The Best American Poetry

Paddy Kavanagh’s “A Christmas Childhood” (Terence Winch)

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) continues to inspire conflicting feelings and opinions. John Nemo, writing in The Dictionary of Irish Literature, puts it this way: “His followers, a varied but vocal group, speak of him admiringly as an important force in Irish letters, second only to Yeats. His detractors, fewer in number but every bit as vocal, dismiss him as a loud-mouthed, ill-mannered peasant who disrupted rather than advanced the development of modern literature.”  As a loud-mouthed, ill-mannered peasant myself, I will take my place among Kavanagh’s followers.

One of his most ardent admirers was my old friend James Liddy, an Irish poet who spent most of his adult life as a professor at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee until his death in 2008. Many years ago (in the ‘70s sometime), James sent me a copy of an Irish journal called The Lace Curtain, which included his “Open Letter to the Young about Patrick Kavanagh.” Describing Kavanagh’s work (and, really, his own as well), Liddy writes, “Or there is a poetry in which real ideas from living come at us. This kind can be direct statement with a reference behind to the story of what happened to the poet. It relies on the mind staying alive, on the man making the statement keeping his emotional intelligence alive.”

Kavanagh brings that emotional intelligence, I think, to “A Christmas Childhood,”  a poem one encounters regularly this time of year in Irish circles on both sides of the Atlantic.  As an Irish accordion player, I relish the mention of his father’s melodeon (pronounced melojin), which is a single-row button accordion.  

The poem introduces us to the thrumming imagination of a six-year-old Irish farmboy, ca. 1910, who is perfectly in tune with the magical world around him.

 

A Christmas Childhood

by Patrick Kavanagh

                           I

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost—
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven's gable. An apple tree
With its December-glinting fruit we saw—
O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
And death the germ within it! Now and then
I can remember something of the gay
Garden that was childhood's. Again

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch
Or any common sight the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

 

                           II

My father played the melodeon
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodeon called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy's hanging hill,
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon. The Three Wise Kings.

An old man passing said:
‘Can’t he make it talk’—
The melodeon. I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife’s big blade.
There was a little one for cutting tobacco,
And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodeon,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At his wedding in April 1967; Kavanagh died in November of that year.

One final note: Kavanagh’s best-known poem is probably “On Raglan Road,” which was written to the tune of an old march called “The Dawning of the Day.”  Many singers have recorded the song since the ‘60s, including Van Morrison and Sinead O’Connor. 

This Just in from Didi Menendez

Check out the most recent issue of Poets/Artist magazine for the latest in the Portrait Studies series. You'll find it here.

Poetic Merge (c) Angela Hardy 

Tattoos and the (interdisciplinary) Art of Persian Poetry by Roger Sedarat

Tattoos, unlike smoking, remain pretty cool. They’re also here to stay (and in keeping with the loose Persian connections, please allow the pun). I thought of introducing a brief collage of poetry tattooed on strangers and friends. Of course I suspected something like this had been done before, but I had no idea of the quality nor the extent of such projects.

Before briefly exploring some Persian connections and implications of this topic, I want to thank writer Facebook friends for introducing me to a couple of great publications: Editors Kim Addonizio and Cheryl Dumesnil have created an anthology of fantastic writers that capture the art of tattooing in various ways in Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. Also of interest is Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor’s The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos for Bookworms Worldwide, a great coffee table book featuring great photographs of literary excerpts tattooed on various body parts.

I also want to mention too that my Queens College Early Americanist colleague Sian Roberts advises researching into “moko,” which,” she says, “is deeply integrated into Maori and Polynesian culture (fun fact: ‘tattoo’ originated as a Polynesian word.)”

In thinking about this topic in relation to things Persian (my commitment for my week of blogging), I also got to know those already in my life by various poetry on their skin. I didn’t know, prior to this entry, that my friend Jason Tougaw, a Comp. Rhetoric specialist (also at Queens College) has a Cocteau drawing of Orpheus, which explains in part why he seems to embody a kind of poetry. Stefanie Simons, who I got to know at Pen America, has tattooed part of an Aracelis Girmay poem on her body (yet another significant reason Stefanie is such a cool young writer). Getting more serious with things—and hopefully I can put a few pics up of what I’m seeing—Claire Van Winkle, poet and translator (and new MFA student at Queens) has this on her arm from Jorie Graham “The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. ~JG” Always, or usually, the arms of these writers carry the words of writers, as if literally connecting to some key influence.

