The Best American Poetry

Tom Lasorda on Frank Sinatra (happy birthday, Frank)

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Today is Frank Sinatra's birthday.  We should all celebrate because he was a tremendous man who touched many, many lives.

He did something for me that I never ever thought possible, and that I will always be thankful for.

Frank called my mother and my sister-in-law answered.  He asked for Ma Lasorda and said it was Frank Sinatra calling.

My sister-in-law hung up in him.

I called back and said, "Hey, that was really Frank.  Put Mom on the phone."

Frank told my mother that he was coming to Philadelphia for a concert and wanted to invite her to be his guest.  He also told her that he wanted her to cook my favorite meal, scarole and beans, and hot peppers and sausage.

Well, to ask an Italian lady to cook is a very high honor.

So Frank comes to Philadelphia and pulls onto our block. Jilly, his right-hand man, gets out of the car and knocks on our neighbor's door.  He asks is Ma Lasorda is there, and of course she tells him that she lived next door.

That lady saw Frank and within twenty minutes there was a swarm of cars and the police had to be called in.

The next night at the concert, Frank sent a limo to pick up my mother.  There was a doctor and nurse in the limo who Frank wanted there just to make sure she was okay.

They got to the show, and her seats were in the front row. As Frank started the show, which was at the Valley Forge Theater, he introduced her to the crowd, came down from the stage to give her a kiss and flowers, and dedicated the entire show to her.

What a man!

So today I wish Frank's family all of my love, and I will always treasure the memories we made during our friendship.

Happy Birthday, Frank.
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Orestes (by Mitch Sisskind)

Who then were the chiefs
and the lords of the Danaans?
I could not tell the multitude
of them nor name them, not if I
had ten tongues and ten mouths,
not if I had a voice never to be broken
and a heart of bronze within me,
not unless the Muses of Olympia,
daughters of Zeus of the aegis
remembered all those who
had come beneath Ilion.
                                    Iliad, Book II

These were the policemen, retired and active,
Accompanied by their wives, who like a great
Flock of birds attended Frank Umschlager’s
Retirement dinner at the Cucina Albanese
And their laughter reverberated off the ceiling
Until the night wound down with Al Jablonski
Saying a few words and then Frank Umschlager
Said a few words himself at the end of the night.

It showed their respect for Frank Umschlager how
Representatives of all twenty-four police districts
Were there although in Frank Umschlager’s career
Frank Umschlager had not actually worked in all
Twenty-four districts, but in the districts where
He did work he crossed paths with officers who
Moved on to other districts so the upshot was
Officers from all the districts attended that night.

There was some horseplay among the policemen
As they greeted one another, laughingly playing
Some grab ass as the wives also exchanged hellos
But the wives in a quieter way because the wives
Didn’t know each other that well and because most
Of them would just as soon have stayed home
But they were there in Frank Umschlager’s honor
Because they were the wives of the policemen.

As when a great flock of birds lands in the trees,
The policemen sat down at the tables designated
For their respective police districts, each policeman
Accompanied by his wife, and then the waiters
Who seemed to appear out of nowhere filled their
Water glasses, took their drink orders, and offered
The appetizers of minestrone soup, bruschetta,
Or crab cakes which was the most popular appetizer.

At the table of the 001 district there was Bob Dreher
Whose father Dub Dreher worked for many years
In the old Area South Detective Division when it was
The private fiefdom of Lieutenant Slick Negronida.
Joe Bona was also at the 001 table, and so were
Ravko Micevik, Herb Bevens, and Phil Trymowicz,
All of them accompanied by their wives that night
Like a great flock of birds at the Cucina Albanese.

Ravko Micevik, the gray-haired man, retired now
from 001 where he worked patrol for many years,
He opened his mouth and he said, “I remember
“Going to Sox Park as a kid when there was
“A late innings pitcher’s duel with no score until
“Minnie Minoso came up to bat and I prayed for
“A home run on the next pitch, so he hit it over
“The fence and ever since that day I believe in God.”

From 002 came Barney Lanaham and his wife,
Angelo Caniziaro and his wife, Al Louderman
And his wife, Konstantin Gekas and his wife,
Gene Fiebig and his wife, and Kevin Bechina,
Ed Glinicki, Karl Deutsch, Bob Lietz, Sal Manus,
Jimmy Nytko, John Pipala, and Gus Catomerislos,
All of them also accompanied by their wives,
As was Edward Jesovic accompanied by his wife.

From the 003 District came Jim Capesius who
Was the boss of the shooting range and who
In all his years on the street was never forced
To fire his gun but now at the shooting range
He taught what he never had to do on the street
But when he opened his mouth no one doubted
He could have done it if the occasion had arose.
He lived in Norwood Park as many policemen do.

Besides Jim Capesius and his wife at the table
For 003 were these police officers, all of them
Accompanied by their wives: Frank Latallia,
Archie Malhot, John Lasser, Ben Garcia, Bill Davis,
Ralph Maruska, Joe Kaderabek, Dave Lansky,
And Al Love, whose father Milton had worked in
The old Area North Detective Division when it was
The private fiefdom of Lieutenant Artie Epler.

From the 004 District which is called the Quad
There came Tim Leidy, Lou Palmer, Bob Gancarz,
Pup Chichester, Kurt Glinski, and their wives,
All under the unofficial leadership of Lee Kopak,
The gray-haired man, who opened his mouth
And said, “If they had the designated hitter in
“Minnie Minoso’s day he would still be playing
“And he would be in the Hall of Fame by now.”

Some from the 004 drank beer as they ate
Appetizers and there was wine for the ladies
But most of these policemen from the Quad
Drank rum and Coke in honor of Minnie Minoso.
Kurt Glinski, the gray-haired man, opened his mouth
And said, “The Green Olive had bean bag sessions
“On Monday nights where Minnie Minoso used to
“Drink a whole big pitcher full of rum and Coke.”

Kurt Glinski continued, “If you want to drink a drink
“As a drink ought to be made, if you want to play pool,
“If you want to drink alone or with six of your friends,
“If you want a perfect jukebox, if you want to watch
“Belly whomping or want to belly whomp yourself
“The Green Olive is the place for you. Minnie Minoso
“Was a regular there and he could have gone anywhere
“In Chicago but instead he went to the Green Olive.”

What about the 005? That night the 005 delegation
Was led by Bud Budnik, the gray-haired man
Accompanied by his wife. He had worked
Third shift for the bulk of his career. Vic Fantozzi,
Steve Girdzius, Leo Jungers, Hank Fahrenbach,
Bill Antonick, Jake Fennessey, Dick Grublesky,
Pat Moonan and their wives rounded out
The 005 delegation like a great flock of birds.

Then the waiters cleared the appetizers’ remnants
And the main courses of the night were announced,
Which were the lasagna, the rigatoni gorgonzola,
The chicken rotolini, or the linguini with clam sauce.
John Czarnik at the 006 table wanted the lasagna
As did his wife, and also as did Gene Hugentugler
and his wife, and Mike Davros and his wife,
But Jerry Frosch and his wife wanted the rotolini.

Moving on to the policemen from the 007,
Big Joe Smolnarski was the leader of the pack,
With his hair the color of iron gray like clouds
Over Lake Michigan on the winter mornings
When Joe Smolnarski made extra money by
Snowplowing driveways. Joe Smolnarski
Was accompanied by his wife as also were
Mort Musk, George Henry, and Sid Milsaps.

From the 008 there came Fred Lipkowicz,
Elroy Baker, Luke Botica, Nick Di Giola,
Walter Bednik, Wayne Burzyzh, Phil Delia,
Bob Alongi, and Joe Furmanek who told how
Minnie Minoso’s sixty-fifth birthday party
Was held at the old Calumet Beach Inn and
Minnie Minoso said, “I’m sixty-five but I am
“Still hitting them with the bases loaded.”

Representing the 009 District that night
Like a great flock of birds were Stan Chiliki
And his wife, Bob Donek and his wife,
Al Dibicz and his wife, and Pat Galvin,
Sam Guistolise, Phil Hess, and last but
Not least Sergeant Guido Indellacotto
And his wife, as were Pat, Sam, and Phil
Also accompanied by their wives that night.

Fred Keuter led the 010 delegation
That included Tom Bouras, Jake Conley,
Vic Getsudas, Leo Riba, Bob Buzek,
Buddy Popko and other policemen
Too numerous to mention, all of them
Accompanied by their wives, and as the
Evening wore on the talk turned to how
Minnie Minoso could do no wrong.

Vic Getsudas then opened his mouth,
The gray-haired man, and he said,  
“One time I saw Minnie Minoso outside
“The old 2350 Club with Plush Falbo
“And I knew he was up to something but
“It was an unwritten rule how Minnie Minoso
“Could do no wrong. I also used to see him
“Outside the old Timber Lanes bowling alley.”

Leo Riba said, “Minnie Minoso got himself
“A pass in the 010 and all over Chicago since
“The word came down from on high that
“He was the fair-haired boy so to speak
“On account of how he was Minnie Minoso.
“We were told to look the other way if
“Minnie Minoso got involved in something
“Because the word came down from on high.”

From the 011 we had Walt Figler, Al Koenig,
Hix Baskin, Max Coffindafer, and John Lekis,
All of them accompanied by their wives.
Hix Baskin, the gray-haired man, said,
“Except when he was playing baseball
“Minnie Minoso never wore a baseball hat.”
Max Coffindafer said, “Even on real hot days
“Minnie Minoso never wore short pants.”

Regarding 012, it was the private fiefdom
Of Lieutenant Bob Hilliz who on this night
Had Phil Bruno, Tom Coyne, and Len Ficht,
In his entourage, each man well along in years
And each man accompanied by his wife.
Bob Hilliz opened his mouth and said,
“As a boy I got a Mickey Mantle baseball card
“But what I really wanted was Minnie Minoso.”

Then with a look of bemusement on his face
Bob Hilliz continued and said, “I traded
“Mickey Mantle to Fuzz Voit who now works
“In the Sanitation Department for Minnie Minoso
“And I never gave it so much as a second thought.”
Phil Bruno said, “If I had it to do over I might join
“The Sanitation Department but a lot of those guys
“Are big time booze hounds, understandably.”

Just as in many office buildings there is no
Thirteenth floor or in cities there is no
Thirteenth Street, there is no 013 District
In the Chicago Police Department so we skip
Now to the 014 District which is bounded by
Elston Avenue on the east, Division Street
On the south, Belmont Avenue on the north,
And Central Park Avenue on the west.

From 014 were Bob Ceska, Chuck Risko,
George Ramboldt, Pete Kula, Bill Lewis,
Gene Podgorniak, and Louie Rappmann,
All of them accompanied by their wives.
Bob Ceska, the gray-haired man, was
Always warmly greeted by police officers
Because of Bob Ceska’s annual parties on
Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day.

His annual parties were in Bob Ceska’s
Large backyard and all the police officers
Were automatically invited along with
Their wives, asking only that everyone
Pitch in some food or a drink item and
In all the years of the parties only once
Had there been a rainout at which time
Everyone transferred to inside the house.

It was a tradition at Bob Ceska’s parties
That at some point during the party
When everyone was feeling good
That Bob took out a record player
And played an old record of military
Marching songs like Anchors Aweigh,
The Marine’s Hymn, Over There, and
Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder.

When the music started everybody
Would sing along and then march
Around the outside of Bob Ceska’s
Backyard or on the occasion when
The annual party was rained out
They marched around Bob Ceska’s
Living room and even spilled over
Into the kitchen and the dining room.

Usually besides the police officers
There would be some local celebrities
at Bob’s Ceska’s annual parties like
An ex-Notre Dame football player or
Old Cubs or White Sox players such
As Moe Drabowsky who in his career
Actually played for both the Cubs and
The White Sox at one time or another.

But over the years Moe Drabowsky became
Persona non grata among the policemen
At Bob Ceska’s parties because Moe Drabowsky
Never brought Minnie Minoso to a party and
The policemen were saying to each other
How Moe Drabowski needed a kick in the ass
Since he never brought Minnie Minoso,
Because of which he needed a kick in the ass.

We proceed to the 015 table where a
Waiter found Ed Barnes, Sam Cognato,
Pup Erickson, Bob Ganz, Mike Kozumlik
And their wives, to whom the waiter
Reiterated how the main courses were
The lasagna, the rigatoni gorgonzola,
The linguini with clam sauce, or the
Chicken rotolini on this evening.

Sam Cognato shrugged his shoulders as if
To say, “What difference does it make?”
He ordered the rigatoni. Mike Kozumlik,
Ed Barnes, and Pup Erickson had lasagna.
Bob Ganz, the gray-haired man, said,  
“Minnie Minoso used to call the Black Angus
“And say, ‘I like to eat and I’m not afraid to pay
‘For it, so I’m coming over in twenty minutes.’”

Mike Kozumlik, the gray-haired man
Was something of a walking encyclopedia
And he said, “Was that the old Black Angus
“In Arlington Heights? Uncle Andy’s Cow Palace
“On Harlem Avenue was a good restaurant
“And Leoni’s on Lake Street in Melrose Park
“Was a good restaurant as was Toscano’s
“At 2439 South Oakley Avenue in Chicago.”

Mike Kozumlik went on, “The Millionaires Club
“On South Wabash Avenue was Minnie Minoso’s
“Old stomping ground despite the fact of how
“The clientele in the Millionaires Club was all
“Stumble-bums mooching after the boiled eggs,
“Turkey, chicken, ham, bread rolls, and soup
“At the free salad bar. The salad bar was invented
“In a small town called Plover, up in Wisconsin.”

