triplett’s and Feld’s work. Their work reflects their belief that their approach and position is infallible. It’s art inside a mausoleum, embalmed of uncertainty.
This is why no one cares about poetry. Contemporary art, a similarly hermetic media is much more popular, not simply for the communal experience of gallery-going, but because it wisely understands the value of a wise-ass and the sense in giving people free booze.
@Hosono. Couldn’t agree more about the elitism here; however, I disagree with the notion that no one cares about poetry. We had more than 120 people at “Cheap Wine and Poetry” last night yucking it up over four great local poets and writers. No one may care about this type of poetry–the high art, academic-y stuff–but good poetry is alive and well in the world; just come to CW&P, grab a drink and have a seat. We offer the same experience as art shows with less hipsters and less talk of the effects of post-modernism.
@5
100% agree
@Brian
No one cares about poetry except for poets and chicken-headed girls easily impressed. I’m one so I know (uh, the former).
Also, two easy indications this poem falls into the highbrow/elite/garbage pile:
use of both “frisson” and “cthonic” in the SAME poem