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Dobby Gibson Reads Diane Seuss
2024/12/25
The New Yorker: Poetry
D
Dobby Gibson
K
Kevin Young
Dobby Gibson: 我非常喜欢黛安·休斯的作品，她的诗歌《我在许多地方睡过多年，睡在那些进入我生活的床垫上》让我印象深刻，因为它很好地概括了休斯诗歌的风格和主题。这首十四行诗通过内部韵律、反复和列举等手法，讲述了她人生中睡过的各种各样的地方，以此来展现她丰富的人生经历和情感。这首诗并非单纯的历史记录，而是对一种情感的历史的展现。它具有童话般的品质，但更接近于《爱丽丝梦游仙境》中那种恐怖和奇异的风格。这首诗通过唤起而非描述的方式，创造了一种身临其境的体验，如同罗伯特·洛厄尔所说的，它不仅仅是事件的记录。这首诗的魅力很大程度上源于诗人坦率而亲密的语气，这使得读者能够被诗歌吸引并沉浸其中。它体现了一种典型的美国式诗歌风格：直接、坦率，不加修饰。这首诗的结构和叙事方式与《坎特伯雷故事集》类似，诗人像一个旅行者一样，通过讲述自己睡过的地方来展现自己的人生经历。这首诗是一首爱情诗，其中包含了对Mikkel、Frank O'Hara和诗人父亲的爱。黛安·休斯的作品受到了Wanda Coleman和Gerald Stern等诗人的影响，他们对美国十四行诗的贡献为休斯提供了创作的可能性。这首诗中“父亲”意象的运用，以及诗歌结尾的意象，都体现了一种悲悯的母性情怀。这首诗的结尾意象“抱着我的羔羊，像一支紫丁香军队”，既展现了诗人对失去的怀念，也象征着一种对抗和希望。
关于我自己的诗歌创作，这首诗的创作灵感来源于一次联邦紧急事务管理局（FEMA）的无线预警系统测试，诗人试图将这种刺耳的声音转化为诗歌。这首诗的核心在于对“创造令人难忘的声音”这一目标的探讨，诗歌前后部分围绕着这一主题展开。这首诗试图将一件令人不快的事情转化为有趣或美丽的事物，这与奥菲斯用歌声战胜塞壬的传说异曲同工。我认为诗歌不应拘泥于庄重或循规蹈矩，幽默是吸引读者注意力的有效工具。我会在写作过程中反复朗读诗歌，以检验诗歌的音韵效果和节奏感。这首诗中“微型马”的意象，象征着在当今时代，即使是最普通的事物也可能令人感到恐惧。诗集《Hold Everything》的标题“Hold Everything”既指诗歌中传达的紧急信息，也指诗歌对现代社会现状的盘点和反思。我在创作十四行诗的过程中，有时是刻意为之，有时则是无意中写出符合十四行诗形式的诗歌，然后再去调整和完善。我尝试用十四行诗的形式来表达对时间的细致感受和体验。我认为诗歌为人们提供了一个表达困惑和质疑的空间，这在当今社会显得尤为重要。
Kevin Young: 黛安·休斯的这本十四行诗集，像是一部由碎片组成的长篇叙事作品。
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Dobby Gibson: 'Well, there is that internal rhyme that Diane uses so effectively. So this doesn't have the chiming rhyme of a Shakespearean sonnet, but it's all held together by her sonnets. And then also, of course, the anaphora and the listing of all these different places that she slept. And I think in that way, this poem is such a great encapsulation of Frank Sonnet's The Book. I mean, here she's telling us her life story, right?'
Dobby Gibson: 'It's kind of perfect for history, but also not interested in history qua history. You know, it's not a history that you find in a book. Instead, it's the history of a feeling.'
Dobby Gibson: 'the real fairy tales, the original fairy tales, which are terrifying and strange. And I'm seeing that here too.'
Dobby Gibson: 'you know, I'll say it again, for me, a good poem, you know, evokes rather than describes. You know, it is an event. As Robert Lowell says, it's not just the record of an event.'
Dobby Gibson: 'I mean, in the case of this poem, I think so much of the world is the voice. It's so compelling and you trust it. This book is called Frank Sonnets, partly as an homage to Frank O'Hara, who appears in other poems within this collection, but also quite literally Diane Seuss's being Frank here. And so there is just that really direct, very intimate voice that pulls us into this poem and just holds it together throughout.'
