Hooks

I was pleased to see that my poem Great White made it into Melissa Guillet's Hooks anthology. I couldn't be in better company, including Melissa herself, and other prominent poets in the New England area. It helped to salvage a hellish day of my car overheating and my blood pressure soaring.

My first time

reading in Connecticut, that is. I read at Peaberry's Cafe in Simsbury, CT tonight. I read a couple of my old chestnuts. The one on Cher you may appreciate more if you remember the saying that "after nuclear holocaust, there will be only two forms of life left on earth: cockroaches and Cher."

• My Pillow Woke Me Up
  
• Livin' in the Skinny Shadow of Cher
  

So what?

Along with Mary Oliver, one of the generators of many "so what?" poems (to me) is Billy Collins. Michael Hettich's review of Collins' "The Trouble with Poetry" seems to give with one hand what it takes with the other. After calling the poems meandering and self-satisfied, he says there are a few probing poems which "redeem an otherwise forgettable book." And, along with making these observations

As in his previous books, Collins' rhythms are closer to those of conversational prose than of verse, and these poems contain little variation in voice, rhythm or tone. Too many of the poems in The Trouble with Poetry, while entertaining, are marred by a cuteness that strives to pass as revelation...

Unlike the best poetry, these poems grow less interesting with each successive reading...

The Trouble with Poetry is filled with meditations that meander from their main subjects to become, in a sense, anti-meditations or portraits of a mind avoiding itself.

he also says

There are, however, a number of poems here that resist easy solutions to the imagined situations they set themselves....

One of the pleasures of reading Collins is following his narrator's digressive mind as it moves across the landscape of the domestic world we share with him. In some of the most interesting and successful poems here, however, Collins develops his ideas in less whimsical, more focused and ultimately more moving ways.

And I think I get what he's saying until he quotes the final poem in the book: a poem which I was liking until it became writing about writing at the end. Come on, how many times do I have to suffer writing about writing? I can't take it anymore. It's like taking a picture of your camera in a mirror. Stop it!

A life of poetry, told in the language of a poet

Aieleen Jacobson's article in Newsday about Gloria Murray was encouraging. At a time when the audience for the open reading in Shelburne Falls has plummeted, it's good to hear that other poetry communities are growing.

Beginning Thursday, her poem "In My Mother's House" will be showcased on a Web site created by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. At www.americanlifeinpoetry.org, Kooser offers a free weekly poem that, he writes, "is brief and will be enjoyable and enlightening" to any publication that wants it. The readership of newspapers that carry the poems exceeds 10 million, says assistant editor Pat Emile. Murray, who is poet No. 31, is the only Long Island writer to have been chosen so far.

When Murray moved to Long Island from Queens in 1973, she says, there weren't many organizations for poets. Now, she says, Long Island is a "hotbed," and she loves being part of a close-knit community that includes Live Poets Society and Performance Poets Association.

In My Mother's House

By Gloria g. Murray

every wall
stood at attention
even the air knew
when to hold its breath
the polished floors
looked up
defying heel marks
the plastic slipcovers
crinkled in discomfort
in my mother's house
the window shades
flapped
against the glare
of the world
the laughter
crawled like roaches
back into the cracks
even the humans sat
cardboard cut-outs
around the table
and with silver knives
sliced and swallowed
their words

Slam poet has an impact

An article by Karen Gardner about someone in my neck of the woods extolls the virtues of slam poetry in getting high school students excited about words. Taylor Mali reportedly uses a method described by Billy Collins as "teaching it backwards" by first introducing students to spoken word -- as opposed to literary -- poetry. Mali quotes founder of slam poetry Marc Smith as saying "I didn't invent a new style of poetry. What I invented was a new way of listening to poetry." Mali has won the national poetry slam four times, and he's led six national poetry slam teams to the finals.

Spoken word poetry, said Mali, has to be immediately accessible.

"Students need to be able to get it, and being able to understand it quickly," Mali said. "Instead of reading a poem over and over again and 'I don't get it. I just don't get it.'"

And therein lies the rub for me. It's sorta like the McDonald'sization of poetry, to say we get kids interested in food by giving them slippery burgers that slide right down the throat. And I certainly think it's good to get kids interested in this way, and I won't go so far as to say that slam poetry isn't really poetry, but perhaps I'd say that slam poetry is poetry on its most superficial level, and that one can get really good at being superficial. And that may be enough for a lot of people. And if that brings more people into poetry then I guess that's a good thing. What's even better is if it leads people to experiment with the rest of the poetry that's out there, poetries without empty calories.

