The Best American Poetry

A Resistance to Emerson [by Michael Schiavo]

In the January 2011 issue of Harper’s, Philip Lopate writes eloquently, as ever, about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s journals, recently published in two volumes by the Library of America. I’m always happy when anyone mentions Emerson, especially at length. While Mr. Lopate more or less gets it right (or as right as one can in a 6-page magazine article), I take issue with one statement: “Still, I sense a resistance to Emerson on the part of the young, a falling out of fashion.”

Exile On Main Street [by Michael Schiavo]

 

In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born: that they are not superior to the citizen: that every one of them was once the act of a single man: every law and usage was a man’s expedient to meet a particular case: that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

 

I Apologize for My Dreams by Jerry Williams

Some twenty years ago, I was living alone in an East Hollywood apartment (directly across the street from the world headquarters of the Church of Scientology). One night as I tried to sleep, somebody’s dog commenced barking and never stopped. Subsequent nights I lay awake, trembling with anger, as the beast beat its giant wings inside a steel echo chamber. I experimented with earplugs, but they couldn’t shut out the constant, insidious yapping that pierced through the din of sirens and police helicopters and babies crying. Was this annoying debacle the owner’s fault? The Humane Society’s? Was it the smog? I worried that repetitive noise and sleeplessness might drive me crazy. I didn’t want to end up like a half-assed Son of Sam.

For weeks, I canvassed the neighborhood. I scanned backyards and peered under cars, staked out dumpsters and vacant lots. I grabbed people on the street and asked if they had any idea whose dog wouldn’t shut the hell up. “What dog?” was all they said. If I did find the owner, I planned to tell him I’d overheard a Scientologist announce that she wanted to call the police and, though the racket didn’t bother me, I felt obliged to warn him to muzzle the pooch. Brave, I know. But I never located the dog or the owner. Meanwhile, the barking got so loud it seemed to be coming from above.

Exhausted from lack of rest, I slogged through my days. At night I collapsed onto the Murphy bed and willed myself to sleep, but eventually the barking invaded my dreams. Had I kept a dream journal during my early-twenties, the following entry might have appeared: I drive to a sporting goods store and buy a thirty-four-ounce Louisville Slugger—the Pete Rose model. Bring the bat home and take practice swings in the kitchen as I wait for darkness to fall. Put on dark clothes and sneak out the back door of the apartment building. I follow the sound of howling through the neighborhood, struck by how sharp my senses are. I can actually smell fur. I see a house with a fenced-in yard. Approach the front of the house. No lights on. I make my way towards the back yard. Sure the animal is there. Suddenly the dog starts to whine and yelp, and when I turn the corner I am confronted by a man whacking the canine repeatedly with a baseball bat. He’s wearing dark clothes and curses at the dog as he beats it. The dog is defenseless, tied to a post. I know the man will not stop until the animal is dead. There’s a doghouse in the foreground. I lower my bat and walk away.

Months passed. That crazy barking curse contributed to my decision to get out of Los Angeles and move back east. I would love to say that I finally spotted a black and gray German Shepherd poised on the roof of the Church of Scientology, untouchable, clamoring mercilessly from his rampart. But life is rarely so artful, so ludicrous. All I have is this mysterious aural virus in my memory.

Easter Light, by William Zinsser from The American Scholar

Two Sunday mornings ago, one of the last Sundays in the long Lenten season that prepares Christians for the promise of Easter, the reading from the New Testament in my church, St. Bartholomew’s, in Manhattan, was the passage from the Book of John in which a man born blind is given sight by an itinerant prophet named Jesus. When the man describes that experience he is rebuked by the Pharisees and other sticklers for correct procedure. Hounded for a proper explanation, he finally says: “One thing I do know: though I was blind, now I see.”

Continue reading at The American Scholar here.

-- sdh

Do you know about Anthony McCann? [by Jeremy Schmall]

I had the supreme pleasure of reading with McCann a couple of weeks ago at KGB, though I'd first heard him read in 2006 at the New School, along with Noelle Kocot and Joshua Beckman. I remember feeling astonished, and utterly so, by all three of them. The night felt *important*—and not just to me—but to POETRY, whatever that is.

