The Best American Poetry

Goodbye WS; Hello to you in this dark evening season [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dear Bleaders,

I’m sure lots of people reading this blog know we lost a staggeringly great poet, Wisława Szymborska, a few weeks ago. It was Feb 1; she was 88. I can’t help giving us this one of her poems right now.

Museum

Here are plates with no appetite.
And wedding rings, but the requited love
has been gone now for some three hundred years.

Here’s a fan–where is the maiden’s blush?
Here are swords–where is the ire?
Nor will the lute sound at the twilight hour.

Since eternity was out of stock,
ten thousand aging things have been amassed instead.
The moss-grown guard in golden slumber
props his mustache on Exhibit Number…

Eight. Metals, clay and feathers celebrate
their silent triumphs over dates.
Only some Egyptian flapper’s silly hairpin giggles.

The crown has outlasted the head.
The hand has lost out to the glove.
The right shoe has defeated the foot.

As for me, I am still alive, you see.
The battle with my dress still rages on.
It struggles, foolish thing, so stubbornly!
Determined to keep living when I’m gone!

Well at 88 she outlasted a lot of dresses. Still, it sucks. No more of those poems.  I had always hoped to meet her. One thing I always Iove about her, evident here, is how much it pissed her off that the world didn't hold meaning in a visible way: how battlegrounds for instance went back to parks, a shudder shared by many but also more subtle situations too, like how you might have been at a railway station one day, even though you weren't, and how odd that it happened anyway, the meetings, the thefts, even without you. "A suitcase disappeared, not mine."

As for me friends, life continues to present itself as a war, a hot war against bleak feelings. Is this feeling thing that is me a biological thing or a thing amid the world with a usage quite askew? I may now know a thing or two about the answers to my offset typesetting, but I also have to dine on a good deal of doubt. What I can see is that life requires a dire pressing forward without leaving a sufficiently convincing trail of flower petals to find one's way back to the beginning.

Instead it's all beginning and all middle, all the time, and you just have to keep rowing even when the scenery changes on one side and stays precisely the same on the other, and other magic tricks of reality. Maybe that's a kind of growing, you're on a riverboat and after some point the inner coast of the river is always the same few houses and yards, while the outer coast starts blurring by peopled with odd beings carrying small electronics. You don't age like leaves falling onto a pile of snow, you age like snow melting off a pile of leaves, you arrive rising up from underneath. 

It's the dark side of the year my bleaders, mid february and dark and rainy with a little spritz of spring here and there. As is my habit, I'm speaking now to those of you fighting the darkness like a war, at all costs, this is the season to fight this thing, the darkness of life, life's rotten disjointment. I'm a believer in stories and stories get into your fiber about what you should be doing and how much it takes to feel alright, and I'm a believer in changing your fiber to fit a better story. It just takes a lot longer than your average hot war. It takes gallons of therapy, of one sort or another. And these gallons are gallions and this war is a land air and water war, and we have to fight for a story that makes it alright. We have to fight our own fiber.

Get some Szymborska, let her rock you from the beyond. Plus, you know, keep up the fight with your dress! Seriously. We need you. I need you, on my side. Don't kill yourself and I shall return to encourage you again.

Love,

Jennifer

"As a writer, all bets were off." A eulogy for Eleanor Ross Taylor by Ross Taylor

This lovely tribute to Eleanor Ross Taylor (June 30, 1920 – December 30, 2011) by her son Ross.... comes to us from family friend Nin Andrews:

My mother was born at home in south-central North Carolina in 1920.  Her father was a farmer.  Her mother, Jennie, was mostly a farmer’s wife, but was also a seamstress, taking jobs sewing things for neighbors far and near.  She kept up on fashionable patterns.  As a teenager, my grandmother painted a very respectable picture of a mother and child, which was hanging in my mother’s room at her death.  She and Fred, my grandfather, often enjoyed discussing bible stories and texts in quiet, thoughtful tones.  For rural folk in the depression, this was the light of culture.  

My mother had two brothers and a sister, who did a number of remarkable things.  Both brothers, James and Fred, worked playing minor league baseball for a while.  Both brothers published well regarded novels.  Her sister Jean married poet Donald Justice and published a volume of stories.

In 1943 my mother married my father, Peter Taylor, who went on to write stories and plays and won the Pulitzer Prize for one of his novels.  He was from the city – or several, as his family moved a few times.  I should de-emphasize him in a piece about my mother, but he was very sociable and introduced mom to many people she came to love.

