An explanation, in case it’s ever needed.
My name is Jared Sinclair, I am an undergraduate student of poetry. This is my process blog. That means I will be posting poems I am working on, poems I am done with, my opinions about stuff, nifty things, and any number of other oddities. Mostly it’s a place to put things that I’d like to get at in the future. This blog is not meant to be, you know, read by people, but knock yourself out. I’m not even sure how you got here.
Keeping Up With The Seasons
Keeping Up With The Seasons
Two in the morning
A new Thursday
No sleeves even to keep out
The coming fall
Stood as always underneath
Some statue or memorial
I invite the leaves to gather
Dark around my feet
To stay for a moment
This city does sleep
A long summer
Ravished the pavements
The tin rooves
All sweat-slick and breathless
Sometimes a car
An airplane passes
Like a child’s dream
A drunk man delivers
His dinner to the city sewer
Everything shudders
A restless anticipation
The coming birds of winter
In time my mother
Will send an envelope
Filled with money
She will write my name
Barely legible on the outside
The card will read “I hope
You’re sleeping well.”
The formatting isn’t quite right, but this edit box is frustrating.
Fubswdqdibvkv
“The enemy knows the system.”
—Claude Shannon
I wrote you this letter, left it just inside your
bedroom drawer hopefully where you will see it
and no one else; think of Herodotus
of Histiaeus’s slave, his head shaved
for a tattoo message, Milesian revolt as soon
as a full head of hair—but steganography
is something else—yes I wrote it but
this is how it came out, some strange cipher
unintendedly impenetrable, Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable
but that’s Vigenère, a kind of Titanic
of cryptology: decidedly sinkable
and this anodyne text, covering something
surely there’s something; think of a Grille cipher
rowboats of meaning on an ocean of all this
that doesn’t, but what’s to be found
in decryption? Ask Mata Hari, married
at eighteen to an advertisement in some Dutch
newspaper, never to teach kindergarten again
who as a spy caused fifty-thousand soldiers’ deaths
she knew the danger, was cuffed and dragged
from her room at The Plaza Athénée, decoded
radio messages the trial evidence—stood guilty
in front of the firing squad, perhaps she saw herself
in the late evening sun finally unencrypted
perhaps she even found herself good news
but satisfaction comes no matter the message
no matter how mundane its contents
how horrible it is: anything elucidated
is something gained—at least I hope the work
is enough for you, enough for this letter
I can promise nothing inside it worth the effort
of cryptanalysis; I don’t even know
myself what’s there to be found or even
what enemies there are to intercept it
perhaps I’m the one forbidden to know
the blind author writing despite his
inevitable ignorance; anyway if I knew
I’d have written it that way instead
I didn’t have internet for a while.
First Time Every Time, new poem
I hate the title. Not sure about the poem.
First Time Every Time
Straining, I have strained
all but my hands. Birds
in harmony, try your mouth
at their tune. Street-side
window filled with faces,
gutter-drain street fumes,
brake squeal under the
corner light, turn your
attention to the west,
do not bother getting up.
Sacrifice a cigarette to
the creation of one thing
or another, you invent
untrue things: aphorisms.
Self-aggrandizement is
my greatest virtue, self-
amusement my greatest
vice. My hands take care
of themselves. Sometimes
I feel. Sometimes I, insane
with bass drums and
the threat of death, hold
quiet communion alone.
Is there another option?
The world outside, filled
of course with pigeons,
has little to offer tonight.
Introductions to be made,
I greet myself amicably,
I offer a shaking hand.
Never As Perfect As You Think I Am, New Poem
Never As Perfect As You Think I Am
Sometimes I miss you
even when you’re right here
in the other room or in
another chair and I wish
you would let me touch
your hand or press my
shoulder into yours.
Proximity is a weakness
of mine I know, and one
you gently resist most of the
time. There are exceptions.
Sometimes I just wish you
would sleep, staying up all
night with your cigarettes
and increasingly empty
glasses of wine, work
in the morning. You feel
the souls of flowers
scrape at your window
and want nothing more
than to let them in.
