Tag: poetry

850 Subscribers?

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been on WordPress for a long time. According to my dashboard, this site has about 850 subscribers. Are you one of them?

WordPress is great at many things, but helping creators understand their audience isn’t really one of them.  I’m hoping you can help me fill in some gaps. I’m also hoping you’ll consider following me on Substack (chriscocca.substack.com).

Some of you are regular readers. Some of you are new. Some might have subscribed years ago and forgotten. Some might just get an email once in a while and skim it. Some are certainly bots. Some are people who liked a particular post but didn’t find much else of value.  

The truth is, with a site as old as this one, a good half of the subscriptions are probably tied to email addresses no longer in use. A good many are also through the WordPress Reader, which is great.

However you connected, thank you.  

To help me create a more engaging experience, would you do me a favor?  Could you comment below with a few quick thoughts?

  • How did you find this site?
  • What kinds of things interest you most?

About My Work and Where It Fits

Another reason I’m asking is that my work has gradually spread across a few different places.

If you’ve been following this site for a while, you might know that my academic and professional training are in theology (MDiv from Yale Divinity School) and creative writing (MFA from The New School). I publish poems, creative nonfiction, and the occasional piece of fiction in literary journals. I’m also working on longer projects—poetry manuscripts, essays, a novel, and a growing collection of short stories.  As I’ve focused more on that kind of work, this site has become less of a blog (remember blogs?) and more of a repository, a bulletin board for current thoughts, and a place to share updates about things I’ve been publishing.

A few years ago, I started dabbling on Substack.  Over the last month, I’ve been interacting on that platform regularly.  It started as a newsletter platform for writers, but now also includes an ecosystem for short Notes (basically, tweets). It combines a lot of what I liked about Twitter and a lot of what is good about WordPress.  It is, by design, a more natural place for those who spend lots of time writing.

Substack is quickly becoming a place where people write more deeply (newsletters/articles) and more informally (Notes).   

I usually link every Substack piece here, and I also write things here that I don’t write on Substack (mid-length things that don’t warrant their own full articles but are too long or particular for Notes). 

WordPress and Substack are both good tools, but I’m curious about how much my audiences overlap. Given that Substack is designed for the subscription model (my Substack is free, by the way), I thought it would be good to ask:

If you’re subscribed here on WordPress:

  • What brought you here originally?
  • What kinds of posts would you actually want to read?
  • And what—if anything—would make you consider subscribing to the Substack?

After all these years, it feels a little strange realizing there might be hundreds of people quietly connected to this site whom I know next to nothing about.

If you’re out there, say hello, and let me know what kinds of things you’re interested in. 

Whether you’re a new or longtime subscriber, or whether you’ve stumbled upon this site because of a random post about Gary Jules, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, or microfiche, thank you for being here!  And thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts and checking out chriscocca.substack.com.

I’m looking forward to reading and writing alongside you.

“Natural Speech” at Earth & Altar; Brautigan on Substack

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to have another sonnet up at Earth & Altar, with one more coming next week.

I’m not a formalist by any means, but working through the mechanics of a sonnet is a great way to stay sharp. It forces you to think in new ways about compression, symbol-work, image-stacking, and what I’ll call the stakes (the “so what,” the thing the volta turns to, the reason, and, in classical sonnets, the argument).

All three of my Earth & Altar sonnets deal with language, limits, and liminal spaces. I wrote them because I saw what Malcolm Guite was doing and wanted to see what I’d do with a less decorative, less…normative?…approach.

I’m not primarily interested in these pieces as engines of devotion, then, even though I think they say a lot about my own spirituality. Neither am I looking to make normative religious statements, though I do think there’s an interrogative duty and that is perhaps why these poems end in questions.

Here’s “Natural Speech.”

There’s also a new free post about Richard Brautigan’s beautiful “I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone” on my Substack.

Rilke, Buber, and “God’s True Cloak”

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

The Poetic Metaphysics of I, Thou, and It

I’m publishing this on Substack soon, but I thought I’d post it here as well. I’m interested in your thoughts.

I learned this poem from Book of Hours about 20 years ago. At the time, I think the last things I’d sat down and intentionally memorized were fourth-grade/1989 bangers “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and “Another Day in Paradise.” (Don’t underestimate their effect on my moral formation).

Here’s Rilke (Macy and Barrows translation):

We must not portray you in king’s robes,
you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.

Once again from the old paintboxes
we take the same gold for scepter and crown
that has disguised you through the ages.

Piously we produce our images of you
till they stand around you like a thousand walls.
And when our hearts would simply open,
our fervent hands hide you.

Book of Hours, I 4

This poem, written in 1899, is often called “God’s True Cloak.”

Reading it now, I notice some things I’ve slightly misremembered.

I thought the second stanza was:

or take again from old paintboxes
the same gold for scepter and crown
that have defined you through the ages.

In the first instance, I’d wrongly remembered a continued deontology (what we must not do); instead, Rilke is describing what we do (and shouldn’t).

I had also thought “stand around you like a thousand walls” was “stand before you like a thousand walls,” but around is definitely better. I’d be interested in what any German speakers or readers make of the original text.

What really strikes me this time, though, is the interplay of you/thou and that in the opening lines. God is referred to as a you/thou (a personal, immanent presence with agency) twice; you in king’s robes, you drifting mist; as well as that (a force) rather than whom. Again, I’m not sure how this reads in Rilke’s German, but, as presented, it’s an elegant compression of God as thou (a God who is someone)and God as that (that which does something; in this case, brings forth the morning, but, in a bigger sense, grounds all being).

This brings us into conversation with Martin Buber. In I and Thou (Ich und Du, 1923, translated into English in 1937), Buber suggests that there are two primary lenses through which we process reality: I-It and I-Thou. I-It grounds and defines the self by difference from Other-as-object (I am Martin, that is a tree). I-Thou recognizes Other (even a tree) as presence and mutual foregrounding. For Buber, every move toward “You” is a move toward God, “the Eternal Thou.” Human life finds meaning through relationships (I-Thou) and grows more integrated in the move from seeing Other as It and understanding, experiencing, and affirming Other as Thou.

Buber certainly knew Rilke’s work and cited him elsewhere (though not, to my knowledge, in I and Thou). And while “God’s True Cloak” isn’t only about the I-Thou tension or the mystery of a God at once immanent and ontologically necessary, it does masterfully, beautifully — mystically — echo mystic traditions and anticipate key parts of Buber’s project.

Poetic brilliance is funny like that.

As for the cloak. It’s hard to not be reminded of the woman cured after touching Christ’s robe. Her instinct (“If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well”) suggests intuition: God is personal presence (walking dusty streets, wearing robes) and God grounds reality (the mist brings forth dawn, the ephemeral has power). Did she encounter the “hem of his garment” as Thou rather than It? For what it’s worth, he says her faith has healed her.

“Salvator Mundi” at Still: The Journal

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

This poem was published at Still a few years ago.

I talk about it in some more depth in today’s Substack. (A Poem, a Dream, and Four Perfect Songs)

Thanks for reading.

Salvator Mundi
Chris Cocca

Now the thing to know about my dad
he doesn’t care if you know
(he’d rather I not even say)
but who gives a shit, really,
because I studied for
priesthood (Nonno had all the books)
and, let me tell you,
the Holy Church doesn’t blush.
But my dad, for some reason,
embarrassed by riches
he fucking deserves
his ring finger bent sideways
above the first knuckle
his hands brown and twisted,
Christ’s head sat low
on his sternum,
diamond-crowned,
my pop’s one allowance
the heavy gold chain
from when Nonno
came back from Naples.
You know what they say
about Naples
(the ghosts of the gone world,
the lares, their iron-tipped spears,
that poor wop Longinus).
Unlike the church, Christ,
my dad blushes
has one holy treasure;
it’s no fucking idol, bunkshooter;
no subway token, no charm,
no mask for Apollo, some laurel-wreathed sun.
It hides in the hem of dad’s white v-neck tee,
Christ in the clouds, Christ sweating blood,
Christ’s head sat low on dad’s sternum,
Salvator Mundi entombed on a double
my old man’s fucked hands
bent for work.

Cliché is Not an Adjective  

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

A hard truth some chronically online people need to hear: cliché is a noun. It is only a noun. It is never an adjective. The adjective form is clichéd. Clichéd is elegant.

“I could have sworn…”

No.

I think what’s happened here is people aren’t reading, and they’re also thinking cliché is like passé. But no. Never.

Other thoughts for Monday via the free Substack. Neil Young, Carl Sandburg, erasure poetry, and more. Not long. Hopefully not pedantic.

Two Poems

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

Two poems previously published at The Shore, the first of which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize:

The Effects of Ground-Level Ozone on the Ecology of Pennsylvania Highways

We could talk about the road
from Allentown to Bloomsburg,
the nuke plant outside Berwick,
the wind mills in Shamokin.
Or I could say what’s plain,
the pallor of the tree tops
too soon against the still-green valley’s
August.

It’s not latitude or elevation
dressing them for harvest.
The civic body pulsing
the freight metastasizing
the emissions of the tourists
come to find themselves
in nature.
Or I could say what’s plain.
There’s nothing in our handiwork
the dying leaves would envy.

Ode to Wallace Stevens

I’m not sure how I feel
about this Wallace Stevens, born in Reading
near the Updikes and the Danners
O’Hara, from the famous brewing town,
Doolittle and Benet from what we still call Christmas City.
Sandburg talked about it.

I was born in Allentown,
half-raised in the townships
with the sons of bankers,
the daughters of accountants,
the sleight progeny of academics,
and half-raised by my father’s
kind of people.

And so when Stevens carries on
and Ezra changes Hilda
into affectation
I think about the blacktop
behind my cousins’ house
the drop-off to the alley
the neighbor kids with summer colds
who smelled like smoke,
no light or warmth in
metaphors or symbols
no prattle about tea—
communal three-speeds, maybe
broken like umbrellas,
free camp at the Y,
baseball in the city parks,
the college hill for sledding.

We go to school or war,
we settle in careers,
like Stevens we get licensed
like Ezra we go crazy
like Hilda we are strung up in the trees.

The halo light of street lamps
has burned out in our alley
Like Hart Crane, one of us is dead.

Rested in an urn on my aunt’s
shoddy mantle
forty cantos east of Reading,
eight west of HD’s plot on Nimsky Hill,
a soldier’s fortune from these lives of letters,
these gadflies we recycle,
and these wars,
also never-ending
so we can have our books
they give the light and heat
by which
my father’s people burn.

Sifting through Kerouac’s Western Haiku

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

A blog post haiku

Hey there and howdy, hello.

Come find me on Substack.

This blog is hosted on WordPress, and there’s a whole WordPress ecosystem that, in theory, helps connect people.

I don’t think I post often enough for that to work, but I really do appreciate the folks who follow me here.

What I like about Substack is that they’ve found a way to incorporate what I also liked about Twitter. There’s the blogging platform (newsletters), the feed (tweets, but they call them posts), and there’s also a chat. It’s pretty tidy.

Speaking of tidy. My latest on Substack is Small Mercies: Sifting through Kerouac’s Western Haiku (and a note from Tom Petty.

I’d like to share more rough draft stories and poems with you, but doing that here makes them ineligible for publication almost anywhere else. I think Substack offers a work-around. I can put rough drafts in the chat, which is only visible to subscribers (subscriptions are free). Just a thought.