The Best American Poetry

Take an Island Vacation in NYC: Hop the Ferry to Staten Island for Matthea Harvey and Justin Bennett's "stillspotting nyc: staten island" Installation

Many times in years past we've sought respite from New York City's steamy summer heat by hopping the ferry to Staten Island.  The trip takes roughly 25 minutes, there's a breeze off the water, a stunning view of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, and, it's free!

Now there's added incentive to head to the ferry's Whitehall terminal: Telettrofono, a fascinating collaboration between award winning poet Matthea Harvey and sound artist Justin Bennett, is live on Staten Island.  Visitors to Telettrofono will be guided to points along the SI waterfront while listening to a 90-minute tale about the real — and not so real — life of inventor Antonio Meucci.  Here's how Matthea Harvey describes the project:

This year I worked on making a soundwalk with amazing sound artist Justin Bennett for the Guggenheim architecture program--it's going on for four weekends (starting this weekend) in Staten Island.. . The piece is called Telettrofono and it's about Antonio Meucci (who invented the telephone decades before Bell) and his mermaid wife, Esterre. Meucci was an amazing nineteenth century inventor who made a marine telephone for divers to speak with ship captains, flame-retardant paint (which he advised using on your underwear) and improved effervescent drinks, among other things. The Telettrofono tour will introduce you to his real and imagined inventions, a mermaid chorus, a preset verifiable fact mode, and the story of a mermaid who leaves the water because of her love of how things sound aboveground.

Matthea shared an excerpt from the audio program:

Preset Fairytale Mode:

Once upon a time in the time

of once upon a time, there was

an inventor who loved a mermaid

and would do anything to please her.

Because she loved sound, he invented

a megaphone, a telettrofono and a drink

that fizzed with the tiny effervescent

fireworks of fermented fruit. Because

she loved light, he invented smokeless

wicks and built a candle factory. Because

she was over-fond of candles, he invented

flame retardant paint. Because she loved

her cats, he came up with a way to carefully

quantify the amount of cream in their milk.

Because she missed her sisters’ voices

he made a marine telephone. Because

her bones were not made for this loud

human world, they began to crack and

ache and crumble. Because she needed quiet

he tried to hush the trains, the carriage,

even the gulls. Because she could no longer

climb up or down the stairs, he carried her.

--

Isn't it dreamy? 

Telettrofono is part of the Guggenheim Museum's two-year multidisciplinary plan to take the museum’s Architecture and Urban Studies programming out into the streets.  You can visit on Saturdays and Sundays, July 21–22, 28–29, and August 4–5, from 12 pm–7 pm.  For more information, go here.

-- sdh

SIX PLATES FROM *PEARLS BEFORE SWINE*, BY ROBERT FERNANDEZ

[i]

[ii]

[iii]

[iv]

[v]

[vi]

---

[i] “Album Zutique” Text: “The Album Zutique was a communal journal for the poets and artists with whom Rimbaud associated while living in Paris....They called themselves Zutistes, a word coined from the French exclamation “zut,” which, depending on context, can mean anything from “golly” to “damn....” Most of [Rimbaud's] poems here are parodies of the work of other poets, and many are ribald in nature.” (Wyatt Mason, from Rimbaud Complete); Image: Grace Jones, from Vamp (1986)

[ii] “Blood of a Young Girl Streaks the Altar” Text: Aeschylus, from Agamemnon; Image: Michael Spinks, from Spinks vs. Tyson, 27 June 1988

[iii] “Disorganized Rainbow” Text: Albert Ramsay, from “Bright Jewels of the Mine” (Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 207 Issue 13, September 1934); Image: Miners, from “Bright Jewels of the Mine”

[iv] “Merle in Switzerland” Text: R.F.; Image: Rivi’s eyes, from Cocaine Cowboys (2006)

[v] "Shelley" Text: R.F.; Image: Amelia Curran, from Portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819) 

[vi] "Take Me Away" Text: "Take Me Away" (1992), Mix Factory; Image: from Tyson

 

Phil Jackson Poet Poke [by Catherine Woodard]

NBA coach Phil Jackson won 11 championships, six with the Chicago Bulls and five with the Los Angeles Lakers. He also was a player for two titles with the Knicks in the 1970s. A Jackson literary tactic was to select books for his players on long road trips. In that spirit, I asked BAP readers to pair poems with NBA and WNBA players. Thanks for the entries. My winners of the Poet Poke.