From 016 were Tony Menze, Sub Peterson,
John McRory, Pat Osuscik, Fred Krenzer,
Randy Jedlick, Hank Hubley, and Lee Gipps,
All of them accompanied by their wives.
Tony Menze opened his mouth and said,
“When I worked in traffic the Bryn Mawr
“Exit off the Outer Drive was considered
“To be a real gold mine by a lot of guys.”

Tony Menze continued, “One night I pulled
“Over Minnie Minoso who was going about
“Seventy miles an hour. I said, ‘Hey Minnie,
‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’
“He said, ‘I’m going to see my girlfriend.’
“I gave him a pass ‘cause he was Minnie Minoso
“But the Bryn Mawr exit off the Outer Drive,
“Was like you were shooting a fish in a barrel.”

The 017 was represented by Mike Black,
Roy Delafield, Ed Gilwa, Kurt Kuhnlie,
Alphonse Irgang, and Rudy Kotchendorf,
All of them accompanied by their wives.
Ed Gilwa said, “Years ago I worked with
“The late great Artie Epler in the old
“Area North Detective Division when it
“Was at Belmont and Western Avenue.”

Mike Black opened his mouth and said,
“In the old days you know who else was
“At the Area North Detective Division?
“Marty Klemko, but he was withering
“On the vine. He was a policeman’s
“Policeman but he was hamstrung for years
“Because Artie Epler, for all his good qualities,
“Refused to let him show what he could do.”

Now we leave the 017 table and go to
018’s table where the fine police officers
Will Brod, Neem Sancino, Walt Crews,
Francis Cotomi, and Joe Bliss were eating
And talking good-naturedly to each other
As their wives also talked good-naturedly
Among themselves, so that the two groups
Were more or less oblivious of one another.

Francis Cotomi the gray-haired man said,
“I don’t like this terminology of the so-called
“Viagra Triangle, which to me is nothing but
“Glorifying the old Rush Street nightlife area
“Of small fry out of town tourists here for
“The sales conventions. I don’t know about
“Viagra but those dumb hicks drink beer in
“Rush Street area for fifteen dollars a bottle.”

Joe Bliss explained to Francis Cotomi,
“It’s called the Viagra Triangle because
“Rush Street, State Street, and Chicago Avenue
“Form a triangle, and men there take Viagra.”
Joe Bliss then huffed and he puffed and said,
“Minnie Minoso didn’t care about Viagra.”
Francis Cotomi huffed and he puffed and said,
“Minnie Minoso didn’t know what Viagra is.”

At the table occupied by the fine policemen
Of the 019 District – they were Matt Corey,
Bert Hesser, Lester Gancarz, Mike Torys,
Ab Frick, and Doug Nyder, all of them
Accompanied by their wives – Ab Frick said,
“Minnie Minoso had great admiration for
“Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz who was
“An old-time dyed in the wool White Sox fan.”

Ab Frick, the gray-haired man, went on,
“When Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz
“Administered the oath of office to the first
“Mayor Daley, Minnie Minoso held the Bible
“Because at that time in 1955 the Sox were
“At the height of their powers and the Mayor
“Was every bit of as big a White Sox fan as
“Was Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz.”

We move now to the 020 table which was
Populated by these fine policemen and
Their wives: Jake Skinkle, Ben Knudtson,
Marv Brege, Larry Cluck, Luther Meeks,
Dennis Poth, and Cameron Schumacher,
Whose years on the street were finished
And now he sat behind a desk at the 020
Interviewing applicants for liquor licenses.

As for the policemen of 021, these men
Whose names were Jim Mudd, Bo Jentsch,
Leo Marubio, Al Gronau, Herb Samelius,
Eddie Jelic, Hank Sinclair, and Bobby Minkus,
All of them accompanied by their wives,
Were finishing their main courses and
Were getting ready for the dessert of either
Tiramisu or New York-style cheesecake.

So too were the policemen from the 022 --
Earl Tanner, Billy Kleinhultz, Steve Frangos,
And the O’Shea brothers, Bob and Michael,
All of them accompanied by their wives --
They too were looking at the desserts
Of Tiramisu or New York-style cheesecake
Of which the cheesecake was chosen by
Most of these policemen and their wives.

Steve Frangos said, “Minnie Minoso always
“Ordered stuffed shrimp anywhere we ate.
“Every single time like clockwork he ordered
“Stuffed shrimp but the funny part was how
“I started ordering stuffed shrimp myself
“And it got to the point where whenever
“The two of us walked into a restaurant they
“Automatically gave both of us stuffed shrimp.”

At the 023 table were Frank Fleishlieber,
Mike Burchmore, Press Clark, Sam Desauer,
Sal Devino, Vic Formeliam, Bruno Miltzow,
And Harry Magnuson, and all these policemen,
The gray-haired men of the 023 District,
All of them accompanied by their wives,
Like a great flock of birds had the cheesecake,
Every last one of them had the cheesecake.

So too did Herman Kanefsky of the 024
Have the cheesecake, that gray-haired man
Had the cheesecake as did Jack Grommnik,
Vernon Holwick, Stan Jozwiack, Mike McCarthy,
Theo van Breems, Am Buba, Dave Kuzda,
and Bob Kyle – they had the cheesecake,
All of them accompanied by their wives,
And all of their wives had the cheesecake.

Now Frank Umschlager was stopping by
All the tables, he was having a few laughs
At each table and then he would move on
To the next one until at the last of the tables
He came to the 024 and the aforementioned
Jack Gromnik, Vernon Holwick, Stan Jozwiack,
Mike McCarthy, Theo van Breems, Am Buba,
Dave Kuzda, Bob Kyle, and Herman Kanefsky

Herman Kanefsky sang For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow
As Frank Umschlager dropped by the 024 table
As he had dropped by all the tables that evening,
And then while the waiters were pouring coffee
For the policemen of 024 Al Jablonski stationed
Himself at the front of the room and when he
Banged a spoon on a glass a silence descended
As when a great fish descends under the water.

Frank Umschlager also fell silent, no longer
was Frank Umschlager sharing a few laughs
At the 024 table as he realized that Al Jablonski
Was going to say a few words and then he himself,
Frank Umschlager, the man of the hour, would say
A few choice words of his own as the silence kept
Descending like when a great flock of birds lands
All at the same time in some deserted cornfield.

Al Jablonski, the gray-haired man, opened
His mouth and said, “Considering how much
“We all dislike Frank, I want to thank you for
“Coming out tonight. The streets of Chicago
“Are a lot safer with all of you dingbats here
“In one place. But seriously, we love Frank
“And we love his wife albeit from a distance,
“So here’s a real quick recap of Frank’s career.

“For the past thirty years Frank Umschlager
“Has been running down leads, making arrests,
“Breaking down doors, pulling his gun on people,
“And logging overtime whenever he possibly could.
“The upshot is, Frank Umschlager may not embody
“What a Chicago policeman is supposed to be but
“God help us he embodies what a Chicago policeman
“Actually is. Hey, I’m just kidding you, Frank!”

Then Al Jablonski took a glass off a table
And raised it and said, “Congratulations,
“Frank, you’re a good man, my friend.”
He took a sip of whatever was in his glass,
As did the other policemen around the room,
Even if there was only water in their glasses,
And as this was happening Frank Umschlager
Stepped up and shook hands with Al Jablonski.

As Al Jablonski slipped away Frank Umschlager
Addressed all the policemen gathered there,
All of them accompanied by their wives,
He addressed the policemen with a sincere
Tone of voice, he seemed pretty calm, but then
As he continued his voice choked up a little
So he had to get control of himself before
He could start to speak again, which he did.

He took a drink of water and then he said,
“In German the name Umschlager means
“To beat around the bush which is funny since
“I don’t like to beat around the bush so it’s
“Like calling a tall guy shorty or a fat guy
“Skinny because it really means the opposite.
“Umschlager means to beat around the bush
“But I don’t like to beat around the bush.”

Frank Umschlager then said, “Be that as it may
“People have no idea what being a policeman
“Is really like, putting your life on the line
“Every day whether it’s ticketing a nice old lady
“In Lincoln Park or locking up stumble-bums,
“Jack-rollers, the mopes, lowlifes, or whatever.
“You guys who worked the wagon third shift,
“As I did for five years, you know what I mean.”

Frank Unschlager went on, “You want to know
“Something else that people have no idea about,
“Which is the furthest thing from their minds
“As they go along their merry way? People have
“No idea about the importance of Minnie Minoso
“To the Chicago Police Department. They don’t have
“Idea number one about how Minnie Minoso
“Is constantly on our minds as Chicago policemen.

“If you were to ask Mister Joe Citizen of Chicago,
“Do you see those police in that squad car,
“What do you think they’re talking about right now?
“I can promise you that the answer you will get
“Would not be they’re talking about Minnie Minoso.
“But they probably were talking about Minnie Minoso
“Because Minnie Minoso is what it means to be policeman
“Starting from your first day at the police academy

“Why is Minnie Minoso important to us as policemen
“And why is Minnie Minoso important to me personally
“As a policeman? I’ll tell you a couple of quick stories.
“I got a call about a fight at the DMV on Elston Avenue
“And while I was there I saw Minnie Minoso at a desk
“Standing there trying to renew his driver’s license.
“There seemed to be some sort of problem going on
“So I walked over and I said what’s the problem?”

The woman said, “He can’t read the eye test letters”
Which were on the wall behind her because of how
Minnie Minoso was pretty old at the time so I said
“Let’s try it again” and then I read the letters myself
“And I said ‘He did it’ but she said ‘He didn’t do it’
“So I said ‘He did it’ but she was going to bitch
“About it so I looked at her again and she shut up.
“I’m sure many of you have your own such stories.”

“Another time I was in the old Ann Sather’s restaurant
“On Belmont Avenue and I saw Minnie Minoso standing
“By a table eating the smorgasbord or whatever it was
“And then a guy comes and says, ‘Hey, that’s my food,
‘I just went to the bathroom for a minute.’ The guy was
“Making a fuss so I went over and said ‘What’s the problem?’
“And the guy said ‘He’s eating my food, I only went to the
“Bathroom and I came back and he’s eating my food.’”

“Then Minnie Minoso said, ‘I come from the poor country
‘Of Cuba and I don’t like to see people waste any food.’
“But the guy was like he wouldn’t take no for an answer
“And he says, ‘I wasn’t wasting it, I went to the bathroom’
“So I said “He doesn’t like to see people waste any food”
“But the guy was going to bitch about it so I looked at him
“And he shut up. I felt like saying ‘Here’s your smorgasbord’
“And sticking his face into it because of Minnie Minoso.”

At that point Frank Umschlager took a deep breath
So it looked like he might start to cry but he didn’t.
He took another drink of water and then he said
“Another time I was at the Sox game on opening day
“And they introduced Minnie Minoso before the game.
“There were some high school kids standing near me
“That were laughing so I said ‘What’s so funny, kids?’
“And one said, ‘Minnie is a girl’s name like Minnie Mouse.’”

Frank Umschlager went on “Another kid said that
“Minnie could mean something little like a miniskirt.
“So I told them how I didn’t think that was funny
“And that I was going to straighten them out about
“Something people don’t know about Minnie Minoso.”
Frank Umschlager took another drink of water
And he looked across the room at the policemen
All of whom were accompanied by their wives.

He then went on, “But everybody here
“Already knows what I told those young kids.
“Look at Joe Smolnarski over there from 007,
“He knows what I told those young kids,”
Frank Umschlager said and pointed his finger
In a very friendly way at Joe Smolnarsky,
The gray-haired man, who then nodded
His head slowly like an old dignified horse.

Frank Umschlager continued, “Look at Al Gronau
“Over there from 021. How are you doing, Al?
“Al Gronau knows what I’m getting at now.
“Hell yes, Al knows what I told those kids
“At Sox park when Minnie Minoso was introduced.”
Just at that moment Pup Erickson from the 015
Leaped up like a great fish jumping out of the
Water and he said, “Orestes! Orestes Minoso!”

After that it was Gene Podgorniak’s turn.
The gray-haired man from 014 leaped up
Like a great fish and said in a loud voice
“His real name was Orestes Minoso!”
Then other policemen who were there
Such as Lee Gipps and Walter Bednick,
And Jake Skinkle leaped up and they said,
“His real name was Orestes Minoso!”

Frank Umschlager finally began to cry and
He said, “Orestes Minoso!” and they were
All yelling “Orestes Minoso! Orestes Minoso!”
-- Steve Girdzius, Sam Guistolise, Gene Fiebig  --
And they all marched around the room
All of them accompanied by their wives
Like a great flock of birds and their laughter
Reverberated off the ceiling of Cucina Albanese.

An Interview with Dante Di Stefano (by Nin Andrews)

 

As you might have guessed from my recent blog posts, I have been thinking a lot about the nature of truth, specifically autobiographical truth, in poetry. After all, we seem to be in era where everyone is questioning the nature of truth in every kind of writing.  As I mentioned in my interview with January Gill O’Neil, I had a poetry professor once who hated what he called “dishonesty in poetry.” He hated it when poets used the first person, and then described illnesses they never had or divorces they never went through or . . . who knows, maybe their own funerals. So I wanted to ask several poets how they navigate this question. A fan of the works of Dante Di Stefano, I thought I’d ask him a few questions. (Let me add that I love asking Dante anything, even the most inane questions because he always has such brilliant answers. I'm thinking of starting a column with the title, Just Ask Dante.)

NA: I love your poem in this year’s Best American Poetry, and I think it speaks to the essence of what made you want to be a poet. Or maybe it is simply stating that you already were, at seventeen, in essence, a poet.  (Of course, by saying that I am admitting that I am reading the poem as truth.) But reading it, I would not imagine that you set out to be an autobiographical or confessional poet? 