Having said that, I don't believe that something accessible is automatically bad or shallow, or that something difficult is automatically good and profound. Maybe L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets would believe that. And I'm sure there are some slam poems which are better than many literary poems, although I don't know if they would be the ones to win slam competitions. But there is room enough for more than one aesthetic, and whether one is slamming, iambing or just plain hamming it's a better activity than a lot of alternatives, especially for teenagers.

Set List 10/21/05

Tonight at Shelburne Falls I chose four from the eleven poems I've written since last month. The first poem kind of sets up the second poem. The second poem is one I like for the use of rhyme which I think is relatively natural and unforced. Also, it deals with the process of grieving, which I feel particularly drawn to lately. The last two poems are powder puffs to please the audience.

• Ladder
  
• Stairway to Fallen
  
• It's All Good
  
• The Edison Whistle
  

Obscurity

So tonight is the open reading at Shelburne Falls, and I'm not sure what I'm going to read. My most recent poems have been written more for the page than the stage, and many of them are somewhat obscure. I've been more inclined to evoke a sensibility than to delineate an easily accessible thought. And I wonder if I am pushing the boundaries of what I can do, or if I am lapsing into a state of fraudulence. Am I being self-indulgent, and, if so, do I deserve to be self-indulgent after a couple years of writing mostly to please an audience? But even if my self-indulgence is deserving, it certainly doesn't mean anyone else has to hear it.

I think my work has taken a darker, more inward turn since I've become more aware of the mortality of those closest to me. It may be just a phase, and my usual desire for novelty will eventually propel me to something else. But in the meantime I feel compelled to write this way even as I'm painfully aware that what I'm writing will mostly disappoint people who've come to expect something different from me.

Well, in the long run, I suppose it doesn't really matter. It's just poetry; it's not like it will have an effect on the mortality of the people whose vulnerability has been weighing on my mind. Anyway, I was Googling Poetry Obscurity and came across this lengthy article by Donald Justice, which I haven't completely read, but I like so far.

You should know about ... Arthur Rimbaud

Texas would not be my expected source for a reminder of the life and poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, but, incredibly here is an article about him in the Daily Texan. It's interesting to compare the Fowlie, Schmidt and Mason translations.

Helen Vendler Listens Invisibly

I have several Helen Vendler books: Poets Thinking; Coming of Age as a Poet; Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire; On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems; and The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Something good in all of them. And there are plenty more available. There is a brief essay on her newest: Invisible Listeners.

The Black Anthology

I've been reading the Back Anthology lately. I have a new appreciation for the rhythms in Nikki Giovanni's poetry. Actually, when I read her poetry I hear the voice of Lenelle Moise, who I've had the pleasure of hearing several times. Hey I just discovered she has a blog. Anyway, I particularly like Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks and Carolyn Rodgers, but there is an article on June Jordan which is worth a read.

What I like about many of the poems I've been reading in the anthology is that important things are at stake, unlike a lot of contemporary poems which wax angst over hangnails.

Now that's what I'm talkin' about

I confess I have no retirement plan. When I was younger I never thought I'd live this long. I have some savings, but no kind of growing retirement investment portfolio. My vague plans for seniority are described in young poet Lara Coley's hopes for the future:

As for the distant future, she would be satisfied if she was "just well-known enough that people want me to travel to their schools or their cities and teach, and to be in-house poet for the year."

You can read more about Lara Coley to appreciate how important a supportive teacher can be to creative effort.

Here are her poems: two-timing and Cracks.

Poetry Roundup 10/13/05

I had no idea that this week is Random Acts of Poetry Week

A review of Miller and Lucinda Williams' show sounds like it was a really good event: the mixing of poetry by the dad and song by the daughter.

I've been wondering lately why we don't currently have iconic poets in America of the stature of a Longfellow or Frost, and today there is an article on Longfellow which asks whatever happened to him (meaning his reputation.) But I'd ask, whatever happened to the reputation of the "national poet", so that there is no one of such popularity and veneration in modern times. Perhaps we all just really suck. I'd be tempted to say that we can esteem a national poet only as high as we esteem the character of the nation, but during Longfellow's time we were just as bloody and annihilating as we are now, if not more so.

I'm not very familiar with the poetry of Philip Levine. On the one hand he's praised for being accessible, and on the other hand he's criticized for being too prosaic and mundane. This is a common dilemma for the work of many poets. Like the poetry, this article on him is also accessible and mundane.