Turn on the light, you
can hear the crosstown
cars carry their burdens
to somewhere or other,
you can imagine what
it’s like to be mirthful
but honestly. And all the
windows are painted shut.
You want everything I
have never wanted. In
that way we are the same
I suppose. I took care of you
when you got drunker
than anticipated and vomited
in your bed, you took care
of me when I was fevered
and breathless two days later.
I would like to tell you
they are equal errands,
I would like to thank you
for staying with me as long
as you did. Both nights
we shared your bed for
the first time, both nights
we said incomprehensible
things and understood.
Tonight I came home after
waiting too long after work
to meet you for dinner,
and you were accidentally
asleep, your bedroom door
open, every light on.
Tomorrow I will dress
myself in dirty clothes
and give your apology back.
NEW POEM: Lip Service
Lip Service
I could knock, I suppose,
but what good is it, really?
I’ve seen you often enough
on his shoulder, more often
now than on mine, even,
and never it’s pleasantly
candid: I’ve sat watching
a powerline as it holds up
jays in summer. I have
gone alone to a small
downtown shore at dusk
and seen the sun give
itself to the Atlantic.
I would much rather
find myself closed tidy
in my room, solitary
and Elvis Costello vinyl.
I would rather I were
tired of myself and full
to sick with books and
twenty-or-so cigarettes,
a preponderance of
black bile, a constant
state of pitiless sincerity.
Going through the motions
is motion after all, which
is more than some people
can say. I’ve remembered
an apple if I get hungry,
a glass of water if I’m
thirsty. Everything is fine
and in place. The night
couldn’t last long enough.
NEW POEM: Catherine
This is not an entirely fair poem.
Catherine
Sitting next to you,
you next to a friend
or some such person,
watching a copy of
Jim et Jules you got
from the library,
make sure to mirror
your actions: each hand
touches the same part
on each, either side,
each gesture double.
Endless diplomat,
not playing both fields
so much as trying
to keep afloat, for now
at least. You’ll go on
this way for as long
as we all can stand.
Forgive me, dearest
mimic, middle-torn
lover, if I leave
you here, to your own
devices and such.
Of course it will end
as Truffaut wanted,
Jules left carrying
Jim’s ashes, then the
end titles, black screen.
I have never been one to travel, but: SMALL REVISION
It’s longer, at least.
I have never been one to travel, but
I’m thinking of going to Norway
once I finish school. Ask me why
if you want and I’ll make up some silly
excuse about cute boys or how
cold weather is good for my
disposition. Half-lies are finicky things,
sure, but it’s hard to deny their effect.
Much kinder, less complicated
than saying that I have grown
in small ways to hate this place
and everything everyone in it
and around it, which probably
isn’t entirely true anyway. There’s
the Square fountain, the Unitarian
cemetery, the waterfront. Places
I sit sometimes and read, or not.
There’s just so much a person
can take of cruise ships and carriages
and clothing store windows full up
with ghosts. I find myself equally full,
ghosts like weather or high tide
or gravity. It’s not that no one
would miss me, or that I would
miss nothing, no one, myself.
It’s just that I don’t even have
a passport, you know, a suitcase,
and it seems like something a body
should want to have and do
and have done. The kind of thing
you tell your grandchildren about,
if you’re into that. I am not convinced
it’s a good idea, or that it has to be.
My mother pointed out that things
won’t fall apart while I’m gone.
I imagine I will stay as long as I can—
odd jobs until they kick me out—
and return, as penniless as before
I left, needing nothing but a shave.
I imagine, coming back on the plane,
I will look over the ocean and sleep.
On “small” and “big” poems.
A friend recently pointed out that I have started writing what he calls “small poems.” This is not something I have ever been accused of, that I can recall. I have tended toward long, sprawling poems that leave few metaphysical rocks unturned (or as few as I can manage), and take in as much of the universe as possible. I can see his point, I suppose. Recently my poems have been what I would describe as more focused, narrower, tighter. This was not and is not a conscious effort (few things I do are), and I’m not certain how I feel about it. So let’s hash this out a little, if we can.
