Stingy Kids

Beautiful beyond imagining

The title of this post comes from John Updike's 2008 article "Visions of Mars," which appeared in National Geographic.  It ends with this paragraph:

The dead planet is not so dead after all: Avalanches and dust storms are caught on camera, and at the poles a seasonal sublimation of dry ice produces erosion and movement. Dunes shift; dust devils trace dark scribbles on the delicate surface. Whether or not evidence of microbial or lichenous life emerges amid this far-off flux, Mars has become an ever nearer neighbor, a province of human knowledge. Dim and fanciful visions of the twinkling fire planet have led to panoramic close-ups beautiful beyond imagining.

I like the phrase "beautiful beyond imagining."  In the article, Updike describes how the late 19th century astronomer Percival Lowell elaborated a history of Mars as a planet inhabited by beings on the brink of extinction.  Later, Orson Welles infamously capitalized on colonial and industrial-era anxieties with his broadcast of "War of the Worlds,"  which imagined our Earth as a paradise for the dying Martian race.  We know now that whatever life Mars may have nurtured no longer animates its surface.  The desiccated Martian landscape most likely serves as a preview of what our own world will look like long after we've left it.  Nevertheless, Updike describes Mars as "mostly dead," a world of persistent movement and change.  Although there is no life as we know it on Mars, this "flux," as he calls it, is a quality of life. 

I don't mean for this to be a sad post, especially on David's birthday.  Lately, I've been reading Ecclesiastes, so ruminations on transience are inevitable.  Our son is almost nine months old, and though each day with him moves too quickly, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Updike wrote a wonderful poem about the Rovers that I long have regarded as "our poem."  Now "our" includes Lev, whose curious gaze and intrepid roving has transfigured our daily life, "beautiful beyond imagining":

“This planet needs our shovels’ bite 
   And treadmarks in the dust 
To tell if life and hematite 
   Pervade its arid crust.” 

“There’s life, by all the stars above, 
   On Mars—it’s you and I!” 
Blithe Spirit cried. “Let’s rove, my love, 
   And meet before we die!”

from "Duet on Mars" by John Updike

Soothe, Delight, Forever

The April issue of O, the Oprah Magazine has an entire section (36 pages!) dedicated to poetry. David Orr may see this as a "sign of the coming apocalypse" (or "O-pocalypse"?), but I think it's fantastic.  I've followed Oprah on and off over the years, and going into this issue there were a few poets I expected to find (Maya Angelou, of course!), but there was much in here that surprised me.

For instance, I've never been a fan of W.S. Merwin's work, but I really enjoyed Susan Casey's interview with the octogenarian poet.  Merwin and his wife Paula make their current home in Maui on a stretch of land where they have single-handedly and devotedly saved a species of palm tree from extinction.  Though he has no illusions of saving the earth, he continues to plant a tree a day.  He recalls how, at the age of three, he protested when telephone repairmen began to cut down his favorite oak tree.  I knew he was an environmentalist, but this one memory really hooked me in.  And then there is this wonderful quote on how poetry moves us to action:

"People say they don't read poetry because they don't understand it...But you don't start by understanding it; you begin by physically responding to it: You're hearing something. You're moved. It's not because you just understood a calculus problem—something's got to you, you're not quite sure why and how."

There's a four-page spread of blurbs from various celebrities (actors and visual artists) on their favorite poets and poems.  This section is less persuasive but there were some interesting morsels, like Demi Moore's commentary on Tennyson's "Flower in the Crannied Wall" and Rita Wilson's take on Cavafy's "Ithaka" (which frankly blew me away--I love Cavafy.)  Dan Rather credits his grandmother for his love of poetry, particularly Bible verse, and quotes from Psalm 23.  "I don't know that many people see this as poetry, but I think it really is."  You and me and Robert Alter, Dan!