More non-dull poetry

Brod Bagert is like me in having given up poetry only to return to it later. I also started writing poems in the third grade. I wrote, not out of angst, but to describe things like a fire truck on our playground. My biggest hurdle has been on giving up trying to write in more popular forms with the slight hope of generating some revenue (plays, librettos, etc.) and in focusing only on poetry. Poetry is what I enjoy, and what I happen to be better at (I think.) I saw Russell Crowe on Inside the Actor's Studio say he would still act even if it payed next to nothing. Easy to say as he sits on his millions. I'll go you one better, Russell, you impulse-control-deficient millionaire: I'll write poetry even though it actually does pay nothing.

My favorite quote from the Brod Bagert article:

"You find a poem by listening. If I pointed to a sheet of music and asked if you liked it, that would be weird, wouldn't it?"

Performance: Revitalizer or Flesh-eating Virus of Poetry? II

Rita Dove has her own opinion on performance poetry which she shared in Bangkok.

"In the United States slam poetry is a new form of poetry that is teaching people to listen again, to show them that poetry can be exciting. It all goes back to ancient oral traditions such as the shamans and stories."

Rather than reading poems to oneself, the audience realised that they felt alive when hearing the words spoken out loud. And it is not like a musical concert where there is no interaction, for at a slam, the interaction among participants is vital, she added.

In Thailand, poetry is seen as an academic and difficult creative medium, lacking the easy-to-grasp narration of prose or the spark of art or dance, and there are few young poets left for their notable predecessors to pass the torch to... On the reader side, a book of poetry has hardly ever made it to a local best-selling list. Very few people would voluntarily go out to purchase one anyway.

"People have written to me about their fear of poetry," Dove said. In defence of the genre, she added: "It's not a musty, esoteric and snooty art, but is in fact born out of real life. I always ask my students at the University of Virginia what do they do when they're not writing poems, such as how do they live? Poetry is not born out of poets, but is born from living."

Performance: Revitalizer or Flesh-eating Virus of Poetry?

Shirely Dent has something to say about elevating energy and gusto over talent and judgement in her A Howl against performance poetry These are her words on the Poetry Society's Foyle Young Poets Awards event on National Poetry day this year in the UK:

Some performance poets - like Lemn Sissay - are good poets, so let's not go mad and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Nevertheless, the bath water is stagnant with its own misplaced self-righteousness and needs a good flushing out.

Voice has become, not something that is welded into lines of language on a once-blank page, but a fetishised thing of personal ownership - my voice, with my accent and all I have to say with this voice is to do with me, me, me. That's why the only way you can experience this language is if I personally perform it for you.

The energy and gusto of the young performers were never in doubt, but energy and gusto alone do not maketh the poet. Somebody has told these young people it is enough to speak and that they should be - will be - listened to; that their own authentic voice is enough... These kids may have reason to rant, but they should not make the mistake of thinking that ranting is enough without the 3Rs...reason, rhythm and risk. 'I want to be some place / where I am not judged by my race' simply doesn't cut it and does nothing to astound me or assault my senses.

The rhymes of the father

Miller And Lucinda Williams are discussed in this article about one of their joint performances.

"I believe that every poem should begin as the poet's and end as the reader's," Miller Williams said about his work and the connection with readers.

"Lucinda and Miller are both poets," friend Michael Thomas said, "but she's a poet of song and he's a poet of work." She grew up around poets and poetry through her father, whose writing counsel she still seeks. She absorbed growing up in the South and uses country, blues and rock influences in her songs.

You might need BugMeNot to view the second page.

Favorite Lucinda Williams songs: "Can't Let Go" and "Essence."
Favorite Miller Williams book: "How Does a Poem Mean?" (with John Ciardi)

A new dimension for sext messaging

Ah, even the realm of cell phone tanka (Tanka: composed of 31 syllables arranged in a rigid, five-line pattern of 5-7-5-7-7) is a battleground in the war between the academic and the popular, as described in an article on how traditionalists abhor cell phone poetry

Traditionalists frown on cell phone tanka's liberal use of slang and colloquial Japanese. They say the topics are frivolous and the writing shallow and one-dimensional. "Almost all of the cell phone poems are stuff I'd never call tanka," says Tokio Ishii, an 80-year-old former paper company employee who is a ranking member of Shin Araragi, or New Yew Tree, one of Japan's most traditional kessha (poetry society.) "What we do is something like religious training. It's pure literature. On the cell phones what they're doing is more like a chat group."

What's more, Kenya Washio, 61, an editor, says, nobody improves in cell phone tanka because everyone is just too nice. In a kessha, poets learn their craft the hard way: by having their creations torn to shreds at group readings. "Tanka is an exercise in masochism," he says. "You get criticized and put down, you curse, you're mortified, you cry. Then you go home and write some more."

The younger poets argue that the cell phone has opened up tanka to a wider group of people who would never have put up with the rules and rigor of a kessha. Young Japanese say tanka is surprisingly suited to the cell phone. It's short enough to fit on little mobile screens, and simple enough to let young poets whip out bits of verse whenever the spirit moves them. Scores of tanka home pages and bulletin boards are popping up on cell phone Internet sites with names like Palm-of-the-Hand Tanka and Teenage Tanka. Japan's national public broadcaster airs a weekly show called "Saturday Night Is Cell Phone Tanka," which gets about 3,000 poems e-mailed from listeners' mobiles each week on topics like parental nagging and the boy in the next class.

Raul Rivero: A poet unbowed by Cuba's jails

Freed Cuban poet and journalist Raúl Rivero, in Miami this week to read his poetry, talked with The Miami Herald about his career and how he survived prison.

Under the dim light of a single bulb, he wrote love poems -- the only thing, his jailers warned him, he was allowed to write.

"Every time I finished a poem, I felt that they had not defeated me," said the 59-year-old, freed in April and now living in Madrid, where his jailhouse poems were published under the title Corazón sin furia (Heart Without Fury).

"It's a very special book because it was edited by the police," Rivero quips.

Before he could give the poems to his wife during her visits, allowed only once every three months, Rivero had to hand his poems over to the prison guard assigned to him for his approval.

He would hand in 10, Rivero says, get seven back.

"He always felt obligated to censor something," he says.

Then he laughs: "It didn't matter. He censored the silliest poems."

I hope someone translates him into English.

Islamo-fascism

It would be an understatement to say I am not a staunch Bush supporter. But I loved these quotes from his recent defense of the war on terror.

Citing recent attacks in London, Sharm el-Sheikh and Bali, Bush said while the bombings appeared random, they serve a clear ideology, "a set of beliefs that are evil but not insane," and gave a new name for the ideology: Islamo-facism.

"Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims: 'What is good for them and what is not.' And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers. He assures them that this is the road to paradise, though he never offers to go along for the ride," Bush said.

For opinion on how the left is failing to properly perceive and respond to the Islamo-fascist threat, see Sasha Abramsky's piece at openDemocracy.

What are British poets writing about?

Nature, war - or washing up? As Britain's top poetry prize is awarded today, John Mullan examines what preoccupies British leading writers.

In the long run, however dusty their embrace, it is the attention of academics that gives poets their standing... While the prizes and their attached ceremonials are good propaganda, poets need translators to help them find readers.

Yet in their hearts, poets cannot help but think that the fizz and splutter of contemporaneity is besides the point. The only reputation that matters is posthumous. Death, makes the poet's reputation secure, or fails to do so. The poets competing for prizes every year would surely forsake any prize money for the sake of just one timelessly memorable poem to leave behind them.

No dull poetry allowed

I like this article I found through Google news. A poet reads humorous works and helps students learn to write poems about real life -- sort of. If you need a login, you can get one from Bug Me Not, which is a handy place to check out when faced with those pesky registrations.

Yes, there's certainly a place for angst in poetry, but there's also a place for the pure fun of screwing around with words.

Smallville a la Mode

My daughter and I are big fans of Smallville. This season's opener was awesome! I particularly liked the scene where Chloe and Clark discuss her knowledge of his secret, and he fills her in on the details. And the Depeche Mode song "Precious" played at the end was just the right touch. It would be nice if their forthcoming album "Playing the Angel" is as good.

Precious and fragile things
Need special handling
My God what have we done to you
We always tried to share
The tenderest of care
Now look what we have put you through

Things get damaged
Things get broken
I thought we'd manage
But words left unspoken
Left us so brittle
There was so little left to give

Angels with silver wings
Shouldn't know suffering
I wish I could take the pain for you
If God has a master plan
That only He understands
I hope it's your eyes He's seeing through

Things get damaged
Things get broken
I thought we'd manage
But words left unspoken
Left us so brittle
There was so little left to give

I pray you learn to trust
Have faith in both of us
And keep room in your hearts for two

Things get damaged
Things get broken
I thought we'd manage
But words left unspoken
Left us so brittle
There was so little left to give