On Tension

I use the word 'tension' a great deal when discussing poems. When I use the word in the context of poetry criticism, I mean it in a very specific technical way that is different than some of its other common connotations. Although I have been using this term in this way for about 10 years now, I had never really set forth a concrete denotation. I chose the word 'Tension' to replace the more commonly used 'conflict', not so much because I didn't think it was apt (although I didn't), but because to me the use of the word 'conflict' betrays the antagonistic imperialistic conquering impulses of Western culture. The word 'conflict is of course generally used when analyzing fiction or drama, poetry critics rarely use it, feeling that poetry works in different ways than those other genres. I felt that that analysis was in error and that the concept, no matter which word was used to describe it, was extremely useful in understanding how poems work. One of the things that I noticed was that all popular and great (two different things) fiction, drama and poems works by establishing and resolving 'tension' or 'conflict' if you will. This has NOTHING to do with the quality of the writing, a work can be poorly, mediocrely, or greatly written and have excellent tension/resolution, this is because T/R is structural and independent of the quality of the language and descriptions. In fact ALL bestsellers have excellent T/R, while only some are well written, the same is true of films/plays/popular poems. i also noticed that all of the great poems which have passed the test of time and are passed down through generations have excellent T/R, even though poetry critics almost never talk about or analyze this (and any meta-analysis is out of the question). Great works often fool us by appearing to ask one question and then at the end revealing that it was some other question all along that was central, this is often the case in poetry. So what do I mean when I say 'tension'? The easiest way of answering this is to note that a poem's central tension can be thought of as the central question that the poem asks and then addresses, notice I didn't say answers, because although all works attempt to answer the question (addressing it) they are not all successful and said success is NOT relevant to the resolution of the tension, a point which is all too often lost on even savvy readers and critics. Sometimes the questions are simply unanswerable, sometimes easily so. Much 'popular' writing poses such obvious questions that any good reader can see the answer coming as soon as the tension is established. The works with the best T/R usually surprise us in some way or offer an unexpected twist. Many great poems actually use a question as the rhetorical device that establishes the tension (I call these Interrogative poems), for example E.B. Browning's famous sonnet How Do I Love Thee? The poem then uses a list structure to provide answers to the question, e.g. "I love thee to the level of everday's most quiet need" the twist comes when at the end the speaker claims that no matter how much she loves him now, she will "love thee better after death". This provides and unusual and unexpected resolution to the initial question. Looking at a more contemporary poem Komunyakaa's My Father's Love Letters appears to have as its central tension the idea that the father beat his wife and now is sorry and wants her to return. So the central question appears to be "Will the father be redeemed by the letters in her eyes?" But of course the final lines ;

This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

reveal that it is redemption in the speaker's eyes that drives the poem. One of the reasons the poem is so great is that it doesn't take the easy way out, the happy ending. Instead he is "almost redeemed" a much more honest and more likely result in the real world.

Gathering Ground

The summer poetry retreat/workshop for African-Americans known as Cave Canem (beware of the dog) has just released its 10th year anniversary anthology entitled 'Gathering Ground'. I got my contributor's copy a week ago and eagerly opened it. I was expecting it to be pretty good given the pool of poets from whom the work was drawn, but it turned out to be even better than I expected. Among the poems that I thought were real gems were 'Stewards' by Nikki Finney, 'Haint' by Teri Cross, 'Carapace' by her husband Hayes Davis, 'The Street of Look Behind' by Erica Doyle, 'Dreadlocks' by Toni Brown, 'Kind of Blue' by A Van Jordan, Christ and Magdalene' by Raina Leon, 'One More Silver Dollar' by Ernesto Mercer, and 'A Quiet Rhythm of Sleep' by Lenard Moore. But the most surprising thing to me was how little distance there was between the best poems and the weakest. The overall level of skill on display is incredible. Part of this is due to the fact that each poet has only one poem and part of it is due to the sharpness of the editor's eyes. Even if you don't read or like much poetry i would recommend this book. One of my biggest gripes about 'Academic Poetry' is that the overwhelming majority of it is boring as hell to the average intelligent reader (read-finely wrought, expertly described moments of no interest whatsoever). this anthology does not however suffer from that particular malady, most of the poems here will reward a reader richly, and a re-reader even more abundantly. Stylistically, the pallette is broad, incorporating Free Verse, Forms and self-styled Experimental Poetries. Aquire and Feast.

Return of the Prodigal

Guess whose back? Yours truly, after a half year of being away. I actually wrote a few poems and thought I would post one here and see if anyone is still reading. Lot's of stuff happened, but i still didn't post the Audre Lorde piece, Bad Poet! The Steelers did win the Super Bowl tho, HOOOOO and i got to watch it with my son, tre cool or something like that. Anyway here's the piece

Why I’m Alone this Valentine’s Day

Last week, you pulled back your freshly twisted locks
and asked me why I love Earl Grey so much,
and what it would take for me to love you like that,
as I sipped a mug of loose leaf tea
steeped for exactly 3 minutes,
then blessed with three teaspoons of sugar
and two of Half and Half
in your tiny sparse kitchen.
I thought of standing downwind from
Latricia Johnson’s house
when her mother used to sit her on their front porch
and comb ruler straight parts into her caramel scalp
then dip two French manicured fingers
into that aquamarine, bubble-filled jar
with the distinctive smell.
How one Friday night at a quarter party at the rec
Behind the basketball court with the broken rims
I summoned up enough courage to ask the prettiest girl
In our projects for a dance.
For the life of me after all these years
I still can’t figure out why she said yes
Knowing full well that I had less rhythm
than a grandfather clock with a broken pendulum.
Bobby DeBarge’s Everest high first tenor
Spiraled out of the component set in the corner
And even if the stern hand of Alzheimer’s
One day washes the chalkboard of my memory
Clean as the first day of school,
I’ll never forget the bow in the strings
Of her yellow halter top or
the back pocket of her Chic jeans
Sliding across my shocked palms
As we shuffled awkwardly to the first verse of
‘I Call Your Name.’
How I asked her if she wanted to "switch"
dance partners and she didn’t get the joke
but my nose was too deep in her
bergamot scented tresses to even notice.

After savoring the last drop
I turned to you, and said
“It would take the right hair grease.”


Not sure about the tense of the last three lines, but we'll see.