Make up: Thoughts on Jeff Thomson

Jeff Thomson's Birdwatching in Wartime follows a journey through the rain forest of South America. The poems contain imagery pertaining to the biodiversity of the rain forest, and South American culture. This includes religion, history and the frequent inclusion of Spanish words or phrases. Thomson paints a vivid picture of the South American rain forest, one that is both full and highly intricate, particularly in "Landscape with Swelling and Hives" Thomson also meditates on the nature of language and death, such as in "Twin" and violence in "Ars Poetica with Pain." These themes eagerly deepen Thomson's views on the South American landscape.

The moment in Thomson’s Birdwatching in Wartime that stuck with me the most was when “American Pastoral” came to the page. For me the striking typical American farmer scene came to mind complete with Farmers who ride their quad-runner across the cow pastures, and having the rolling hills and blue sky behind them. However, what seems so American is not so unfamiliar to neighboring regions. South America has a very substantial agriculture. Other then a physical barrier the only other wall of separation North American and South American Farmers share is language. This is the astonishing aspect of Thomson’s poetry; it fills the gap with pose and ease.

Make up: Thoughts on Susan Howe

Susan Howe appears to be the master of bridging the gap between literature and visual art. Howe’s, “The Midnight” displays this bridge perfectly. While combining visual works of art such as pieces of manuscripts, photographs, and portraits, Howe is able to present a work that transforms with every read.

The overwhelming theme in “The Midnight” is the effects of insomnia. This is apparent throughout the entire text and through the cluttered state of the book itself. Many of her images and references do not instantly make sense or connect. All of the Alice and Wonderland images set throughout the text don't necessarily relate to the text displayed next to or around the image, Howe is more focused on the ideas surrounding the story of Alice and Wonderland such as bizarre adventures and the question of what is real or unreal.

The most interesting part of her poetry however is the interweaving between poetry and prose. I would like to whether she wrote the prose or the poetry while awake at 2 a.m. To honest both are so abstract I believe it could be either.

The text as a whole for seems to be still a work in progress, which I believe is the intent of Howe. The text is so obscure it could quite possibly go on forever. On lighter note, the level of complexity and demand for very close reading I will admit, made “The Midnight” a challenging but rewarding read.

Make up: Thoughts on Adrian Matejka

Adrian Matejka’s mixology could very easily be read with a solid beat pulsing in the background keeping time. His poetry is raw yet refined and still the kind of poetry that demands multiple reads not only for sheer enjoyment but also for its complexity and insightful inquires. I could not put down Mixology nor could I simply skim through any of the poems.

With an urban feel Matejka brings to light musical references that are almost so subtle one could easily read over them with blinking. For example the poem “Tommy Johnson (c. 1896-1956)” is one entire musical reference. Tommy Johnson was a famous blues musician. The very first line is a reference to the kind of blues musician and character Tommy Johnson actually was as Matejka writes, “there’s jake leg blues in this box.” Jake was a common aliment associated with drinking the then popular medication called Jamaican Ginger. This liquid was formulated to go around the prohibition laws and was especially popular with southern blues musicians. Jake leg was reference to the way an individual walked when they drank too much of the Jamaican ginger. The nerves that helped the toes function properly in order for one to walk were severely hindered.

This is only a small snippet of the depth and detail Adrian Matejka has gone into with Mixology. I believe this collection of poetry even though quite musical in its references can be thoroughly enjoyed by any reader.

Make Up Post: Spahr, This Connection of Everyone with Lungs

“I speak of the intimate relationship between salmons and humans, / between humans and icebergs, between icebergs and salmons, and / how this is just the beginning of the circular list” (21).

This is truly just the beginning of the revolving references that encompass the poems of This Connection of Everyone with Lungs; in her book, Juliana Spahr brings awareness to “suspended dust spores” (9), the square footage of a city, Burkina Faso, foot soldiers, parrots, beloveds, the Oscars, Nazi Germany, bus bombs, Celine Dion, those exiled, those evacuated, those lost, and those who lie in their beds and worry about war.

The first section filled with a single poem, a tribute to September 11, Spahr hypnotizes the reader in a repetitive form that mimics the rhythm of breathing as “everyone with lungs breathes…in and out” (4) the distance between molecules, cities, bodies, and islands, exhaling out to the mesosphere and inhaling back again, a connection of everyone that is both “lovely” and “doomed” (10). The second section is a compilation of “Poems Written From November 30, 2002 to March 27, 2003,” an account of America’s invasion of Iraq and the experience of watching the war unfold, both on a universal level and on a personal level; the speaker feels both distant and utterly close to the war in the middle east as she watches the news from her home in Hawaii.

On the scale of contemporary American poetry, Spahr seems to fall somewhere in the middle of the line between transcendent and immanent styles; while the multitude of cultural references - events of war, politics, the media - all embody the world we live in, Spahr’s specific play of language, the music of her hypnosis poem and her usage of “yous” in addressing her audience, both constitute a type of poetry that reaches outward to the events of daily life, as well as challenges the reader to experience this collection in a way that connects him or her to the speaker, the war, the many “lovely” and “doomed” subjects of this book.

For example, Spahr uses both transcendent and immanent styles according to her form and content in the poem “January 20, 2003” as she draws upon lists of images of love and war while questioning what is beautiful. She writes, “some say the thing most lovely is the thirty / thousand assault troops from Britain today joining the sixty-two / thousand from the US mobilized in the past ten days and a further / sixty thousand from the US on their way” (46) a compilation of statistics, the “thousands” and “thousands” of “cavalry” of “foot soldiers” of a “fleet” (45) that concentrates on the idea of a group of people, a faceless, strong thousand parallel to a ship as a whole or an army of “self-propelled guns” (46). In the second half of the poem, Spahr contrasts the images of war with what is said to be most beautiful, opinions compiled in a very repetitive form: Spahr says, “But I say it’s whatever you love best. / I say it is the persons you love. /…I say it’s what one loves. / It’s what one loves, the most beautiful is whomever one loves. / I say it is whatsoever a person loves. / …For me naught else, it is my beloveds, it is the loveliest sight” (46-7). Also containing a hypnotic element much like her first poem, “January 20, 2003”’s rebounding form brings the idea of priority, of the world full of thousands of soldiers or the specific “ones you love” (47), our perspective on love and war, of people and what is “the most beautiful thing upon the dark earth” (46) to the reader, who creates his or her own meaning by considering this question. Spahr even admits her repetition: “I say it again, the sight of the ones you love, those you’ve met and / those you haven’t. / I say it again and again. / Again and again. / I try to keep saying it to keep making it happen. / I say it again, the sight of the ones you love, those you’ve met and / those you haven’t” (47). Both transcendent in reaching to the throngs of armies gathered in war to the collection of personal beloveds, this poem immanently repeats its form in questioning what is beautiful, what is valued on a global and personal scale, and how a lover is the same as one of the thousands of soldiers; Spahr encourages the reader to love these soldiers, which are both “the sight of the ones you love” and “those you’ve met and / those you haven’t” (47).

This Connection of Everyone with Lungs is successful at bringing awareness to the war, to cultural events spanning the course of two years, to the connection we have with strangers, friends, our own “beloveds,” soldiers, victims, and ourselves and our actions, or lack of actions. Spahr’s “Poem Written After September 11, 2001” is successful in its immanent style, the rising and falling intonation of the “entering in and out of the space of the stratosphere in the entering / in and out of the space of the troposphere in the entering in and / out…” (9), capturing the swinging sound of breathing that happens when exhaling, speaking, or reading poetry aloud.

Matejka: Black, White & Gray

Adrian Matejka’s book Mixology has a rhythm to it that is the most unique out of all the readings we’ve done so far this semester. I can feel the beat to it while reading it in my head and aloud. This gives the feeling of a distinct flow, and the fact the title is Mixology makes me think of this book as a perfect blended mix of words. I say that Matejka has flow, but this is not like a calm river—more like a river with rapids that shape jagged rocks into smooth curves. An example of this is with the poem “Synth Composite Basketball: No More Leather,” when he says, “Rust makes / my hands hurt, / busts jumpers / and lungs. All my theories / and historic stamina left / in the Gus Macker me and my team / almost won.” (16). The smooth “s” sounds in “rust,” “makes,” and “hands” compliments the harsher sounding syllables in “jumpers,” “historic,” and “Macker.” Matejka has seemed to master the placement of words and how to make his poetry smooth. The beats of the harsh and smooth syllables throughout this book make the rhythm incredibly distinct. His poetry isn’t music, it isn’t lyrics, but rather a mix of both.

