![]() Robert Pinsky at Poetry Colloquium (3-9-2017) |
Robert Pinsky 2017 Colloquium Terrace Room (4th floor), Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg 460 Stanford University Thursday, March 9, 2017, 11 am
Edited by Peter Y. Chou |
![]() Robert Pinsky at Poetry Colloquium (3-9-2017) |
Preface: The 2017 Mohr Visiting Poet,
Robert Pinsky gave a Poetry Reading
on January 25, 2017, where he read ten poems. His Colloquium originally scheduled for
February 22 was postponed to March 9.
I got the 9:53 am Bus #40 at Rengstorff
to Showers Drive; got the 10:16 am Bus #522
to Palo Alto Train Depot; The Palm XPress
"P" Shuttle usually gets to the Oval in 9 minutes.
However after 10:03 am, "P" Bus goes to the
Medical Center & gets to the Oval in 21 minutes.
So the 10:25 am "P" Bus got to the Oval at 10:40 am.
The Terrace Room on the 4th floor was not packed,
and I got a seat in the 3rd row. Eavan Boland asked
Pinsky to talk about Yvor Winters, so he did that.
Pinsky said he came to Stanford 40 years ago
as a Stegner Fellow in Graduate School.
He felt he was a hot-shot poet from East Coast.
He showed his poems to Yvor Winters, who said
"There's a gift here, but you're so ignorant!
Nobody could write great poetry
who has not read that much."
Winters was not interested in Pinsky's reading
all the contemporary poets, but has no idea
of 16th century British poets such as
|
Robert Pinsky: Eavan Boland, Director of Stanford's
Creative Writing Program, asked me to talk
about my poetry experience at Stanford 40 years ago with literature
and Yvor Winters
(1).
I came to Stanford as a Stegner Fellow (1963) around the time of the
Birmingham Church Bombing
(September 15, 1963). I sent two checks, mine and Yvor's to Birmingham, Alabama, in support
of rebuilding the Church.
There were two things on his wall—
a portrait of Herman Melville
and a poster of California Wine (?)
(Poem: "In Praise of California Wine") Yvor Winter's "A Summer Commentary" Poet's Choice (By Robert Pinsky, Washington Post, 7-3-2005) When I was young, with sharper sense, The farthest insect cry I heard Could stay me; through the trees, intense, I watched the hunter and the bird. Where is the meaning that I found? Or was it but a state of mind, Some old penumbra of the ground, In which to be but not to find? Now summer grasses, brown with heat, Have crowded sweetness through the air; The very roadside dust is sweet; Even the unshadowed earth is fair. The soft voice of the nesting dove, And the dove in soft erratic flight Like a rapid hand within a glove, Caress the silence and the light. Amid the rubble, the fallen fruit, Fermenting in its rich decay, Smears brandy on the trampling boot And sends it sweeter on its way. from The Giant Weapon (1943) by Yvor Winters, New Directions It's like drinking Keats' "beaded bubbles" "Ode to a Nightingale" Yvor Winters literature criticisms of the 1950s are still read today. I came to Stanford from the East Coast, thinking I was a great poet already, not knowing Yvor Winters. He looked at my poems and said "There's a gift here, but you're so ignorant!" [Pinsky noted: "Nobody ever called me ignorant before."] Winters: "What have you read before 20th century?"I mentioned Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman. But he asked if I had read the Medieval poets. I told him on reading Andrew Marvell & John Donne. Winters said "Nobody could write great poetry who has not read the 16th century British poets." Winters offered "History of the Lyrics" class in the fall and it was too late to take the course. However, I impressed him with my ardor, and he gave me his syllabus. Winters was 63 years old at the time. He wanted me to read the 16th century British poets— Thomas Wyatt [1503-1542] and George Gascoigne [1535-1577]. What they do with their lines is purity of a foreign idiom, not found in the poems of Allen Ginsberg, Alan Dugan, Allen Tate, or Philip Levine. Here there was psychology and powerful ideas. The next year, I audited Winters' "History of Lyrics" class. John Williams wrote English Renaissance Poetry (1963). Winters denounced the book, saying