McCann has a new book just out from Wave Books, called "I Heart Your Fate," and it's really, truly incredible. Reading it is like wading into the Adriatic Sea on an overcast July morning and feeling something slimy grip around your calf—so you look down and feel relieved that (of course, haha) it's just seaweed—then you realize it's actually *not* just seaweed, but rather the pulsing tentacle of some creature so slobbery and horrifying not even your own mother would believe your description of it. That is, if you lived to tell them, which you won't. Sucked under, friend, into the unforgiving brine.

Then someone, a gorgeous and close acquaintance, calls to you from the sand (near the beach blanket and umbrella) that THE HOT DOGS ARE READY, or that YOU SHOULD REALLY PUT SUNSCREEN ON. And you realize it *was* just seaweed, but your heart is pounding and legs are shaking and maybe just to be safe, you think to yourself, it's a good idea to stay out of the water awhile. Then when you get back to the beach towel it's the most brilliant beach towel you've ever seen and your gorgeous acquaintance is so gorgeous it's hard to believe you're both the same animal and you eat four hot dogs in a row without bothering to squirt them with ketchup and you stare up at the shimmering cloud cover and make secret promises to God.

 Anyway, that's what reading McCann's book is kind of like. Maybe it's not for everybody, but I'd bet you'd like it

Here's a clip of him reading from it (warning, one of the poems prominently features a VAGINA):

 

The poetics of Paula Deen, Jesus, and waiting rooms (by Erika Meitner)

I should be writing a recommendation letter now for one of my many students who have asked me to complete this task for them so that they can get a job, get an MFA (most of the requests are for these), or get into some other form of graduate school.  Recommendation letters--the writing and distribution of them--have gotten way more complicated in the past three or four years.  It used to be that I wrote one letter, students would open a file at career services, and I'd send one copy of the letter there.  Then career services would send out said letter for them (and me).  Now, some of my students use Interfolio (a letter service), but others follow grad school guidelines for online applications, so I'm writing paper recommendation letters and mailing them, and then trolling my e-junkmail box for robo-links so I can upload my letter to a jillion more schools, each of which has a totally different e-system to navigate, many of which crash while I'm trying to upload my letter.  Multiply this by ~20 students a year (and sometimes more).  Which is to say that I'm a little bitter about this current complicated system, as it taxes my organizational skills, and sucks up way too much of my time.  Complaining about this is, I realize, ironic, as I work for an MFA program that requires electronic rec letters.  I just wish someone would centralize the process again somehow.

This is an excellent place to offer a brief diversion with some links to recent articles about MFA programs making the rounds:  there's Joyelle McSweeney's recent "Lay off the Motherf$%ing MFA Students;"  there's Chad Harbach's "MFA vs. NYC" article from n+1 excerpted on Slate.com recently; and The Chronicle's "A Fray Over Frey’s Play to Prey on M.F.A.’s" (which is about this article on James Frey's fiction factory from New York magazine).  The one thing all of these articles have in common is that no one will ever make money off their poems.

But back to task-based wheel-spinning:  I spent a good chunk of my day in my doctor's office, waiting for him to look at my foot due to my aforementioned accident with my son's Big Boy Bed.  My primary care physician is lovely, but also deeply deeply Christian.  The waiting room has multiple copies of the bible (illustrated and non), and each exam room also has a copy of a blue bible on the little table that holds all the doctor's instruments--his swabs and tubes and syringes.  Usually the TV in the waiting room is tuned to Paula Deen making corn fritters, but sometimes it's turned to the 700 Club or other shows where people with health issues talk about how Jesus saved them.  The waiting room is also filled with oil paintings, all done by my doctor, all of which look like photos unless you look at them at an angle to catch the brushstrokes:  a girl lacing up a toe shoe, a toddler with roses, a few paintings of street scenes in India where he's gone on missions.  Sometimes there are farmers in the waiting room talking about their cattle.  Often there are people bringing in elderly relatives in wheelchairs who nod off while they're waiting.  And we wait.  I've sometimes waited more than two hours while Paula Deen whips up Truffle Whoopie Pies with Cranberry Cream Filling.

It's a Very Appalachian Hanukkah (by Erika Meitner)

Being Jewish in small-town Appalachia around Hanukkah time is an exercise in resourcefulness.  We have no synagogue here--only a lay-led Jewish Community Center.  The president of the center is very fastidious about keeping the mass emailings to official events and business, but about two nights ago, she sent out a note that it was ok to use the list to discuss where to find Hanukkah candles locally.  