My mother was a teetotaler.  At the many parties she attended with my father, mom would stand happily conversing with her arms folded, not even disguising her abstinence with a glass of soda.  Some partiers admitted feeling intimidated by this. 

Many readers note, rightly, the unflinching determination to face truth in my mother’s poems.  I think the flip side is that she had courage in the face of real fear.  She was physically small, and, having recently watched her go through the diminutions of old age, her second childhood, I have become more aware of the country girl child in her.  She was inquiring (she saved stacks of clippings about astronomy, the brain, physics, paleontology) and she knew the world was a great and terrible place. 

She also loved watching cloud formations.  Most of her poems tell stories about people, but around the edges is an awareness of the creeks and mountains.  I feel her interest in gardening, birdwatching, even in people’s cats and dogs was a conventional expression of her love of the natural world. 

Perhaps a well known quote by Flaubert helps to explain her conventional life: “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”  As a mother, she was lovably predictable.  As writer, all bets were off.

Paul Violi 1944-2011

We are sad to report that our beloved friend Paul Violi died yesterday after months of contending with pancreatic cancer. Paul -- a prince of a friend, a generous teacher, an inspiring poet -- was perhaps the most consistently inventive poet of a singularly talented generation upon whom the legacy of Ashbery, Koch, and O'Hara rested not as a burden but an as impetus toward poetic originality and freshness of vision and language. For nearly ten years Paul taught a poetry writing workshop in the graduate writing program at the New School. It was a great experience for students and teacher alike. I will write more about my friend in the weeks to come. But first the news must sink in. In the meantime, here is Michael Quattrone's beautiful 2007 article about Paul.  We've created a tribute blog where you can post your thoughts and memories of Paul.  Please visit Remembering Paul Violi.

-- DL

Taylor Worship, by Catherine R. Stimpson

 My sister  Mary called. "Elizabeth Taylor," she said.
         "Yes," I said.  
        "I'm sorry," she said.
        "I am, too," I said.
        "You must be mourning."
        "I am." 
        "You were obsessed with her," she said. 
        "I was," I said.

        I was? I  am---although my obsession is now reined in and harnessed.
After I saw Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet in 1944, I learned how grand  it felt to worship someone from afar. 

        I never wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor.  Worship is not about identification.  Her middle name, Rosemond, may have been close to mine, Rosalind, but even a besotted child knows that sharing four letters out of eight in a middle name leaves four letters unshared. 

        I may have had fantasies that she would appear in my little town and pop me into her car and take me to Hollywood to be her friend, but I never really wanted to be that close either. Worship is not about sharing a toothbrush.

        I wanted what I had: the wonder and curiosity and exhilaration and freedom to range widely that a giddy reverence provides. Elizabeth Taylor's life was larger than mine. It was distant from mine, but  it was close enough for it to warm  and open my imagination and my heart.  As a child, I could recite the names of her parents (Francis, Sara), of her brother (Howard), and of her chipmunk (Nibbles).  Later, I could rattle off the names  and characteristics of her first fiance and then of all her husbands.  Oh, yes, John Warner, he was a bit of a rest stop. Even without seeing them all, I can chatter on about the movies. 

        Like prayers, such recitations were a sign of my devotion. But a far greater sign is   the quality of my attention to her activities, rapt when I was young, dearly engaged when I was older. She was a goddess worthy of my solicitude. She had both beauty and talent. She used her talent well. She seemed to do what she pleased, but she never seemed snotty or mean. She had a good time on several continents, but she did good things as well. She had courage.  In National Velvet , she cut her hair and rode her horse to a championship.   She was loyal, generous, and brave. She never fudged things---or not that I could tell.   
        
        And, she had all those illnesses and injuries and addictions, but she was reborn again and again, rising up from rehab and hospital beds.  As divinities must be, she was capable of resurrection.  Unlike some divinities, she was bawdy and earthy. She could camp out unpretentiously. In 2002, she published a book, Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewelry. Such stones, such pearls. Hers was hardly a sand lot collection. The first picture shows her in profile---all gussied up.  In the second she is also in profile, starting to kiss a great-grandchild. And her hair?  It is in pink and blue rollers. 

        My realistic self is aware that she died on March 23, 2011, at the age of 79, in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.  Her publicist said the cause was complications of congestive heart failure. These are facts. However, I also know that she is off to fresh woods and pastures new, though they may be yachts and 4-star hotel rather than fields and sheep folds.  She dedicates the jewelry book to "my beloved Mike and Richard, the two greatest loves of my life. And to my children, without whom there would have been no life." So Mike and Richard will be there, and her friend Roddy McDowell, and favorite dogs, and her family when they are ready to roam to be with her. 

        I elided the truth in my conversation with my sister. I am gratefully remembering  "my" Elizabeth, whose presence enabled me to enter into the realms of worship, rather than mourning. Late yesterday afternoon, in such a spirit, I asked a young man in my office if worshipping Elizabeth Taylor were a generational matter. Were his circles as involved in her doings and being as mine?  "The chatter on Facebook is less than I might have expected," he said diplomatically.  I took this in, but I would never, never make book against the enduring face of Elizabeth Taylor. 

Gladys Horton, lead singer for The Marvelettes: More than just another fish in the sea

Gladys Horton, one of the lead singers for the Marvelettes, has died. It’s a measure of how little respect this great girl-group has been given that The New York Times obituary of Horton had to resort to many hedges due to a lack of outside scholarship about the group. Horton was either 64 or 65 when she died; she was born either in Inkster, Michigan, or Gainesville, Florida; the Marvelettes broke up either “in the late 1960s or early 1970s.” Sigh. I think we know the exact moment the Beatles broke up, and the precise moment Dylan “went electric,” don’t we?

         The Marvelettes will always be obscured by other acts on the Motown label starting with the Supremes. But they released a string of singles that are exceptional examples of girl-group soul. Their tight harmonies, no-nonsense phrasing, and lack of melodramatic flourishes may actually have worked against them, as did their talent for putting across a novelty song such as (the Marvin Gaye-written) “Beechwood 4-5789” as skillfully as they did more poetic work such as Smokey Robinson’s extraordinary “The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game.”

         Horton didn’t sing lead on that last song, but she did on the group’s biggest hit, “Please Mr. Postman,” and one of the Marvelettes’ trickiest, wittiest performances, “Too Many Fish In The Sea.”

 

         “I don’t want nobody that don’t want me,” sang Horton on that song. The firm decisiveness is in the lyric written by Norman Whitfield and Eddie Holland, to be sure. But it wouldn’t be half as effective had Horton not sung the sentiment with such a whiplash sting, flicking each consonant at the listener as though she wanted to commingle pain with your pleasure. She was a fine, fine vocalist, and you’d do well to track down a copy of The Marvelettes: Anthology, the best showcase for the group’s work, a short history of soul music across 28 tracks, concluding with the superbly punctuated song title, “A Breath Taking Guy.” Every breath Horton took on these hit singles was a strong one

Alfred Kahn, 1917-2010 by Stacey Harwood

I came to know Alfred Kahn through his two-volume Economics of Regulation, one of the texts I studied in graduate school. Read it if you want to know everything there is to know about deriving marginal costs and the finer points of the Averch-Johnson effect on electricity pricing. Professor Kahn was chairman of the NYS Public Service Commission but he had moved on long before my tenure began. While he was greatly respected in regulatory circles as an economist and intellectual  I'll remember him as a proponent of good writing.  Early on in my career someone returned a paper I had written along with a copy of what was known as "the Kahn memo" which he had circulated in 1977 to his colleagues at the Civil Aeronautics Board.  In it,  Kahn railed against the artificial and hyper-legal language favored by bureaucrats and urged his employees to use "straightforward, quasi-conversational, humane prose."  The key word here is "humane."  It was our duty as public servants to write clearly, yes, but also with compassion and sympathy for our readers.  Every now and then when I found myself lazily falling back on horrible bureaucratic gobbledygook, I could snap out of it by rereading Kahn's memo.  

Alfred Kahn lived in Ithaca, NY and David and I could find him during our summer stays having lunch and reading the newspaper at the Cafe DeWitt. He had an office nearby and maintained an active consulting practice until he was well into his 80s. He was a sweet and modest man and when I told him that his 1977 memorandum was still in circulation, he seemed genuinely surprised and pleased.  

 Here it is.  I think you will find that Kahn's words are as important today as they ever were (click on the image to read): 

Read the NYT obituary here. 

