The Best American Poetry

Mas Lorca! [by Sharon Preiss]

June 5 was the 115^th anniversary of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca’s birth. Happy birthday, Freddy! LIVE from the New York Public Library threw a fine celebration for him on June 4, with readings of his work, readings of work he influenced, a dramatic performance of a lecture he gave expounding on his experience in the U.S. and the creation of Poet in New York, and a grand finale performance by Patti Smith, who recited two Lorca poems and sang a couple songs.

It is Lorca who is credited with advancing the concept of duende as an aesthetic mode and artistic ideal. Literally speaking, a duende is a mythological creature –a goblin or a sprite – that causes mischief and disruption. The word is derived from the Spanish word for “owner” (dueno), and the implication is that the uncontrollable and out-of-hand is the true ruler of the world. Lorca’s vision of duende is that the artist needs to surrender to danger and disruption in order to get to the heart of his art. From the opening lines of his lecture:

 Well then, before reading poems aloud to so many people, the first thing one must do is invoke the duende. This is the only way all of you will succeed at the hard task of understanding metaphors as soon as they arise, without depending on intelligence or on a critical apparatus… Poems like these are not likely to be understood without the cordial help of the duende. 

The poets on hand this evening to pay tribute to Lorca – Philip Levine, Tracey K. Smith, Paul Muldoon, John Giorno – remarked on the danger of the duende, the risk involved in letting go of rational thought in surrender to deeper, darker forces. “The duende does not come at all unless he sees that death is possible…The duende wounds. In the healing of that wound, which never closes, lies a man’s work,” Muldoon quoted from Lorca’s lecture “Theory and Play of the Duende.”

The poet and musician Patti Smith has been surrendering to the duende for all 40 or so years of her remarkable career. Though her poetry hero is Arthur Rimbaud, certainly Lorca’s work is progeny of Rimbaud’s poetic call to disrupt the senses in order to find true meaning. Anyone who’s seen her perform knows that Smith channels forces from beyond and surrenders to wherever those forces take her through her performance. Likewise, the actor Will Keen, who interpreted selections from Lorca’s Poet in New York lecture, which is interspersed with poems from the book, gave a riveting performance that I’m sure convinced those new in the audience to Lorca’s work that he was worth getting to know better. An additional treat to the evening was Lorca scholar Christopher Maurer’s invitation to Lorca’s niece, Laura Garcia Lorca, to the stage to read several poems in their original Spanish.

“Lorca had no wish to see his poems dead on the page,” said the evening’s host, Paul Holdengraber. As the celebration of the poet’s life and work continue through July 21 (follow the link for more info: http://lorcanyc.com), is assurance that Lorca’s poems and legacy will live on.

Veronica Golos, Guest Author June 10-14

 This week we welcome Veronica Golos as our guest blogger.Veronica is the author of Vocabulary of Silence (Red Hen Press, 2011), winner of the 2011 New Mexico Book Award. An exploration of war and its witnessing-from-afar, poems from Vocabulary of Silence have been translated into Arabic, Italian, Indonesian and Spanish.   She is also the author of A Bell Buried Deep, co winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize (Story Line Press), an re telling of the biblical story of Sarah and Hagar, involving race, servitude, history, slavery, and freedom, in a series of lyrical persona poems, to be re-issued by Tupelo Press.

She is co-editor of the Taos Journal of Poetry & Art, and the Acquisitions Editor for 3:A Taos Press. She was Poet in Residence at Sacred Heart Academy in Greenwich, CT in 2005, at the Nassau Museum of Art, and Yaxche School in Taos, New Mexico. She has lectured on Teaching Poetry to Children at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College and Colorado State College. Golos’ work has been widely published and anthologized nationally and internationally.  She was awarded residencies at the Wurlizter Foundation, awarded Creative Woman Fellowship by A Room of Her Own, among others.  A lifelong activist for social justice, humanitarian and peace causes, Golos uses her poetry not only to interpret and question but “to challenge and act.” She lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her husband, writer David Pérez.

Welcome, Veronica. 

-- sdh 

"Sperm Heaven" by Henri Michaux (trans. David Lehman)

            A man’s sperm bears a curious resemblance to the man himself – to his character, I should say.

A woman’s egg bears an astonishing resemblance to that woman’s character.

Both sperm and egg are tiny. The sperm is very long and totally single-minded. The egg expresses ennui and harmony in one stroke. Its shape is nearly that of a sphere.