Dobby Gibson: 'But she is also renowned as a poet for just being very blunt and being a poet of the body. And so there isn't a politeness to the poem. It's direct.'
Dobby Gibson: 'So that also, I think, makes it feel kind of ancient or connected to poetry in a broader tradition.'
Dobby Gibson: 'I think so. And I think throughout the book, there's love for Mikkel, who's a character, a friend of hers who's important to the book, and even Frank O'Hara to a degree. And of course, her father, the death of her father when she was seven is one of the great subjects of her poetry in this book and other books. So I think there is a love song component to it.'
Dobby Gibson: 'Just being a fan of hers, I know she's talked of the importance of Wanda Coleman and Gerald Stern and other practitioners of the so-called American sonnet that helped to give her permission to do what she does in this poem and the larger book, Frank's Sonnets.'
Kevin Young: 'And, you know, this is one of the great ones and one of the great series. You know, I love a good series. And as you suggest, you tell these stories over time. You know, the sonnets, in a way, is the first novel. It's the first big, long narrative beyond the epic that's sort of broken up in these little bits that you assemble something out of, right?'
Dobby Gibson: 'So I'm feeling that quite viscerally in this poem and thinking about it throughout the broader book, for sure, of course.'
Dobby Gibson: 'It's like a strange thing, like another strange thing. And I love that. It feels like exactly right. It couldn't have been said a different way. But at least I couldn't have gotten there, you know. And I think the poem has all the visceral things and then it has this moment which both is visceral and I think blooming constantly. And there's something about it that every time I look at it, it shifts. Holding my lamb, it's like holding it tight, you know, wanting it to survive. But then it's also this army of lilacs, which is a kind of contradiction, but also a kind of marshalling of forces.'
Dobby Gibson: 'And so because I was in this open workspace with a bunch of knowledge workers who all had two or three devices per person, it was just a cacophony of this horrible sound. And I couldn't stop thinking about it the rest of the day. And I just wondered, You know, basically, if I wrote a libretto for that horrible sound, what might that sound like? And that was the genesis of the poem, and then I was off and running.'
Dobby Gibson: 'I think that's really perceptive. I mean, that's a statement of poetics in and of itself. And that's really the transformation I was trying.'
Dobby Gibson: 'Can I make something that's just the most horrible thing in the world into something that's interesting or beautiful and kind of like Orpheus singing so beautifully, he drowns out the sirens.'
Dobby Gibson: 'I mean, I don't like the idea that poems should be solemn or be well-behaved. And I think humor is such an effective tool to get people to pay attention and to get myself to pay attention and even be interested.'
Dobby Gibson: 'So amazing to me how we all approach it differently and how after a while you hear it without hearing it, you know?'
Dobby Gibson: 'I didn't want this poem to just be a litany. I wanted it to be strange and I wanted it to get at the really peculiar texture of our current moment where it's not just the big things that are scary although they are awfully scary right now but that makes just like you're saying the most banal thing also seem terrifying and so it just takes on new levels and new resonances'
Dobby Gibson: 'Yeah, so the title Hold Everything refers to both this idea of there's urgent news that I'm bringing or the poems are bringing, and certainly this poem is a demonstration of that. There are also poems in the book that Allude to that other reading of hold everything where they're doing kind of a more tender accounting for lack of a better phrase, just asking you to to pay attention.'
Dobby Gibson: 'That is exactly what happened to me. I came into the forum quite accidentally, but at the same time, I was really inspired by Diane Seuss using the sonnet as a means of writing a memoir, Terrence Hayes using the sonnet as a site of protest.'
Dobby Gibson: 'But for me, I was interested in using the sonnet as a meditative engine and could I track the texture of time on a moment by moment basis Whether I pulled it off or not, readers will have to decide. But that was what was really driving me.'
Dobby Gibson: 'And I just come to poetry so grateful to have a space for negative capability, for confusion, testing out ideas. It just feels more vital to me now than it ever has.'
Deep Dive
Dobby Gibson and Kevin Young discuss Diane Seuss's poem, "I Have Slept in Many Places," focusing on its structure, themes of life experience, loss, and the unique way Seuss uses the sonnet form to create a powerful narrative. They explore the poem's fairytale elements, its evocative language, and its blend of humor and profundity.
- Analysis of "I Have Slept in Many Places" by Diane Seuss
- Discussion of the poem's sonnet structure and its unconventional use of the form
- Exploration of themes of experience, loss, and the passage of time
- Comparison to other poets and literary works
Shownotes Transcript