Crg Hill's poetry scorecard

6 of Diamonds

 

He did not run away from his previously expressed views

 

It climbed the cellar steps. It climbed the front hall steps.

It climbed all the way up to the attic without a sound

 

All this dope dealin’, disrespectin’ our women, we’ve got to stop that.

Bitter cold. They’re nervous about it for sure. Germany’s put

itself in a box. Iraq says President Bush should be exiled to North Korea

 

On Water Street, the outside walls of the shed thump

now and then like a bass drum with a foot pedal

at work inside it keeping the beat. In the shed

performance had begun. The upbeat grabs her neck

 

Four moons of Jupiter in a straight line, rings

of Saturn, even the uneven surface of the moon

sharpened by the scope, put the governments in place:

no stars, many black holes, quarry that sprawling

Orion does not even consider, bow aimed away at space

 

His body could keep up somehow but it was the things

inside of him that began to strain and roar. His lungs got

so dry that they squeaked with each breath. His heart

swelled from pumping so hard. He got a little panic-

stricken because he knew he couldn’t keep it up and he

knew he had to. He wanted to die if that would get him

 

In the fire den of the discovery room, Lily’s got an ivy

tub snowing out of her wrought elbow, flooding a

gloating bug that hugs a mental stare and spurts

a second tub that ruins Frances’ hound. Mercedes

stands stuck as a silver dirge at the hut of the bad

stirring her sisters. The wheat curtails, pulled back

from the bad since the rhyme is pre-empted by neighbors

6 of Hearts

 

He was soon forced to mute that praise, joking later, 'I was a little forward on my skis'

 

Between us, there are no good solutions. Family and oil.

It’s the defense that took off, the worst-case scenario

 

I know now it turns somewhere, seems to taunt,

turns out of knowing, burns, spits, before it spins off

into needing, absolutely nothing in the dumb center

 

His rage roars (or squeaks) political motivation,

pain-stakingly paraphrased by his self-righteous press secretary

to tell and not show. He thinks we want to feel

his anger; once and for all, we just want him to think

 

Do you remember those happy bygone boom days when

the stock market was going to save us from a variety of ills?

Rising stock prices would solve the problem of Social Security

short falls, boost federal, state and local income-tax revenues,

and let us all retire young, rich and happy. It never happened, of course

 

You do not need to prove damage or malice in an uphill

battle. Show the ordinary showing. Where’s the line

you can’t cross through the world of adult products?

Why are women in the mud, wrestling? I never imagined

how much of myself I retained out of their hands. It

is my body now. I will never have to face death again

 

The dumb reed reposing wrenches renown from the

No Mind’s Lunge. This is a reasonable rhyme for a

retch of pretested grind that has yet to be dropped

by either side. The roaming has come to moan a

hunted smoggy expense of salient slum. A lump –

frayed, sallow, mean, mostly frayed, presumptive

except for the deed. Stars may romp across and remain stars

 

from 7 x 7, Otoliths 2010. I was asked recently to explain these poems. I've done so in an interview with Jeff Hansen:

http://experimentalfictionpoetry.blogspot.com/2010/07/interview-with-poet-crag-hill-on-his.html

Hansen: All the poems in 7x7 take their name from a card from a standard playing deck. How does this randomness fit with the formal discontinuities in other parts of the poems?

Hill: I cannot recall if I chose playing cards to title the poems before or after other aspects of the project in place (ultimately each title corresponded to the card I slid from the diminishing deck). One of the 7s in 7 x 7 represents the number of days in a week. Thus the first day of the week has one line, the second day two lines, etc. (I have used the seven days of the week before-see The Week, The Runaway Spoon Press, 1991-to structure a writing project). The other 7 denotes the number of different sources I worked with to write the content of each stanza. I used seven playing cards to select each source for the day. If I pulled an Ace from the short stack, I selected from poetry in my notebook. For a 2, I selected prose from my notebook. With a 3, I chose a quote from a book I was reading. With a 4, I rewrote a passage from a book I was reading, changing the sense while retaining as much of the sound as I could. Drawing a 5, I quoted news from the internet or magazines (primarily Newsweek). With a 6, I quoted from a newspaper (most commonly The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, circulation 8000). Pulling out a 7, I quoted-or slightly misquoted/misheard-television and radio programs. For instance, in "Queen of Hearts," the first line is a taken from a prose passage in my notebook about Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. The next two lines are quotations from a political news show. The next three lines are a rewriting of a passage from something I was reading (I didn't keep a record of these texts). The next four lines are a poetry excerpt taken from my notebook, a poem written on a drive across Montana to visit family in Wisconsin. For the next five lines I again drew an Ace and excerpted from a poem based on a dream. The last two stanzas are direct quotations from my reading (direct quotations of text are marked by italics)

 

7 of Hearts

Two memorable comebacks or maybe a couple monumental collapses

 

Yet it is not thought, driving thought as it is driven,

carrying what carries it, connected to our laughs and cries but separate

 

Standing on a snow-covered plaza in neat

rows, the demonstrators shook their

clenched fists against the backdrop of white-

 

They got the first one two weeks ago, armed with missiles

with shorter range, at the end of the fourth season,

he was going to bolt the show. Johnny Depp was a sleeping dog,

taking you exactly where you need to be

 

its stunning silhouette, with amazing turns

and cantilevers, makes it unlike anything

on any urban skyline. Like a lot of people,

Koolhaas has been mulling over skyscrap-

ers since 9-11. ‘It’s a kind of unconscious’

 

North Korea mindset: We will not be Iraq.

Pull out of a treaty? A good idea, sir.

