This week’s poem appears to be from Cooper’s forthcoming book, Chaos is the New Calm. According to a blurb for the book, it consists of “sonnets and sonnet like poems.” This 14-line poem threads together a series of “details too fine to miss or mess with” by careful attention to the sounds of the words.

Some examples include –
--the K sounds (consonance?) of “Backstreet” and “arcane”
-- the assonance of “barricade” and “balustrade”
-- the assonance of “kingdom” and “wing”
-- the alliteration of “parapets” and “puddle”
-- the assonance of “soaked oats”
-- the internal rhyme of “palatial” and “glacial”
-- the internal rhyme of “Fear” and “ear”
-- the internal rhyme of “Tubes, lubes”
-- the end rhymes of “exclamation” and “declaration”
-- the assonance of “unrepentance, remnants”
-- the similar endings (partial rhyme?) of “untouched, rouged, hushed”
-- the assonance of “Scat tracks”
-- the K sounds (consonance?) of “tracks” and “crosswalks”
-- the alliteration of “pills” and “popped”
-- the near rhyme of “threats” and “threads”

Also, Cooper often uses the spondee, a foot of rhythm consisting of two consecutive stressed syllables. He begins with the spondee “Backstreet,” but is in full spondaic form in the first two lines of the third stanza –

Scat tracks, crosswalk, bebop
haircut; moonshine, daylight,

As for content, the poem appears to have woven together details from various parts of Cooper’s life. Perhaps the poem is a Poem About Poetry (PAP) and / or a recognition of the idea that each of our lives consists of several threads which we must weave together daily into a braid that does not let one thread stand out too strongly. This appears to be the theme of the last stanza.

I enjoyed the poem’s language experiment but would a preferred one with more emotional heft.

CHAOS IS THE NEW CALM by Wyn Cooper

Chaos is the new calm
violence the new balm
to be spread on lips
unused to a kiss.

Left is the new right
as I brace for a fight
with a man who stands
on his remaining hand.

Fetid harbor harbor me
until someone is free
to drive me away
from what happened today.

Don’t strand me standing here.
If you leave, leave beer.

WYN COOPER: A SERENDIPITOUS CAREER

<link>

FUN by Wyn Cooper

“All I want is to have a little fun
Before I die,” says the man next to me
Out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. He says
His name’s William but I’m sure he’s Bill
Or Billy, Mac or Buddy; he’s plain ugly to me,
And I wonder if he’s ever had fun in his life.

We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday,
In a bar that faces a giant car wash.
The good people of the world are washing their cars
On their lunch hours, hosing and scrubbing
As best they can in skirts and suits.
They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record store,
The genetic engineering lab, but not a single one
Appears to be having fun like Billy and me.

I like a good beer buzz early in the day,
And Billy likes to peel the labels
From his bottles of Bud and shred them on the bar.
Then he lights every match in an oversized pack,
Letting each one burn down to his thick fingers
Before blowing and cursing them out.

A happy couple enters the bar, dangerously close
To one another, like this is a motel,
But they clean up their act when we give them
A look. One quick beer and they’re out,
Down the road and in the next state
For all I care, smiling like idiots.
We cover sports and politics and once,
When Billy burns his thumb and lets out a yelp,
The bartender looks up from his want-ads.

Otherwise the bar is ours, and the day and the night
And the car wash too, the matches and Buds
And the clean and dirty cars, the sun and the moon
And every motel on this highway. It’s ours you hear?
And we’ve got plans, so relax and let us in —
All we want is to have a little fun.

I read this weeks offering and thought it sounded more like a song lyric than a poem (whatever do i mean by that you might ask) and then googled Mr Cooper and found what you had: Cheryl Crow (I think) used his Fun as the lyric to one of her hits.

As an idea, or concept Cooper's poem seems kind of half-baked. More like a sketch or some notes on the way to being something better. It's sonic qualities are noted, but I don't think they are enough to hold the piece together.

Don’t strand me standing here.
If you leave, leave beer.