 

Reading Dostoyevsky at Seventeen

In those days, my dreams always changed titles
before they were finished, and I wanted
only to love in that insane, tortured way
of poor dear Dmitri Karamazov.
Suddenly, I was speaking the language
of lapdog and samovar. This is
the ballroom, the barracks, the firing squad.
This is the old monk with the beard of bees.
This is the orange lullaby the moon
of the moon will sing you when it’s grieving.
This is the province you escape by train,
fleeing heavy snow and eternal elk.
This is the part where I take your hand in
my hand and I tell you we are burning.

 

And let me add, before you answer the question, that this poem as well as the others in this interview is from your forthcoming book, Ill Angels, that will be published by Etruscan Press next summer. I am so looking forward to owning that book! 

DDS: Thanks for your kind words, Nin. No, I didn’t set out to be a poet at all, of any kind. I’ve always loved reading and writing, but in high school I read mostly novels, and I kept a daily journal that mostly consisted of reactions to the books I was reading, quotes from those books, lists of new words I’d discovered, and philosophical statements (that I’m sure would make me cringe if I read them today). “Reading Dostoyevsky at Seventeen” begins with an autobiographical detail; it’s true that I read Dostoyevsky’s four big novels when I was seventeen. The poem attempts to recreate the frenetically pitched set of emotions that one only experiences either in the pages of a Russian novel or in the throes of adolescence. None of the images and phrases are drawn directly from Dostoyevsky. Rather, I try to evoke what Milan Kundera called “the magical charm of atmospheres”: recalling what it felt like to lie alone in my twin bed at night pondering the fate of Dmitri Karamazov, dreaming of a girl I liked in my homeroom. “Reading Dostoyevsky at Seventeen” is an attempt to capture those lost atmospheres from a novelistic or cinematic vantage point.

NA: I admire your poems about your father’s illness and death. One of these poems is called, “A Defense of Confessional Poetry.” Are you a defender of confessional poetry? Do you consider these poems to be confessional?

DDS: The poems about the illness and death of my father are deeply autobiographical. Most, if not all, of the details in these poems are true to the events as I recall them. Whenever I write about someone I know I tend not to embellish. Of course, remembering is an inherently slippery proposition, but I try to remain moored to the truth of my recollection. Sometimes, I feel like this fidelity to “truth” is a failure of imagination on my part. However, it would feel like a betrayal if I invented additional details about the day my father died, if I changed a second of my daughter’s birth, if I altered my wife’s personality, simply in service to a poem. In this sense, I can understand the objections of your college poetry professor.

The title “A Defense of Confessional Poetry” was a bit tongue in cheek, but in the poem, I was also trying to emphasize the transformational and restorative aspects of reconciling, or attempting to reconcile, the death of my father with my complicated feelings toward him.

I’m not a defender of confessional poetry (or of any poetry for that matter). I deeply admire the first-generation Confessional poets (none of whom, except for Sexton, approved of the label “Confessional”). These poets (Berryman, Snodgrass, Lowell, Plath, Sexton) provided a radical rejoinder to the orthodoxies of high Modernism and New Criticism, while opening thematic space for subsequent generations of poets to write about virtually anything. It should be noted that Confessional poetry comes to prominence along with the Beat Generation and the New York School at the height of the Cold War. These schools of poetry overlap with, and bleed into, the civil rights movement, the counter-culture, the feminist movement, and the gay rights movement, all of which signaled fundamental changes in American society. In these movements, speaking personally became a crucial form of intervention in the public sphere and an overt political act. The Black Arts Movement is also a part of this helix.

From the time of its coinage to present day, the term “confessional,” as applied to poetry, has proven problematic. M.L. Rosenthal’s initial formulation of the confessional mode of writing (in his review of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies) posits confessional poetry as a kind of “soul’s therapy.” (“Soul’s therapy” sounds downright ridiculous in 2018.) Confessional poetry since Rosenthal’s appraisal of Life Studies, although variously defined, remains contingent upon the linkages between personal revelation, private guilt, and public authenticity. 

Today, in the world of reality television, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, the boundaries of the personal and the private have blurred. The forms of confession practiced across the spectrum of contemporary media are staged and superficial, contingent upon spectacle, less concerned with discovering truths than they are with generating celebrity. Confessions (and scandals) may abound in social media today, but little retains the power to shock or to foment meaningful political change. It’s undoubted that the autobiographical lyric and the shadow of the confessional mode continue to dominate the mainstream of contemporary American poetry. However, there’s so much reality-clutter in our culture, so many ways that poets (and non-poets alike) shape and pedal virtual selves, that the lyrical gesture toward autobiography and confession loses its dynamism against the backdrop of so many proliferating identities and revelations. It seems like identity and authenticity are more contested from more perspectives than ever before.

I’m somewhat suspicious of the overreliance on autobiographical detail in my own poetry because it opens the door to the corrosiveness of narcissism, sentimentality, and nostalgia.  I’m constantly at war with these things, and with my own inexhaustible naivete. At the same time, I don’t generally confess things that are shameful in my poetry, although I recognize the power in that gesture. I don’t want to put all my business in the street. Many of my poems are persona poems, or poems about music and language. I strive to be protean, to speak in tongues; I’d like to get to the point where I could have access to the imagination in the manner of William Blake, Christopher Smart, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson (Not to be as great as any one of them, but to write one or two poems that approaches “The Proverbs of Hell” or “Juilate Agno” or “The Windhover” or “I taste a liquor never brewed”).

NA: In your poem, “Bronx Pyramid,” you open, “Sometimes you might be tempted to invent/a memory  . . .” and later you write, “I have come to know that I am not I/and you are not you in the music; . . .”

I love this poem, and I wanted to know if you could elaborate on the sentiments expressed in it.

 

The Bronx Pyramid
after Carlos Henriquez

Sometimes you might be tempted to invent
a memory from a Brook Avenue,
a curandera’s chanting resurrects,
a stillborn third son, brujo’s serpent tongue,
a trumpet blown over the arco of
ordinary seconds. Now, I hear time
cajole a rhythm from the embalmed worm
of reverie hidden in my own heart.
I have come to know that I am not I
and you are never you in the music;
here, where musician and audience meet,
we remain thirsty for the what that is
and is and hangs there like a mother’s name,
carving infinite care from the silence.

 

DDS: “The Bronx Pyramid” is an attempt to write from inside the music of Jazz bassist Carlos Henriquez. Henriquez is one of my favorite contemporary musicians and this poem tries to articulate what it feels like to dwell in the notes of his music. It occurs to me that we never question how autobiographical a Coltrane number is, and yet if you listen to A Love Supreme you come away with the sense that this music has laid bare a life before you. In great music, there is an intimacy and a vulnerability we are invited to share in as listeners. This holds true for other kinds of music too; it doesn’t matter if Bob Dylan lived on desolation row or if Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. A poem can be encoded with truth in the same way as a pop song or as a jazz number. What I think I come to understand in “The Bronx Pyramid” is that the music of Jazz and poetry (and Rock and Soul and on and on) begins with the dissolution of the self. One of the greatest joys I know is to be in the midst of composing a poem, or saying a poem, free from the strictures of self-definition, charged with negative capability, awash in what Galway Kinnell called “saying in its own music what matters most.”

NA: Also, in your poem, “Stump Speech,” you begin:

You undress in poetry, but in prose
you redress. You grow old in prose, lose teeth,
forget the face of your brother, but call
to your dead and dying in poetry.

For you, poetry is reaching for a different kind of truth than prose?  

DDS: I believe poetry has a different way of embodying truths than prose does. Quoting Milan Kundera again, “prose: the word signifies not only nonversified language; it also signifies the concrete, everyday, corporeal nature of life.” For me, prose embodies the incremental, the calendric, the historic, the national, the transnational, and the immediate; of course, poetry has something to do with those things too, but poetry thresholds itself between restraint and effusion. It has more to do with the mythic, the atemporal, the visionary, the legislation of unacknowledged worlds (to paraphrase Oppen); of course, prose can tread that ground as well, but I don’t think in quite the same way as poetry does. Also, the distinctions between poetry and prose have collapsed quite a bit, under, among other things, the weight of what Christian Wiman called “the train wreck of broken-prose confessionalism.” I’m not as pessimistic about broken-prose confessionalism as Wiman is, and I haven’t quite articulated all the differences I intuit between great poetry and great prose, but I sense there are clear distinctions. Part of why I write poetry is to clarify those distinctions, and to come closer to understanding what poetry is.

 NA: In your poem, “For My Creative Writing Students,” you have these lines:

“The need to say what you can’t say unspools/ itself from your mouths and hymnals a hope/as blue and speckled as a robin’s egg.” Do you think of poetry as a way to say what can’t be said? 

DDS: I believe there are truths conveyed in poetry that go beyond the limits of language, what Frost called “the sound of sense,” what Donald Hall called “the unsayable said.” I don’t think poems have so much to do with intention; poems are a kind of throbbing through words that accrues to music, what Stevens meant by “the dove in the belly.”

NA: I love that. Honestly, I would love to keep asking you questions just to read your responses. But I will stop for now. I thought maybe we could close with "Dreaming of Hokusai at Sloan-Kettering."

 

Dreaming of Hokusai at Sloan-Kettering
 

Because all the animals are kings and queens,
I wait for the rain to paint me; I long
to dream the butterfly dreaming me while
the blood lotuses into test tube,
pillow cherry blossoms the lolling head,
and all over the world the living still
go on living despite the needle’s truth,
stitching saline into this purple vein,
as a hawk is painted onto a bough
and the window beads itself up with rain.

The great wave continues to crash against
the clear sky, peasants fly kites from the roofs
that appear higher than Mount Fuji’s snow,
the fisherman’s wife fucks an octopus
or two, and the paddies remain tended
even when the south wind blows your hat off.

We, in our frail bodies, are woodcut, sketched
on silk, silkworms ourselves, ideograms
for dying, riders galloping a ridge
toward a mountain we will never reach.

There is no way to paint the swan in you,
or the heron taking wing, the village,
its terrible stillness before the fire.

For now, you have only the orderly
joking with the phlebotomist, asking
her to draw your blood in a bikini
next time; this is your temple, your tea house,
your watermill frozen in its churning,
a wheel of rivulets like braided hair,
or like the sutures in your throat and chest.

And the hospital might trick you into
believing this pain might make you holy,
but you are already holy, the stooped
millworker with a turtle on a string,
the surface of a lake without ripples,
the portly monk laughing in his Saki,
the lumberjacks sawing planks in heaven,
the sound of traffic on 68th Street,
the sill cleaving flight, a regent of air.

 

Dante Di Stefano is the author of two poetry collections: Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016) and Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, 2019). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Sewanee Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. Along with María Isabel Àlvarez, he is the co-editor of the anthology, Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America (NYQ Books, 2018). 

 

Listening to Grace Cavalieri's Recent Interview with George Bilgere (by Nin Andrews)

In my recent interview and classroom visit with Nicole Santalucia, Nicole and I talked about confessional poetry, and her students joined in the conversation. I was so interested in her students’ questions and comments, I am still thinking about them. One of the questions that stuck with was about the difference between autobiographical and confessional poetry.  I am paraphrasing here, but the student seemed to be asking, If you write about your life, then aren’t you a confessional poet?

The question came at the end of our time together, but I would have liked to have answered by talking about poets like Frank O’Hara, Billy Collins, and George Bilgere, poets who serve as a nice contrast to confessional poets. Or better yet, by playing Grace Cavalieri’s recent interview for The Poet and the Poem with George Bilgere in which Bilgere talks about his teaching method, his young boys, his writing process, and ideals. “The challenge for me,” Bilgere explained in the interview, “is to try to write interesting poems out of a commonplace life.”

About George Bilgere, Grace comments, “He can take an ordinary event and make it a knife through the heart.” The interview is short, entertaining, and so worth listening to, I want everyone to hear it. But if you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, be sure to listen to the unpublished poem, ““For the Slip and Slide,” that is about twenty minutes in. It’s a masterpiece.

Below is the title poem from his most recent collection.

 

Blood Pages

 

Someone gave my little boy
this illustrated book about whales
and every day he carries it to me,
demanding we read through its pages
about the biggest whales, the blue ones,
and the fiercest whales, the suave
orcas in their tuxes, and the mild
sperm whales with their baleen
and blow holes and benevolent gaze.

 

Which is fine. Everyone likes whales,
but of course being a boy
he wants to focus on the "blood pages,"
as he calls them, just two of them
inserted like an accidental dose
of reality in the middle of the book,
where the great whales are hauled up
like minnows onto the decks
of the Japanese trawlers, their strength
broken against the diesel winches,
blood pouring from the smoking wounds
where the harpoons struck and exploded.

 

I want to page forward to the dolphins
somersaulting above Sea World, but he
wants to see leviathan stripped
of his lordliness, skinned
alive on an ocean of blood
by small men with their scarlet blades,
their watch caps and cigarettes,
making good money on the long cruise
but nonetheless longing for home,
for the touch of their wives,
for their own children on their laps.

 

George Bilgere’s seventh book of poetry, Blood Pages, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2018. Bilgere has received grants and awards from the Pushcart Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation through the Library of Congress, and the Ohio Arts Council. 

He has been awarded the Midland Authors Prize, the May Swenson Award, the Ohioana Poetry Prize, the Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, the University of Akron Poetry Prize, and a Creative Workforce Fellowship through the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture in Cleveland. 

Bilgere is familiar to National Public Radio listeners from his many appearances on Garrison KeillorÍs The WriterÍs Almanac and A Prairie Home Companion. He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland and hosts a weekly poetry radio show on WJCU.FM called Wordplay. He has a marvelous wife and two incredibly cute little boys.

Poets & Artists 100: all hail Didi Menendez [by David Lehman]

Poets & Artists 100 is here.

