The Best American Poetry

Frederick Douglass

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

-- Robert Hayden. The Collected Poems of Robert Hayden. Liveright, 1966.

Poet Eloise Klein Healy forwarded this to me under the subject "The Lives Grown Out of His Life". The original post came from poet David Graham who must have seen in this an echo for us all.

-J.F.

Donne No More: Some Puns (by Jenny Factor)

The recent post about John Donne's penchant for puns led me to fish out my copy of Donne's Holy Sonnets in order to transcribe Sonnet 17--the stunningly sad sonnet which was written upon Donne's wife (Anne More)'s death.

Notice both the punning of "more love" (which links the phrase to the concept of Anne More's own now-missing love) and the mention of my very fave 17th Century disease: dropsy.* * an incurable thirst; probably a symptom of diabetes.

XVII

Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to her and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, when as thou
Dost woo my soul for hers off'ring all thine:
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, flesh, yea Devil put thee out.

Dr. Robert N. Watson of UCLA has pointed out the counter-Trinity Donne raises at the end of this sonnet: world, flesh, and Devil. But I am most in love (I resist the urge to say more in love) with the lines of this poem whose meanings wiggle like a fish (i.e., whose soul is wanted for whose in line 9?) and with how Donne slows down and speeds up the metric of the poem with stream-like eddies of sound (the th's of line 7 tarrying into the quick shoot of line 8). Read it aloud. Some critics tackle poor John for these raggedy edges of sound. But I am in love with the echoey places ("a holy thirsty dropsy" indeed!).

Donne done.

-J.F.

Tool Talk: On Vantage Point (by Jenny Factor)

“A good photograph is knowing where to stand” Ansel Adams

During our June residency at Antioch University Los Angeles, poet Carol Potter spoke about how poets can benefit from the techniques of fiction.

Potter’s lecture put me in mind of one of my favorite fiction-tools for poetry: vantage point—how (to paraphrase Ansel Adams) a good poem is also about knowing where to stand.

Lately, I’ve been fascinated by poets who write fiction and story-tellers who write poetry. For instance, Wendall Berry (poet) has a fine story in the latest Hudson Review. D.H. Lawrence is often honored by the epithet “not a bad poet”. Raymond Carver (storyteller?) and Tess Gallagher (poet?) are the two genres’ most famous salt-and-pepper shakers.

When I’m reading a poem, I like to look at beginnings. I even have a nickname for poem-starts: I call them “the handshake”. A solid handshake can do a lot of narrative and vocal work.

Reginald Shepherd (1963-2008)

Reginald Shepherd, a poet whose work was selected for several volumes of The Best American Poetry, died this week at the age of 45. Reginald was an omnilect thinker, a writer of ineffable grace, and a generous friend. He was also recently a colleague at Antioch University Los Angeles. You can read Reginald's brilliant online essays on poetry.

Here are some lines from "With the Wind Blowing Through It" (in Fata Morgana, Pittsburgh, 2007): "Special instructions/to the spinner of webs, the knotter of strings...the thrower of ropes/over chasms.../Special instructions to the rain/and assorted precipitations/...to the layers of roads, the asphalt...to the puddled ends of slanted driveways...:

The same sky keeps happening
but differently each time
(today with finches in it)

Thanks to Emily Warn for the generous recollections of Reginald at the Harriet site (where he blogged as recently as August on everything from Britney Spears to Turandot).

-Jenny Factor

Trochaic Theory Picks Obama...and Nobel Prize Winners!

Trochaic Theory Picks Obama...and Nobel Prize Winners!

             Dactyls are "frequently/ favored by Destiny" -- DL on You Tube

Here is the riddle that
unmakes the mystery:
most names are dactyls
and trochees--no joke!

David C. Lehman's fresh
trochaic theory can
crown half our poets
and not miss a stroke!

-- Jenny Factor

Poem Noir Becomes Prizefight Film (by Jenny Factor)

Joseph Moncure March may not have been a (m)ad man like our current crop of unexpected poetry-lovers, but he was a poet whose book-length narrative poem became the screenplay for the 1949 Hollywood feature film, The Set Up. Read all about it in Jefferson Hunter's fascinating article in this summer's Hudson Review.

Joseph Moncure March's 1928 poem tells the story of "an aging black middleweight [boxer], Pansy Jones" and "two conniving fight managers" who influence his career. By the time Art Cohn finished the screenplay (which was his very first!), our boxer has been de-ethnicized and changed from tough-as-nails fighter to a victim; and the final story has changed a great deal as well.

Surely this isn't the only poem to become a screenplay! For 10 points, how many screenplays have been written from the plots of poems?

-J.F.

Henry David Thoreau (by Jenny Factor)

It's the Fourth of July, and I feel about as American as Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), one of my heroes. This morning, I've been reading Walden. So I'd like to set out his words about reading:

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers.... In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo (sic) philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did...

Happy Fourth, everyone!

-J.F.

*Pen and Ink Sketch of Thoreau: Félix Valloton, 1896

The Commonplace Book of Women! (by Jenny Factor)

"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us."
W.H. Auden

A recent mention of the 18th century commonplace book prompted me to dive into Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. To come clean with you, I've only read Chapter 1—but in it, Bauer makes a terrific defense of the art of reading.

What if your mind is hungry, but not particularly literate?...The truth is that the study of literature requires different skills than reading for pleasure… Most of us can manage to sing "Happy Birthday"…when called for, but this doesn't incline us to march down to the local performing arts center and try out for the lead in Aida…

That wise Bauer reminds us that historically, folks of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries didn't take twenty-five years in school to gain a complete education (K through PhD). In the classical method of self-education, young people kept little notebooks about what they read to help them first understand, then evaluate, and then opine on literature and the ideas (from philosophical to scientific) expressed there. (Note to Word-Wonks: that three-pronged process is what old schoolmasters called the trivium).

So...whenever I read Jane Austen, or Bronte, I wonder how those pre-modern women protagonists became so darned accomplished! Apparently, it's all about those reading diaries. Bauer cites the example of Mary Wilson Gilchrist who came back from her short term at a women's college determined to keep learning, so she kept reading diaries and organized women's book clubs in Civil-War era Ohio.

-J.F.

A Few Notes from the Antioch MFA Residency (by Jenny Factor)

Part One: Twice each year, I help to organize and participate in Antioch University Los Angeles' MFA residency—a 10-day festival of literature and language held on the campus in Culver City. On Saturday morning, the poet Richard Garcia taught Jumping Into the Flow, a class about how to design and lead an in-class writing exercise. Richard says that to write a good exercise, you'll need (a) a model poem, (b) a procedure, and (c) an atmosphere. He described the good classroom exercise as "a combination of structure and chaos". He gave us this recipe before we took out our own pens: (1) be aware of your atmosphere, (2) be especially aware when memory kicks in and opens a door. If it does, follow it. This is one of the poems I wrote that morning. All the similes are by members of the Antioch Poetry Program:

Solstice Morning Similes
for the people of A1011

As soon as my eyes opened, I found myself
Again. Yup, there I is—on the mattress like
Pubic hair on a bar of soap. That’s the way
It goes some days I guess: thought simmering
Like a pancake in its own grease, oil splatter
On the poor chef, on the poor chef’s clothes.
Why even bother? I rolled around and stretched
My legs and found—what?—well, it was like
Crumbs under the sheets, like the boiled egg
I left in the trash yesterday that stank when I
Got home at 11. Damned summer heat—like
Hot waves off the barbeque grill. Some days, I’ll
Stand and stand outside in the dusk, feeling
The one heat beat into the other, cooking
For the family. And it’s just like that sometimes:
One child bored…what do I do, Mom? And
You-know-who needing—a hand, some
Attention. For me to give a damn. And like
Picket signs outside the grocery store, I protest. I
Flip the burgers. I take another sip of iced gin.

-J.F.

You can read poems by Richard Garcia here.

Irving Berlin, the Singing Waiter (by Jenny Factor)

Roger Gilbert's evocative recollection of Charles Trenet inspired me to include this additional excerpt from Lawrence J. Epstein's At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York's Lower East Side: 1880-1920.

"Berlin never learned to read or write music. He played the piano...using just the black keys...Born in Russia and subject to excruciating poverty, Irving Berlin...began his musical life leading a singing beggar into cafes. Blind Sol let Berlin sing with him once in a while, and the young boy found that he enjoyed the experience so much that he began singing in the cafes himself....In 1906, Berlin became a singing waiter at Pelham's Cafe, inventing risque lyrics to parody current hits. Two singing waiters at another cafe had published a song aimed at Italians and the song had been successful. Pelham's decided it had better get in the song business as well and had its piano player compose a similar song. Berlin's lyrics were used, and so his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy," was published on May 8, 1907, three days before his nineteenth birthday."