Cf. Leadbelly's version of "Alabama Bound":

Please don't leave me here,

Please don't leave me here,

But if you do go anyhow

Leave me a dime for beer.

After reading Cooper's bio, and serendipitious it is!, I am disappointed he refused to songwrite for Michael Bolton. Would have enjoyed his rendition/interpretation (move over Sinatra!) of this ditty, "Daily Thread." (Because Bolton is nothing if not a roughhouse ruffian.)

Backstreet barricade, arcane
balustrade, hidden kingdom of wing and prayer,
details too fine to miss or mess with,
skinny escape from a netherhood
of parapets and puddle soaked oaks.

This poem began (for me) with much promise: seemingly a sonnet, charged with sonic energy - approaching Hopkins?: internal rhymes next to each other, assosance overload, even coining the clever neologism, "netherhood," from contracting netherworld and neighborhood - I was awaiting the coming descent (ala the "terrible sonnets") into the dark night of the soul:

Hospital palatial, shadows under foot and bed.
Time glacial. Fear the sound in both ears.
Tubes, lube, sudden exclamation,
declaration of unrepentance, remnants
of dinner untouched, rouged, hushed.

And was not disappointed. So far I could (kind of) envision the outlines of a storyline: a man is beat down in a shady "netherhood" (1st stanza), then hosptilized (2nd stanza) and describing the sounds (screams?) about him, "remnants of dinner untouched," "time glacial" because of how slow (and shiny, as a glacier) events in the hospital transpire. But then:

Scat tracks, crosswalk, bebop
haircut; moonshine, daylight,
pills not popped: no threats
to these daily threads I weave and weave.

The poem "weaves" out of its lane and leaves me, crashed into a tree, thinking "what the fuck just happened?" Possibly that was the intent; "scat tracks, crosswalk, bebop haircut" sort of makes sense if read as the speakers fragmented memories of the footsteps before, location of, and assailant of his beat-down; next he remembers "moonshine" (that it was night when he arrived at the hospital) then "daylight" (that it was, as if of a sudden, morning there at the hospital), sees "pills not popped" (as he was too out-of-it to remember to take them); but then the last "no threats / to these daily threads I weave and weave" makes little for drawing any conclusions. Suppose "no threats" means the convalescent speaker no longer feels afraid, "Fear the sound in both ears." And "daily threads I weave and weave" could mean he is busy putting his memories, his life, back together after a concussion, etc.

Like that "Daily Threads" reminds of the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread"...but no certain how that relates to any of the poem. Seems the poem is dark throughout and goes for a quick turn of sunshine after "daylight" in the last lines but the sudden optimism is not convincing in the least. As if Hopkins were suddenly to end "Carrion Comfort" or "No Worst" in good cheer - nobody would buy it.

Paul, neither of those tops the old (t-shirt) standard, "Wish you were beer."

Seeking the meaning of "balustrade," found this word: baluster. And the third definition:

"any of various symmetrical supports, as furniture legs or spindles, tending to swell toward the bottom or top." (dictionary.com)

Which derives from:

"Origin:
1595–1605; < F, MF balustre < It balaustro pillar shaped like the calyx of the pomegranate flower, ult. < L balaustium < Gk balaústion pomegranate flower"(dictionary.com) Ah the perversions in language are bottomless! As if it were written by a bunch of balusters. Not to be confused with those who enforce the rules of grammar, that pack of ballbusters.

I was a freshman at Marlboro College in Vermont when that song became suddenly ubiquitous. Cooper was teaching poetry there that year. I believe it was his first and his last year there. I imagine the royalties rather dwarfed his teaching salary.

Here is what I consider a better example of weaving, by Louis Zukofsky:

All of December toward New Year's:

Not the branches
half in shadow

But the length
of each branch

Half in shadow

As if it had snowed
on each upper half


Real weaving seems to me to require the repetition of words as well as similarity of sounds. Meanings play a large part here, but play little if any part in "Daily Threads".

