Ron Padgett

Pese a la aparente simplicidad de la poesía de Padgett, sus textos son difíciles, supongo también que es debido a mi poca experiencia con el tema. Al ser una edición bilingüe hay traducciones que no concuerdan exactamente con el texto original, pero no sé si esto se debe siempre a la dificultad de trasladar el texto original a otro idioma conservando lo sustancial del poema. Aún así resulta una poesía agradable de leer sobre todo por ese toque naíf que la caracteriza.
La poesía de show more Ron Padgett es la que escribe el personaje de la peli Paterson de Jim Jarmush, destacando el poema de amor que comienza con el verso "Tenemos muchísimas cerillas en casa. / Siempre las tenemos a mano. / En este momento nuestra marca favorita es Ohio Blue Tip"

Pero mi preferido es el que da título al poemario "Cómo ser perfecto", en el que encontramos algunas perlas como estas:
"Eleva tu ritmo cardiaco a 120 latidos por minuto, por 20 minutos seguidos, unas cuatro o cinco veces a la semana, haciendo algo que disfrutes.
Esperanza para todo. Espera nada.
Primero, cuida las cosas que están cerca de casa. Ordena tu habitación
antes de salvar el mundo. Luego, salva el mundo.
(...)
Cultiva una buena postura hasta que se vuelva natural.
Si alguien mata a tus hijos, consigue una escopeta y vuélale la cabeza.
Planifica tu día, para que no tengas prisa.
Muestra tu aprecio a las personas que hacen cosas por ti, incluso si les pagas,
incluso si ellos hacen favores que no quieres.
(...)
Crece un poco.
No deambules por las estaciones del metro murmurando: “¡Todos vamos a morir!”
Cuenta entre tus verdaderos amigos de diferentes momentos de tu vida.
Aprecia los placeres simples, como el placer de masticar, el placer
del agua caliente que cae sobre tu espalda, el placer de una
brisa fresca, el placer de quedarte dormido.
(...)
Saca la basura.
Ama la vida.
Ten el vuelto preciso.
Cuando haya un tiroteo en la calle, no te acerques a la ventana." show less

There are many reasons why Ron Padgett is one of my all-time favorite poets, and at the top of the list is his playful witty approach to otherwise serious situations and events. Reading his work, I have the impression of a man in love with life and laughter, despite the occasional downs that come along. Padgett cartwheels through stanzas and parades words through lines, often skipping through a variety of potential meanings and coming to unexpected conclusions. How Long is no exception to show more this and is a fun, thoughtful look at growing into adulthood. show less

Author is a poet, not a primary teacher in the trenches. Off-topic, in a short book that should be kept in focus, he takes a moment to blast phonics instruction, to disparage other methods, and to say that only whole-language has a chance of producing readers. He also reminds us, unnecessarily and as a straw-man, that the worries of American students compared to other nations' students, using comparative words as vague as 'better' and 'weaker' are unanswerable.

The other problem is that this show more is dated. He says that adults don't read enough and write less. Another straw man. What am I doing right now but writing? What are comment threads on social media made up of, if not reading and writing? Also (later) he does not have a clue that digital and audiobooks will become portable and convenient, but he does pre-emptively think that digital books would be horrid.

That said, he writes engagingly, and I do have hopes that when he finally gets the stage set I'll learn something from his ideas.
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p. 56 finally begins the Tips. Most involve butchering text to create random resonances. Read a newspaper cross-column, read only every other line, or every other line backwards, etc. The one idea I do like is to take a bit of poetry that I'm struggling with, and replace every noun (or verb) with a different random one, thus decoding the structure first. "The forest and the trees are separated." Then put the intended words back in. (And, of course, always read poetry [except concrete poetry] aloud.)

And read at least portions of other works aloud to yourself. Slow down to that speed if a passage is beautiful, or difficult, or worth thinking about. I agree with him about that.

I like his definition of classics. They "were created by people who looked at life squarely and had something wise or beautiful to say about it, with freshness and originality."

I like the idea of the French leaflet, 10 sonnets cut line by line so that they can be paged through in "One Hundred Trillion Poems" like the little board books that allow a child to put a giraffe head on a monkey's body with a fish's tail. [a:Raymond Queneau|15957|Raymond Queneau|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1491630480p2/15957.jpg] had to construct those very carefully. I'm not sure how creative the reader is though.

I appreciate how he reads a book of poetry - I do much the same often. First, last, the shorter ones, the rest of 'em if warranted, and then the whole thing straight through if worthy.

"Why don't we... read according to what we need? Have you been feeling trivial? Read some philosophy. Have you been stuck in the same town too long? Read about an exotic place. Has your imagination been running riot? Read a good how-to book on plumbing. Does your life seem too cut and dried? Go to the library, close your eyes, reach out and take a book, check it out, go home, and read every word of it. These are all creative uses of reading."

I do like the idea of reading by location, but I don't like his examples, so I'll paraphrase. Reading [b:Walden|16902|Walden|Henry David Thoreau|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1630470982l/16902._SY75_.jpg|2361393] on a nature hike or in a wilderness cabin is a good fit... but what would it be like to read [a:Elmore Leonard|12940|Elmore Leonard|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1240015224p2/12940.jpg] or [b:The Old Man and the Sea|2165|The Old Man and the Sea|Ernest Hemingway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1329189714l/2165._SY75_.jpg|69741] there? Or what would it be like to read this book on the beach? Experiment creatively!

"By going into some detail here about typefaces and book design, I am not suggesting that we all need to become experts on the subject. I do believe, though, that we will become better readers if we are more aware of the circumstances--sometimes the constraints--under which we read. Otherwise, in having trouble reading a poorly designed book, we may blame ourselves or the author for shortcomings that instead are the publisher's. show less

There are some really good poems in this collection - I like the one about how difficult it would have been for us to do multiplication with Roman numerals such as MDCCCLXIV. In 'Paris again' Padgett has French waiters down to a T - 'grumpy and snooty and Cartesian and quick all at the same time'.