One word that is one of the main themes in this book is “Mulatto.” This word is used in a couple titles and in many poems. Mulatto means a mixed race, and this was a concurrent theme. He uses this theme to portray this mix of cultures and uses his own stories to allow readers to experience his thought processes about life. That’s another thing about Matejka’s poetry—it is incredibly dense. There are so many words packed into short stanzas, something I am still in awe about. For a poem as short as “Samson and Delilah”, there are so many different sounding words in each line: “guitar pick circling reverb’s foxhole.” (30). Try saying that ten times fast. Since a lot of poems have tricky sounding lines, it made me slow down and hear the rhythm more closely. This corresponds to the hip-hop culture and the urban lifestyle that Matejka continually displays. You don’t have to be one specific culture, race, or ethnicity, but rather, I think Matejka was trying to convey that one should be proud of their mixed heritages.

I enjoyed this book a lot, although I am not “hip” enough to know a lot of these references he wrote about, which made me Google a lot of phrases, words, and names. I think he was successful overall; I genuinely enjoyed reading every poem. I found that I’m taking away from this book that there shouldn’t be so much black and white, but rather people should celebrate the shades of gray.

Thoughts on Matejka

Adrian Matejka’s Mixology is a treatise on mixtures. His poems read like slam poetry, but are written in more traditional form, with uniformly-sized lines and verses. Many more traditional poets like to use literary allusions in their poetry, referencing classical works and authors. Matejka chose to go this route in most of his poems, but instead of referencing dead white men, he chose to use Public Enemy lyrics, and references to a more urban culture.

If one did not know that Adrian Matejka is of mixed heritage, I feel that much of the meaning of the poems would be lost. However, all it takes to resolve that problem is a quick Google or Wikipedia search, which isn’t difficult since many terms in the poems need to be looked up anyway. Growing up in post-World War II Germany must have been difficult for someone of African-American heritage, even with Nazi rule over. The book begins with the line “Today, I’m assimilating like margarine into hotcakes;” to Matejka, assimilation is everything, whether or not he even wants to fit in. He was coming of age in America just as urban culture was becoming popular; at a Public Enemy show, he and the rest of the audience “didn’t know what to do as a rap crowd either.” He didn’t know how to assimilate to either of his backgrounds. He’s like the basketball he writes about in “Synth Composite Basketball: No More Leather:” “mulatto/ of homemade leather and rubber/ now named a “basketball.” Just like the basketball, he is mulatto, a combination of opposite-looking things.

Overall, I think Matejka was very successful with Mixology. He was able to mix high-brow and low-brow cultures in such a way that leaves a huge impression. His ability to take such a traditional literary convention, the use of allusion, and twist it into something using urban pop-culture references shows just how versed he is in the struggle to be a mixture of two things and still be successful.

Adrian Matejka: Mixology

Mixology is a text unlike others that we have encountered thus far, the poetry contained inside is dense, intricate, eloquent, and contains references to pop culture icons such as flavor flav or Denzel Washington. The Poems inside act like works of Larry Levis where much of the references need to be looked up (with Wikipedia or Google) to fully understand what the poet is trying to accomplish. A good example of this is found in the poem Seven Days of Falling, if the reader doesn’t know who Danny Larusso (the star of karate kid who went on to be a pro skateboarder) or Juan Valdez (Columbian coffee advertisement person) or where Zanzibar is, etc. then the reader will not fully understand the poems intent. Unlike levis the references in mixology are not high brow poetry and Greek myth references, they are hip hop and pop culture references that comment on Matejka’s life experiences in the latter half of the 20^th century. German born raised in America with mixed parents (one white one black) Matejka was harassed and felt out of place early in his life (Hispanics would make fun of him for looking Hispanic but having a German accent, etc.) this and other events that happened to him (due to his mixed race) resulted in one of the major themes of mixology being race. The term Mulatto refers to his mixed race and appears many times throughout the text both as the “in your face” subject of the poem, and as the insinuated subject of the poems.

The poetry in mixology is flowing like a rap song, it is dense like a Levis poem and it is on the subject matter of race. However there is another aspect of the poetry that I have yet to discuss and it is a matter of great importance. The poetry is incredibly urban yet at the same time it is unbelievably literal and poetic (even though you could rap certain verses of the poetry it is still poetry and not a rap song, and as poetry the poems are incredibly successful at being, they tell stories of the human condition, how it feels to be different, growing up etc.) Mixology’s greatest success is the poems ability to be both flowing and eloquent but at the same time represent subject matter that is real to the poet. I really enjoyed this text and was surprised to find dense rich poetry that used hip hop and pop culture references to get its point across.