 

By way of transition to the Persian, Tara Mokhtari, an Iranian-Australian poet and critic who I recently met during her visit to NYC, has the following lines in Perisan on her arm from the modern Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri (about whom I hope to blog soon). She offers the following loose translation: "Live large, and alone, and modest, and unyielding.” Most people, she notes, get a little disappointed when she explains the “alone” part. Writers, however, would surely understand.

 

            I offer these tattooed lines as a greater transition to the well-known early trendsetting images of Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, who radically politicized the female body with words from poetry as well as other sources. Like Neshat’s work, Mokhtari’s words both attract and subvert attention, as the latter explained how men during her trip to NYC hit on her by using the foreign lines as an entry into the conversation (making the message of valuing aloneness all the more significant).

Those unfamiliar with Neshat's postmodern treatment of the feminine post-Islamic Revolution—especially following her visit to her country of origin in the 1990’s—might find it worthwhile to check out her Women of Allah series. She co-opts a kind of communal or group definition of the Persian woman in the context of the Islamic Republic of Iran, reproducing a seeming empowerment with guns, for example, though also rendering the women with little individuality (re-imposing the mystique of the veil, so to speak). 

 

There are far too many things to say and theorize upon as one considers the implications of these seminal images. In a pithy blog entry, it’s perhaps best to let the art speak for and against itself, so I’ll refrain from what will only become a reductive analysis. One overriding question that Neshat’s work continues to brilliantly bring to the surface relates to appropriation and issues of Orientalism.

 

Obviously the Persian script on female bodies (the artist used her own body in much of this work), like Tara’s tattoo, means something different to Iranians than to those, say, in the English speaking world. The latter can’t help but find another layer in their resistance to understanding, and I read that some have mistakenly assumed they must be lines of the Qu’ran. What does it mean to know, or to not know, that often this amazing calligraphy are the words of the first modern feminist poet Forugh Farrokhzad?

A prodigious amount of tension derives from the dichotomous reception of eastern vs. western audience. Insofar as Robert Frost famously claimed “Poetry is what gets lost in translation,” he was pulling a fast one, and his elusive irony gets aptly demonstrated here. The meta-statement itself is poetry, an epigram of sorts, meaning in locating the dislocation Frost paradoxically finds poetry. In her own way, through the resistance of translation and the resulting loss of meaning, Neshat too makes poetry in the English speaking world by allowing the loss.   

Of course there is a lot more going on in Neshat’s earlier work here (not to mention her more current projects with video and film). To a certain extent interjecting the images in the framework of poetry tattoos might seem like forcing a comparison. However, when considering these indelible impressions as well as a kind of permanence through the use of impermanent artistic media, they remain another kind of tattoo pictured on the artist. 

 

Contemporary Manifestations of the Beloved by Roger Sedarat

My experience with the ghazal, as both a translator from the classical Persian as well as an Iranian-American poet writing in the form in English), gets me thinking comparatively, both in terms of time and space. New translations of any great writing will always appear, in part because literary styles change along with a reading audience. Thinking about how this form reaches from the 13^th and 14^th centuries to today, even as it spans regions (from Iran to America), continues to offer a kind of intercultural space for some postmodern funkiness.

I didn’t think, out of all the things in the world to blog about, that I’d find myself here, but to make it worthwhile, I want to focus on form in relation to theme. If I remember correctly, T.S. Eliot has that great metaphor about theme or meaning in a poem as analogous to the meat the burglar throws the guard dog as he sneaks into the home for the jewels (the style). To a great extent, the “beloved” in the ghazal has served as the desired object, especially for Persians, who adapted the longing for the divine into such a sensual and tangible form, wherein the beloved becomes the material manifestation of divine presence. As a result, writers like Hafez began juxtaposing the high and the low, esoteric theological matters with full red lips, long before rock n’ roll was invented, let alone rap or hip hop.

Of course, some of these depictions do not safely fall under the rubric of political correctness. This makes the current writing of the form that much interesting, when considering a Persian writer like Simin Behbahani who, while honoring the form of the ghazal , inverts the gender of the beloved, a politicized/feminist statement on the centuries old tradition. 