More about Steve Orlen

These pictures of poet Steve Orlen, who died one week ago today, come to us from Jerry Williams and Max McConkey   They were taken by Max.  This first picture is of a memorial service.  In sending it along, Max writes: There was a lovely, private, informal event for Steve in [his] backyard yesterday afternoon. Only "close friends" invited: but that turned out to be about 50 people. We ate samples of Steve's favorite foods (lots of bacon), drank wine, told Steve stories (many R or X rated), listened to Steve poems read by fellow poets, laughed, and cried. In the photo, below, which I took with my iPhone, the group was gathered to hear a reading of an Orlen poem by his close friend, Gibb Windahl.  

The two pictures below were taken on November 12, under the ramada in the backyard of Steve's house. In the first, Steve is surrounded by friends, from left, Buzz Poverman, Michael Collier, Fred Kiefer [English Prof @ UA, also a local FOS], and David Rivard.
Here's a picture of Steve alone. The picture came labelled "softy.jpg."  I didn't know Steve but the label seems to be packed with love and to say something about him that is most endearing.  I wish we had met. 

Max tells me that those who are Steve Orlen's facebook friends can find more pictures, tributes, and reminiscences on his page.  You can read Jerry Williams' post about Steve here.  Again, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment field below. 

-- sdh

In Memory of Steve Orlen (1942-2010) by Jerry Williams

A few years ago, my friend, former teacher, and mentor, Steve Orlen, came to read his poetry at the school where I teach creative writing, and I had the great pleasure of introducing him to a New York audience.  About seventy-five people attended, and before Steve got up to do his thing I read the following introduction:

Steve Orlen has authored five previous collections of poetry, including This Particular Eternity, Kisses, and The Bridge of Sighs.  He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.  He teaches at the University of Arizona and in the low-residency M.F.A. Program at Warren Wilson College.  He lives in Tucson with his wife, the painter Gail Marcus-Orlen, who designs all of his book covers, and they have a talented young son named Cozi, who attends the University of Massachusetts.  Of Cozi, I have heard Steve say, "I wish he would just become a poet and get it over with," which leads us into the more anecdotal aspects concerning Steve Orlen, the man.  First of all, he is the best teacher I have ever had the privilege to study with, and I would not be standing here right now if I hadn't taken his courses at the U of A.  Also, Steve Orlen, like most poets, has been the subject of a few juicy rumors.  Now, rumors in general are a dirty business, and we should always take them with a couple dump trucks full of salt.  Most people would consider themselves lucky to have lived the lives that their rumors attest to.  But there is one rumor, and it's probably true, though where poets are concerned, nothing can be confirmed unless you've witnessed it with your own eyes—and sometimes not even then.  But this specific rumor, whether scuttlebutt or legend, says more about the heart of this poet than anything I could possibly concoct with a lot of fancy language.  As the story goes, Steve Orlen got into a shoving match in a bar with a drunken Kurt Vonnegut because the distinguished novelist exclaimed that "free verse is shit."  This was 1966, and I imagine the scene would not have played out any differently if Steve had been toe-to-toe with Norman Mailer, Lyndon Baines Johnson, or Yahweh Himself.  Anyone who would broadcast such ridiculousness was going down.  You'll be glad to know that Steve has mellowed over the years, as any good man would, but that fire still rages in support of the craft of poetry—on the page and in the classroom.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's poetry's promoter, manager, trainer, corner man, cut man, and seasoned pugilist all rolled into one.  The blurbs he writes for his contemporaries' books sound better than most poets' poems.  And, tonight, we get to celebrate Steve Orlen's reaching yet another significant milestone: the publication of Elephant's Child, New & Selected Poems from 1978-2005.  Seriously, this is the real deal.  Please welcome Steve Orlen.

As the booming applause began Steve jumped up from his chair and hugged me as hard as I've ever been hugged and then he took the podium, thanked me and the college, and proceeded to bring the house down with his beautifully constructed, longish narrative-lyric hybrids.  I swear there were people crying in the crowd.  This was one of the greatest nights of my professional life.

On November 14th, Steve Orlen passed away as a result of a sudden terminal illness.  During the prior week he had been surrounded by family, friends, and colleagues.  Alison Hawthorne Deming shared with me that he spent that time, utterly present and Buddha-like, working on his final manuscript with his former students (accomplished poets in their own right).  Awareness of such facts tempers my grief somewhat, but makes my heart even heavier, so heavy I'm going to cover-couplet W.H. Auden:  Earth, please receive your honored guest.  Steve Orlen is laid to rest.