He’s not freelancing at all if that story is true.

What more do we need to prove before we put

the story in place? Some of them picked him

out of a lineup, prisoner to the last minute

 

Muffling of the war drums? React the way you’re trained.

On a changing frontier, he is the last cowboy,

more like a cult than a country. Don’t settle for less.

In the morning, in the mirror, he says,

I doubt the best I can. [I changed that.]

“Food was very minimum, daily beatings, daily interrogations.”

She went to Santa Claus and said, “I hope I don’t die.”

 

from 7 x 7, Otoliths 2010. I was asked recently to explain these poems. I've done so in an interview with Jeff Hansen:

http://experimentalfictionpoetry.blogspot.com/2010/07/interview-with-poet-crag-hill-on-his.html

Hansen: All the poems in 7x7 take their name from a card from a standard playing deck. How does this randomness fit with the formal discontinuities in other parts of the poems?

Hill: I cannot recall if I chose playing cards to title the poems before or after other aspects of the project in place (ultimately each title corresponded to the card I slid from the diminishing deck). One of the 7s in 7 x 7 represents the number of days in a week. Thus the first day of the week has one line, the second day two lines, etc. (I have used the seven days of the week before-see The Week, The Runaway Spoon Press, 1991-to structure a writing project). The other 7 denotes the number of different sources I worked with to write the content of each stanza. I used seven playing cards to select each source for the day. If I pulled an Ace from the short stack, I selected from poetry in my notebook. For a 2, I selected prose from my notebook. With a 3, I chose a quote from a book I was reading. With a 4, I rewrote a passage from a book I was reading, changing the sense while retaining as much of the sound as I could. Drawing a 5, I quoted news from the internet or magazines (primarily Newsweek). With a 6, I quoted from a newspaper (most commonly The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, circulation 8000). Pulling out a 7, I quoted-or slightly misquoted/misheard-television and radio programs. For instance, in "Queen of Hearts," the first line is a taken from a prose passage in my notebook about Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. The next two lines are quotations from a political news show. The next three lines are a rewriting of a passage from something I was reading (I didn't keep a record of these texts). The next four lines are a poetry excerpt taken from my notebook, a poem written on a drive across Montana to visit family in Wisconsin. For the next five lines I again drew an Ace and excerpted from a poem based on a dream. The last two stanzas are direct quotations from my reading (direct quotations of text are marked by italics)

 

10 of Clubs

 

In the sawdust footfall, our world out of step, I followed your fall

 

Looming over the conflicts is the threat of “invisible” weapons of mass destruction

going on now in all stores

 

Some opt out of this language and point

a series of beautifully coded mental images of people

precise and out of prisons

 

I’d have thought in you it would have snapped

as anything sooner or later will snap, but still it happens

that’s when I expectantly watch myself turn light in a mirror

there’s repercussion, a crash and I look sickly away

 

Air Force investigators concluded that

Schmidt and Umback should have left the

area when they spotted gunfire to allow time

to determine its source. Remaining in the

area led to the pilot’s misperception

 

Barbed-wire, bicep, a rose, remembered

in the small of the back. I forget to breathe

I choke to remember. His voice breaks, gathers itself

up, reconstitutes, more soul than vocal. Back to the ocean

face to the wind, she shifted shells one hand to the other

over and over until the sun cleared the eastern mountains

 

slits and chairs and acid

splashed, filaments that gave

way of their own accord

from the stress of spanning

tiny, trifling gaps, but which

in a wounded psyche

make a murderous maze

 

from 7 x 7, Otoliths 2010. I was asked recently to explain these poems. I've done so in an interview with Jeff Hansen:

http://experimentalfictionpoetry.blogspot.com/2010/07/interview-with-poet-crag-hill-on-his.html

Hansen: All the poems in 7x7 take their name from a card from a standard playing deck. How does this randomness fit with the formal discontinuities in other parts of the poems?

Hill: I cannot recall if I chose playing cards to title the poems before or after other aspects of the project in place (ultimately each title corresponded to the card I slid from the diminishing deck). One of the 7s in 7 x 7 represents the number of days in a week. Thus the first day of the week has one line, the second day two lines, etc. (I have used the seven days of the week before-see The Week, The Runaway Spoon Press, 1991-to structure a writing project). The other 7 denotes the number of different sources I worked with to write the content of each stanza. I used seven playing cards to select each source for the day. If I pulled an Ace from the short stack, I selected from poetry in my notebook. For a 2, I selected prose from my notebook. With a 3, I chose a quote from a book I was reading. With a 4, I rewrote a passage from a book I was reading, changing the sense while retaining as much of the sound as I could. Drawing a 5, I quoted news from the internet or magazines (primarily Newsweek). With a 6, I quoted from a newspaper (most commonly The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, circulation 8000). Pulling out a 7, I quoted-or slightly misquoted/misheard-television and radio programs. For instance, in "Queen of Hearts," the first line is a taken from a prose passage in my notebook about Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. The next two lines are quotations from a political news show. The next three lines are a rewriting of a passage from something I was reading (I didn't keep a record of these texts). The next four lines are a poetry excerpt taken from my notebook, a poem written on a drive across Montana to visit family in Wisconsin. For the next five lines I again drew an Ace and excerpted from a poem based on a dream. The last two stanzas are direct quotations from my reading (direct quotations of text are marked by italics)

He nothing Lax

 

He space provides, elides

 

He honors each signifier

with the weight of 

significance

middle of the

pale earth

 

of the advance of

sights and lines

 

lower than

up and

 

down

slides down

 

the smell of

wheat harvest

 

straddles husk

and hold

 

appeal and brush

the color of