The emails started, hot and heavy:  the Target had blue and white candles, the Target was out of them, someone spotted them in the Kroger bargain bin by the registers marked down to 50 cents along with leftover matzah, someone else found two kinds (!) at the Walmart at the end-cap of Aisle 13 near women's shirts.  Then more emails followed, about where to find chocolate Hanukkah gelt (see picture).  All the Big Box stores are one town over in (ironically) Christiansburg.

My husband pointed out tonight that we actually have seven boxes of Hanukkah candles in our house.  I've apparently become an incidental hoarder of consumable Judaica products.  What if the Saxes need a box though?  Last year, they were forced to use Advent candles from the Party Central store (a shanda!).  And there was the one unfortunate year where the only place I found candles was at the Walmart Christmas Shop, in the back of the store where the garden center normally is.  I was so excited to find the candles, tucked between boxes of those light-up outlines of deer people put on their lawns that pretend to eat grass, that I bought a few boxes, along with Hanukkah "garland," and I didn't even care that the cashier wished me a Merry Christmas when he rang me up.

 

"Put on your Yarmulka..." (by Erika Meitner)

I got back yesterday from a week in New York with my immediate and extended family for Thanksgiving, and I've almost recovered. All conversation is always being conducted at a yell in my family--think George Costanza's parents:

 

The main casualty of this was my voice (and a little bit of my sanity). I'm mainly thankful that I'm not still stuck on the Cross Bronx Expressway or the GW Bridge writing this blog post.

It's a 10 full hours of driving from Exit 33 on the Long Island Expressway, where I grew up and my parents still live, to Exit 118 on I-81 South in Virginia, where I moved in 2007 so that I could take a job teaching poetry in the MFA program at Virginia Tech. The car, this trip, was loaded down with flagels (I import them over state lines--the flagel is the flat one on the bottom in the picture), approximately two tons of thanksgiving leftovers, and Hankukkah presents for my three year-old son from every relative we have.

Hanukkah starts super-early this year (thanks lunar Jewish calendar!)--on Wednesday--which means I'm less-than-prepared for eight nights of gifting, and a grueling three-hour knuckle-grating latke-making marathon. I figured I'd take this opportunity to spend some time this week ruminating on poetry and religion (in addition to any tangents on the major beige Jewish food groups).

Things I'm hoping to tackle this week that will somehow tie into this theme include:

• Zeek's Jewish Poetry Manifesto that went up a few weeks ago:  "No more kiddush wine poems, no more challah, no more herring! Enough with the Jewish grandmothers blessing shabbes candles, and no more poetic trips to Auschwitz, please..."  And Zackary Sholem Berger's response over at The Forward,
• the hard work of dying that my last living grandparent--my Oma--is currently doing in hospice care on Long Island,
• my interfaith family,
• miracles,
• big box shopping for the holidays in Appalachia
• my son's new Noah's Ark menorah,
• and the three Iraq war vets I saw in hunting gear at the Sunoco off of Exit 7, on I-78 in New Jersey. 
  

Two Takes on Torah - Rachel Barenblat

Now the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at his tent’s front door
In the heat of the day. He looked up, and saw three men near him that were not there before.
When he saw them, he ran from the door of his tent to greet them, and he bowed to the ground.
He said, "My lords, pray, if I’ve found favor with you, do not pass by this servant you’ve found.
Pray let water be fetched, just a little, then wash your feet and recline under the tree;
Let me fetch you a morsel of bread to refresh your hearts, then go on with your journey..."

Those are the first few lines of this week's Torah portion, Vayera (Genesis 18), rendered in verse by Seth Brown, who's written a version (not a translation, but a rendering) of the entire Five Books of Moses in rhyming heptameter.

His rendering is called From God to Verse, and it's either chutzpahdik, impressive, or completely insane. Seth isn't a religious guy, but at this point I suspect he knows the Torah better than any of the rest of my secular friends. (He'd have to, in order to do this kind of work.)

I'll admit it, I love this project for its sheer nuttiness. And because I think it's a respectful yet quirky recasting of the Torah text. But I also love it because it feels to me like a sign of the tremendous richness of scripture.