Click here and you'll arrive at a Didi Menendez's groundbreaking magazine devoted to "figurative realism" in art -- with poetry tossed in by such stalwarts as Nin Andrews, Grace Cavalieri, and Denise Duhamel.

Figurative realism is a good name for a movement in favor of representational art with the human figure  at its center. The revival of the nude as an aesthetic ideal is significant. It is especially impressive in a puritanical era and may be a harbinger of welcome changes to come. The black and white painting on the left is by Dirk Dzimirsky, who curated the "Figurative Art" show up now.

The current issue of Poets & Artists includes gorgeous, sensuous paintings by such new (to me) artists as Anne-Christine Roda, Aixa Oliyeras, Veronica Winters, Megan Read, Nadine Robbins, Conne Karlera-Sales, Daniel Maidman, Victoria Selbach, Miriam Escofet (Portrait of Sophia, on right). It's an exciting development, a cry for beauty against brutality.

-- DL

First People's Buffalo Jump State Park [by Tami Haaland]

For years I’ve been on the Humanities Montana “Conversations” roster, a speaker’s bureau arrangement that sends many of us around the state on various adventures. This past Monday, for example, I spent two hours at Skyview High School in Billings working with seniors who had written research papers and were in the process of turning them into poems for the oral presentation part of their assignment. 

This fall, the current poet laureate, Lowell Jaeger and I, spend a day with teachers in the far eastern side of the state talking about how to work poetry into their curriculum. We've both visited many schools, along with ghost towns like Virginia City, county fairs, book festivals, libraries, and other events from one end of the state to the other. The Poet Laureate role means somewhere around 10,000 miles of travel, and though my term ended in 2015, I’ve continued to provide poetry-related presentations.  

Last spring, Humanities Montana asked a few of us—Lowell Jaeger, Caroline Patterson, Dave Caserio and yours truly—to come up with proposals for state park events that would deepen people’s experiences in these areas by introducing writing, art, poetry and discussion.  We were all excited about this prospect. In years past I had partnered with a local land institute to offer poetry workshops on the prairie. I’ve also created hiking / creative writing classes for my students. We hiked locally and explored a favorite trail in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, stopping to read poetry, write, and share our work along the way.  This new opportunity sounded like great fun, and I said yes when the ranger at First People’s Buffalo Jump State Park contacted me to arrange a September event.

First Nations Buffalo Jump was heavily used from 900 to 1500 BCE, before the introduction of horses dramatically changed the culture of the plains. At this site, fourteen different tribes from around the Northwest would gather periodically to herd buffalo over a cliff and in this way provide sustenance for a season or two.

Some might consider the site desolate. The prairie can strike people that way because it’s so arid, and by September, there isn’t much green left in the panoramic view. Up close, wild flowers, juniper, or sage offer a splash of color in contrast to the sandy soil and straw-colored grasses of late summer. From the prairie below, the ridge above looks modest. It’s hard to see the steep drop off.

This site is a bit out-of-the-way on the road between Great Falls and Helena, a few miles from a small town called Ulm. Three people joined me at the buffalo jump, a former student who drove four hours from Roundup, composer and pianist Philip Aaberg and his friend who were en route from Chester to Helena.

We started with a historic overview of the buffalo hunt. The ranger told us how a 13-16-year-old boy was chosen to be the buffalo runner. He would wear a buffalo calf robe, and he, in turn, would choose two friends to wear wolf hides. The three would go out to the herd, the wolf boys wandering near the back and the buffalo runner in the front, crying like a calf until the lead cow would respond and come towards him. In this way they would lure the herd up the gradual incline at the back of the hill. Meanwhile everyone else prepared by praying for a successful hunt, setting up drive lines—low rock walls that would contain and manage the bison at the top of the hill—and gathering hides and branches to swing about as they chased the bison over the cliff. Below, people prepared to butcher, to cook, and to work on the hides.

After a few days, the herd would arrive at the top of the hill, and then the buffalo runner would cast off his bison robe. Oral history indicates that once the lead cow saw she had been fooled, she would be enraged and the stampede would begin. The buffalo runner, brave soul, would lead the bison forward and jump off the cliff at a predetermined spot where he could cling to some piece of rock or overhang while the herd went sailing off the edge.

We listened to the park ranger recount the process as we sat in the visitor center facing out toward the jump. Wooden benches were strewn with wolf and buffalo skins, and more exhibits filled the adjoining room, where we could move deeper into the history of the place if we chose. Rangers created the exhibits in consultation with the people whose ancestors had traveled here, whose methods were well documented in the oral histories of the tribes.

After leaving the visitors center, we meandered up the hill, talking, speculating, reading placards. We also talked about writing and composing. Much of Phil’s work is inspired by landscape and the natural world, so I asked him how that process happened for him. He shared an experience about a commission he had to write a piece based on a particular ecosystem.  He began walking in the area, thinking, trying to find a way in, when a bird flew up. And that was the way in. “Nature is interruption,” he said.

I see what he means. Walking in a wild ecosystem creates an adjustment in the mind. When we are removed from dailiness and busyness, a different rhythm takes over. Interruptions of color, light, creature or movement, can mark a beginning of some sort, or a focal point. I’m speaking mostly from experience. Having grown up in the prairie, I was always attracted to the treasures—the bright colors of flowers, the possibility of agates, bones of small animals in a sea of short grass or a snake crossing my path. Quite of few of us from the northern Montana prairie have cited the expanse and the openness as part of what feeds the imagination and conditions us to respond through art, music, or writing.

We lingered in one place and another on the way up, imagining what it must have been like to witness one of these hunts. In an area called the pishkun, where blood was cooked into pudding, bone chips appeared like confetti against the soil. When we arrived at the top, we didn’t hike to the prairie dog town, in part, because we had all seen prairie dog towns elsewhere.  As we rested for our descent, we read poetry, particularly Lois Red Elk’s “This Awareness,” in which she explains her traditional Lakota worldview that includes both nature and spirits. “Everything that existed was my friend and teacher,” she says. Some of our group took time to write, some scanned the horizon. From where we stood, it looked like an easy slope down to the prairie and we understood how the bison could be fooled. It’s not until you get closer that you see the fatal drop off.

On the way down, two hawks circled, a grouse flew up to surprise us, and as we came a little closer to the visitor center, we stopped at the Sun Dance Lodge, then commented on the teepees, much smaller than what is customary now. Teepees this size would have been used when this jump was in its heyday,  the Dog Days when things had to be smaller because there were no horses to carry the long poles and heavy skins of a larger home. 

What a treat to spend three hours hiking and musing with friends. Though our group was small, this collaboration between Humanities Montana and the State Parks is bound to grow.

At the end of the day, Phil and I revisited an idea we've had before. We’d like to try a music / poetry workshop, maybe in a place that will allow people to see far into the distance and walk for miles if they want to. Now for the planning. 

Five Great Mystery Anthologies [by David Lehnan]

      A Catalogue of Crime
     By Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor
     Harper & Row, 1971

     Say you want to read a novel by a prolific crime author such as Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr, and you don’t know which to read in which order, and which to avoid. Let Barzun and Taylor be your guide. Revised and enlarged several times since it was first published in 1971, “A Catalogue of Crime” is the single best annotated compendium of mystery and espionage literature ever assembled. There are more than 5,000 entries in this work of heroic scholarship by emeritus Columbia Prof. Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, Barzun’s late partner in crime-fiction criticism of the most practical kind. The editors render their generally reliable judgments succinctly and with a suitable amount of caprice. Nicholas Blake’s “Thou Shell of Death” has “complex situations and killings” and, oh yes, a “good use of snow.” The book proves once and for all that the murder mystery is, in Barzun’s words, “a highbrow enterprise, inescapably.”

     The Book of Fantasy
     Edited by Jorge Luís Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo
     Viking, 1988

     The great Argentine writer Borges wrote stories—he called them “ficciones” (“fictions”)—unlike anyone else’s. Some masquerade as literary criticism, such as one that argues that a version of “Don Quixote” by the nonexistent Pierre Menard is, though identical word for word with the original, superior to it. The distinctive Borges story contains an ingenious mix of mental puzzles and labyrinths, ironies and surprise endings, and “The Book of Fantasy” reflects his sure feel for the uncanny. Among familiar favorites, Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” can still scare, and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” a chapter of “The Trial,” can still perplex. Two wonderful surprises are “Macario” by B. Traven, the mysterious author of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” and “Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched” by the little-known May Sinclair. They enchanted me.

     The Book of Spies
     Edited by Alan Furst
     Modern Library, 2003

     On a Caribbean cruise I found this book in the ship library and whiled away the most pleasurable hours on the balcony overlooking the sea, reading expertly chosen excerpts from the greatest spy novels, including Eric Ambler’s “A Coffin for Dimitrios,” Joseph Conrad’s “Under Western Eyes,” Somerset Maugham’s “Ashenden” and Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American.” Most fun for a reader is encountering something new, and I hadn’t realized that Anthony Burgess had written, in “Tremor of Intent,” a send-up of the spy genre that transcends its satiric aims and becomes an ironic version of the very thing it mocks.

     A New Omnibus of Crime
     Edited by Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert
     Oxford, 2005

     This recent anthology boldly evokes the title of Dorothy Sayers’s classic anthology of 1920. The editors aim to showcase the work of the four-score-and-seven years since. Here you’ll find the whole gamut, from the tough-guy patter of hard-boiled Raymond Chandler (“He looked tough, but he looked as if he thought he was a little tougher than he was”) to the more decorous detection practiced by Miss Sayers. Among the writers in between: The underrated Fredric Brown, representing the down-and-out world of noir, in which temptation can’t be resisted, failure is inevitable and well-educated family men can become bums overnight, “suddenly, for no reason you can define.”

     Triple Pursuit
     By Graham Greene
     Viking, 1971

     Once you get hooked on Graham Greene, there’s no turning back. Here we have three of his titles—“This Gun for Hire,” “The Third Man” and “Our Man in Havana”—which superbly convey the Greene world in which the eternal poles of good and evil trump the merely secular rules of right and wrong. Greeneland is a place where an ordinary, innocent man or woman can turn into a spy-master capable of large-scale deception, as happens to a vacuum-cleaner salesman in the sardonically funny “Our Man in Havana.”A few years ago I read three or four Greene novels in rapid succession and it hit me with the force of an epiphany that the whole genre of espionage, with its assignations, codes and betrayals, serves this author as an overarching metaphor for his true subject: romantic infidelity, in which the partners necessarily behave like secret agents. Newcomers to Greene who read “Triple Pursuit” straight through likely will be, for any number of reasons, similarly thunderstruck.

     Mr. Lehman is the author of “The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection” (2000) and the editor of “The Oxford Book of American Poetry.”

    From the archives; originally in the Wall Street Journal, February 3-4, 2007.

Next Line, Please: A Hole in One [by Virginia Valenzuela]

Last week, we were invited to play a game of word golf, a prompt which lets our imagination go as we try to solve a puzzle composed of slightly altered end words. Who had the lowest score and the win? Well, let us begin:

In “To Tell the Tiller From the Tail,” Eric Fretz managed the task in seven lines:

Bukowski said “the moonlight always seemed fake”
through the plastic thatch of my faux-Samoan fale
in California, just before the fall.
But in that time the tales we told were tall.
Now facts have changed, there’s nothing left to tell.
See: two black birds fly above the bright teal
sea, as if a simulacrum of the real.

Dr. Lehman applauds "the attention-grabbing opening line and the daring use of “simulacrum,” a piece of academic jargon that means fake in one context and is fake in another." I myself enjoy any poem that is set in a car in California.

“Apophasis at the End of the Year” by Steve Bellin-Oka’s offers crisp imagery and several dives into the Bukowski-esque. 

I half-tried to love this makeshift life: a woman’s fake
pearl earring falls off. She rattles in her purse for the fare,

the bus hiccupping ahead. Carbon monoxide fart
of the tailpipe. Always we are gone and there, “fort”

and “da,” as in Freud’s grandson’s game. To ford
a river, to find good footing, I run my fingers beneath the fold

of your crisp white shirt. You tell me my hands are cold.
In six weeks, we will leave this town. One December story I told

you: a pregnant woman side-saddle on her camel, the toll
of the jostling through sand. Another the stars might tell—

our compulsion to repeat, to wander. To forget the desert’s teal
flowers and hail. This makeshift life, half-pretending it’s real.

Christine Rhein employs the image of a ladder to exemplify the work of this exercise. Here is her “Act of Betrayal”:

Precise, a painted forgery: fake
love. The portrait (that gazing face)
in a museum-house you pace
around all night. Yes (hell yes), pack
up (your sorrows) the dreamy peck
of still-life fruits. Sun-kissed wine. Peak,
scentless blooms (that laughter peal).
Brushstrokes to your heart, wildly real.

And a quick tip-of-the-hat to Louis Altman's brilliant couplet in the "underrated manner" of Alexander Pope:

How skeptical we are, how hard we think to make
A phony work of art for avarice, just for lucre’s sake.

For more poems, couplets, and noteworthy commentary, please visit the American Scholar's page for the full post! And as always, a new prompt will arrive next week.

An Interview with Nicole Santalucia (by Nin Andrews)

 

Ever since my interview with January Gill O’Neil, I have been thinking about the question of truth in poetry, especially in confessional and autobiographical poetry. So, a few weeks ago, I had the honor of joining two of Nicole Santalucia’s creative writing classes by Skype, and I talked a bit about this topic. I confessed that I was not a particular fan of confessional poetry, and the students (such amazing and inspired students!) had so many interesting comments and questions. Nicole, herself asked, Do you think I have fallen too deeply into the confessional well?

