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And the Word
Winner of the Lannon Award for poetry.
- GenresPoetry
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 2, 2014
As with Basho, the poet's images (and even grammar) are, almost invariably, not what they seem on a first read-through.
A good (and funny) example to illustrate this would be Basho's "Don't Imitate Me."
Don't imitate me;
it's as boring
as the two halves of a melon.
Yes, there is the obvious trope that a poet copying another can seem like a duplicate, the other half of the "melon."
But it also seems to suggest that the poet wants an imbalance in the poem, a polarity, something in keeping with the wabi-sabi ideas in art. The idea that imbalance (along with other forms of "wrongness") can be productive of a more satisfying (because truer?) sense of reality (or better yet, illumination?) in art suggests itself.
But is Basho even talking to another poet? Maybe the speaker of the poem is actually nature, "who" is imparting these same wabi-sabi principles, by letting Basho know that a simple naturalistic style, being a mirror, won't suffice. So maybe the poem is more about capturing the necessary details of the mind in the act of perception, the way a figurative painter might reduce a body to a few strokes, which might be gestural. This too is very wabi-sabi.
Corman doesn't write only haiku or very short poems that read almost like haiku. He does write longer poems that occupy several pages sometimes, even in this collection. But even then, he prefers to parse very closely, pivot quickly. En bref, he does love the skinny poem, probably because of the way it can condense attention. The careful lineation, these groupings of a few words at a time, makes the mind sharpen its scrutiny of those words. Normally we want to process sentences in bulk, and we miss the subtle differences in the way a poet is using a particular word. Corman's poetry is often associated with that of poets like Creeley, Eigner, and Niedecker, other poets whose most memorable poems were often very short and very condensed.
This particular collection has Corman exploring some new avenues. He becomes interested in re-presenting correspondence between dead writers as poems, carefully culling the words which mean the most to him, and which he hopes will mean something to us. This is a strange effect, because he doesn't always tell the reader up front when he's doing this. You sometimes find out only at the very end of the poem that the words are not Corman's. And yet, somehow, merely by the act of separating out the words and breath, Corman manages to make that other writer's words sound as though they really were written by Corman himself. It's a rather strange effect, moving and funny at once. Maybe we really are all one.
Here's one small poem from the collection, this one much more quintessentially Corman, what most people think of (I'm guessing) as "the Corman poem."
POIGNANCE
Over the gas jet
my wife cremating
a pregnant cockroach.
All at once it glows
and glows again - the
point of any point.
The poem is rooted in a disturbing act. The mind is set up to lose: feel disgust and lose pathos; feel pathos and disgust creeps up on it. Here is the awkward titular poignance.
I think the glowing here, the little flare-ups, are as much about consciousness as they are about a burning cockroach. Corman's poems are almost always about consciousness, and usually much more about apperception than perception.
The poet's play on the idea of the singular point (a sort of punnning with the title) which cannot remain singular (in that it iterates, repeats with time) is surely all about consciousness and its weird payload of memory. What's most disturbing here in the "glows again" is that the payload in this poem is not just any form of memory but living, unborn memory ("pregnant cockroach").
So the poem seems to be about regrets consumed before they are born. The violence of the act (taking the insect to the fire) would seem to bury this possibility, but the quick eye notices and pathos flames in the observer. Is "the point of any point" to be seen, to register, to exist? How strange that we use the same word for our ultimate mathematical reduction of space ("point") to mean also "intent" or "reason." So consciousness is predicated upon these minutiae of space, minutiae of intent.
Corman's poems are extremely condensed in this manner. Tomorrow, I'd probably read this poem in a very different way. But that's the negative capability at which this poet excels.
A good (and funny) example to illustrate this would be Basho's "Don't Imitate Me."
Don't imitate me;
it's as boring
as the two halves of a melon.
Yes, there is the obvious trope that a poet copying another can seem like a duplicate, the other half of the "melon."
But it also seems to suggest that the poet wants an imbalance in the poem, a polarity, something in keeping with the wabi-sabi ideas in art. The idea that imbalance (along with other forms of "wrongness") can be productive of a more satisfying (because truer?) sense of reality (or better yet, illumination?) in art suggests itself.