For all their erudition, readers then and now are still dogs, regardless of the desired object, so I thought if only to satisfy my own hunger, I’d throw out contemporary manifestations of the beloved—objects of transcending desire—as they surface in different kinds of writing. Again, it’s not like these have direct relevance to the form, but they do capture something of the spirit of longing for the beloved, albeit within the context of the culture in which they are written. Here’s a little list arising from a survey of some favorites. They are off the top of my head—lines to and for various beloveds—and admittedly they tend to get too male/chauvinistic. I really would like to see collective posts here, various lists from men and women:

 

Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend

I want to guard your dreams and visions

Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims

And strap your hands across my engines

                                                            --Bruce Springsteen

“Pray and play, play and pray.”

                                                Miles Davis

 

“I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too.”

                                                            --Wicked Witch of the West, Wizard of Oz

 

“In this country first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman.”        

                                                                                                       --Tony Montana

 “Oh, wait’ll I get dat wabbit!”

                                                 --Elmer Fudd

 

“Oh no, Mrs. Robinson. I think, I think you're the most attractive of all my parents' friends. I mean that.”

                                                                                                --Benjamin (from The Graduate)

 “What am I living for, if not for you?”

                                                    --Fred Jay and Art Harris (Song)

 

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

                                                                                                --Vince Lombardi

“I put her on my plate, then I do the dishes.”

                                                           --Lil’ Wayne

“Hello cowgirl in the sand…”

                                                --Neil Young

 

“Ah beer, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.”

                                                                          --Homer Simpson

 

“God it’s so painful when something is so close, but still so far out of reach.”

                                                                                          --Tom Petty

 

“Hey Mr. DJ, I just wanna’ hear, some rhythm and blues music…on the radio”

                                                                                                            --Van Morrison

“I eat men like air.”

                                    --Sylvia Plath

 

“See that look in their eyes, Rock? You gotta get that

look back, Rock. Eye of the tiger, man.”

                                                --Apollo Creed, Rocky III

 

“The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face

Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.”

                                                                                                --Bob Dylan

“COOKIES!!! UMM-NUM-NUM-NUM-NUM”

                                                                        --Cookie Monster

 

“What they want, I don’t know, they’re all revved up and ready to go.”

                                                                                    --Ramones

 

"Lil' Wayne Writes Ghazals"--A 21st Century Introduction to a Classical Persian Form

“Lil’ Wayne writes ghazals.” This from Program Coordinator and poet Reynold Martin to the amazing group of teens doing spoken word (and so much more) at Urban Word as he introduced the workshop I gave on the ghazal a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to poets doing well with the form in English—especially the likes of Marilyn Hacker, Suzanne Gardinier, and the late Agha Shahid Ali—more often than not the form needs little introduction. Thankfully, it also lends itself to so much clever invention in our trans-cultural age that it spontaneously receives an introduction like the one from Reynold.  

One of the many classical masters from Iran aptly defined Persian verse by saying, “Poetry is in the rhyme.” That may sound a bit antiquated, even among contemporary  Iranian writers, who tend to break away from the established Persian form of the ghazal. Yet rhyme of course endures, insisting on making itself heard, whether in the original poems of Rumi and Hafez or the lyrics of Lil’ Wayne. In asking the teens at the workshop why rhyme keeps coming, and also what is it about rhyme for Rumi and others that inherently makes for us  a kind of spiritual connection, versions of the same response answered both questions. Basically, as they observed, it links what might not belong together, cleverly connecting as it helps us to remember.

I get the gist of Reyold’s comparison, but following the workshop I needed to explore it for myself. First, a very brief recap on the form of the ghazal. Sticklers will rightly get upset and say I’ve glossed too much here, but it’s a blog entry, for goodness sake. Rest assured, there are ample resources out there to better and further introduce the form. I’d say a good place to start is Shahid Ali’s introduction in his anthology: Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English. Anyway, here is a short overview, followed by a comparative analysis to Lil’ Wayne and others:

The ghazal is a poem comprised of autonomously closed couplets, wherein each stanza stands independently from others. A recurring rhyme followed by a repeated phrase concludes both lines of the first couplet as well as the second line of the remaining couplets. Typically, the convention calls for the poet or persona to include his or name in the concluding couplet. Emerging in 7^th Century Arabia, the form became especially well known through the 13th and 14th century verse of Persian poets such as Rumi and Hafez, making its way to later poets writing in Urdu such as Ghalib. It has been adopted by other poets writing in Hebrew, Turkish, German, Spanish, and English.

 To give an excellent example, here are a few lines from Shahid Ali’s poem, “Even the Rain,”

 Even the Rain

 by Agha Shahid Ali

 What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?