I love that term, the confessional well. I decided I wanted to ask Nicole questions about her sense of herself as a confessional poet and her new book, Spoiled Meat, the winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize.  

NA: First, I want to continue our conversation that began with your class. Can you elaborate on that term, confessional well? I think that should be the title of a poem!

NS: I must confess my concern about being self-centered, yet I am unapologetic that my poems bear a precise relationship to my personal life.  The confessional well is the capital P Private, the place in the psyche where secrets harbor, the place where only the “I” can retrieve what’s inside. This designated well for confessions is also a dumping zone and a workspace, a mode of self-reflection and personal inventory. 

A confessional well is comparable to a fountain of truth, I guess. Wells and fountains are both structures that contain water. Confessions and truths are accessed similarly and create a sense of agency during the process.

My confessional well is occupied by more than personal experiences—my failures, successes, pains, traumas, etc.—because its foundation is permeable. It’s like a hydraulic fracking site with a drilling team injecting chemicals, sand, and water. What I mean is that there are pollutants and pressures—environmental and societal—that infiltrate my well of truth.

A confessional is also an enclosed stall in a church that scares the shit out of me, and, well….

NA: I love what you are saying here. But I am somewhat surprised that you consider yourself a confessional poet. Do you think that the opening poem, “The Chicken with a Broken Beak,” in your wonderful new poetry collection, is a confessional poem? 

 

The Chicken with a Broken Beak

 

I want to be the chicken in the front seat of that Cadillac
driving down Route 11. The chicken that reaches
for the steering wheel when there’s another chicken
in the road. The chicken that changes a flat tire
and the chicken that doesn’t get beat up for loving
other chickens. I want to be the red feathered chicken
with white feathered chicks. The chicken with big breasts
that doesn’t wear a bra. The chicken that can actually fly;
I’d soar over Pennsylvania, over cornfields,
and over the prison. I’d free caged chickens
and dig graves for dead chickens.
I’d tie a dollar to a string and catch the guards
who guard jailed chickens. I’d wear my human costume,
patrol the highways, and pull over chicken trucks.
Maybe I want to be a chicken because a chicken’s
life is short; a chicken’s panic is usually caged.
Maybe I am chicken when I don’t hold my wife’s hand
at the movies or on a walk through town. I’m chicken
when I pull my arm off her shoulder after someone
whispers, eww, homos. Chicken feathers have taken over
my face and skin and courage. I’m the chicken
craning my neck through bars and the chicken
with a broken beak.
 

NS: My mode for writing is often rooted in the confessional, but my poems don’t always confess. What I admit in a poem sometimes reveals a vulnerability, but it doesn’t cause shame or embarrassment. Besides, there’s less to be embarrassed about these days. God forbid the G, L, A, or P words: Gay, Lesbian, Alcoholic, and Period. Okay, when I was 10 years old I was embarrassed of all of these words. I was embarrassed to be myself for many years. Now, a large part of my identity and volunteer work is very much connected to being a lesbian and recovering alcoholic.

I’ve seen poets wince at the word confessional as if it’s a dirtyword or a weakness. I am not weakened as a poet or a person when I reveal personal truths in my work. 

Yes, “The Chicken with a Broken Beak,” is confessional. I am the scared chicken and clearly indicate this in the poem. The poem confesses fear and a disturbing incident from the personal “I” – this is not a persona. Deanna is my wife.  I yearn and dream to be the chicken that can fly, but I am a cowered when ridiculed for being who I am/who we are as a couple and the scar/broken beak reveals a truth: that I feel embarrassed at times for not having enough courage to stick up for myself and my relationship.

NA: I think it’s your sense of humor, often a dark humor, that makes me think of you as something other than confessional.  Humor and confessional poetry don’t usually go hand-in-hand. I had to laugh out loud at your poem, “Business Men.”  Was this inspired by our pussy-grabbing president?  You don’t think this is a confessional poem, do you? 

 

Business Men

 

I heard about how good the pussy is on the market these days.
Men go door to door selling pussy from their briefcases.
Just the other day Dick and his wife, Jane,
started to seriously consider an investment in pussy.
Jane told Dick he’s nuts, that pussy loses value,
how it is no different than the depreciation of a car.
She told him that buying into pussy is like buying a coffin
to lay down and take a nap in; Jane’s been lying
in her pussy coffin for years.
Sometimes pussy is like a giant hairy taco
that will swallow you whole if your face gets too close.

 

The pussy truck parks next to the taco truck
at the farmer’s market. Jane recommends the pussy
with the white gills, red stem, the one that wears a skirt
and has a bulbous sack. There are men who forage
for pussy in broad day light. They dig their hands
into the soil and pluck whole pussies from the earth in one grab.
The pussy beneath the soil is not calling to a man
as if he were a thing from the dirt like a tuber.
The pussy that grows at the edge of the woods
is usually on state owned land.
Trespassers walk through the woods,
fill their briefcases, then head straight
to town to ring your doorbell.

 

NS: Yes, this is a response to our pussy-grabbing president. Less of a confessional, but there’s a personal I in the first line who hears about how good the pussy is on the market these days…This is certainly an angry lesbian—a persona that aligns with everything about me right now.

NA: I also wondered about the poems about the Normal School. What inspired these poems? I’ll post one here so people can get a sense of them.

 

The Normal School Lesson Plans

Shippensburg, Pennsylvania

Lesson Plan: So, unless the man was willing to take a whole ox-worth of fishhooks,
he must have something else besides cattle for money; that is, he must
give something else in exchange for the half-dozen fishhooks which he wanted.
(Learning Outcome: This is male prostitution.)

Lesson Plan: Most mothers like children to have company,
but the children must realize a mother has housekeeping problems.
(Learning Outcome: This is in-the-closet lesbianism.)

Lesson Plan: If a man owning a goat wanted a tent, he sold a couple of them for twenty
pieces of iron and bought his tent for fifteen pieces. What might he do in the tent?
(Learning Outcome: get a blowjob and pay for it with the profit of five pieces of
iron.)

 Lesson Plan: In 1868 two Swedish cabinet makers came from Sweden to Philadelphia
and started a business. Mr. Brown and Mr. White sold Mrs. Howe a cabinet.
What does Mrs. Howe keep in her cabinet and why?
(Learning Outcome: Mrs. Howe keeps a lemon and vinegar solution in her cabinet.
It is most likely used to clean her vagina.)
 
Lesson Plan: “How many logs does it take to build a dam?” Asked Fred.
“Ah! That depends on the size of the dam,” said Aunt Kate.
(Learning Outcome: Fred and Kate are not talking about logs and dams.
This is a metaphor for incest.)
 
Lesson Plan: Just then a hawk came flying over the pond.
“Stop, Stop!” said the frog. “Let me go. It’s the mouse you want.”
“I flew down for the mouse, it is true,” said the hawk,
“but I like frog much better, so I shall eat you first.”
(Learning Outcome: men are like hawks; they want to eat you.)

 

NS: I work at Shippensburg University, which was founded in 1871 as the Cumberland Valley State Normal School. It is a teaching college and a wonderful institution. I did some research a couple of summers ago and spent time in a rural, one-room schoolhouse that was in use from 1865 to 1954. The Normal School poems reflect language found in old lesson plans and lists of rules for female teachers during the 1890's to 1930's.

NA: Now that you are talking about Shippensburg University, I thought I’d return to your amazing class! Especially because, much to my delight, three of your students wrote defenses of confessional poetry! As well as poems titled “My Confessional Well.” I want to include just a few excerpts of what they wrote here, and I have to say—what a joy to receive their comments and poems! One student, Erika Mundock wrote: “Confessional poetry, to me, is a way to talk about the things I never knew how to talk about before.” Another, Taylor Caudill, wrote, “I only started writing a few months ago and I am slowly realizing the power of the confessional. It’s not a way to solve issues but to help cope/understand them . . . " And Emily Mitchell explained: “I draw a lot of inspiration from the confessional poets I mentioned earlier (Plath, Sexton, Lowell), but I think their brutal honesty influences all of contemporary poetry.  All poetry comes from a place deep inside of the poet, the individuals we regard as confessional poets simply paved the way for us to do that without hesitation or fear.”

I love how engaged your students are! I also love that they composed poems on the topic. I am pasting below excerpts from their poems--or rather a blend because I think their  poems work so well together.  The first stanza is by Taylor Claudill, the second stanzas, by Emily Mitchell, and the third, by Erika Mundock.

 

My Confessional Well

 

1.

I think the soil drew me here, to this field –
This loose, crumbling dirt, surrounded
By cornstalks reaching their green arms
Up to the sun and clouds that feed them.
But this empty circle of earth waited
For me to arrive.
Even the cornstalks knew I was coming.
They told me to take my shoes off
And sink my feet into the cool, damp soil.
So I listened and felt my purpose.
The Earth told me to build my well here.
She said, Build the confessional well –
The one that I wanted.
The one that I shamed myself for wanting.
The one that I didn’t deserve.
The one I had no right to.
The one with no blueprints.

 

2.

Instead, I scoop up my addiction,
my self-hatred, my #MeToo,
and pour them out on parchment.
I decorate the black ink with
sunflowers and bee boxes
with my shoes and my fingernails
with white houses and white clouds
until the parchment is soaked
wet with ink of every color, of every hue.

 
I hang it up to dry on the clothesline
strung between trees
behind my dead grandmother’s house.

 

3.

Sometimes I find myself at the bottom
of the confessional well, where red brick walls
crumble at my touch and my vain attempts
of escape always end with my fingernails
peeling back from their beds and blood
dripping into the dirty, ankle-deep water below.

Without fail, I wake from this nightmare,
bruises around my neck.
Figures of the dead once again whisper
their misery upon me.
Still I go to sleep every night hoping to return
to the well, where
unspeakable dread and I find solace.

 

NA: I thought we might close with one more poem from you. How about one of your poems about Pennsylvania?

NS: Sounds good. Let’s end on thumpthumpthump, which is pretty much the sound of fear and truth hitting the bottom of the confessional well.

 

Thumping in Central Pennsylvania

 

The cows and apple trees and tractor trailers
thump between the prison yard and the university.
Sometimes I chase a herd of cows out of my classroom
and the earth thumps. The word of the lord thumps.
The word thump breaks my ribs. Brown battery operated
cows thump through traffic. Factories thump and farmers
thump. The warehouses are full of thumps. The sky thumps
to the ground when I get home from work and kiss my wife.
When two women fall asleep in the same bed
the stars thumpthumpthumpthumpthump
like bullets hovering over our heads.

 

Nicole Santalucia is the author of Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press). She is a recipient of the Charlotte Mew Prize, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, and the Ruby Irene Poetry Prize. Her non-fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such as The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, Out Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Bayou Magazine, Gertrude, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, The Boiler, as well as numerous other journals. She teaches at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and has taught poetry workshops in the Cumberland County Prison, Shippensburg Public Library, Boys & Girls Club, and nursing homes.

Joyeuses Fêtes: “La Petite Collection” lets you sample 100 of the best Paris artists [by Tracy Danison]

"La Petite Collection" 2018 exhibition of original post-card size miniatures by contemporary French visual artists takes place from 6 to 15 December at Galerie Bertrand Grimont, 42-44 rue de Montmorency 75002 Paris. Works from La Petite Collection 4ème Edition and previous shows can be seen and purchased on the web. See the links below - Artist: Pat Andrea 

In past times, when la Joyeuse Fête wasn’t just Karine and I getting as sloppy as politeness will bear on other people’s liquor and dancing in New Year at a German opera, my son Boo’s enthusiasm for progress and self-improvement would sometimes flag.

In such moments of childish despair, I would wag my index finger gravely and say to my sweet boy, “Soft trousers, Boo. Soft trousers, man”.

He would laugh and buck right up, as if I’d popped a Sugar Puff Blaster into that cute little cupid-bow bouche.

“Soft trousers” is our way of naming "true progress".

It was our little joke then, as it still is now.

It comes from reading Raymond Briggs’ Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age. Briggs is also the author of that

sublime Winter’s Tale, The Snowman. 

Ug, the boy genius, was the first to see that soft trousers would be a vast improvement over stone trousers. Lucky for us. How then in stone trousers would we dance Salsa? And what would tailors be?

As well as lifting and soothing Boo’s progress-and-improve blues, Ug also commented my own childhood without my having to utter a single word. This interested my Boo, you bet.

Achieving soft trousers requires genius and good humor, certainly, but, especially, a vision and footwork.

Artist: Nathalie Sizaret

Artist: Anahaita Masoudi

Giving potential art-buyers an opportunity to look at a wide but manageable variety of the visual work of artists that gallerists, exhibitors and fellow creators think are the best on the market, Florence Lucas’ La Petite Collection has achieved soft trousers in the realm of appreciating and buying visual art.  

Artist: Caroline Ballet

Each Petite Collection creator produces two 10cm x 15cm (4- by 6-inch) originals that sell for an affordable 150€ apiece. And, as over its three previous years, the Petite Collection will this year present examples of work by not fewer than 100 contemporary visual artists in postcard format. A complete list of contributors figures at the end of the article. 

Artist: Rachel Marks

Creator contributors are selected by Lucas who, with the help of
friends and colleagues, puts together a list of the best work encountered at galleries and exhibitions during the year past. She makes her call for contributions in Spring.

Artist: Daniel Otero Torres

Contributors may be entirely new on the scene or have already shown. New or established artist or not, the selection process means that artists are effectively vetted twice – by the gallerist or exhibition curator, as well by Lucas.

Lucas says she makes her choice of

Artist: Célia Coette

contributors on what she calls the “interest” of their work in terms of intention, theme and esthetic result. The number of artists on show and the technical challenge of making a miniature along with format make for interesting comparisons.

But, especially, taken together, the selection

Artist: Danièle Gibrat

and technical conditions of production mean that the quality of the works on show is so uniformly high that you find yourself considering intentions and themes that would not ordinarily get your attention.

Artist: Christina Ruiz Guinazu

In addition to the physical exhibition, La Petite Collection produces a lovely catalogue – you can collect past years as well as this one’s to get a sense of whose doing what and getting along over time.

Artist: GwenaelBillau

Works can be ordered on the internet during and after the physical show.   

La Petite Collection Home 

La Petite Collection Boutique

La Petite Collection Images

For information on the project, click Contact.

Artists contributing to the 2018 La Petite Collection, 4^ème Edition

Laurent Ajina     Pat Andrea     Mateo Andrea   Sylvain Azam      Azul      Clément Bagot      Caroline Ballet     Pauline Bazignan        Diane Benoit du Rey      Gwenaël Billaud      Mireille Blanc      Ana  Bloom      Charlie Boisson      Nathalie  Borowski      Léonard Bourgois Beaulieu     Bufalino Benedetto      Joachim Biehler     Bruno Bressolin      Marta Budkiewicz      Bufalino Benedetto       Dana Burns          Antoine Carbone      Marcos Carrasquer      Marion Charlet      Mathieu Cherkit      Gaëlle Chotard      Mamadou Cissé        Côme Clérino           Célia Coette     Guiillaume Constantin      Jules Cruvellier       Coraline de Chiara  Grégory Derenne      Luc Doerflinger      Hélène Duplantier       Cornelia Eichhorn       Yoann Estevenin        Jean Charles Federico       Gabriel Folli         Olivier Garand     Julia Gault    Daniele Gibrat        Laurence Annie Gossart       Paul Gounon        Guacolda      Michel   Guéranger      Cécile Hug         Charlotte Jankowski       Christine Jean      Chloe Julien      Lucie Le Bouder        Sophie Lecomte      Nicolas Leto      Thomas Levy Lasne      Maud Louvrier      Florence Lucas     Ferdinand Makouvia Kokou      Oscar Malessène      Rachel Marks      Anahita Masoudi       Alexane Morin       Quentin Naudeau      Daniel Otero Torres   Aurore Pallet      Guillaume Pelloux       Laurent Pernot      Tanc        Nelson Pernisco       Clémentine Poquet      Baptiste Rabichon       Sandrine Rondard       Christina Ruiz Guinazu        Alice Schneider     Nathalie Sizaret       Lise Stoufflet       Florian Sumi       Isabelle Taourel        Victoire Thierrée    Anne Touquet       Maxime Touratier      Clarisse Tranchard      Rémi Uchéda     Marine Wallon   

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.

 

Now, if you know your Lenny Bruce, you know that garland, like Drakes Cakes or Instant Potatoes, is a distinctly Goyishe item.  I don't even care, though--I live in Appalachia.  I will buy anything with a Jewish symbol emblazoned on it that I find at the Walmart.  My mother-in-law is really into decorative holiday items:  Santa dishes, festive serving platters, hand towels with snowflakes on them.  One year, for Christmas, she got me a giant Hanukkah platter with doves and stars on it, and now, in Appalachia, I am glad for my giant seasonal decorative Goyishe-Jewish platter, which will be pressed into service during tomorrow's latke-making marathon, when even the cats will start to smell like deep fried hash browns.

So this is a post about resourcefulness and community, syncretism and adaptation.  I was thinking about this in the context of poetry today--especially the syncretism.  Are there ways that other practices or cultures wend their way into contemporary American poetry, and are adopted, torqued a little, and ultimately embraced into the fold?  I think of Terrance Hayes' pecha kucha poems from Lighthead, where he takes a Japanese business presentation format and turns it into a poetic form.  I think of Maureen Thorson's practice (and what is a writing practice, if not a ritual?) of napowrimo--national poetry writing month, where poets come together virtually to create new work each day, and the communities that have grown up around this new practice.  And I'm totally thinking of asking my mother-in-law for this Hanukkah felt wall-hanging for next year (which is really, I suspect, made by a Jew with serious Advent-Calendar envy).  

* * *

Recommended Hanukkah poem:  "A Christmas Story" by Alan Shapiro, from his book Happy Hour.

Poem of the night, in honor of the Festival of Lights, starting tomorrow at sundown, and in honor of the simultaneous loss and pleasure inherent in syncretism, or any time two things are joined together:

A Light Says Why by Karen Volkman

A light says why. From all the poor prying. Again we attain a more 
regal posture--small bird accompanying slips between our whim. 
Where will we flicker, loose as two feathers from a wren's back? Gone, 
do not brood for all the hands that miss you. They hardly hold. Don't 
wait, one who thought a dark eye could save you, like night with its black 
paws curled and gone to sleep. There are only two names to remember, 
Loss and Pleasure, crossed in this field like no man's borrowed light. Call 
the far-sighted foxes to the launching. Call the small deer scattered in 
the back brush, swift as flit. Contingency has arms and hands and wasted 
faces. And a body, shrunk and scurvy, built to burn.

(ed note: this post first appeared on November 30, 2010)

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.

 

Now, if you know your Lenny Bruce, you know that garland, like Drakes Cakes or Instant Potatoes, is a distinctly Goyishe item.  I don't even care, though--I live in Appalachia.  I will buy anything with a Jewish symbol emblazoned on it that I find at the Walmart.  My mother-in-law is really into decorative holiday items:  Santa dishes, festive serving platters, hand towels with snowflakes on them.  One year, for Christmas, she got me a giant Hanukkah platter with doves and stars on it, and now, in Appalachia, I am glad for my giant seasonal decorative Goyishe-Jewish platter, which will be pressed into service during tomorrow's latke-making marathon, when even the cats will start to smell like deep fried hash browns.

So this is a post about resourcefulness and community, syncretism and adaptation.  I was thinking about this in the context of poetry today--especially the syncretism.  Are there ways that other practices or cultures wend their way into contemporary American poetry, and are adopted, torqued a little, and ultimately embraced into the fold?  I think of Terrance Hayes' pecha kucha poems from Lighthead, where he takes a Japanese business presentation format and turns it into a poetic form.  I think of Maureen Thorson's practice (and what is a writing practice, if not a ritual?) of napowrimo--national poetry writing month, where poets come together virtually to create new work each day, and the communities that have grown up around this new practice.  And I'm totally thinking of asking my mother-in-law for this Hanukkah felt wall-hanging for next year (which is really, I suspect, made by a Jew with serious Advent-Calendar envy).  

* * *

Recommended Hanukkah poem:  "A Christmas Story" by Alan Shapiro, from his book Happy Hour.

Poem of the night, in honor of the Festival of Lights, starting tomorrow at sundown, and in honor of the simultaneous loss and pleasure inherent in syncretism, or any time two things are joined together:

A Light Says Why by Karen Volkman

A light says why. From all the poor prying. Again we attain a more 
regal posture--small bird accompanying slips between our whim. 
Where will we flicker, loose as two feathers from a wren's back? Gone, 
do not brood for all the hands that miss you. They hardly hold. Don't 
wait, one who thought a dark eye could save you, like night with its black 
paws curled and gone to sleep. There are only two names to remember, 
Loss and Pleasure, crossed in this field like no man's borrowed light. Call 
the far-sighted foxes to the launching. Call the small deer scattered in 
the back brush, swift as flit. Contingency has arms and hands and wasted 
faces. And a body, shrunk and scurvy, built to burn.

(ed note: this post first appeared on November 30, 2010)

Support Poets! Here's your 2018 Holiday Gift Guide [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Of course poetry books top your gift lists but you can also support poets by ordering gifts from poets who, whether by inclination or necessity, make things that you can wear, eat, hold, and experience. Here are a few suggestions for holiday gifts. Click on the image for more information. If I've left someone out please add a description and link in a comment:

Clockwise from top left: Jennifer L. Knox makes herb and spice-infused artisanal seasoning blends with "no preservatives, MSG, dairy or other creepy shizznit." Deanna Dorangrichia makes stunning utilitarian ceramics that honor the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. NEA fellow Molly Brodak is the genius behind the delicious and whimsical Kookie House. Follow Laura Orem on Instagram to snag one of her stunning otherworldly acrylic pour paintings. Kristy Bowen's dulcet dancing girl press and studio makes chapbooks, stationary, and beautiful custom jewelry hair clips (I want one!).  Paige Taggert created MACTAGGART Jewelry in 2003 and her beautiful wearable designs have gained a wide following. Alexandra Reisner's customizable jewelry is available from Caelum Designs. If you want want a ring engraved with “I heard a fly buzz” on the inside, she's the one for you. Combine the practical with the provocative with a tote bag, backpack or pouch inscribed with one of  Yahia Lababidi's inspirational aphorisms, available only from Lababidi Ink. This Day Too: Music from Iris America, Terence Winch's first album in roughly 10 years, is a rich gathering of traditional and original songs and tunes from one of the Washington DC area’s best-known Irish-American musical families. Winch in joined by brother Jesse and son Michael along with an all-star cast of D.C. traditional musicians.This is perfect music for your holiday celebration.

Give the gift of an experience and you will help create lasting memories: 

photo(c)www.aurorandjohn.com

Jezmina Von Theile learned card, palm, and tea leaf reading from her Romani-Sinti grandmother. You can schedule an in-person session in the New York City area, or schedule a phone session if you're out of town. Victoria Rowan is the "creatrix in chief" behind Ideasmyth, your genius amplifier. She offers a variety of services to "help creatives become more professional and professionals to become more creative. (ed note: I know from personal experience that if you have a project that's been languishing, Victoria will help you get. it. done!)

Books make fine gifts too! Here are three I recommend: 

David Lehman's Next Line, Please offers a masterclass in writing in form and collaborative composition. An inspired compilation of his weekly column on the American Scholar website, Next Line, Please makes the case for poetry open to all. Next Line, Please gathers in one place the popular column’s plethora of exercises and prompts that Lehman designed to unlock the imaginations of poets and creative writers.

The current volume of the Best American Poetry (2018) was guest edited by Dana Gioia and includes contributions from 75 poets. You'll find many newcomers alongside beloved favorites. Dana Gioia's brilliant introduction and Lehman's foreword set the stage for the poems that follow; the contributors' notes, a perennial favorite section, give readers a behind-the-scenes tutorial in how poems are made. 

Complete your loved-one's collection of the Best American Poetry series with this edition of the Best American Poetry 1988. A celebration of the first edition of Best American Poetry and a tribute to the late John Ashbery—the guest editor and one of the best American poets of all time—this thirtieth anniversary edition is a look back at the beginning of a renowned anthology series and an outstanding collection of poems.

-- sdl

From the Archive: Happy Hanukkah

"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 gift giving, 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. 
  

I've been trying to teach my son basic Hebrew prayers for Shabbat--over the candles, wine, and challah. This past Friday the two of us made it through half the challah blessing together before he got too embarrassed about the twelve other family members who were watching us. I'd say a Hebrew word, and wait for him to repeat it. Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min hararetz. (Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.) Judaism has a fixed liturgy--standardized blessings for every ritual and experience. Because I pray and bless in Hebrew, because I choose not to translate what I'm saying in my head while I'm saying it, the blessing becomes a rote and mimetic part of the ritual--a liturgical chant, a comfort mantra, a familiar song.

A few weeks ago, my niece and nephew were baptized into the Episcopal church. Years ago, I went to their Quaker welcoming ceremonies, back when they belonged to Friends' Meeting. I remember sitting in excruciating silence for over an hour, which I suspect was a transcendent quiet for others who are less type-A than I am. This time there were robes and funny hats, lush stained glass, a majestic choir and accompanying organ, and the liturgy--a call and response that seemed so disjunctive with what I knew of my spunky five year-old niece, and gentle seven year-old nephew:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

I renounce them.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

I renounce them.

Question of the night: What's the difference between poetry and prayer?  Does it have something to do with power, aspiration, intention?  When can poetry become liturgy, incantation, spell?  Discuss.

Exercise of the night: How might you write a blessing in a new language?

Poem of the night:  (which avoids sentimentality with a kick-ass, understated, non-transcendent, yet utterly comforting ending)

blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

(ed note: this post first appeared on November 28, 2010)

Much Depends on Dinner: Cooking Latkes with Gabriella Gershenson [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

"Fried things are highly popular at any celebration:  they add a piquant variety to the menu; they are nice to look at, possess all of their original flavor, and can be eaten with the fingers, which is always pleasing to the ladies." Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste.

This is really a public service announcement disguised as a cooking post. In case you hadn't noticed, we're deep into latke season here.  If you read through this post, study the photos, and follow the instructions, you will never have to eat the leaden, oily, flabby discs that so often pass as latkes in restaurants and delis, and, yes, your relatives' homes.  My friend, the superb writer and editor Gabriella Gershenson  has generously agreed to share the outstanding recipe passed down from her Latvian babulenka and perfected for the modern kitchen by her mother, the superb chef and caterer Anna Gershenson. Your search for latke heaven ends now.  By heaven I mean that your latkes will be thincrispflavorful and so light that you will dispense with all social niceties such as dishes, knives, and forks and eat them with your hands as soon as you can after they emerge from their brief bath in bubbling oil.  

We begin:  As Anna instructs in the recipe at the bottom of this post, assemble your ingredients and cooking accouterments.  You will need several bowls, sheet pans, lots of paper towels, some aluminum foil; the kinds of things that may not immediately come to mind.  If you have to stop mid-cooking to find them, latke perfection could be out of reach this time around.  (Below, the ingredients: eggs, flour, onions, potatoes, oil. You will also need salt and pepper.) 

Before we took this photo, Gabi and I had already peeled and cubed a boatload of russet potatoes.  The type of potatoes is key: you want a starchy variety.  I'll leave it to the food scientists to explain why. You also want to have a lot of oil on hand (Ed. note: Gabi uses Canola.)  
Once you're at the point shown in this photo, you grind the onions and potatoes.  "WTF? Grind? Every latke I've ever made has used shredded potatoes." I know, I know, me too.  At first Gabi and I couldn't believe it either but you do grind the potatoes. You fit your food processor with this blade and blast away. How do you know when your potatoes have been ground to the proper texture?  You listen to Anna: When you see that the potatoes are beginning to slide in the bowl and don't just sit attached to the walls, and moisture starts appearing, it's time to stop.

(Here is where we pause for a brief departure from Commandment #2 to say thank you to the god of small kitchen appliances for creating the food processor, without which we would be doing  this.)

Next, you dump your first batch of ground onions and potatoes into a strainer set over a large bowl.  Grind and strain the remaining potatoes and onions and when you're done, a goodly amount of milky water will have accumulated in the bowl. Peer through the water and you will see that the bottom of the bowl is coated with a thick white paste.  This is the potato starch. Pour off the water, being careful to preserve the starch (see photo, right).  

"Francois Villon Begins His Journey" [by David Lehman]

François Villon Begins His Journey

                                                         [in memory of Paul Violi]

In this my thirtieth year,
Drunk and no stranger to disgrace,
I grin like a fool from ear to ear
Despite the trickle of tears on my face,
Clown that I am, condemned
By Thibauld d’Assole’s command,
Threatened and even damned
By the faker with the crozier in his hand.

The bishop, a typical horse’s ass,
Wanted me to sup on his shit.
To hell with that. I’d sooner smoke grass
And worship at the sacred fountain of wit.
As a lad I was fed a crust of hard bread
And a jug of water on a five-mile hike.
Each night exhausted I went to bed
And dreamed of her whose fragrance I like.

To those who have caused me grief
That spilled into my poems, I say
I bloomed like an almond tree in leaf.
For years I wrote poems every day
And laughed at those who believe
That “love thine enemies” makes sense.
May the poets, who know better, relieve
You of such illusions and discontents.

I pray for you, I pray for all
Who deserve God’s mercy.
But I who fell with Adam’s fall
Speak one word only: merci.
I thank all who made me suffer,
Gave me pain, inflamed my heart,
Aroused my manhood like a lover
And taught me that romance is an art.

Some of my enemies may
Dismiss me as a loudmouth
But they will rue the day
That my north conquered their south
And the deed defeated the word.
Still, I will say a line in praise of one
Who let me bear a sword
In defense of God’s sole son.

I have no real property to leave,
But sick though I may look, and wan,
I still have got my brains. I believe
The Lord has given me all I could want.
I freely admit I owe it all to Him.
And now I shall say what I meant
To say from the start. Like a hymn
I shall compose my last will and testament.

Written in the sixty-third year
Of our century, this statement stands
As my hand and seal as I clear
The air of untruth and clap my hands
To applaud the prince who freed me
From prison and gave me back my life.
To him and his wife, and to those who read me,
I bequeath the peace that shall outlast strife.

I confess my many sins of lust,
Of wrath, of greed, of pride.
But God who made Man out of dust
Has taken my side.
Though dead I may be when this you read,
Know that I live on by grace
Of the Lord who aided me in my need
And let me gaze on Madonna’s face.

And knowing that I shall meet my fate
Soon enough down this well-trod road,
May I stop one last time, one night late,
At a café where I shall declaim my ode
To the joy of the multitude, to cheers
From strangers in this ancient continent,
My thirst quaffed with a tankard of beer,
Beyond reform, your humble penitent.

DAVID LEHMAN

The Common 
Issue 16
posted on Poetry Daily, December 1, 2018
http://poems.com/poem.php?date=17867

"Texting" [by David Lehman]

Does the triumph of the text message
over the phone call or voice mail
imply that they were wrong all along,
those analysts of the text
who said that the spoken word
is invariably “valorized”
to the detriment of the written word
in the most primal of binary oppositions
that the myrmidons of critical theory
were determined to dismantle
by “valorizing” the bottom half
of any ratio, be it day-night, white-black,
male-female, dominant-submissive,
the haves versus the have nots,
parents and children who dress alike,
and even truth-falsehood, fact-fiction,
cause and effect, as if each pair
were in perpetual conflict,
the universal dialectic having seen to that?

Traveling and Returning [by Tami Haaland]

Long ago, during the summer when I graduated from high school and turned eighteen, I went to Europe with the Montana Youth Choir. It was the usual month-long, fast-paced trip through eight or nine countries with buses and tour guides. We were endlessly in awe of the world and ourselves walking around in it, singing in places like Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It’s the sort of thing  many young people do every year, and for me, as with so many others, it was a lucky introduction to a larger world.

One unusual part of that trip was our passage through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin. Our choir directors warned us to keep our cameras out of sight and to be highly respectful when a guard would likely walk through our bus, a curious, almost smiling guard, as it turned out, who nevertheless carried a machine gun. I remember the barbed wire on top of the wall but what stuck with me most was a row of landmines and a row of red geraniums neatly spaced on the East Berlin side. When we drove into the city, it was as if the war ended yesterday. The buildings were ragged and pock marked in contrast to the sparkling newness of West Berlin.

When I was planning this trip, I thought I would go back to Berlin, go back to Paris, see as much as possible while I was in Germany  and maybe go to other countries as well. Last summer I went briefly to Stavanger, Norway for the first time, a three-day side trip from England, to see relatives and the family farm, purchased in 1799. It was a thrill, and I wanted so much to return, thought I might jet up there again for a day or two, the equivalent of my jetting over to Winchester for a couple of days.

Fortunately, before I left the U.S. I had a conversation with a friend who wisely advised me to go for immersion rather than making more whirlwind journeys, even to a place that feels like home. Or to places like Paris and Berlin which would also require more planning and more time.

When I went to Strasbourg the train would have arrived only two hours later in Paris, and I felt a bit of longing as I stepped off rather than continuing on. But the idea of immersion is what I tried to stick to, especially given teaching obligations and other events that began to fill my schedule. Outside of my brief episode in England, which was easy and familiar, I stayed mostly in southern Germany. Even in that decision, I felt the daily pull, which I have mentioned in previous posts, teeter tottering between walking into town or hopping on a train to someplace new. Ultimately, I’m pretty happy with the balance that governed my days.

On my last Sunday there, I took the train to Heidelberg and spent hours walking, first downtown, then up to the castle—a sort of elegant monstrosity built in stages. The place is huge and has some decidedly touristy attractions, like the largest wine keg in the world and a very interesting Apothecary Museum full of seventeenth-century remedies. If I am honest, what I liked most was the climb up to this castle which is situated on a small mountain. Walking quickly from the street below felt like walking in the mountains at home. The body likes this workout and the challenge of climbing. This walk and the steep climb to the Philosopherweg or Philosopher’s Way on the other side of the river were the best workouts of my 23 days in Europe. But of course there’s much more—The Philosopherweg was a haunt for Romantic poets Joseph Eichendorff and Friedrich Hölderlin who are commemorated there. Beyond that, it’s just a great place for faculty and students at the university to walk along the side of the mountain with the river below. Many generations have.followed this path.  

When I was still trying to find my way around in Heidelberg, I happened to take a side street to the river. Here, I came across the outline of the former synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht, November 10, 1938. There is a similar memorial near the train station in Ludwigsburg, where suitcases with the names of those who were deported sit inside the outline of the synagogue, and nearby is a screen with revolving images and biographies. Both of these memorials contain an altar where people place flowers, candles and bright stones. Train stations have memorials as well, lists of the people who were deported. When you ride the train in Germany, you know you may be traveling the same path that Holocaust victims were forced to travel. Part of the memorial at Dachau is a short railroad track and the platform where people would disembark before entering through the main gate. Only a few days into my visit, I went to Dachau, and I find myself mostly silent when thinking about it. Or rather, I don't think so much as feel great sadness. It’s hard to fathom such darkness, harder still to find words that explain what it is to be there.

Yet in my classroom and among colleagues at Ludwigsburg University there was open conversation about the past and the manifestation of neo-fascism and white supremacy in contemporary society. Since the focus of our seminar was Montana Literature, my students and I read and discussed chapters from James Welch’s Winter in the Blood and poems by Lois Red Elk, Mandy Smoker and Heather Cahoon. I showed them maps of tribal territories before and after Caucasian settlement. We also talked about how Hitler admired U.S. policies for Native people.

In England, a teacher told me that Britain is beginning to acknowledge what colonialism meant for the people who were colonized. In the U.S., only in recent years have memorials to slaves begun to emerge and there are few Native American memorials. Near where I grew up in the northern, rural part of Montana, the Marias (Baker) Massacre occurred in 1870, but it, like other massacres, is still not widely known or commemorated. 

In Germany there are daily reminders of the Holocaust: outlines of former synagogues, small gold squares in the sidewalk with the names of Jewish citizens who lived and worked there, lists of people who were deported. Major camps where the SS were trained or where millions of people were murdered have become world renowned memorials.

I think a lot about Jung’s description of the shadow—the side of individuals and societies that we may try to run from, our dark underside, but of course, no one can escape their shadow. Further, Jung says that if we don’t come to terms with it, then we risk being controlled by it, which brings me back to poetry. Poetry doesn’t cater to either-or fallacies or polarization or denial. Poetry will ask us to take a good look at the shadow and get comfortable with ambiguity. Poems ask us to look, and then look again. 

Meet the Press: Shrew & Cat in the Sun Press

Dante Di Stefano: In his introduction to The Best American Poetry 1988 John Ashbery wrote: “there is not much ‘political’ poetry that I like for the reason that the political sentiments reiterated in it are usually the exact ones I harbor, and I would rather learn something new.” Considering the efflorescence of political poetry right now, and your own background as a union organizer involved in direct political action, could you begin the interview by riffing on Ashbery’s quote and its relevance to the political poetry being written in the Trump Era?

Joe Weil: I think a lot of political poetry preaches to the already converted, but in that sense it is as vital a trope as carpe diem is, or as vital as an elegy for a recently deceased poem might be. That might make political poetry seem dangerously close to a conventional form or rather formula (lots of rhetorical devices including anaphora, lots of listing and enumerating, the use of invective, the inserting of a We and a Them, and so on).  But when Political poetry fails, like when most poetry fails, it fails in the way its puts lines and nouns and verbs together. It does not fail intrinsically because it is political poetry. There is nothing innately wrong or inferior about political poetry. Much of the world’s best poetry is political... Blake’s Chimney Sweeper poem (the one in the Experience section) succeeds both as a political poem, but also as a powerful poem about the suffering of child laborers. Its words are so well chosen and so chilling. It is as great a poem as Goya’s “Saturn Eating his Children” is a painting. Most of the poems we love by the romantics were deeply political. Time has blurred the causes, but left the images and the main ideas of freedom and newness vivid. Political poetry might be considered tacky or obvious, but it surprises me Ashbery didn’t take to it, since he often liked traipsing the thin line between the sublime and the tacky, the lyrical and the obvious (he loved playing with cliché) . One of his poems ends with: “Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulations.” That ominous declaration rings politically true at this moment in time though the poem was written in the 1950’s. Political poetry, when it is good, continues to have many lives and uses. It transcends its moment and exceeds its own cause. Done well, it is both anciently sudden and suddenly ancient. It does not date

DD: In the “Pre-Rambles,” or introductory essays, to the first two issues of Shrew you lay out some guidelines for the magazine. I’m most interested in your idea of a “pre-standard” aesthetic, a concept that I think connects to another idea you’ve written about, a “Eucharistic vision” of poetry and the world. Could you unpack these concepts for us?

JW: If you start with “Standards” you’re already publishing poems that fit a mold. The mold may not be precise or even visible, but it’s there. The editor is imposing his or her “ur” poem on every poem that passes through. In a "pre-standard" idea of publishing, you find people willing to enter. So you find poets rather than poems and you say: Hey buddy, got a poem for me?” The magazine is not based on excluding the many to pick the few. I always thought this was too much like the cool bouncer at a disco saying who can and who can’t get through the door. Most of the time the criteria run along these lines:  

Poet A writes a poem about the color blue. It gets rejected. Poet B, a widely known poet writes a poem about Blue, it not only gets accepted, but the editor brags about having Poet B in the mag. Let’s say both were of equal quality: well, then, the true standard was not quality, but hierarchy.

When I started this Shrew, I asked friends whose work I liked to send me something. They sent it and I published it, and I also did the same with the art. “Pre-standard” does not mean an absence of standards. Rather, it means “toward a standard.” You start with people of good faith, friends or at least poets you’ve met under good circumstances, and you ask them to join you. Free play eventually finds the rules, but the rules can never find free play. So, I begin with free play. And yes, it is part of my idea of Eucharistic reality, of being part of a body where all are welcome to enter. It’s strange because, if you give people free play, they start creating their own standards, often far more exciting and interesting standards than you, yourself, would have imposed. I hate snobbery. I think it is the source of all race and class and gender hatred. So death to snobs. But there is something that is a healthy snobbery: you don’t let those who like to play the bouncer at the disco in. They might create a room full of beautiful people, but who knows if that’s really the best room for a party?

DD: Part of what makes Shrew so dynamic and vital is that it champions, both implicitly and explicitly, the overlooked, the broken, and what I’ve heard you call the “motley,” that is, what Hopkins would call “dappled things.” Could you talk a little bit about poetry and all things counter, original, spare, strange?