 

NBA CHAMPS

Mary Karr, award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist, offers Losing Steps by Stephen Dunn for the San Antonio Spurs from her native Texas. Despite a 20-game winning streak in the playoffs, the Spurs were worn down by the younger Oklahoma City Thunder in the semifinals.

“I'll testify for the Spurs with Losing Steps. You can say we all suffer a little slowdown with knee aches that thwart our best games. Speed is a gift from the gods, and as a Texan, I pray they get their legs back.”

Also from Karr, Loony Bin Basketball for Phil Jackson as a coming attraction. Her poem for Jackson will be appear in POETRY magazine in September 2012 .

Todd Muller is founder of Ball In, a website which started as paper zine in the mid-90s dedicated to the idea that basketball is the best way to find meaning in this world. Todd, always a good pickup teammate, tossed me Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which I am assigning to Ron Artest, the Los Angeles Lakers forward who legally changed his name to Metta World Peace. Mr. World Peace was suspended for seven games right before the playoffs for a flagrant foul elbow to Thunder guard James Harden. Overall, he has been suspended 10 times in his 13 years. World Peace would be wise to study Shelley’s sonnet about art and language long outlasting the other legacies of power.

Overheard on National Public Radio just before the playoffs. “They are going to need World Peace going forward…Might be curtains for World Peace.”

Brett Fletcher Lauer is a poet and managing director of the Poetry Society of America. His knees are 33 years old, young by any standard but the NBA. He suggests as summer reading the The Magic of Numbers by Kenneth Koch for the two teams in the finals, Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat, and the many older players who’ve already cleaned out their lockers for the year.

Lauer with memories of the basketball net in his family’s driveway: “Playing against my three older brothers, age provided huge advantages such as their superior motor skill, height, and physical strength—like when they did that thing where they held me back by placing their hand on my head and my arms flailed around unsuccessfully trying to reach them, reach the ball, reach anything but air.  

But in the timeline of an NBA player, it doesn’t seem to work that way
I thought both teams might enjoy Kenneth Koch’s mediation on the magic of numbers and youth.”

Mark Coatney of Tumblr and a teammate in my Sunday pickup game, suggests What Work Is by Philip Levine for LeBron James, who’s in the finals for the second consecutive year with the Miami Heat. The Heat lost to the Dallas Mavericks last year after James bolted the Cleveland Cavaliers in a live ESPN special. “It will help him figure out what was so wrong about how he left Cleveland.”

Michael Schiavo s a poet who lives in Vermont. He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut, and claims, before tip-off, he successfully predicted the exact final score of the Huskie’s 1999 NCAA championship. He recommends A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman for the Thunder’s star Kevin Durant, nicknamed "Durantula,"

“Noiseless is perhaps the wrong word to describe Chesapeake Energy Arena, which has been dubbed both "Loud City" and "The Thunderdome." "Noiseless" is certainly the wrong descriptor to use when talking about Kevin Durant's impact on the NBA. "Patient," however, is applicable to both fans and current players of the franchise formerly known as the Seattle SuperSonics.

This fragment, which first appeared in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, evokes the basketball (and poetry) experience from two vistas, especially when #35 (or the "lonely old courage-teacher") drops the rock. The first stanza mirrors the crowd's (reader) participation in the movement of the game, the hesitation and surge, the witness to the weave of curve, hangtime, swoosh. The second stanza friezes the moment (poem) when that sphere is released, when it arcs toward the circle, the threading of a world through a wormhole, beautiful, repeated 'til the final buzz.

 

WNBA MVP

Darrel Alejandro Holnes, poet and playwright (and die-hard fan of the New York Liberty!) matches five Liberty players with five poems.

Leilani Mitchell – Fierce Girl Playing Hopscotch by Alice Fulton

Cappie Pondexter – Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Kia Vaughn – Harlem by Langston Hughes

Nicole Powell - Old Men Playing Basketball by B. H. Fairchild

Kelly Miller – Georgia Dusk by Jean Toomer

“I chose these poems because each displays the spirit of empowerment, mischief, wisdom, history, and strength that each player demonstrates on the court. There's also a strong sense of place in each of these poems. The New York Liberty represent New York City, but the players each also carry their hometowns with them. Place is an important to a player, as is it is to the poems, as it was to the poets. It locates, it centers us to create both art and athletics.”

"Classics Illustrated" Makes a Comeback [by DL]

<<<
The Classics Illustrated Comics Project — Five Cartoonists

For our first-ever comics post, At Length asked five cartoonists to consider adaptation. We wrote: If you were hired by Classics Illustrated and told to choose a book—any book!—to adapt into a comic, what would it be? Why that book? What would it look like? The responses dig into the problems of transforming work from one medium to another with wit, sympathy, and just a touch of sarcasm. We’re very pleased to present new work by Kevin Cannon, Pascal Girard, Melissa Mendes, Andrea Tsurumi, and Noah Van Sciver.
>>
For more, follow this link.

And if you remember the old Classics Illustrated comic books, the ones published by the Gibralter company, please comment here and share your recollections. I remember reading the series in order: The Three Musketeers was number one, followed by Ivanhoe, and The Count of Monte Cristo was also in the top ten. James Fennimore Cooper was superior in Classics Illustrated form, not only The Last of the Mohicans but also The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder. I owned some of the originals, those published in the 1930s or 1940s, and found them preferable -- at least in literary quality -- than their successors in the 1950s. The very covers of the comic books -- such as the picture of Edmund Dantes overjoyed at the treasure box he has unearthed -- still gladden my heart. My old collection is in an archive box somewhere. Do the words "classics illustrated" have a similar effect on anyone else? -- DL

". . . and turning for home it was Secretariat" by James Cummins and David Lehman

I was supposed to meet Monica, my secretary, at
Three o’clock: where was she? I felt like a ruffian,
Standing in the infield, watching the wind whirl away
Lost tickets. A policeman approached. A citation
Of some sort? No, he tipped his cap. “Sir Barton?”
He inquired, most respectfully. Yes, I affirmed—

What is it? “Just routine,” the cop affirmed.
I felt like a low-ranking diplomat at the UN Secretariat
Accused of spying for Belgium. Would the real Sir Barton
Avoid his inquisitor’s eyes as I did? No ruffian,
He, but a master of codes, ciphers, and encrypted citations
In fortune cookies. (“Autumn comes, goes, and whirls away.”)

I cleared my head … That world was world’s away
From this one. The policeman’s handshake was a firm,
Live thing. He pulled an envelope from his book of citations,
Then blushed. “Sir, I—I spoke with your secretary at—”
Scrawled across pink flowers, in Monica’s ruffian
Hand, was what the young man pointed to: ‘Sir Barton.’

“Huh,” I said thoughtfully. What was Monica doing at Sir Barton,
My estate, where I go to get away from the social whirl? Away—
I needed to whirl away. Having no choice but to play the ruffian,
I slugged the cop and ran. My masculinity thus affirmed,
I felt good. But there was still the question of my secretary. At
A loss I looked up her name in the index. Two citations

For cigar smuggling. Wait, what’s this? A third citation—
A monograph! Horrified, I read: “The Life and Times of Sir Barton”!
The scamp! The exploiter! Hastily, I cell-phoned the Secretariat.
“Adlai!” I shouted, “Adlai!”—but I watched my words whirl away,
As I realized, with a shock, Adlai was dead. I was alone, a firm-
Ament of pain my sole sky. I was, at last, one of the roughs. “Ian!”

I said, catching sight of James Bond’s creator. In the rough and
Tumble of life, the man stood erect, in an obvious state of excitation.
What the cop had intimated about Monica was true, he affirmed.
Indeed he had just spent a delightful day with her at Sir Barton.
All of them were in on the plot. It was, well, an LA way
Of doing business.Everything was for sale, even the name “Secretariat.”

After his recitation of the specials—including orange roughy and
Pepsi—the waiter whirled away.Sir Barton sighed.The rather, ah, firm
Haunches of the lad reminded him of that great warrior, Secretariat.

(from Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man by James Cummins and David Lehman.  Illustrations by Archie Rand.  Soft Scull Press, 2005)

Until the Fulcrum Tips: A Conversation with Rita Dove and Jericho Brown

Welcome to the second of seven days of surprises, a week of gratitude!  After reading my first book, you may not believe it, but I am thankful for my childhood.  Rita Dove won the Pulitzer Prize when I was in elementary school, and she was poet laureate by the time I was in high school.  I imagine I don't have to tell you what seeing her face on posters in the schools and libraries where I was reared meant to my sense of possibility for living my life as a poet whose work actually reaches people.  

The author of several books of poetry, a
novel, and a book of essays, Dove is also a playwright and librettist.  She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  When I was told that I’d have the chance to blog here this week, I had just finished reading her introduction to The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry. I immediately asked her if she would answer a few questions I’ve always had about her life, her poetry, and her work as an editor that I could share with this week's readers.  Gracious as ever, she agreed.  In memory of Sterling Brown, Allen Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath, poets without whom I could not exist, here is my conversation with Rita Dove:

Sextus Propertius: A Bio Note [by Jack Hanley]

Sextus Propertius was the greatest of the elegiac poets of Rome. He was born of an affluent Umbrian family at or near Assisi and lived from about 50 BC to 16 BC. We learn from Ovid that Propertius was his senior and also his friend and companion, and that he was third in the sequence of elegiac poets, following Gallus (born 69 BC) and immediately preceding Ovid himself (born 43 BC). The known poems of Propertius consist of four books comprising 4046 lines. Cynthia, the first book, was published around 25 BC. He was the most psychologically astute of the Roman poets, a deeply introspective man who mastered a language of selfhood.

-- Jack Hanley

"On Translating Sextus Propertius (XII)" (by Phoebe Zinman)

Cyndi, we love the taste of you scrambled on our tongues, and Rome holds us less fondly when you are gone. No matter that we do not know the sordid details of Sextus Propertius’ love affair with you. We, too, have been abandoned to a world transformed by first loves, beginning and ending in declarative perpetua.

Prometheus, chained to the mountain, stopped struggling against the vultures and thought of the red dots of fire that would mimic the night sky, much as we pause in our grieving for love lost to think of all the poems we will write. 

-- Phoebe Zinman

Homage to Sextus Propertius -- P. J. Moriarty's Version

My desire does not cease. Its finger, obsessed,
     Accuses the noble face, like fierce Rome, of death.
And here I am, divided by what I might say,
     All Beginning, Finality, descends to Heart;
Never does devout constitution sustain love.
     Cynthia, never less, your pour-over in song like milk.
World grants us: we will not be quietly softened
     Nor will our likeness be possessed by a simple phrase.
Tendered we must know: Will we not break apart? A mystery
     Crushed poor Prometheus into a grain of sand?
I will not ease, I become flame: drawn, life ruins its path.
     Though many may tame its raging love.
None but the first long breath of a soul swells
     So immensely that it forms it own gravity.
So I make a portrait of its withering grace.
     As though no one has ever aspired to lament their Love:
So affirmed is the despondency held in the portrait’s heat,
     Its severity and nature cannot be recalled.
Yourself: a small picture of a world at its own end:
     Cynthia from the very beginning, Cynthia at the end.

-- P. J. Moriarty

 

Homage to Sextus Propertius -- Erin Burke's Version

Those who desire without fingering
are of the noble, conscientious Romans, right?
So many unlike divisions – it is
the huge Hypanis Veneto who says to Eridano –
I cannot consider love alone ample nutrition.
Cynthia, the beauty, in her distance.
Give her until the end, and she takes 
always the shortest step away from it.
With her own eyes, does she not see me?
The total of the ego infinite in its mutant longing
when you extinguish all for love’s temper. 
There is never a long solution to the aching nocturne,
callous in its grave.
Try, you can review the present as a wet flower
and nothing more than the arms of love:
all elements translate to and serve her
blind in their resistance:
Cynthia to be first, Cynthia to be last.

--- Erin Burke