But is Basho even talking to another poet? Maybe the speaker of the poem is actually nature, "who" is imparting these same wabi-sabi principles, by letting Basho know that a simple naturalistic style, being a mirror, won't suffice. So maybe the poem is more about capturing the necessary details of the mind in the act of perception, the way a figurative painter might reduce a body to a few strokes, which might be gestural. This too is very wabi-sabi.
Corman doesn't write only haiku or very short poems that read almost like haiku. He does write longer poems that occupy several pages sometimes, even in this collection. But even then, he prefers to parse very closely, pivot quickly. En bref, he does love the skinny poem, probably because of the way it can condense attention. The careful lineation, these groupings of a few words at a time, makes the mind sharpen its scrutiny of those words. Normally we want to process sentences in bulk, and we miss the subtle differences in the way a poet is using a particular word. Corman's poetry is often associated with that of poets like Creeley, Eigner, and Niedecker, other poets whose most memorable poems were often very short and very condensed.
This particular collection has Corman exploring some new avenues. He becomes interested in re-presenting correspondence between dead writers as poems, carefully culling the words which mean the most to him, and which he hopes will mean something to us. This is a strange effect, because he doesn't always tell the reader up front when he's doing this. You sometimes find out only at the very end of the poem that the words are not Corman's. And yet, somehow, merely by the act of separating out the words and breath, Corman manages to make that other writer's words sound as though they really were written by Corman himself. It's a rather strange effect, moving and funny at once. Maybe we really are all one.
Here's one small poem from the collection, this one much more quintessentially Corman, what most people think of (I'm guessing) as "the Corman poem."
POIGNANCE
Over the gas jet
my wife cremating
a pregnant cockroach.
All at once it glows
and glows again - the
point of any point.
The poem is rooted in a disturbing act. The mind is set up to lose: feel disgust and lose pathos; feel pathos and disgust creeps up on it. Here is the awkward titular poignance.
I think the glowing here, the little flare-ups, are as much about consciousness as they are about a burning cockroach. Corman's poems are almost always about consciousness, and usually much more about apperception than perception.
The poet's play on the idea of the singular point (a sort of punnning with the title) which cannot remain singular (in that it iterates, repeats with time) is surely all about consciousness and its weird payload of memory. What's most disturbing here in the "glows again" is that the payload in this poem is not just any form of memory but living, unborn memory ("pregnant cockroach").
So the poem seems to be about regrets consumed before they are born. The violence of the act (taking the insect to the fire) would seem to bury this possibility, but the quick eye notices and pathos flames in the observer. Is "the point of any point" to be seen, to register, to exist? How strange that we use the same word for our ultimate mathematical reduction of space ("point") to mean also "intent" or "reason." So consciousness is predicated upon these minutiae of space, minutiae of intent.
Corman's poems are extremely condensed in this manner. Tomorrow, I'd probably read this poem in a very different way. But that's the negative capability at which this poet excels.
January 23, 2022
One of the things I like most about Cid Corman is his integration of Eastern influences into his poetry. At their best, Corman's poems are like Zen Koans: brief, concise, and profound. The poems of , however, show a stronger leaning toward Western influences. Most notable in his his of allusions. His use of allusions, in itself, is very Western academic. And the influences to whom/to which he alludes belong exclusively to the Western canon (with the exception of
The I Ching
)...
Of the Western influences to whom Corman alludes, the most interesting from a critical perspective are the poets George Oppen and Lorine Niedecker - two of Corman's most prominent influences, two adherents of the Objectivist school of poetry, and two of the most influential poets of the twentieth century...
Fortunately, there are still a handful of poems deserving of comparison to the Zen Koan. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the other poems. But once you've read the best of a given author, it can be difficult to read anything else...
One of my favourite poems from this collection...