But he has bought grief's lottery, bought even the rain.

 

"our glosses / wanting in this world" "Can you remember?"

Anyone! "when we thought / the poets taught" even the rain?

 

After we died--That was it!--God left us in the dark.

And as we forgot the dark, we forgot even the rain.

 

Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.

For mixers, my love, you'd poured--what?--even the rain.

 

The first couplet reproduces in both lines what the following couplets will copy only in the second line: the recurring rhyme followed by the word or phrase. In the last couplet, typically the poet mentions his or her name or a pseudonym as a kind of signature.

It’s worth noting that after Rumi met his esteemed teacher, Shams-y-Tabriz, who reoriented him in time and space (whirling him into a true poet as opposed to a mere learned academic), roughly ¾ of what he wrote was in this form. It’s also worth speculating why. Each couplet, unlike an entire western sonnet, coheres unto itself, remaining closed. You could scramble a given ghazal and get an interesting poem in flux, even as each couplet maintains its autonomy (which is why in the Urban Word workshop we could each write our own couplet and then make an entirely unified ghazal in a very random way that seemed to fit together as if by author intentionality).

 This obviously puts productive pressure on the form and specifically the rhyme + the recurring word, in a great way. One would, and should, have to read tomes like Annemarie Schimmel’s The Mystical Dimensions of Islam to fully appreciate how the philosophy of Sufi mysticism underpins this form and vice versa, creating a seemingly disjointed world that unexpectedly unifies through musicality of the form. And here is where English does fall short compared to Persian, Urdu, (and other languages I’m sure). In Iran, the form itself literally sings. I write now listening to Sufi music streaming on RadioDarvish.com, an internet site that serves as my kind of go to station for any kind of writing or translating. The great Mohammad Reza Shahjarian sings a ghazal by the 13th century classical Persian poet, Saadi. 

At the tomb of Hafez , the 14^th century master’s poetry is sung on loudspeakers.

 Translations by Marilyn Hacker and original English ghazals from Shahid Ali are about as good as examples one can get of the form in English. Add to this the introduction of supplementary music (which becomes integral thanks to the form, and the poetry itself) by Coleman Barks. Even so, the form, if only as analogy, can be compared to some masterful lyrical songwriting that uses the crux of such repetition.

 Before getting to Lil’ Wayne, consider another great songwriter (and no stranger to appropriation of middle-eastern mysticism) invested in similar repetitions, Bob Dylan. Here are a few couplets/lyrics from “Shelter from the Storm”:

I was burned out from exhaustion buried in the hail

Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail

Hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn

"Come in" she said

"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

 

Suddenly I turned around and she was standing there

With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair

She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns

"Come in" she said

"I'll give you shelter from the storm".  

 Of course this is not a ghazal; it’s an American song, a very good one at that. But as a song, it embodies the spirit and, to a certain extent, the letter of the form . The last two lines work as an extended repeated phrase, while each third line varies the “orn” rhyme. In part, constructions like these enable Dylan to go the distance and branch out in so many interesting ways while returning to an inherently satisfying (and darkly spiritual) repetition.

To conclude with where we started (very much like a ghazal), Lil’ Wayne in his own way does indeed approximate the form as well. It’s too much to get into how deftly he puns to reinvent cliché, politically charge his own self-reinvention with humor, etc. Even so, at some point it’s really worth going into the kind of correspondence between his rhyme in this respect and the likes of Hafez. Like the latter, for Lil’ Wayne much of the poetry is indeed in the rhyme. Going back to Tha Carter II Album, consider these lines from “I’m a Dboy:”

 

Thinkin' of a masta plan

I get money but I'm thinkin of a fasta plan

I'm tryin' to cash it in

I got 5 in thet garbage can and the Wrap Saran

I need cash advance

See I know three sold

The other two a jam

I'm a sit on one and whip the other one much as I can

Hot ass fuckin sadan

Windows rolled down no sound

Them bricks got the speakers drowned

I ain't listenin for shit but sirens

I ain't tryin to get to my ships sunk fuck you pirates

I'll touch you cowards

It ain't nuthin to a boss

The niggaz in the hood tryina floss and ya head gotta cost nigga

Take a loss nigga

SS five five all black with the top chopped off dat

Catch me in the spots where the shots pop off at

I ain't tryin to prove nuttin I'm jus tryin to move somthin

 

[Chorus]

 I'm a d-boy

Bitch I'm a d-boy

Ho I'm a dough boy

I got the scope in the rope for them jackboys

I got money in my pocket

I got money in my block

I got the money in the power

 

Now, I know this is a stretch, and I’m getting myself in trouble (and Reynold along with me). All, or most any kind of pop song has a refrain, so how can one just say willy nilly chorus= repeated phrase? One can’t, unless the series of rhymes can be said to equal one long rhyme, and the rhyme functions at this level of musicality and inventiveness. We are at best still dealing with an analogy as opposed to an equation, but I’d maintain we are closer to the ghazal than may at first be realized.  

