So we have a poem by Kenneth Coke a New York school poet. It's called variations on a theme by William Carlos Williams and it is a Pastiche variations on a very familiar poem for us. This is just to say I wonder if we could recite this is just to say together. I think we can do that. Okay, here we go. A1 and A2 this is just to say I haven't another one that were in the ice forgive me. They are I Love How It Ends that poem on the word cold almost as if he anticipated our objections to the Palm what are our objections to that poem what conceivably do we worry about there Molly? Well, we worry I think About whether it's a sincere apology or not, right? It's clearly not right and then the coldness, you know, he was really he saw something. He saw something in the refrigerator. He wanted and he was just going to take it and there is a there's an implied relationship to the sexual relationship of the marriage in there, you know, basically takes what he wants when he wants it so there is I have objections to It as a poem, right we have objections to the politics and the like yeah, I know section usually objections, I think but I can't raise his concerns about found poetry sure right because this is a refrigerator note. So it's a it's a it's a faux found poem. Like hey, I wrote a refrigerator. Then I realized it was a poem now, he wrote the poem but let's just say I wrote a refrigerator note and now we're in the modernist Revolution and I can make a poem out of a refrigerator note hooray for me, but Flossie's involved in this Exchange. And she gets written out of the equation. Although she does Write a response and he kind of makes the best of that response by talking about it as a poem better than his and so forth. So what's marvelous about that Innovation that modernist Innovation, which was sort of behind what you said a minute ago about the poem being so good. I mean, it's such a it makes a poem out of a out of a subject that wouldn't typically be just if you really take it as like domestic situation, like I'm leaving my partner a note, right and I'm going to you take that up as a subject of poetry is equal to any other poetic subject great rallying cry or early modernism, which is that anything can be the subject of poetry. There's no such thing as as a high poetic content that's distinct from a low poetic to okay. So then we have Kenneth Koch who writes these variations and it's funny. So who wants to speak to the humor of it? We've just listened to a recording which we're making available through mod, Poe of coke reading it and the audience laughed a lot. How was that Max? How did that laughter happen for you? I think a lot of the humor from this poem derives from doing kind of the opposite of what we were just saying about Williams writing. This is very domestic sort of found poem right like like there's there's so much. Eating and me taking these two little plums right here. He's he's taking that to the extreme by being like It's so funny that I chopped down your house and gave way your life savings is a very different kind of I think he's expecting to hear bye-bye really inflating the situation or putting far higher Stakes into the situation, which I think then helps us reread the the Williams poem and kind of understand the power dynamics. I think a little bit differently, but just a little bit more clearly. And so yeah, it's Both dislike. It's both the secure murres play on Williams. And also just just a way of getting at what Williams is up to buy sort of exaggerating what he's doing just to see what's actually there at the at the core that's good. You're saying a bunch of things in one thing you're saying is that the by the time we get to Coke and the 1950s and 60s poets are okay being critics in a way that is that they're doing Theory and they're doing criticism. You know Williams and his generation maybe with TS Eliot accepting but he's not in the course. They would say no, but the work of the poem is the work of the poem. I'm really not interested in literary criticism. Now given the state of literary criticism at that time. They had a good reason not to want to get involved in it. But by the time you get to the let's just call it the post modern period the poet aspires to being able to do critique and so in a way the relationship here's a question. I want to ask you all the Nation ship to originality is different you get and this might help people who Trot want to do like cocktail party conversation about what's modernism as opposed to post-modernism just handy dandy or for your PFD orals. Okay. So what's modernism post-modernism modernism is where is where Williams says I'm finding this refrigerator note and I have a relationship to originality. This is something new newness is all over that poem and and there's a it's a fake newness, but it's all newness is fake news anyway, so that's he he thinks this is an originality. It's like it's like a it's like a ready-made. Which is not very original right because it's taking the urinal or the snow shovel from the hardware store and maybe taking the urinal from some another artist. But anyway for originality this doesn't even pretend to be original because it's a poem that's based on a poem The thought it was original. So does that mean we're removed from reality? What how do you feel about that new relationship with originality Ali and then Davey I love the I mean For people who haven't heard the kind of folks at recitation of this like it's worth listening to because there's something about I think it's a really genuine laughter but the laughter reminds me of a certain type of laughter that is often heard at readings, which is this kind of like performative. Like I want to show you that I'm in the know and I know what's going on and they're in the know and what sense they're in the know because they know the will hear the poem. They know this is just to say no Williams. So I think part of what's funny is that kind of like exaggeration that Max was talking about but also the Williams the Williams Enos event like the just the language and the firmware to wind on the porch was so juicy and cold makes it actually no sense. Like Mart firm cold. March wind is Juicy is so funny because it only makes sense in knowing his kind of General vocabulary and their a of that poem but it really invokes, you know, this kind of like Mad Doctor like version of Williams that I always imagined kind of just be like, he he wait wait wait, I feel like both yes, but like gleeful in in a little bit of sinister Earnest just kind of like yeah wild like The New York school put this is not a typical New York school poem Davy but it is a poem that is part aligns with New York's cool ideas about poetry is already a always there. There's a lot of reuse and remaking right and we're in always in relationship to our predecessors. You know, O'Hara's always dropping the names of poets that he happens to be reading and so forth. This doesn't do that. It drops one name and it and it just keeps banging. Away at that. Anyway, what's your thought about this as a kind of critique of from the postmodern era back to the modern era. Does that work? Yeah, I think it totally works because it's establishing a relation to quotidian language. That's much more like other work than your school does Williams is interested in shifting context of thinking about here's this like domestic thing and I'm going to elevate it by operating in this different context by making it into a poem by changing its context and what I understand the New York school to be doing is is to be uninterested in the line between what's hired and what's a lowered and thinking about quotidian language appears in poems, but that is a reframing that draws attention to the language that bears the seams of the fact that that quotidian language neither belongs to the poem nor to it's like operation in daily life the like the poem is participating in a like quotidian usage of that language rather than extracting the language and taking it out of its next which is what Williams thinks he's doing and I hear Coke to be playing off of that to be playing off of the idea that Williams thinks that he could excuse his like Loki and endless misogyny by deciding that it's useful to have to refresh it that like a river like a recontextualization or like a plea of like ineptitude allows behaviors to be excusable allows like one context to become another in a way that like the New York schools really skeptical of if you take the yes they are and if you take the humor out of it and the clever re-appropriation of Williams what? It is a poet guy who has destroyed the house that they were planning to live in sprayed the hollyhocks with lie killed the killed the garden gave away all the money to a hobo and broke her leg and trapped her in the hospital where he's a Williams like doctor. Not a pretty picture and funny because it's so knowing about that purty Koke. I want to invite those who haven't had a chance to talk about this poem to say so so I think Lily would be next. Yeah, I think what I like about this is that I know that variations on a theme is like a common phrase like in music, especially but the word theme feels like a really pointed dig kind of at Williams because I think We talked a lot about that year of modernism as getting away from poetry as having themed content and let her you know, like getting away from just of making really concrete narrative meaning or whatever. So then Coke is actually saying like no there's a theme here, but you have to you have to read it a slightly different level. So the theme is of what we were talking about like hurting your partner making everything that's there's and apologize and fake apologizing and then making Poetry that makes only you more famous out of it. So I think like it's because very famous for this poem bow, right? Well, the individual stands us are great. But taken as like a gesture as a whole it's like him saying like you can't be Charmed by the language of the poem like icebox and the perfect perfectness of the metaphor of a plum. It's like there's something going on here. Let me update the language a little bit and you'll see the theme. Good point Ambrose your thought on this. Yeah something that really makes this these variations work for me is that last line which I think diverges from Williams Palm where you already know the poem already makes it so clear what these themes are that he's pulling from Williams, but to take it as far as I'm just going to come out and say I wanted you in the ward Where I Am the Doctor that's like I'm going to take this off. we're past the scale and off-the-charts just to make it utterly clear that this is about me and male ego and pride and I think that's really important because without that it could be funny, but it could be coming a little dangerously close to sort of replicating what Williams was doing with the critique maybe being a little too subtle, but I think that line makes it super clear what he's trying to do and in the introduction Listen to the recording that we make available in mokpo Coke says he I don't know if he says loves but maybe does loves the poem. In other words. He admires the Williams poem sort of where we began when you were talking about objections with there's the poem and then there's our concerns about the themes of the poem. So forth and Coke clearly has that kind of difficult relationship to the poem that you kind of have to have. Okay, Anna. Would you like to say something? I'm imagining as you sometimes do what a detractor might say about this. Mmm and a detractor might look at this and say well like okay, it's funny. But like is it really a poem and I think the reason why it works I think it works as a poem because precisely because it is funny because I think humor works best when we use humor to like point something out. That's true that sometimes you need humor to get to that true thing and isn't it cool that we can not only have humor to get to the true thing, which is that Williams maybe was not a stand-up guy and maybe didn't treat his partner or lots of other people in his life with a ton of respect. And we can critique him sort of on both ends of that. Right? Like we can critique the ethics of that and we can also do it through poetry. The point I want to make is that the the original poem is so in our ears that you could get a kind of approximate redoing of its meter and diction and get it and know that it's about that. I mean it is just one of the Dozen things or so or maybe 25 things in my ear that I could recognize instantly in poetry and I think he does a marvelous job of picking just enough out. Right. I am sorry, but it was morning that that's such a we got that right? Yeah that's in my ear. But then to turn it it's a and I think that kind of game playing with language is a Hallmark of the New York school poets, certainly O'Hara and to some degree the early Ashbury Ali. Did you want to add something to this? You don't have to but I feel like I've said my piece you said your piece daddy. Have you said your piece Dave Poplar thoughts. I love that you put it out. I am sorry, but it was morning because in the original version the whole last line was the whole last stanza is about I'm sorry, but it's not my fault. It's the plums. I mean they were there are so sweet. They were so delicious. It's not my fault. Yeah plane and lumps and bumps will be plums. Yes. Yeah. I'm not taking responsibility. It's the look at the Arms are the ones to blame and in this poem like Ambrose pointed out he's using that but then making it clear that I wanted you here in the world is Where I Am the Doctor it's really about him period you can't get away from that. It's just making that absolutely crystal clear that that's that's what it's about. Don't hide behind the plums. Yeah. Gabe fun fuck. Yeah, I like a comment that kind of coke made before reading the poem which is the he said that Williams is poems in his poems desire always wins. It is interesting because it's not just that like, it's not just the desire to eat the plums. But also the desire that like this Palm will work as a poem and like as you were saying that kind of like believe me about why I did it. I hope that you'll understand that my desire was enough like to let this be Kind of like just poem and I think what Coke does well is not just undermines the kind of like desire that leads to the plum eating but also that desire for the Palm to work or to be like a kind of like a convincing object and just kind of takes it into the Absurd in a way that like is funny but it's also it's usefully intertextual desire is both transitive and intransitive. That's probably the wrong way of describing it but that it is and I'm just restating what you say. Here desire is something that requires the object of Desire something. You want William so often that thing that you want is like a pretend potemkin Village cardboard cutout thing that what you really want is to Stage desire that is to be aggressive. I think that kind of desire in Williams is aggressively desirous a petition as we say in the context of that plump home and he has both of those things going on and Coke is really playing. Laying on what desire can turn into if it's severed from an object of Desire. Thank you all this was really great.