Williams stoled his syllabus. In Poetry Magazine (February 1939 issue), there's an essay by Yvor Winters. . He gave us a sticker suing Doubleday for publishing Williams' book. I wrote the Preface to The New Anthology of John Williams, English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson (2016) published by New York Review Books Classics. I'm not sure whether John Williams has met Winters. His novel Stoner (book character's name) is like a battle in The Iliad— a story of a farm boy who goes to an Agriculture School, but got interested in English literature and embraces a scholarly life. His Augustus won the 1973 National Book Award. It contains letters from Horace and Seneca. His Butcher's Crossing (1960) is a novel about cowboys of the West, on buffalo hunt, and stranded up in the mountains. Anecdotal framing of Yvor Winters and John Williams. I gave my English 192 class Sir Walter Raleigh's poem "Nature, That Washed Her Hands in Milk"
How poets like Walter Raleigh reported on the quick flickers and sudden changes in emotional life. [also in Pinsky's Singing School (2013), pp. 100-101] This poem is written in a plain and ornate style (Petrarch), used trope (figure of speech), no odor penetrating into rock, "Nature washes her hands in milk and forgot to dry them" (fancy metaphor) Monosyllables slow poem down. Polysyllables speed poem up. "Turn silk and milk to dust. shuts up the story of our days." This poem is a lesson in style— he divides the line asymmetrically, Raleigh was the boyfriend of the Queen [Elizabeth I] and beheaded [by King James I for treason, 1618]. Fulke Greville [1554-1628] has a 6-line poem in his Caelica 83 You that seek what life is in death Now find it air that once was breath: New names unknown, old names gone, Till time end bodies, but souls none. Reader! then make time, while you be, But steps to your eternity. Pinsky's commentary [also in Pinsky's Singing School (2013), p. 132] I've distributed two handouts of Greville's poems— Caelica 56: Pinsky's Commentary (Slate, March 17, 2009)
Greville is going to a married woman's house, he sees a naked woman in the moonlight, and thinks he's in heaven— all his senses are set on fire. He uses "dainty throne" [line 22] instead of vagina or genitals "Conceit" [line 25] is like ship of love, temple of love. It's like a male peacock telling the female "I'm so elegant and you don't want to go to bed with me." "Fancy" [line 27] is inner sense (imagination). Reason is the outer sense "Teacheth time to run away" [line 47] refers to "Ars morales" In the crudest way, don't do your celebration, until you're on top of her. Greville has better source than Adrienne Rich or Allen Ginsberg. Picasso and Braque looking at Japanese papers and African masks inspired them to invent a new art [of cubism in early 1900s]. My first book was titled Sadness and Happiness (1975). George Gascoigne [1535-1578] wrote "Woodmanship" address to his patron [Lord Grey of Whilton] When I hit something, it was a pregnant doe. "There stood a doe, and I should strike her dead," Gascoigne: "The Lullaby of a Lover" [1572]
In "Lullaby and Laughter", Pinsky writes about the strange appeal of George Gascoigne's self-inspecting humor (Slate, May 3, 2011) [also in Pinsky's Singing School (2013), pp. 139-140] Dante: Evil is an absence; Darkness is absence of light energy. It's a self-inflicted wound; Greville's Caelica 100: "Down in the depth of mine iniquity, the faithless doom to desperations; Deprived of human graces not divine, Even there appears this saving God of mine." Even in the darkest soul, Grace is infinite. Gascoigne didn't know how to sulk up to people. He bought fancy clothes to impress others, instead of bribes that would have been better. Ending of Gascoigne's "Woodmanship": "Methinks it saith, old babe, now learn to suck, Who in thy youth coulst never learn the feat To hit the whites which live with all good luck. Thus have I told my Lord (God grant in season) A tedious tale in rhyme, but little reason." Pinsky's Colloquium ended promptly at Noon. |
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