The section also includes "The O Poetry Primer," a list of twenty books "no reader's library should be without." I admit that I was pleased that most of the authors, if not the specific books listed, are already on my shelf (Deborah Digges was unfamiliar, so I have something to add to my reading list.). The selections aren't meant to be radical; they are staples of any decent poetry collection.  It leans heavily toward the Anglo-American tradition (with the exception of Rumi and Szymborska), but someone new to poetry can't go wrong with these books, and that's the point.

Orr found offense with the fashion spread that concludes the section, but I loved it.  You could even say that I was pea-green with envy to see these young female poets celebrating their youth and work.  I've seen Sumeir Hammad on stage and she is just stunning.  I love the composition of her page, the long line of her arm guiding her words into the air.  On other pages, the poetic text feels tacked on, but Hammad's poetic megaphone alludes to her work as a slam poet. If you've ever seen Anna Moschovakis (poet, translator and editor at Ugly Duckling Presse) in person, you'd know that it's a no-brainer that she be included here.  Her spread features an incredible Haute Hippie suede jacket and a table covered in poetry.  I should add here, by way of disclaimer, that I am an UDP subscriber (you should be too!).  After years of seeing actresses and female pop singers on the cover of every damn magazine in the world, it's such a pleasure to see these beautiful female poets.  I was only sad that Oprah didn't dress up a few hot, young male poets, like Terrance Hayes or Kazim Ali.  If Oprah ever wants to dress up petite academic translators, I volunteer!

I enjoyed this issue so much that I want to spread the love.  In the spirit of Oprah, I'm giving away one copy of O to a Stingy Kids reader (to be chosen randomly). In order to qualify for this giveaway you must...:

1.  Identify the Gone with the Wind (film version) reference in this post.

2. Live in the United States (I'm not mailing this overseas, sorry.).

3. And I'd love it if you would share your favorite poem and/or poet (include a link or excerpt if you can).

 

Margaret Atwood is CRZ!

According to Quill & Quire, Margaret Atwood, who maintains a very active Twitter account, has released an iPhone app that converts the most colloquial textese into Atwoodese.  No joke (well, I think it is but will play along for the sake of National Poetry Month):

Margaret Atwood – author, entrepreneur, Twitter enthusiast, and Tech 2.0 guru – announced today the release of the Appwood, an app that allows iPhones to convert humdrum text messages, tweets, e-mails, and Facebook updates into something that sounds as though they have come from the keyboard of the literary master herself.  (via Q&Q, my emphasis)

How does it work?  I couldn't tell you because I'm not going to spend $9.99 to find out (it's also not in the App Store--April Fools!), but here's an example from the article linked to above:

Without Appwood: “WTF? Boming Lybya? That’s CRZ” 
With Appwood: “War is what happens when language fails”

That's mighty funny!

But you know what is true?  Oprah dedicated part of the April issue of O to poetry.  I'll discuss that later this week.

Poetry shows up in unlikely places.  RLY.  In other words, it's everywhere. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vida Blue

My interest in perfume has been chronicled extensively on this blog (there's even a tag for it, which should make finding my perfume-related posts a little easier--UPDATE: alas, those posts were on my defunct Vox blog).  About a year ago, I began to consider a baseball and perfume pairing that I call "Vida Blue."  Here are my notes for three "Vida Blue" fragrances:

Spring Training

Mint

Grass Linden

Orange

Avocado

Basil

Sugar Cane

Sage

Tuberose

Home, Away

Leather

Caramel

Grass and Loam

Tobacco

Salt

Winter Ball

Cocoa, Star anise, Sandalwood

 

"Spring Training" is promising, the other two not so much.  But in my perfumista fantasy, Minka Kelly and Derek Jeter are the models and spokespeople for "Vida Blue" (although Jeter has his own line and would probably consider this a conflict of interest).

While I'm in the mood for sharing, here's my recipe for "Thistles," a fragrance inspired by the poetry of Esther Raab.