My next book (due in early 2011) will be a collection of Torah poems, many of which appeared in early draft form at Velveteen Rabbi. (You can find them linked here.) My poems and Seth's have very little in common, stylistically, but they arise out of the exact same material. And that fascinates me.

It's a little bit like the way that Shakespeare's plays have sparked renderings as diverse as Kiss Me, Kate and Ten Things I Hate About You. It's not just that these foundational texts are deep, though they are; I think it's also that they're beloved, and have been so deeply-loved for so long. We can't help wanting to respond to them with our own creativity, our own transformative works which take them in new directions.

Ultimately I suspect that our transformative works say as much about us as they do about the sources from which they ostensibly spring. Seth writes Torah poems which are witty and literary and a little bit over-the-top because he is all of those things. (I'll leave it to readers and reviewers to figure out how to describe my Torah poems when that collection comes out.) And on that note: shabbat shalom, dear Best American Poetry readers!

British Poets, Day Five: The Fabulists [by Todd Swift]

Yesterday and today the world experienced the Chilean miracle at Camp Hope, where thirty-three miners were rescued after months of doubt and darkness - a time they survived with optimism, creativity, and inspiring communitarian spirit.  The event, to my mind equivalent to the moon landings in terms of human and technical drama (not a unique thought, I am sure), is particularly resonant of the literary style of "magic realism" which came from Chile's part of the world, a style that saw the miraculous in the everyday.  It therefore seems apt to celebrate, today, poets whose work touches upon, in a variety of ways, fable, dreams, enchantment, faith, and the extraordinary - poets I will label (if just for this post), "The Fabulists".

When discussing this with one of the poets included below, Matthew Gregory, he had this to say: "it seems to me a kind of new Romanticism of some sort, allowing for the frivolous and the camp, something like the Victorian horror crazes, but, when it works, with something of a truthful enquiry, is like the best of magic realism. It seems to be happening generally, doesn't it? In the mid 1990s, I'm quite sure there wasn't as much vampire love on television as there is now. And in poetry, on the whole. Underwood, Kennard and sometimes Emily Berry write with many voices, untrustworthy narrators, ghosts and anthropomorphic subjects.  I think reading Charles Simic, James Tate, the Eastern Europeans/Polish (Holub, Szymborska) and some Ashbery is where we'll find the nerve of this particular ache."

Now, a few grumpy critics in Britain have complained that these labels I am applying may be constraints for these poets as they develop - which seems to miss the point of these posts entirely - as with all literary labels, these are provisional, arbitrary, and, indeed, like literary criticism itself, equivocal, in a creative sense.  I offer these as ways to read and appreciate these poets, but not as "Swiftian" "puffery".  There is nothing satirical about it, and very little puff.  Though I do like Puff the Magic Dragon.

Kathryn Simmonds was born in Hertfordshire in 1972 and worked in children's publishing and the charity sector before pursing writing seriously, although she has written poetry since childhood.  She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and her pamphlet Snug was published by Smith/Doorstop in 2004 as a result of their annual competition.  Her first full collection Sunday at the Skin Launderette won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2008 and was short listed for the Costa Poetry Award.  She is also interested in prose and dramatic writing - her short stories have appeared in The Barcelona Review, The Liberal Magazine and a number of anthologies, and she has written a play for Radio 4.  Now living in north London, she works as a writing tutor for the City Lit, Morley College and The Poetry School.  Simmonds is one of the only poets in Britain who, though subtly and never condescendingly, replies to a British secularism that disenchants the world, with her own quietly held sense of Catholic faith; as such, her poems form part of the great debate between science and religion occuring now - though they are, of course, also about much else besides.

Nocturne

Midnight for the squirrels and the drunks,
midnight for you dear and your chest hair too,

put your pen down pet and rest here.
Midnight swallowing the mirror whole, swallowing

my mother in her pale blue slippers,
and my brother, my big brother in his too small bed.

Bed, the longed for stopped short sound delivering
us at last from sense-making. The trains

are empty, the magnolia trees are still, the tower block
has lost another dozen yellow squares but

they'll fill up and we'll fill too, and in tomorrow's
morning we'll awake, washed up again among

the bills.  Meanwhile, the stars are queuing up
to get behind your lids.  Love, give me your hand.