I assume that part of it is the influence of a certain professor (Paul), whose taste can tend toward “smallness.” I took his class this past semester, my first workshop not led by my other poetry professor and advisor (Carol Ann). It is tempting to say that their poetics could not be more disparate, but that’s unfair and probably a subject best left to another post. Suffice it to say that Carol Ann seems to treasure the lyric, the metaphisical, the “big” poem, while Paul is perfectly fine with a “small,” cute, narrative poem.
Now I have had an on-again-off-again relationship with narrative in poetry, and not to say that narrative poems are universally “small,” but I think there’s a fairly significant connection between the two. A (good) lyric poem can’t help but be huge and universal, insofar as it brings in the whole of the universe as its framework. A narrative poem, on the other hand, can tend to remain dogmatically in the smallness of the narrative, and neglect universality in favor of something else. It’s fruitful, here, to point to Bishop, who has a habit of using narrative (or plain description) as a path to see the universe in the lyric. And Bishop has had a large hand in my own understanding of and attitude toward narrative in poetry; the result is that I have been a cautious advocate for it, historically.
So when Paul gives me books to read (among them After the Fall, Edward Field’s new and selected) that contain unabashedly narrative poems, ones that don’t break out of the narrative and into some kind of twisted and itching lyric, I find myself put off and intrigued at the same time. Many (not all) of these “small” poems work, and many of them are very good poems. So there is merit, I think.
Part of this shift in my writing is due, I think, to the struggles I’ve had with For Adam or Gus. The draft linked there is fine in some ways, but I found myself fearing that I was simplifying things, forcing the entire poem to live within the confines of homosexuality and not venturing out into the full complexity of the thing. And, in trying to work it out of itself, I’ve produced some really shit poetry (too shit even to post here) and made myself rather frustrated. And suddenly, while in the midst of this existential crisis, as it were, I’ve found myself playing with poems that stay purposefully small. I remain unsure how I feel about the whole thing.
So there we are. Hm.
BONUS BECAUSE IT’S BEEN SOME TIME: I have never been one to travel, but, new poem.
I have never been one to travel, but
I’m thinking of going to Norway
once I finish school. Ask me why
if you want and I’ll make up some silly
excuse about cute boys or how
cold weather is good for my
disposition. ————-Half-lies:
finicky things, sure, but it’s hard
to deny their effect. Much kinder
than saying that I have grown
in small ways to hate this place
and everything everyone in it
and around it, which probably
isn’t entirely true anyway. It’s just that
I don’t even have a passport, you know
and it seems like something a body
should want to have and do
and have done. The kind of thing
you tell your grandchildren about
if you’re into that. I am not convinced
it’s a good idea, or that it has to be.
My mother pointed out that things
won’t fall apart while I’m gone.
I imagine I will stay as long as I can—
odd jobs until they kick me out—
and return, as penniless as before
I left, needing nothing but a shave.
I imagine, coming back on the plane,
I will look over the ocean and sleep.
IT’S BEEN A WHILE: The Forgetting of Crosswords, new poem
The Forgetting of Crosswords
A four-letter “Southwestern sight”
turns out to be mesa, not sand.
It’s a reasonable mistake. I mean,
I’ve never been farther west than Atlanta.
You still laugh at me, call me provincial
(which is a ten-letter word for
“Canadian airline”).
—————————–And of course
you tell that story about standing at the foot
of some rock thirty miles outside of Phoenix
at dusk, how it probably changed your life
forever. I’ve had my share of life-changing
experiences, I’m sure, but none spring
to mind.
——————The closest thing I can recall
is that time a three-letter “Quilting party”
stung me just above the left eye
my junior year and I spent two days
with no depth perception, my eye
swollen shut. I remember realizing
for the first time how fragile we are,
how close always to semi-blindness
or paralysis or death or whatever,
but I don’t tell you that.
———————————I say that
my mother had to drive me to school,
how embarrassing that was. You laugh
with me, write unseen for “Hidden,”
rub your nose. The truth is, still
sometimes I close that eye, feel
a pale ghost of pain there, remember
how to be half-blind, if only for
a few minutes at a time.
———————————-It takes a while,
but I remember ada, a three-letter
“Nabokov novel.” I think you’re impressed.