Thistles

Vetiver

Lemon Peel

Thistle tincture

Eucalyptus

Olive

Frankincense/Oudh

Lily or Rose

It was always meant to be a poem

As the poet G. C. Waldrep rightly noted at a reading I attended, "There are two poems. The one on paper and the one you read out loud." This distinction motivates William Shatner's 1968 spoken word album The Transformed Man. If you haven't heard Shatner's rendition of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," I urge you to do so (see below). Over the years, this album has undergone its own "transformation" from "worst album" to "so bad it's good" relevance thanks to the ongoing generosity of parody (most notably in Family Guy). Recently, Shatner appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, where he performed an excerpt of Sarah Palin's farewell speech as a poem.  I had to laugh when O'Brien introduced him as a "master thespian," but I think it's fair to say that Shatner has a gift for self-parody.  A jazz duo accompanied him, giving the performance a "beat" quality that worked well with Shatner's deadpan delivery and, again, gave the performance a risible air of authenticity. I must quibble, however, with O'Brien's insinuation that poetry is what is nonsensical.  Arguably, Palin's speech makes far more sense when it is crafted into a poem.  To demonstrate I've included the "poem" below but added line breaks where I saw fit, and because I can't help but cram another crazy juxtaposition into this post, the font is inspired by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind.

   

This Last Frontier by Sarah Palin et al Soaring through nature's finest show. Denali, The Great One, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. 

In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with all of its ice fogged frigid beauty,

the cold though, doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extremes summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us   that here, Mother Nature wins.

And it is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future

 

Sonnet 99

The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride,
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
In my love’s veins thou has too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both,
And to his robb’ry had annexed thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth,
A vengeful canker ate him up to death.
More flow’rs I noted, yet I none could see,
But sweet or color it had stol’n from thee.

This is the only fifteen line sonnet by Shakespeare.  Regarding line 5: In Elizabethan times, those of noble birth would trace the veins in their hands and arms with blue pencil.  This was also a common practice in the court of Louis XVI.  The expression 'blue blood" derives in part from the visibility of blue veins on pale skin.  Tan skin was considered plebian and associated with outdoor labor. 

The Yips

This past Sunday,  Mike Pelfrey, a starting pitcher for the New York Mets, balked at the mound three times in a game against the San Francisco Giants.  Baseball rules spell out clearly what constitutes a balk.  It's not uncommon but it is costly, as runners on base instantly advance to the next base.  Three times in one game is, unfortunately, uncommon.  Pelfrey blamed it on a temporary case of the yips, a sudden and inexplicable loss of ability. 

First baseman Jeremy Reed later told reporters that he tried to say something to Pelfrey to get his mind back in the game but had little experience in that role.  Sometime jams in baseball can be resolved by one perfect pitch, but what if the pitch is lodged somewhere, out of reach.  What line can you cast to get it out?  

In fall 1995, I attended a Galway Kinnell-Gary Snyder reading at the University of Richmond.  I was with a friend who was an avid Kinnell fan, and on the drive to the campus, she tried to describe the experience of hearing him read his poetry live.  "You'll have to hear it for yourself," she told me, giving up.  The theme of the reading was the environment.  Snyder read new poems and a few from Turtle Island, which won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  Then he turned the podium to Kinnell.  My friend was right.  Kinnell had a wonderful, deep voice and read his poems in measured and steady cadences.  It was an example for me of how to be a good reader of poetry without engaging in theatrics.  After reading some of his poems, he shared "One Ordinary Evening" by Virginia Hamilton Adair, who published her first collection at the age of 83.  (Ants on the Melon was published the following year.)  As far as poetry readings go, this was excellent.

Then Kinnell announced that the last poem he would read would be "The Bear," his signature poem.  It's a long poem, and what made Kinnell's readings of The Bear so famous is that he could do it entirely from memory.  So he began--

In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.

A few stanzas into the poem, Kinnell stopped.  He started from the beginning and, again, stopped in the same place.  He paused and said that something was breaking his concentration.   Like others, I looked around trying to find anything out of place, out of the ordinary.  But the door was closed, no one was going in and out, and we were quiet.  Did he see something we couldn't see?  It quickly became clear that Kinnell would not get out of that jam and, then, from one of the front rows, a man whispered the line that had been misplaced in Kinnell's memory.  Without glancing up Kinnell repeated the line and kept going.  He read this entire, brutal and gorgeous poem out loud.  When he finished, he reached into the cheering audience and grabbed the man by the hand, grateful that he had got him through the inning.

El beisbolista, el poeta

Miguel Batista is a published poet and novelist--he's also a relief pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.  He started his MLB career in 1992 with the Pittsburgh Pirates but hasn't spent that long with any team, nine in total.  Overall, he's had a solid career but his performance this season has been uneven.  This is what the Red Sox commentators were observing when one of them mentioned that he also wrote poetry.  "You don't hear that often.  A baseball player who is also a poet.  And he's published too."  Upon hearing this, my head exploded.

Batista's official website represents all sides of the man: poet, writer, musician, baseball player and (touchingly) human being.  In his own words:

Dominicano por destino, pelotero por profesión, poet por pasión" es una frase  que resume la vida de Miguel Batista. Porque para hablar de él hay que viajar un poco más allá de su prestigio como jugador de  béisbol y ahondar en sus valores humanos, así como en las miles de páginas en que se revela su vocación por la palabra.

Dominican by birth, pitcher by profession, poet by vocation" sums up Miguel Batista's life in an nutshell.  To really understand who he is, you have to dig deeper than his fame as a Major League Baseball player, and get to know his human values.  You have to immerse yourself in the thousands of pages he has penned as a poet and novelist, revealing his heartfelt passion for the written word.

Baseball season affords players very little down time.  Apparently, Dustin Pedroia and Terry Francona play cribbage before games.  A lot of players tune out with video games.  Batista writes.  His first book--Sentimientos en blanco y negro--slowly came together, in fits and starts: 

...pese a su agitada agenda deportiva y aprovechando su escaso tiempo libre, en aviones, en el "clubhouse" o donde fuera, Miguel iba escribiendo en papeles sueltos o libretas, sus sueños, sus dudas, temores y amores.

In spite of his hectic schedule and little free time, Miguel wrote on scraps of paper and notebooks, in the dugout, on airplanes, wherever he happened to be.  He wrote about his dreams, his doubts, his fears, his loves.  It was 1999, and he never imagined that any of his writings might be published one day.

Something about this process--it's fragmentary quality--reminds me of Marina Tsvetaeva, an early twentieth century Russian poet.  I read once how Tsvetaeva would quickly pen a line poetry while making dinner or tending to her daughters.  Granted she worked under particularly straitened circumstances, but a number of great poets have juggled writing with full-time careers in other professions--for example, Wallace Stevens (lawyer) and William Carlos Williams (physician).

There are a few poems in Spanish and English on his website.  Read them and make your own assessment of his work.  What interests me, and what I admire, is that Batista makes time for a creative life.  And he doesn't compartmentalize it.  It isn't relegated, as it was for Robert Mitchum, to a secret, private practice.  It's all there in the open--the good, bad and uneven--"...we kindly/ surrender to the most beautiful feeling/ we have always known" ("Perfect Stranger").

PEN World Voices: Poetry Reading

Blurry photo of Wayne Koestenbaum and Nicole Brossard reading "Transcreation." 5/1/09

poem to understand
how people bend
before an idea
their hair barely brushing the depth of silence

Poem(é), Nicole Brossard

5/1: After "Discovering Unbearable Truths," I headed to the Bowery Poetry Club for two events: Poetry Reading  and The Translation Slam.  This post will address the reading.  The slam requires it's own space (you'll soon understand).

What drew me to the reading, honestly, was the opportunity to hear Nicole Brossard, one of my favorite writers, read her work in person.  I've heard that she's a charismatic and dynamic reader of her own work and she did not disappoint.

My notes are very fragmentary.  I would jot down, quickly, a few observations or lines after each author finished reading.  Looking back on my notes, I find myself scratching my head.  Why did I write "nice belly"  with regard to Brossard?  I realize that most of my notes have more to do with the performance of the poems than what the poets actually read.  And what they wore.  Here you go:

PEN World Voices: Discovering Unbearable Truths

Uwe Kolbe and Uljana Wolf in conversation with Susan Bernofsky

I arrived late, after Uljana Wolf had read her poems, but in time to hear Uwe Kolbe read "Fathers and Sons."  The panel description tells us that "These two writers from Germany woke up one day to realize that their lives were built on some terrible lies. Uwe Kolbe discovered that his own father had been spying on him for the Stasi, and Uljana Wolf had a similar awakening. Find out how they put the truth of their lives back together, came to reinterpret their pasts, and how these understandings influenced their writing."  From this description, one can draw a connection to Kolbe's poem, even though it doesn't read explicitly autobiographical.  

Wolf and Kolbe offered reflections on their status as post-war writers, though they represent different  generations.  Kolbe was already an adult in 1989; Wolf, a ten-year old child.  Their perspectives and experiences may differ but they acknowledge that so much remains to be uncovered and understood with regard to East Germany, and their works respectively emerge from this desire to make sense of the past.  They continue to breathe the "air of suspicion," as Kolbe calls it.  At the same time, their work has also moved in other directions, to other times and places.

Q&A: An audience member was not pleased by what she perceived to be an evasion of the original topic.  "Can we address the topic of the panel?" meaning, I suppose, the personal 'unbearable truths' hinted at in the description.  I understand that hearing these personal narratives may have motivated attendance but the question also missed the point, which is how these true stories find expression in or shape their poems.  Someone at the festival said "poetry concerns itself with the truth."  This isn't a point I care to argue, but the panel highlighted a familiar tension between talkshow truth and partial truths.  How does poetry concern itself with what is unbearably or unbelievably true?  Maybe like this:

FATHER AND SON

Keeping the distance 
and staying close together 
with dangling arms. 
The father the uniform, 
the son with Rasta hair. 
The Father's got Prussia in his rucksack, 
the son on the surfboard 
towards the mouth of the river. 
The Father travelling, 
the son the internal emigration. 
The Father the letters, 
the son doesn‘t speak. 
Father, who takes it easy, 
son to his heart. 
Fighting each other without rules, 
more seriously than anytime at the playground, 
longer than lifelong. 
The Fathers never die, 
one hears since ears have existed, 
and seldom do the sons live.

© Translation: 2001, Sapphire/Ramona Lofton

What is the true story:  In 1989, after the Wall came down, some artists were "invited" to see their Stasi files.  It was discovered that the poet Sacha Anderson, a friend of many East German artists, had been a Stasi informant.  "Like a spider sitting in a net."

In 1992, Kolbe was able to read his file.  "[It was] like someone wrote you a biography, and autobiography, yet you had no idea."  He flipped through the pages, and came upon a few written in familiar type.  He recognized it as his father's typewriter print.  Kolbe was estranged from his father, and when he confronted him, his father defended his actions, claiming that the information he provided kept the Stasi from engaging in more extensive investigations.  "I defended you," his father said.  Another informer was a good, older friend.  According to Kolbe, that betrayal carried more of a sting.

Citing Gabriel García Márquez as an example, Kolbe remarked that "most of what 'real' literature is is telling your own story."  Post-war writers "are just telling their own story, coming from different places...east or west, or whatever." 

From where I was sitting, I had trouble hearing Wolf and didn't take as many notes when she spoke.  Her poems are wonderful, mesmerizing.  Here's a link to a few from DICHTionary, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.