Not all sperm are like a man’s. The sperm of a crab, and even more so that of a crayfish, resemble the corolla of a flower. The supple, radiant arms seem to be reaching out not to a female but to heaven.

Given the regularity of crab reproduction, you might well suppose that these decapod crustaceans know what they’re doing.  

In fact, we know nothing about the heaven of the crab, although there are people who catch crabs and dangle them by the tentacles, the better to observe them. We know even less about the heaven of the sperm of the crab.

-- Henri Michaux, “Le Ciel du Spermatozoide” (trans. David Lehman)

Reprinted from Conduit

Some More Summer Reading [by Moira Egan]

It's been an Andrea-infused whirlwind at the West Chester Poetry Conference this week, and it's also, I will formally state, been a lot of fun. 

And I don't mean this post to seem a cheat, but I'm going to share with you some excellent ideas for summer poetry reading. Mezzo Cammin, an online journal of formal poetry by women, has just published its 15th issue; to celebrate, they have published 15 reviews of poetry books by 15 contemporary poets. 

I'm going to re-recommend the wonderful Babette Deutsch, as I have done in my review. I knew her name mostly from books that I inherited from my father, but her Collected Poems blew me away. She is a poet whose voice should not be forgotten. Give her work a try -- not to mention the other 14.

Thanks to David and Stacey for having asked me to blog this week -- and if you're around, I'd love to see you at my reading in Brooklyn on Sunday.

Over and out, Moira

All best tropical storm wishes! 

"The Rhubarb Fizz at Fitzbillies" (by Stacey Harwood)

Stacey Harwood wires from Fitzbillies, the legendary tea shop on Trumpington Street in Cambridge, with the news that the venerable institution, which faced bankrutcy not too long ago, is thriving under new management and a chef that is au courant. The rhubarb fizz is something you would never associate with the home of the Chelsea Bun (which Tim Hayward, a co-owner who writes on food for the Guardian and the Financial Times, calls "a diametrical coma in a rectangular box").

Here is Stacey's report filed for Saveur:

<<<
Cambridge mainstay Fitzbillies has always been one of my favorite stops when I'm in England. I look forward to the reliable tea and Chelsea buns they're famous for, but on my most recent visit I noticed that the university town fixture has somehow changed—newer, fresher, bigger, brighter. I soon learned that Fitzbillies has, in fact, enjoyed a recent growth spurt, thanks to husband-and-wife team Tim Hayward and Alison Wright, who took over in 2011 and added an imaginative dinner menu with the help of London chef Rosie Sykes.

When I sat down to dinner, I was greeted with a basket of cheese straws and the new house cocktail, the rhubarb fizz, a compelling combination of rhubarb syrup and sparkling wine -- spicy and nuanced. I asked chef Sykes to confide the syrup's ingredients. "Cardamom and vanilla," she said. "I've been on a bit of a cardamom kick lately." She infuses additional flavor into the syrup by simmering the rhubarb in a spicy ginger beer.

Now that I'm back home, and with one of the first edible harbingers of warm weather finally showing up at my local farmer's market, I know what I'll be drinking for the next few weeks.
>>>

http://www.saveur.com/article/Wine-and-Drink/Friday-Cocktails-Rhubarb-Fizz

Storm's a comin'; and a poem by Marilyn Nelson [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

 

Dear Bleaders,

It is going to storm here soon, it’s not due until tonight, but the wind is already doing weird things to the leaves. I'm hoping my little garden withstands it. Here's a photo of my bean stalks yearning up the white fence I gave them, and in the background the first crop of tomatoes. 

Here’s a great poem for you. It takes you into something secret. It’s by Marilyn Nelson from her The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems. She's also got a great new New and Selected called Faster Than Light.

Lonely Eagles

for Daniel “Chappie” James, General USAF             
and for the 332d Fighter Group

Being black in America

was the Original Catch,

so no one was surprised

by 22:

The segregated airstrips,

separate camps.

They did the jobs

they’d been trained to do.

 

Black ground crews kept them in the air;

black flight surgeons kept them alive;

the whole Group removed their headgear

when another pilot died.

 

They were known by their names:

“Ace” and “Lucky,”

“Sky-hawk Johnny,” “Mr. Death.”

And by their positions and planes.

Red Leader to Yellow Wing-man,

do you copy?

 

If you could find a fresh egg

you bought it and hid it

in your dopp-kit or your boot

until you could eat it alone.

On the night before a mission

you gave a buddy

your hiding-places

as solemnly

as a man dictating

his will.

There’s a chocolate bar

in my Bible;

my whiskey bottle

is inside my bedroll.

 

In beat-up Flying Tigers

that had seen action in Burma,

they shot down three German jets.

They were the only outfit

in the American Air Corps

to sink a destroyer

with fighter planes.

Fighter planes with names

like “By Request.”

Sometimes the radios

didn’t even work.

 

They called themselves

“Hell from Heaven.”

This Spookwaffe.

My father’s old friends.

 

It was always

maximum effort:

A whole squadron

of brother-men

raced across the tarmac

and mounted their planes.

 

            My tent-mate was a guy named Starks.

            The funny thing about me and Starks

            was that my air mattress leaked,

            and Starks’ didn’t.

            Every time we went up,

            I gave my mattress to Starks

            and put his on my cot.

 

            One day we were strafing a train.

            Strafing’s bad news:

            you have to fly so low and slow

            you’re a pretty clear target.

            My other wing-man and I

            exhausted our ammunition and got out.

            I recognized Starks

            by his red tail

            and his rudder’s trim-tabs.

            He couldn’t pull up his nose.

            He dived into the train

            and bought the farm.

 

            I found his chocolate,

            three eggs, and a full fifth

            of his hoarded-up whiskey.

            I used his mattress

            for the rest of my tour.

 

            It still bothers me, sometimes:

            I was sleeping

            on his breath.

                            -Marilyn Nelson  

Chocolate bars, and eggs, and whiskey turned into the substance of loss, to be taken in, to get drunk on. Cherished. Sleeping on a dead man’s breath. 

Stays with you.

Makes you look at your own chocolate and eggs and whiskey with smarter hands. 

Okay, stay away from the lightening and count to the thunder.

As to all the good you're doing, keep it up.

Also, keep your chin up (though not out in the rain).

Regarding all that is awful: it might get better,

will very likely change. Don't kill yourself

and I shall return to encourage you again.

Love,

Jennifer

 

 

"The Triple Cain Theory of Hollywood and War" [by David Lehman]

On Memorial Day weekend -- and again on the anniversary of D-Day -- we take a solemn moment to remember our war heroes. In 1944, the man who would have been my father-in-law, had he lived long enough, landed on Omaha Beach, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and liberated a concentration camp. He also slugged an officer who made anti-Semitic taunts.

Some spend the day, or a portion of it, watching war movies, and you can see great ones about a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma, the brainwashing of GIs by Chinese militants during the Korean War, the plight of returning veterans having a tough time readjuisting to civilian life, the story of a Swedish industrialist whom the British blackmail into spying on Nazi industrial capacity not to mention do-or-die missions behind enemy lines in Europe; traumatized pilots returning to their base in Britain after one flight too many; escape attempts from German POW camps; the exploits of generals, the fate of battles, the derring-do of a charismatic hero; a mutiny on a US Navy destroyer-minesweeper that has seen better days; heroism on the home front with an alliterative heroine such as Greer Garson or Claudette Colbert.

My Triple Cain theory of Hollywood and War is based on a primal parable of guilt and violence, the story of Cain's slaying of his borther Abel. Hollywood movies are the invention of wandering Jews, and the moviemakers conceive themselves as marked men like Cain, protected by the vvery sign that sets him apart. This identification with Cain supports the view that violence is righteous and inevitable. There are three prominent movies in which the name Cain figures.

(a) Citizen Kane (1941). Orson Welles, playing Kane, cables a reporter in Cuba: "You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war." Etc.

(b) The Caine Mutiny (1954) with Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, and Jose Ferrer as the Jewish lawyer Barney Greengrass who gets the mutineers off the hook by exposing the captain, Bogart, as a paranoid playing with marbles he is destined to lose. Well, maybe Greengrass isn't his last name. It's Greenwald. But you know what I mean. I thnk especially of the spech he makes when he spills his champagne into Fred MacMurray's face, which he does not just because Fred's a hypocrite and a heel but somehow also in the name of the batty captain and similar incompetents who donate their bodies to the machinery of war, which is metaphorically identified with a US Navy destroyer on its last sea legs.

(c) The hero of High Noon (1952), willful Marshall Will Kane, played by tall stoic taciturn determined manly Gary Cooper, with goodness blonde gracious Grace Kelly as his Quaker (pacifist) bride, who shoots a man before the "real time" movie is through, and the just-married couple drives the carriage out of town with no fanfare except the lonesome Academy Award-winning song, "Do not forsake me, O my darling." Several "types of allegory" come into play, depending on whether the focus is on
i) Kane,
ii) Grace Kelly
iii)) Frank Miller, who has vowed to kill him and is expected on the noon train,
or
iv) the townspeople, who are either
1) spineless,
2) too young to do do anything but play cops and robbers,
(3) too old to do anything but offer a warm hand clasp
or
(4) Lloyd Bridges.

(d) Summatiom of thesis
1. Cain and Abel (Genesis) as a parable of Hollywood and the American War Machine
2) Digression on Michael Caine as a British variant of the American type
3) The special attractions of the prisoner-of-war camp as a site; digression on William Holden, Steve McQueen, and James Garner as three attractive North American models
4) Digression on East of Eden with James Dean (whose last name is a near anagram of Eden) as a version of Cain,
5) Presidential hopeful Herman Cain's moment of fame. 
6) Comment from Susan Cain, author of the bestselling Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking. Cain's research tells her that "we watch people like Charlie Sheen BECAUSE they are narcissistic, not in spite of it." The obnioxious are "better liked" in college. "Not only that, but the type of narcissism that was most predictive of popularity was the most malignant kind."
7) Everything else.

Details TK. -- DL

Formally Speaking: Housekeeping the Sonnets [by Moira Egan]

Last night we had the great pleasure of listening to Julia Alvarez read -- her poems! She said herself that it's been a while since she thought of herself as a poet rather than a novelist. 

At our sonnet panel earlier in the day, we had talked about the value of bringing simple diction and earthy detail into contemporary poetry in form, and it was wonderful to hear her talk about her own early loves: many dead white guys. But how to insert a female, as she said, immigrant voice into that tradition? Well, she said, go into the poems -- go into the sonnets, and start to housekeep them. 

She read a couple from the sonnet cycle 33, and some other wonderful pieces: "Naming the Fabrics," "El Fotografo," "Recitation," and gave the lovely image of wishing to be the bead in a necklace of a generation. If you haven't read her poems in a while, please go and find some; you won't be sorry.

Formally Speaking: Notes from the West Chester Poetry Conference [by Moira Egan]

Overheard at dinner:

"When reading Merrill, you just have to suspend your heterotextuality." 

"You are right there in the liminal zone." 

* * *

Tomorrow: sonnets on parade. A wee sampling:

From the inimitable Kathrine Varnes: 

The Fleshpot Sonnets (a crown)

1.

This moment's peach -- sometimes it's just enough

sweetness, despite the stone and bitter skin

or because of both, because. Because the thin

juices won't behave: soaking the white cuff

edges, filling, spilling from the palm's trough,

flesh of water, sugar gracing the chin,

tracing the neck like a contemplation of sin

we can wash away. We don't even have to bluff.

 

So what will I steal tonight as the toddler sleeps?

A husband lingers in the hallway's dark

and glances, settles his eye where he'd recruit,

I with the monitor's glow upon my cheeks

two hours a day. Leave now? I can't debark

while writing towards this bivalved, cleft-fleshed fruit.

 

* * *

7.

I gave up padded bras, certain offense.

I shunned the curve of underwire glam.

Let me be the woman that I am,

I said. Let infants find their milk, the tense

cry of hunger loosen. Impotence

inspired by well-fed babies? Sham.

Shame. Before the press of the mammogram,

let breasts be breasts, whatever audience.

 

Let breasts be breasts. Our season's brief as is.

It's hard enough to find a bra that fits.

(And those who asked the schoolyard, Does she stuff?

now look askance--filled with J. Alfred's fear

a thousand times repeating: Do I dare?)

Declare this moment and this peace enough.  

 

(With the permission of Kathrine Varnes. From Hot Sonnets, Entasis Press, 2011)

Pretty yummy, isn't it? 

 

Ode to jet lag

Jet lag is not fun but it can be funny. Imagine sitting across the table from your sister, having a perfectly normal conversation, when suddenly, although you seem to be awake, you are not, and you start talking in your sleep. You say completely irrelevant and inexplicable things, like "Not everyone can be a chef."

Maybe the Delphic Oracle had jet lag.

Though I have always suspected that Tori Amos was the Delphic Oracle for our age. No, I never was a Corn Flake girl, either.

This week, after the jet lag: sonnets, sestinas, and live reporting from the West Chester Poetry Conference. For now, sogni d'oro.