I read this week's offering and thought it sounded more like a song lyric than a poem

1A, if you read Paul's post, you will note that you are, indeed, prescient, at least about another of his poems.

So far I could (kind of) envision the outlines of a storyline: a man is beat down in a shady "netherhood" (1st stanza), then hosptilized (2nd stanza) and describing the sounds (screams?) about him, "remnants of dinner untouched," "time glacial" because of how slow (and shiny, as a glacier) events in the hospital transpire

Cutter, I got an entirely different narrative arc -- that the narrator used to do drugs, ended up in detox, and is now doing OK. But as I said to bottomfish in his thread, I don't think the narrator's individual story is that important to the poem. (At least that's my story, since I really can't figure the poem out.)

zbigley:

I was a freshman at Marlboro College in Vermont when that song became suddenly ubiquitous. Cooper was teaching poetry there that year. I believe it was his first and his last year there. I imagine the royalties rather dwarfed his teaching salary.

Hi Michael!!

Still working on your Ph. D. in medieval literature, or has the Great Recession changed your plans?

Did you read the link I provided above? It says Cooper's royalties enabled him to stop working.

Speaking of connections, Cooper's good friend Madison Smartt Bell, with whom he made a CD, is a prof here in the Balto area. Bell is a novelist (did a trilogy on Hati), and his wife Elizabeth Spires is a poet.

Wyn, if you're reading this, why don't you try to get Beth to submit a poem to Slate?

Real weaving seems to me to require the repetition of words as well as similarity of sounds.

I dunno, Bottomfish. I think there are lots of different kinds of weaving.

Here's a fine poem about invisible weaving of threads. (Do you remember services like this? I do.)

INVISIBLE MENDING by C. K. Williams

Three women old as angels,

bent as ancient apple trees,

who, in a storefront window,

with magnifying glasses,

needles fine as hair, and shining

scissors, parted woof from warp

and pruned what would in

human tissue have been sick.

Abrasions, rents and frays,

slits and chars and acid

splashes, filaments that gave

way of their own accord

from the stress of spanning

tiny, trifling gaps, but which

in a wounded psyche

make a murderous maze.

Their hands as hard as horn,

their eyes as keen as steel,

the threads they worded with

must have seemed as thick

as ropes on ships, as cables

on a crane, but still their heads

would lower, their teeth bare

to nip away the raveled ends.

Only sometimes would they

lift their eyes to yours to show

how much lovelier than these twists

of silk and serge the garments

of the mind are, yet how much

more benign their implements

than mind’s procedures

of forgiveness and repair.

And in your loneliness you’d notice

how really very gently they’d take

the fabric to its last, with what

solicitude gather up worn edges

to be bound, with what sever

but kind detachment wield

their amputating shears:

forgiveness, and repair.

Hi, Mary Ann, Isn't Cooper's rags-to-riches story every American's dream? I love it! And I always love a sentence in which the word "serendipitous" can be used.

You know, I really like "Fun" as a poem, even though I am more familiar with it as a song. I notice there is more character development and plot to it than in "Daily Threads," but I suspect part of the difference is the limitation a 14-line poem puts on things like that. There are echoes of "playing solitaire and watching Captain Kangaroo, now don't you tell me, I ain't got nuthin' to do" (I may have a word or two wrong there, too lazy to Google) in this piece -- unrecognized boredom combined with an imagined superiority.

The recession is a reason to stay in grad school, not to leave it! I'm in year three, done with courses, reading for exams. We're hoping to move somewhere a bit more rural next year while I work on the dissertation. I'm at least a year and a half away from beginning the job search (to start a position in the Fall of 2012!), so I'm hoping that's just enough time for the capital to start flowing a bit and colleges to feel like they might want to hire, say, an Assistant Professor of medieval literature. It could happen! I didn't study with Wyn back then. Ironically, it was because he was teaching a "formal" poetry workshop, and I had no interest in such things at the time. Last week I taught Donne's "Batter my Heart" sonnet and wrote the whole thing out on the board, line by line, so we could worry over the scansion.