 

Didi Menendez's Portrait Project

Didi Menendez's portrait project is designed for poets as well as visual artists. She has selected and posted photogaphic portraits to serve as models  Here are some of the particlars centerting on a Star Black photograph from February 2011. There are five other photographs at the moment and Didi may add to that number. For full details, click here.

<<<
Deadline: August 15, 2011

Visual Artists:

Render a portrait using this image and send a jpg of your portrait to didimenendez at hotmail.com. Place on subject line PORTRAIT STUDY #2. You may render the portrait in your preferred medium. Specify with your submission the size and medium of your entry along with your name and web site/online portfolio address. Everyone is welcomed to submit a portrait. All entries following the guidelines will be placed on this blog post. Once all entries have been submitted by the deadline, the best will be featured in PoetsArtists (www.poetsandartists.com) web site.

Poets:

Submit a poem inspired from this image to didimenendez at hotmail.com. Place on subject line Portrait Study #2. Send poem attached to a word document along with your web site address and short bio. If the poem is well received by our editor (me), it will be published on this post. The best poem will be published in the PoetsArtists web site along with the best portrait submitted by a visual artist.
>>>

Gogol [by Lera Auerbach]

I have to apologize to the readers of BAP for my disappearance. One of the reasons is that I am in the process of completing an orchestral score for the upcoming premiere of my opera Gogol in Vienna. It is a large-scale opera with three acts, full orchestra, two choirs (adult mixed choir and boys), dances and the cast of  fifteen characters.

Since yesterday was Gogol's birthday, I think it would be appropriate to share with the readers of BAP a short interview I gave last week via email about Gogol. While the actual  interview will be published in German, here is the English version of it.

GOGOL INTERVIEW

1)      Why are you fascinated by Gogol?

Gogol, born a Ukrainian cossack, is often considered the father of modern Russian literature. He was a writer with a rich and conflicted inner life, able to bring to light, in the most vivid form, the tragic nature of the human condition. His writings are even more relevant today than they were during his time.

  2)      Which story is reflected in  your opera "Gogol"?

Before starting my work on this opera, I reread the complete works of Gogol, as well as over twenty books written about him. For the opera, I wished to create not a historical account of Gogol’s life, but a dreamlike vision of his inner passions, his madness and genius. Opera is above all a drama, the ultimate dramatic expression. Some operas based on historical events and real people, such as Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov", can  also be viewed as tragic fairytales for adults. "Gogol" is ultimately a Russian opera, and Russian history is a nightmarish fairytale from which this country may never awake.  

3)      Which character is Gogol in your opera? Is he a tragic person or is he funny?

Gogol was a deeply troubled man, possessed by fears. He became religiously obsessed and began to believe that he brought real evil into this world through his writings.  A priest, whom Gogol trusted, ignited these convictions and encouraged Gogol to burn the 2nd and 3rd volume of the "Dead Souls". Gogol's deep seriousness is what allowed him to become a great satire writer. This opera is ultimately tragic but has dark humorous undertones. As an  example, Bes (a demon), who is Gogol's adversary, but also in many ways his alter-ego,  often ridicules  Gogol. Bes' comments can be grotesque, yet  they also ring of truth.  In a tragically distorted manner, Bes, whom Gogol passionately fights and fears, also represents Gogol's consciousness.    

 4)      First you wrote a play and then the libretto. Why are words not enough? Why do they need  music? Which dimension  can you express with the music?

The play and the libretto are two separate entities. The play is complete without music. The libretto is an adaptation of the play, specifically crafted to be a partner to the music.  Opera is one of the most complete art-forms:  music, text, staging, and drama are all part of the whole. As librettist for my own works, I have an ideal collaboration with the composer.

 5)      In what way is your regional provenance  important in your music?

Although I have lived half of my life in the West, Russian culture and music are part of my DNA.  

