From: sheila@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (sheila)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Robert Hass, interesting
Date: 23 Jul 92 18:02:58 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

Do excuse anything overly ridiculous I have written in the last
few days. What a last few days! Anyway, This week I seem to be
in a mood of sharing poems I remember reading.
About two semesters ago I took a poetry writing class. The teacher
brought some poems to class and Robert Hass "Spring Drawing 2"
was one of them. The last image is particulary _there_ to me.
In rec.arts.books which I just started reading again the books
folks have a discussion going on startling last lines of books.
and first and so on and any variation one could care to throw in.
(let me say, for no particular reason, that I Hate, "IT was the
best of times it was the blahblabhalbhalbhalbhalbhla.,bhlahblbhalbhalbh
and also "IT is a far far sappysappysappy" but that is just my 
opinion. Those sequences just drove me crazy.) Anyway, another
variation for last sentences in books, is last images/lines/thoughts
in poems. anyway, this one is interesting to me:

Spring Drawing 2

A man says "lilacs against white houses, two sparrows, one streaked,
in a thinning birch," and can't find his way to a sentence.*

In order to be respectable, Thorstein Veblen said, desperate in
Palo Alto, a think must be wasteful, i.e., "a selective adaption
of forms to the end of conspicuous waste."**

So we try to throw nothing away, as Keith, making dinner for us as
his grandmother had done in Jamaica, left nothing; the kitchen was as
clean at the end as when he started; even the shrimp shells and
carrot fronds *** were part of the process,

and he said, when we tried to admire him, "Listen, I should send you
into the chickenyard to look for a rusty nail to add to the soup for
iron."

The first temptation of Sakyamuni was desire, but he saw that
it led to fulfillment and then to desire, so that one was easy.

Because I have pruned it badly in succesive years, the climbing rose
has sent out, amoung the pale pink floribunda, a few wild white roses
from the rootstalk.

Suppose, before they said "silver" or "moonlight" or "wet grass," each
poet had to agree to be responsible for the innocence of all the suffer-
ing on earth,

because they learned in arithmetic, during the long school days, that
if there was anything left over,

you had to carry it. The wild rose looks weightless, the floribunda are
heavy with the richness and sadness of Europe

as they imitate the dying, petal by petal, of the people who bred them.*

You hear pain singing in the nerves of things; it is not a song.

The gazelle's head turned; three jackals are eating his entrails and
he is watching.
			-
* I identify with that.
** Can't remember a lot of biographical info for Thorsten Vieblen.
*** This reminds me of leaving some garlic in the refridgerator hidden
behind some pot or something that remained hidden so long it sprouted.
Now it's on my kitchen windowsill and We are trying to get it to grow.
Just what do these things need to grow anyway? Hope I'm not drowning
it. We had it upsidedown for a while.
* Wonder why he didn't just leave it at "as they imitate the dying,
petal by petal."? Would a connection still be made between the
roses and the people? Maybe leaving out "of the people who bred 
them" makes the sentence too meladramatic. Makes it sound like it
is trying to be big. I wouldn't want that. Wonder if he even
wants a connection between the people who bred the roses and the
roses. Notice that the person who bred the rose is Robert Hass,
an American, not a European. Is he a wild rose? Is that just too
silly and too allegorical? Am I really asking these questions to
ask myself or to ask other people for the hell of it? (What I mean,
I have answers to these questions, do not necissarily think they are
constant, and like to ask other people the questions so that I can
see what their versions of the answers are, and what their assumptions
are in answering them. Is this what people do a lot when they ask 
questions? I don't all the time, Sometimes I ask questions because I
want to hear the answer that the person will give. This reminds me of
trying to learn how people learn....that is another subject. maybe
I will get back to it. 

	There is another peom by Robert Hass that I would type for you
guys, but this article is too long. anyway, the book I looked up
these poems in is called  >>Human Wishes<< Robert Hass.
Copyright 1989 by Robert Hass
Ecco Press New York, NY.
This book lists other books by RH:
	Poems:
Praise
Field Guide
	Prose:
Twentieth Century Pleasures.

I havn't read any of these others. I havn't finished all of
Human Wishes. 
I don't think that his poems are unclassifiable as prose.
-- 
stark raving sane!   sheila@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu