Stingy Kids

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Praise Song for the Day: Inauguration

"After Obama spoke, Elizabeth Alexander rendered a poem." ^*

Inviting a poet to speak at inauguration is not a long standing tradition.  Robert Frost (Kennedy), Maya Angelou (Clinton), Millard Williams and, now, Elizabeth Alexander have shared their work on the inaugural stage.  President (President!) Barack Obama wrote poetry in college, so I'm not surprised that he included a poem in the festivities.  The choice of Alexander, on the other hand, was a bit of surprise for some in the literary blogging sphere, since she's not a big name or major political poet (but how many "big name" living poets can most people name?  I rest my case.).  Alexander is hardly an unknown.  She's written four books of poetry, taught literature for several years (winning teaching excellence awards in the process), and is currently chair of African American Studies at Yale.  She knows Obama and his family from her days teaching at University of Chicago, so it seems that the choice, in part, was personal.  As it was for Kennedy and Clinton.  

What mattered most to me was that Alexander represents a large number of devoted writers and educators who work for love not fame.  I thought of my grandmother who taught high school and college literature for over thirty years.  I thought of my mother-in-law, who recently retired from teaching high school literature but continues to teach composition at a local college.  The poem itself felt very uneven but its rougher corners may feel otherwise in a few days.  When asked to describe the task at hand, Alexander replied: "Overwhelming, humbling, joyful. What we have is his understanding that the arts do have a place in day-to-day life, that poetry can still us--that is, let us pause for a moment and, as we contemplate that careful, careful language, hopefully see situations anew, from a different angle."  

An official text of Alexander's poem is not available yet but someone already posted a video on line (see below).  I will provide a link to a transcript of the poem but resist extensive quotation here.  The transcripts I've encountered read like prose pieces, and I prefer to honor Alexander's original line breaks and punctuation (or lack thereof).

   

Here's a video of Maya Angelou reading "On the Pulse of Morning," my favorite of the four inauguration poems:

And, finally, Robert Frost reading "The Gift Outright."  This was not the poem that he composed for the inauguration but, as you can see in the video, the glare of the sun made it difficult for him to read his page, so Frost opted for a poem he had already committed to memory.  The original inauguration poem "Dedication" began with the following lines: "Summoning artists to participate/ In the august occasions of the state/ seems something for us all to celebrate." Yes, it is.

 

*"History at noon: Obama is US President," Thaindian News  

Latset!

Latset! An Anthology against the War in Gaza is currently available as a free pdf download (Hebrew only).  In Hebrew, "latset" means "to leave, get out" and is used in this context as an imperative.  The anthology represents a collaboration between poets and visual artists, some of whom may be familiar names outside of Israel.  The work of the poet Aharon Shabtai, for instance, has been widely translated.  I'd also like to highlight the participation of the poets Salman Masalha, Rami Saari, Merhav Yeshurun and Efrat Mishori.  The anthology, Mati Shmuelof writes, "has been prepared with great urgency and rage, at the outbreak of the war, as an act of emergency protest."  It is also, "a collaboration of hope."  A number of journals came together to put together this anthology, including Daka, which I wrote about in an earlier post.  For those who don't read Hebrew, here's my translation of a poem that I thought was particularly outstanding:

She was killed in Gaza

by Roni Hirsch

Maybe I was killed today

I do not know

there were discrepancies

in the international news reports

maybe I was killed today in Gaza

my family and I embraced and watched the blue sky

afterwards we scattered, maybe it happened then

and maybe we were still together

I went back to the past

the war was still before us

I do not know

in which one I was killed

maybe it was World War II

and Italian planes bombed Tel Aviv

Poetry @ YouTube

YouTube user joshuamarie77 is the poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson, whose poemfilm journal, Rabbit Light Movies, was mentioned in a much earlier post. Snippets of these episodes are available for viewing on YouTube but haven't been updated for several months.  That's probably because he has switched over to Vimeo.  I love the scruffiness of YouTube but, I admit, the Vimeo videos look more professional.  What a difference context makes.  Compare and contrast with this video of Joyelle McSweeney reading "Piaf":

Joyelle McSweeney from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

Amy King has a more active YouTube channel, amyhappens.  She curated and moderated a panel on Race and Poetry for the 2008 Boog City Festival.  I missed the festival entirely so I'm grateful that she has posted videos of this event.  I'm slowly making my way through her videos of the panel. 

President-Elect

I've amassed a large folder of links to election-related articles that I've enjoyed over the past few months.  Some of these articles have challenged my understanding of certain issues.  Others, like the Siglo 21 endorsement, struck me for their depth of feeling.  I wanted to share a few of these with you.  I think it's clear from my selections that I endorsed Barack Obama but I also want to call attention to Senator John McCain's concession speech.  I thought it was incredible--gracious, kind, respectful.   

The Poetry of Barack Obama (via NYT)
Obama, Poet by Rebecca Mead

Harold Bloom, who in fifty-three years of teaching literature at Yale University has had many undergraduate poems pressed hopefully upon him said, when reached by telephone in New Haven last week, that he was not familiar with Obama’s oeuvre. But after studying the poems he said that he was not unimpressed with the young man’s efforts—at least, by the standards established by other would-be bards within the political sphere.

The Candidate by William Finnegan

People in Illinois seem largely unaware of Obama’s long, annealing trip into their midst, although they often remark on his unusual calm. Now forty-two and a state senator, Obama emerged, in March, from a raucous primary as the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate. In a seven-person field, he received a remarkable fifty-three per cent of the vote—he even won the “collar” counties around Chicago, communities that supposedly would never support a black candidate. And everyone recalls that, as the votes were being tallied at his headquarters on Election Night, he seemed to be the least agitated person in the place.

Our Support to Barack Obama (Periódico Siglo 21)

For Siglo21, the candidacy of Barack Obama means the freedom and equality made flesh and blood in a political leader.

That only has the meaning of a beautiful season to live, and we want to be here to live it, including, being able to narrate it.

John McCain's Concession Speech

I urge all Americans ... I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.

President-Elect Barack Obama, Victory Speech

Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House (note: referring to Civil War president Abe Lincoln) ­ a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, 'We are not enemies, but friends ... though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.' And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn ­ I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.