 

 6)      What do you think is generally characteristic of your music?

Let music connect directly to the listener regardless of the composer’s own attempts to interpret its essence. Jorge Luis Borges wrote “A man sets himself in the task of portraying the world. Over the years he fills a given surface with images of provinces and kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, rooms, instruments, heavenly bodies, horses, and people. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face”. Sapienti sat. Cetera desunt.

 

Elizabeth Fodaski + Edward Hirsch at KGB Bar [by Megin Jimenez]

March 14, 2011. Elizabeth Fodaski dips a toe and then takes a nervy leap into work with a personal edge. Nervy for her, I think, because her poems would not be classified as "lyric," but are rather the sort that test out words to see what they could possibly do beside each other. (As in much of her new book, Document: "A palimpsest of fruity horizons harangues the interloper"). She starts with an elegy to her father ("reader, I married him to my memory"), followed by poems from Document. She then reads a kind of minuet on the couple, with the recurring image of a husband's face at the dining room table (place of family meals, sex, arguments, apologies), taking Dickinson's line "I like a look of agony" as its point of departure. The kind of poem, she confesses, that is difficult to return to once written. Language frissons: "shaky custard," "a glass of noise," "your designated tough-guy novel moment."

 

Edward Hirsch comes with a collection of new and selected, The Living Fire, which spans seven previous books and a life lived in the company of poetry. In contrast, Hirsch's work could serve as the definition of "lyric" (as a category). He, too, begins with an elegy to his father ("Special Orders") and offers a poem that takes a line from Petrarch as its point of departure: "The times my sad heart knew a little sweetness." He describes the summer of being a young poet in New York and writing the first breakthrough poems, ones he knew would stick around, and shares one ("Song"). There's a nervy poem, too, involving breast milk and "a mirrored room off Highway 59" (called "Milk"... that's all I'll say!). And "Green Couch", a kind of ode to the object, a repository of "difficult reading," and the silent witness to the end of a marriage. It ends with the wonderfully simple stanza:

I go back and forth to work.
I walk in the botanical gardens on weekends
and take a narrow green path to the clearing.

 *****

Join us next week, March 21, when we co-hosts (Laura Cronk, Megin Jimenez and Michael Quattrone) take over for our own reading. To see the complete Spring 2011 series, click here.

National Portrait Gallery, London. Hello Mr. Pope!

"What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed."

-- sdh

Bloof Books Poets at KGB Bar [by Megin Jimenez]

February 28, 2011. Shanna Compton (far left), founder of Bloof Books (as in BLOOF!, the comic book noise), opens the reading with poems from a manuscript in progress, “exploring cliché and melodrama”. One of the challenges she proposes: ending a poem with “I love you.” She reveals a recurring fascination with imaginary hotels (metaphor for imagination? poetry as a place away from “home”?), offers love poems to her husband, a disgusted rebuff to the ugly crush of the news. Stand-out snippets: “DIY bleeding,”, “sunset stripes,” “My husband is the best wife in the world.”

Peter Davis reads from his new book of poetry, Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! It first struck me as a brave project, as many of the poems are in the voice of some kind of “po biz” (excuse the term) id, one which may strike uncomfortably close to home for some. The insecure, secretly attention-seeking, competitive, tenure-craving, publication-cataloguing little imp who turns people who write against each other, and is not entirely alien to anyone who’s gone any step beyond taking his poems out of the drawer. But Peter's laughing with, poetry people, and it’s good to exorcise it. He’s damn funny, too. Out of a deadpan start, he breaks into this voice, who is not beyond courting & flattering any potential receptive reader, which includes  babies, metalheads, & people who might find themselves reading the poem underwater.

Jennifer L. Knox surprises with a departure from her playful, whipsmart, smart-ass, right-now mode. Her reading centers on a longer series from her new book, The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway (isn't that a swell cover!). Jennifer wrote the series, she relates, in response to a dare from friend and poet Ada Limón to write down every car crash she has been in. Autobiography via car crash, car crash as rebellion, car crash as search, car crash as youth – music, drugs, near death escapes. A melancholy undercurrent, a portrait of a father surfaces. He’s present, in some way, in all of the crashes – driving instructor, witness, ER parent. Car crash as masculine presence, driving as ritual...

***

Join us this coming Monday for readings by Erika Meitner and Jeanne Marie Beaumont. To see the complete Spring 2011 series, click here.