1
"Mimic idiom" -
study's furnishing
reminds all do well
to learn to speak the
living word - not some
trivial success -
little a little
better. Husks and shells
we make conquest of
for the most part or
most apparently -
bu sometimes these are
cinnamon - spices -
you know. Even the
hunter you speak of
who slays a thousand
buffalo - brings off
only hides and tongues.
What sacrifices -
what hecatombs - what
holocausts the gods
exact for favors!
How much sincere life
can utter one word.
- Four Communications from Henry David (pg. 17-18)
Schubert water, Mozart birds,
Goethe whistling twistingly,
Hamlet meditating steep,
sensed our pulse and trusted it.
Perhaps my whisper was con-
ceived before my lips and leaves
treelessness and you my life
long before you came to this.
- Untitled (pg. 31)
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorr-
ow - what he meant - what he felt - what we know
unable to move beyond the event
of our own eventuality. Duns-
inane. Guttering body - guttering
shadow - nothing at last at last nothing.
- Macbeth (pg. 43)
Sitting at the sea
absorbed in it - a
Tolstoy with Gorki
coming up behind -
hearing the silence
break upon the shore.
- Student (pg. 46)
Paul Celan also
meant to be human
bu death was too much
to make meaning of -
not at least without
entering into.
- Untitled (pg. 57)
From Moline
to nearly
Keokuk
on Mark Twain's
river on
John Deere's yacht -
millionaires
for a day -
reveling
in the sun-
set - certain
it was made
for those who
see to it
and return
to it. Like
death. Strangers
reminded
of how far
this is is
to have been.
- Excursion (pg. 59)
The I Ching the rain.
Let the drops fall
where they will and
let them lie there -
a fortune just
as the sun foretold.
- Untitled (pg. 121)
Of the Western influences to whom Corman alludes, the most interesting from a critical perspective are the poets George Oppen and Lorine Niedecker - two of Corman's most prominent influences, two adherents of the Objectivist school of poetry, and two of the most influential poets of the twentieth century...
I think I know what
George means when he says
"There are words the mean
nothing - but there is
something to mean." He
still bears the faith and
the marks of that faith
in him. Not unlike
delight in the green
he sees strike up from
the sidewalk in spite
of it. And I in
turn delight in his
recognition - though
I have had to leave
that country - abused
beyond my power
to struggle against
for being stupid
enough to trust in
those I live with. You.
- 3 Pilgrims (pg. 53)
Suddenly
a bird call
makes it seem
(I dont know
why) like a
holiday -
like getting
a letter
from Lorine.
- Untitled (pg. 56)
Fortunately, there are still a handful of poems deserving of comparison to the Zen Koan. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the other poems. But once you've read the best of a given author, it can be difficult to read anything else...
The ant waits
and I wait
upon its
majesty.
- Untitled (pg. 65)
You touch me
and I grow -
you take me
and I am -
we are no
one alone.
- Untitled (pg. 83)
A hand
out for
a snowflake
or how
a hand
understands.
- Cogito Ergo Cogito Sum (pg. 90)
mosquito
at the ear
saying so
so and so.
- The (pg. 93)
To have a flower
in the house. The dead
blossoming. The last
time. As if the sun
came through the window
pirouetted here.
- Untitled (pg. 94)
Light touches
each of us
for shadow
We dont lend
bu all that
we are gives.
- Untitled (pg. 101)
It isnt just
the silence. The
sky itself seems
at this moment
incredibly
true. As if it
had without a
single word said
all that is could.
- Untitled (pg. 109)
Sky in
the puddle -
dog lapping
it up.
- Untitled (pg. 120)
Whose fault
or any?
Why pick
on apples
when dust
bruises air?
- Untitled (pg. 124)
One of my favourite poems from this collection...
Someone I cared for
put it to me: Who
do you think you are?
I went down the list
of all the many possibilities
carefully - did it
twice - bu couldnt find
a plausible one.
That was when I knew
for the first time who
in fact I wasnt.
- Untitled (pg. 72)
July 12, 2025
picked this up because i flipped to a random page at the bookstore and fell in love with the poem. really enjoyed it! (poem i flipped to was on page 4🫶🏾)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews