The Best American Poetry

Getting to Know: Ernest Hilbert [by Daniel Nester]

In which we interview writers asking the same questions asked of Ashley Tisdale by Juliette, editor of Miss O and Friends; see the original interview here.

Close to 20 years ago, Ernest Hilbert and I attended to the same satellite Rutgers campus in Camden, NJ, but at slightly different times. People would mention Ernest to me, and people would mention me to Ernest.

It wouldn't be 10 years until we finally met. I thought it would be some diva encounter between Linda Evans and Jackie Collins, both of us sizing each other up the way writers do; instead, we just drank 100 beers and made jokes about death metal bands and our old teachers.

Ernest, or Ernie as he is known to friends, wears so many hats he qualifies as a freaking milliner. He works for Bauman's Rare Books, the antiquarian bookseller that takes those full-page ads on the backs of issues of The New York Times Book Review. He runs E-Verse, a multiplatform website empire that is email, video, and blog all wrapped in one.  And he's editor of Contemporary Poetry Review, a smart, idiosyncratic publication dedicated to poetry criticism.

Oh, and he's an excellent poet. His first book, Sixty Sonnets (Red Hen Press), uses a sonnet form of his own tweaking, and name-checks everything from Zippos to Star Wars figures to Plato and Thomas Eakins. Franz Wright calls it a "touching and intelligent book." Ernest took time out from his hat-wearing to talk about important issues of the day, and we're glad he did.

Age: 39
Sign: Aries
Birthplace: A violent but inspiring midnight storm, in Philadelphia. “Once more to seem slight and alive / Since in lightning and rivers I began.”

You may know me because: I have a blog and vlog called E-Verse Radio, a book called Sixty Sonnets, and a tendency to be the last one at the bar still gabbing when they throw on the lights and lock the doors.

My house is: a lovely century-old brick Colonial Revival right next to the tracks that divide West Philly from South-West Philly. You get the idea. Still, it’s a place to keep my books and my cats.

Jabbereffy, Turing, Sign-off.

Drawing by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of Dear Future Boyfriend.

Take the Turing Test here.

What is Jabberfucky? Go here and fucking find out.

Bookmarked here at your guest blogger's computer: Tony Hoagland's "Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of our Moment."

Some results from my previous call for new-ish literary journals, suggested by our readers:
The Lumberyard, Cave Wall, Bateau, Chatauqua, Caketrain, GUD, Atlas, 1913: A Journal of Forms, and New York Tyrant.

Well, that's it for me this week.  Maybe BAP will have me again.

Thanks to Cristin for giving me artwork and all my interviewees for being good sports. And if you're in New York, maybe I'll see you at the BAP-approved KGB Reading Series with Star Black on Monday, December 1.

Meanwhile, catch me over at my own site here.

Get Your Orality On.

Drawing by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of Working Class Represent.

-- Get On The Griot Trail with Bob Holman and Papa Susso in West Africa. Mr. Holman is traveling around Africa with his griot pal Susso to film endangered languages.

-- While you are getting your orality on, check out the online Walter J. Ong Collection at Saint Louis University.

-- Play this clip of Lowell Fulson at full volume and get your grind on something.

-- I'll admit it:I have every version of Ron Mann's 1982 documentary Poetry in Motion: VHS, CD-ROM, DVD, LaserDisk.  Get this clip on, by the collective sound poetry group The Four Horsemen, remains a favorite.  (It's out of sync, I know.)

-- Get your Poetry magazine on with its November issue, with a Visual Poetry Today section edited by Schenectady resident Geof Huth.

-- I'd be remiss not to get my self-promotion on and link to this post of group sound poems composed by my students last Spring at The College of Saint Rose.

Getting to Know: Michael Schiavo (by Daniel Nester)

In which we ask the same questions Teen magazine asked then-soon-to-be-pregnant teen idol Jamie Lynn Spears; see original interview here.

Take a good look at this picture.  What do you see?  Look into those eyes. Give yourself a second. What do you see?  A scowling and confused booty rapper? Musical theatre enthusiast?  Gaffer or best boy? Off-duty narcotics cop? 

The answer is None of the Above.  It's Michael Schiavo, poet and co-editor of Tight literary journal, who has just dropped his first book, The Mad Song, a "prose meditation, bluesy elegy, sensual lament, comic colloquy, poetic memoir" that can only be written by Schiavo. Wildly associative and crafty, Schiavo's work is an admixture of Berryman and Niedecker, Pound and Baudelaire. 

Yep, he's that good.

Which is why it's deadly important we ask Michael Schiavo, non-booty rapper, non-musical theatre enthusiast, non-gaffer/best boy and non-off-duty narcotics cop, these Really Important Questions.  And we glad we did.

BAPB: You’re in Jr. High, right?
MS: Most definitely.

What are you most looking forward to?
Painting the White House black.

What kind of car do you want?
Is fudge considered a car?

What's your favorite subject?
Sexual Education.

Do you play any sports?
Cricket in season, jai alai now that the wintertime enshrouds.

Are kids in school treating you differently because of Nickelodeon exposure?
Most definitely.

You have a new puppy named Ali, right? How is she?
Short for Ali Baba. I love that Maxfield Parrish painting. She has yet to master the psycho-laser technology we've implanted, but there's always a learning curve on stuff like that!

How old is she now?
714.

She's a mix, right?
Like me.

What are your feelings about Ali?
I fucking hate her.

Where did you find her?
Conjured. Did you every see Practical Magic? Like that.

Do you dress her up?
Always. Mondays are, of course, for pirates. Tuesdays we blast into the stratosphere as Chinese cosmonauts. Wednesdays through Fridays are catch-all, but Ali Baba usually picks a sports theme—she loves the NBA—go Chris Paul!—but she also likes gladiators or Indian chiefs. The whole weekend is “Casual Friday,” i.e. lingerie!

Do you try to coordinate it with what you're wearing?
Most definitely.

What is your fashion style?
Old School

Year 'round?
Bet.

What do you like to do for fun?
Pleasuredome with my dominatrix.

Was it really scary?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. At times she doesn't obey my safe word, and while I can't really complain, the chafing does get a bit much. She lotions me after.

TV anything you watch?
God, I love that Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job! It's like entering the bathroom of my mind and cowering near the toilet.

Are you watching Joey?
They made a movie out of that? Dylan never ceases to inspire. Desire is one of my favorites.

So, you have to get TiVo?
Most definitely.

Do you have an acting coach working with you?
Seth Rogen. He makes me call him “Zoe.” She's great. And she smells like a mixture of wet cinnamon and Manchego cheese. Desirable.

Is Zoe like you?
Only in that she too likes white cotton panties.

How are you not alike?
Genitalia. But the gap is shrinking.

Will that change as you get older?
Let's hope!

Have you gotten advice from mom or sister about business?
Most definitely.

Do you have a celebrity crush?
I've had celebrities crush me, if that's what you're asking, Natalie Portman.

What was your most embarrassing moment?
When I was 12, I went to see Midnight Run with my father at the Waterbury Mall. The theater wasn't overly crowded, but I had eaten a lot of sushi before the movie started. Sure enough, it hit me during the famous helicopter chase scene. Diarrhea streamed down under the seats (I always sit in the back row) but the movie was so good, I didn't get up to clean myself until after the credits were over and I had thrown up too and when I asked the usher to replay the movie he said I'd have to pay more money and it was so embarrassing!

So you raised your hand to answer a question and it was wrong?
It's always wrong.

You probably haven't raised your hand since?
Only in the Black Power salute.

Favorite movie:
Zorro, the Gay Blade.

Reason?
Ron Leibman. C'mon.

Film star you look up to/like to have a career like?
Daniel Day-Lewis. Or Seth Rogen.

Do you like Hilary's music?
I love her mouth, the shape, the wetness.

If you could work with any other actor/actress who?
I'd like to do a remake of War of the Worlds with that girl from Man On Fire.

Would you think you'd died and gone to heaven if you got a part in an Ashton Kutcher/Lindsay Lohan movie?
Only if it was a “pornographic movie.” At least that's what they call them in the Czech Republic.

Something you can't live without:
Masturbation.

Play video games?
I beat Contra every day before I go to school. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right,  Left, Right, B, A, B, A, Start

Who's someone you look up to?
Stockton to Malone.

Why?
Courageous.

Mises-en-Abyme, Bly, Naive, May, Copland, Hyde.

Drawing by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of Hot Teen Slut.

Night before teaching, and here's what I am up to:

-- I am looking up, for what seems to be the thousandth time, mise-en-abyme. Or mise-en-abime, wherein the i has a little chapeau thingie on it. One thought I had: Why, oh why, in tarnation is this image linked from that Wikipedia article? I know not.  But there are super discussions on this rather malleable term here and here. But it's here that got me looking for images of old Quaker Oats logos. WTF?

-- Linked from some then I end up reading bits of Freidrich Schiller's essay "On Naive [also: Simple] and Sentimental Poetry"; copies here and here.

-- Queen and Paul Rodgers have arrived in Chile. Photos here.

-- Speaking of Brian "is God" May: Really, Alex Ross?  Copland Will, Copland Will Rock You?  Read and listen here. I don't hear it--and what's more it seems it's just another rock critic's stab at making Queen out to be a pastiche factory. My wife sliced and diced Copland for months while working as the music editor for this movie--for which she should have gotten an Academy Award nomination, IMHO--and never once did I listen to "Fanfare for the Common Man" and say to myself, "wow, that sounds like the Red Special." Even when I rocked out to the Emerson, Lake & Palmer one, yo.

-- Read a little bit about Leaping Poetry for classes tomorrow; here's a little nugget from Robert Bly's essential Leaping Poetry: An Idea With Poems and Translations:

In ancient times, in the “time of inspiration,” the poet flew from one world to another, “riding on dragons”.... They dragged behind them long tails of dragonsmoke. ... This dragonsmoke means that a leap has taken place in the poem. In many ancient works of art we notice a long floating leap at the center of a work. That leap can be described as a leap from the conscious to the unconscious and back again, a leap from the known part of the mind to the unknown part and back to the known.

Dragonsmoke.  Awwwwww, yeah. That's what I am talkin' about.

-- Has everyone read the Lewis Hyde profile from last Sunday's New York Times? Yes? OK.

The Albany Poetry scenes, as seen through Dan Wilcox's lens.

As a relative newcomer to Albany--we moved here from Brooklyn in 2005 when I started teaching at The College of Saint Rose--I was curious to see what the local poetry scenes were like in and around our new hometown.  It didn't take long after going to my first readings that I noticed one dude at every one.  He wore in a black beret, a flash camera around his neck, and lots of political buttons. 

That dude's name is Dan Wilcox, and he was always taking pictures. A peace activist, veteran, and former state worker--everyone seems to be a former state worker up here in New York's state capital--Dan Wilcox is one of the poetry scene's griots. He claims to have the "world's largest collection of photos of unknown poets." Some of the photos are, in fact, of very well-known poets. Here's a mini-exhibition for your viewing pleasure, with Dan Wilcox's commentary.

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This was taken at the QE2 in February 1995, where Tom Nattell (right front) ran a poetry open on the last Monday of each month.  There are a couple dead poets in this picture (including Tom), others who have moved from the area, some I don't know, some don't show up at open mics anymore & there are a few hard-core open micers & folks still writing.  Tom Nattell & the readings at the QE2, a punk rock club in a former White Tower Hamburger joint, were the start of the vibrant poetry scene that continues to this day in Albany.

Another event that Tom Nattell was responsible for organizing was the annual 24-hour reading/performance fund-raiser, Readings Against the End of the World.  He ran it from 1984 to 1993.  It was a fund-raiser for the Albany Peace & Energy Council & was in about 3 different venues during its run, around the weekend of Earth Day each year.  This is Ed Sanders reading in 1991.

Getting to Know: Michael Robins (by Daniel Nester)

In which we ask the same questions Teen magazine asked then-soon-to-be-pregnant teen idol Jamie Lynn Spears; see original interview here.

Perhaps you've read the poems of Michael Robins in the best-known literary journals (Typo, Verse, Milk, Diagram). Or maybe you've read Robins' first book, The Next Settlement, which won the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry. Or maybe you're just curious about this dude who writes, as his book's jacket copy reads, "enigmatic scenes [that] are masterfully rendered with a photographer’s eye." Or maybe you want read how Robins writes, as this guest blogger might put it, "fucked-up lyrics for a fucked-up age."

Well, either way, trust me: it's important that we ask Michael Robins, who lives in Chicago where he teaches at Columbia College, who has just come back from reading at Lewis University, and who helps edit literary journal bornmagazine, these Really Important Questions. 

Despite the time difference, Michael assured us that he was fully clothed during our phone conversation.  And, considering his dynamite answers, we're glad he was!

BAPB: You’re in Jr. High, right?
MR: Indeed. It’s been difficult during the last few decades, repeating the 8th grade year after year while my teachers get younger and younger, but I’m also fortunate that the eligibility rules for middle school football are ambiguous at best. At 6 foot and 170 pounds, I’m proud to have beaten our rivals two of the last five seasons.

What are you most looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to the end of this interview so I can get back to my homework.

What kind of car do you want?
Anything that reflects my hobbies: walks on beaches, Bill Murray, fluffy kittens.

What's your favorite subject?
What’s your favorite subject?

Do you play any sports?
Do you always answer a question with a question?

You ever heard of kickboxing? Sport of the future? Don the Dragon Wilson? Benny "the Jet" Urquidez? Mercy Mess on the Champions of Sport? I can see by your face, no…

Are kids in school treating you differently because of Nickelodeon exposure?
I remember watching the Janet Jackson fiasco during the Super Bowl Halftime Show and thinking, “Nothing like that could ever happen to me.” Let bygones be bygones, I say now. In the long run, I think that my exposure on Nickelodeon has really opened some doors for my career. At the very least, no one quite knows anymore what to expect when I walk into school each morning.

You have a new puppy named Ali, right? How is she?
She’s great, but I feel the need to set the record straight: “Ali” is merely part of her middle name, as in Daisy Jane “Muhammad Ali” Murphy. With a name like that, she now has all the makings of one day becoming commander-in-chief, that is if we can just keep her from treeing squirrels.

Getting to Know: Barbara Louise Ungar (by Daniel Nester)

In which we ask the same questions Teen magazine asked then-soon-to-be-pregnant teen idol Jamie Lynn Spears; see original interview here.
 

photo by Dan Wilcox

I, Daniel Nester, work with Barbara Louise Ungar at The College of Saint Rose.  We go to meetings and talk about teaching and all that working-at-the-same-college stuff.  I've always thought she was so serene--still waters run deep and all that.  So when I go over to her website to get some good biography-type stuff did I find some amazing details. 

I knew that she had written Haiku in English as part of her graduate school work.  I knew she has a cool son named Izaak, with whom I trade Hot Wheels cars. I did not know, however, that Barbara spent a summer on Lake Como and six months in Rome. That she lived another summer on the Greek island of Symi.  And, finally, that she spent a year in a cabin in Woodstock, NY, where she performed under the name of “Psyche.” 

Barbara Louise Ungar's newest book, The Origin of the Milky Way, published last year, won the Gival Press Prize for Poetry.  It's a terrific collection and she's reading at a lot of places across this great nation of ours.  We caught Barbara on the road to a reading in Syracuse to ask these important questions.  And we're so glad we did!

BAPB: You’re in Jr. High, right??
BLU: Have I died and gone to hell?

What are you most looking forward to?
My next meal, orgasm, or poem, whichever comes first.

What kind of car do you want?
One I don’t have to drive.

What's your favorite subject?
My boyfriend.

Do you play any sports?
Badminton and ping pong.

Are kids in school treating you differently because of Nickelodeon exposure??
Differently from what?

You have a new puppy named Ali, right?
No, actually, her name is Lola.

How is she?
She just ran away, so I’ll find out tomorrow when I get home.

New-ish Literary Journals: A Call for Lists (from Daniel Nester)

Drawing by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam.

So I am helping a librarian friend out with an article on new-ish literary journals, and I need your help, dear readers.  You know what literary journals are, right?  Those magazines all your favorite writers are published in before they put together their collections?  Those periodicals editors put together out of love, from which are culled poems for The Best American Poetry and other Best-of's? 

Anyway, here's what I need: Tips on great literary journals that have made it past their first issue and look like they are in it for the long haul--i.e., ones that librarians might acquire for their periodicals section. Do you edit one of these journals?  Do one of your friends? Enemies? Half-uncles? 

Leave journal names, top 10 lists, in the comment box below--you can also backchannel email me at danielnester at gmail dot com. You can give me reasons why you would recommend these for a library, too, although that's no so necessary.  I imagine such a compilation would be interesting for those writers who are looking to send out their work to said journals. 

I need these by December 2. Give links to their websites if you can.

And you will have this guest blogger's great thanks. 

Getting to Know: Taylor Mali (by Daniel Nester)

In which we ask the same questions Teen magazine asked then-soon-to-be-pregnant teen idol Jamie Lynn Spears; see original interview here.

Taylor Mali makes his living as a poet. Which makes Taylor Mali one of a kind.

A native New Yorker turned high school teacher, Mali joined the poetry slam movement in the mid-90s, and immediately made his mark as a pioneer in slam strategy. He led six of his seven National Poetry Slam teams to the finals stage, winning the championship a record four times. One of the original poets to appear on the HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, you might also remember him as the "golden-tongued, Armani-clad villain" of Paul Devlin's 1997 documentary film SlamNation, which chronicled the 1996 National Poetry Slam. Taylor also runs the very popular Page Meets Stage reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club.