JW: I love comic poetry, and by that, I mean something different than just Billy Collins. I mean work with the fool’s cap, with the touch of Harlequin, with deep sadness to the comedy so that you know the clown is dancing on the edge of a steep cliff and the banana peels are flying off to meet him and to kill him.. I love poetry, also, that can laugh at itself, that breaks the 4th wall. I also revere poets like Vallejo who I know was the poet equivalent of someone who lived his art so intensely that he became the Shema—as did Emily Dickinson. I know he is not the greatest of all Spanish poets, but my favorite poet in Spanish is Miguel Hernandez, who I first read when I was 18 and everyone in my family was dying. His fierce love and integrity destroyed me—in the best way. He broke me down. I love May Swenson, especially her sex poems. Wanda Coleman is a poet I return to as well as Wallace Stevens, Bob Kaufman, Williams, and Whitman, also Carolyn Kizer, Maggie Nelson. I’m very motley in my tastes. I might read a sonnet by Milton, a sonnet by Wanda Coleman, King Lear, and funny poems by the California poet Ronald Koertge, all in one day. Why not? I like the magazine to go in many different directions. I always liked the idea of motley. When I was very little, I always dyed all my Easter eggs every color so that they came out a sort of sloppy brown, but if you looked close enough,  if you put your eyeball right up against the egg, all the colors were still in there, and they were like some beautiful brawl of colors—all swirling around and through each other. I think I’m still that way. The sheer mess of it all delights me.

DD: Maria, tell us about your experience as Guest Editor for Shrew.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Guest Editor, Shrew Issue 10: I Love Shrew because the design of the journal is beautifully clear and clean. I really like the layout and the combination of poetry and art. I love the Pre-Ramble and the way it gives each editor a chance to frame the issue and to contextualize the work chosen. I am thrilled with Shrew’s combination of poetry and art. I think the art opens the poems up to another way of seeing and feeling. For me, I feel uplifted by the combination. In short, Joe Weil’s concept for Shrew is brilliant.  

DD: Tommy, what made you want to help Joe Weil develop Shrew?

Tommy Stella, Managing Editor, Shrew: I’ve helped Joe with a few projects in the past and I’ve always enjoyed every single one of them. One day I logged into Facebook and saw a status update that Joe made talking about how tired he was of magazines and how he was going to start his own magazine that celebrates writers and writing, etc etc sic sic sic. I immediately messaged him and asked what he needed.

DD: How is what Shrew is doing different from other journals are doing?

TS: The goal of Shrew is to combine what I’ve learned from working for various online newsletters and social media accounts with Joe’s knowledge of the poetry/magazine world (combined with Colleen Curry’s fantastic design). Our current goal is to make a product that is accessible to poetry initiates and to general readers. The beauty of Shrew is that everything is meticulously designed. We are completely open to every single writer who submits to us. And we mean that.

DD: Colleen, what motivated you to take on the task of designing an online literary magazine?

Colleen Curry, Graphic Designer, Shrew: Joe was my poetry professor in college. When I heard that he was looking to start a digital zine and that nobody had stepped into the role of designer yet, I volunteered. I have a lot of respect for the poems Shrew publishes and strive to showcase them in a way that is unique, timeless, and never takes itself too seriously.

DD: What do you see Shrew as providing that differs from other current online zines?

CC: Shrew is a platform first and a magazine second. It's founded on the idea that poets thrive in a network. All of Shrew’s strength lies in the insight of its contributors and the thought put in by Joe and other guest editors to anthologize a theme, practice, or place and to start a dialogue which can then continue online, sometimes in a future issue.

DD: How, as the designer, would you describe the look of Shrew?

CC: It’s punchy and that’s deliberate; I wanted to approach Shrew as a brand. Publishing is a turbulent industry, always in flux, and the way we consume media is constantly changing. I want Shrew to be able to keep up with that, so everything from the magazine itself to our website and social media is grounded in a few simple, highly adaptable design elements. (Yes, it's a lot of red.)

DD: Joe, you have also published several books by other poets under the imprint of Cat in the Sun Press. Could you talk about that press and the books you’ve published there?

JW: I first published my former student Micah Towery because Micah had been so vital to my life early on at Binghamton University. He had helped set me up with a mic so that I could do my Joe Weil morning poem show which appeared on Facebook and had over 600 members at one time—including the poets Dorothy Laux, Sean Thomas Dougherty, and Patricia Smith. Then Micah and my former student Adam Fitzgerald set up THETHEPOETRY.com which was initially a platform for my rants and essays, but which we opened up to many young poets and writers who later became far more famous than I. Micah did so much and I did his book Whale of Desire, which I love. Then, my wife Emily and I asked Micah to come on board and he is really the one who makes the press possible, but we published a book of poetry and art by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, which Emily spent a great deal of time editing, and we did several other books, including a book of essays by Alfred Corn, which Micah edited and put together. We run it this way: I have the book put together, edited and designed,  and then it is put on print on demand, and the poet keeps all profits from the book. I don’t get a dime, not even a percentage. So the poet maintains control of his or her art. I think it works best that way. Maria claims it gave her a whole new part time career as a painter because people started buying her paintings when they saw the book. Before this, I was involved in creating Monk Books with Bianca Stone and Adam Fitzgerald. I like creating presses and zines, but then I tend to run away after they get established. I like inciting things and then getting out of town before it becomes boring.

DD: You are married to a talented poet, Emily Vogel. How has being married to her changed your relationship with poetry and writing?

JW: I’m a devout malpracticing Catholic. Marrying Emily is my means toward not being damned to hell. It’s my vocation. It’s a sacramental marriage and I know this is going to get me jeers in some quarters, but, hey, it’s the cultural belief of my Irish Catholic ancestors. Before we had kids, Emily and I would wake up, kiss, get dressed, have some breakfast, then go to separate floors of the house we rented and write all day. We’d meet again in the evening, watch a movie, fall asleep and get up to do it all over again. Emily also painted, so there was a lot of paint on the floor. I play piano, guitar and several other instruments. So we were always doing our art. We started doing gigs together and then we also sang and played music with the readings. Eventually, we wrote a book together called West of Home, a book of responsorials, which ended up as a play produced by the Wombat Theater company at KGB Bar in 2013 (or it may have been 2014). We’ve done a lot of interesting things, but now we have two children, both on the autistic spectrum. Their presence in our lives, and our love for them, has re-shaped everything. They broke three of my guitars and I finally decided this was a message from God (I don’t play guitar that much anymore). Emily is a fantastic poet who doesn’t always get involved in my projects. She has her own, including being poetry editor of Ragazine, As for as my relationship to poetry, poetry was always my secret imaginary friend who came from the other side of the universe through the tiny holes in a screen door. Poetry still comes to visit me. Being married to Emily and loving my children has made those visits even more welcomed and necessary. I write more poems about being a father now. Can’t help it. They’re more surreal and more conversationally lyric than my former narrative poems. So I’ve changed, but not on purpose. I don’t know what the changes will amount to yet.

DD: How have your young children changed your understanding of poetry?

JW: I am sixty. I do everything far too late in life. My children arrived when I was 54 and then 55. They are on the spectrum and largely non-verbal. They present challenges that I already experienced by having an older brother who had suffered damage to his brain, had a hemispheral removal that didn’t stop his convulsions, and eventually ended up blind and paralyzed. I like to fool myself that I got a training in love and caretaking from my brother that will help me with my kids, but that’s not so. I have never experienced a love as fierce as I feel for my children. Trying to explain it would be a catastrophic failure. They are going to be six and five and still are not potty trained. I joke and sing and talk to my wife while cleaning the poop from their legs. When Gabriel can’t sleep and is stimming (a term in autism meaning self-soothing movements) I stay up all night and try everything I know to comfort him and help him sleep. Clare has lively conversation with objects and qualities of light, and shadows. She is in a world I wish I could visit, just to love and understand her more. My children have affirmed for me that love is the only impossible thing I will ever accomplish. I love them. I wipe the poop from , the world where people think they understand autism because they watched a movie once. How do you explain that love crushes you into something you never intended, but that’s okay? You can’t. It sounds trite. Everything I say about my children sounds trite. Perhaps someday I will be able to say one thing that seems to me to be absolutely accurate and worth saying.

DD: What is one thing American poetry needs more of, in your opinion?

JW: I think American poetry needs more listeners, people who don’t want to be poets so much as read or go to readings. The trend in all the arts is that everyone in the audience is also in the business. That’s like LA where everyone might have done some acting or knows producers or would-be directors. Maybe this is good and I don’t want it to change too much, but I think, overall, it makes me worry about this all being solipsistic. I think American poetry needs more ways for poets to come up. Right now, there’s the academic MFA, or there’s the spoken word route. Both are limited, and as they gain power, both create false binaries and are too rigid a frame. I began reading in bars. I was spoken word in that sense and still am, but I don’t do the formulas. I don’t read with slam voice or with that slightly fry voice, little question at the end some academics use. There are affectations I’d like to see less of. I’d like to see more ways to succeed, more small grass roots community readings. I’d like to see funds for small readings all through the country and I’d like those funds to be administered by the hosts of series, so a poet who wrote a book could actually go around and get paid—and be a local force. I had an idea for a poetry union with a gauntlet of readings all tied together in a loose affiliation, a sort of circuit. They do it in slam and they do it in academia (but unofficially). The presses could be acknowledged by certain series and their poets sent out to tour for, say, a modest 200 a reading. I’d love to see book carousels at every series with the local mags and latest books and chaps in the carousels. I’m not holding my breath.

DD: I heard you’ve been writing bird poems lately. If the following poets were birds what kind of birds would they be? Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, Charles Olson, Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Schuyler, & Joe Salerno.

JW: Wallace Stevens: Plump shrike, wonderful at what he does, but rarified and sometimes cruel.

William Carlos Williams: Sparrow would be too obvious, probably more one of those parrots or canaries that have survived in cold places by living near electric stations and hot boxes.

Gertrude Stein: A noble Ostrich.

Charles Olson: A very grave, but kindly Stork.

Ezra Pound: A parrot in an old Edwardian house crying: “crack, crack! Thy winter winds! Bah!!!”

Emily Dickinson: Definitely a hermit thrush singing from a rare perch on a clothesline at dusk.

Gwendolyn Brooks:   A blue jay, someone who loved taking beautiful things to her nest, but could also drop an acorn with great precision from a hundred feet of sky to hit the bullseye of some idiot’s head.

James Schuyler: A beautiful pine warbler. I love his flower poems.

Joe Salerno: Ah, my dear friend Joe. Joe liked boat-tailed grackles. He loved the iridescence in their feathers. He would be a boat-tailed grackle, but one which, if he heard a child crying, would come over and gently begin to sing.

DD: Your friend, the late Joe Salerno, deserves a much wider audience than he has had. That he has had any posthumous audience at all is largely because of your efforts, which involved, among other things, publishing his book, Only Here. Could you discuss his importance to you as a poet and as a friend?

JW: My efforts were certainly not alone. The poet Sander Zulauf did far more of the heavy lifting and Salerno’s family did far more to keep his legacy alive. I help because I loved him, miss him, and I purchased so many copies of his book that I can still give one every year to a student I think will love his work. I helped because he was damned good as a poet and because I loved him, because he may have been the best human being I ever met. As a poet, everyone at the local New Jersey readings became attentive the second he stood up to read. We all loved his poetry. He’d won the Hopwood Award at Michigan, but you’d never know it. He never told anyone about his degrees in philosophy and the workshops he attended at Michigan where he more than held his own with Gregory Orr, Les Josephs and Jane Kenyon. He quit poetry for many years to raise his kids. I met him when he was forty and just getting back into the scene. We became friends naturally and by accident. We always went to readings together and he often drove me there and back because I didn’t always have a car. For months after he died, I could still feel his presence in a car, his denim or his flannel shirt beside me. He left an actual physical life behind him wherever he went. A new poem by Joe was an occasion. Then, the way he listened! He’d quote back lines from poets who were reading for the first time, encourage them, become their mentor in about ten seconds.

DD: I’d like to end with a poem by Joe Salerno, the title poem from Only Here.

            Only Here

            I wake
            Holding the blue piece
            Of a dream. And lying still
            On the cloudy pillow,
            Before the day’s first word
            Spreads meaning out over the world,
            I let the morning rain
            Be all I am.

            And in the slender
            Stone-colored light, the ordinary
            Promises of my life are made again,
            Attaching themselves silkenly
            Like rain to the window
            Or my car glazed like a white rose
            In the driveway.

            And the dream
            Now cold, blows away
            Like history, my wife
            Stirring beside me, the feathery touch
            Of our first child turning
            In her widening belly. Downstairs
            The kitchen waits. There is nothing
            To decide. Everything asleep
            Is about to awake, the day
            Set like a mighty clock
            In the silence.

            Opening our eyes,
            We lift the world; the universe
            Tossed like rain from the tips
            Of our lashes. Only here
            Our ordinary eyes learn to find eternity—
            There is nothing else. The luster
            Is the plainness we walk in;
            This poverty we rise to
            At the end of dreaming—
            The sacrament each day
            Of our feet touching
            The floor.

---

Joe Weil is an assistant professor at Binghamton University. His reviews, essays, poems and short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines. He has four full-length collections of poetry; his latest collection of poems is A Night in Duluth, published by NYQ Books. In 2013, he was the recipient of the People's Poetry Award by Partisan Press. Joe Weil co-founded Monk Books with Bianca Stone and Adam Fitzgerald. He has since created Cat in the Sun books with his wife Emily Vogel. He is the Editor in Chief of Shrew. Having grown up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Weil now lives in Binghamton with Emily and two small children, Clare and Gabriel.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions, 2007). She is the Founder/Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is also Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY. She has published sixteen books, including What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980-2009 (Guernica Editions, 2010), The Place I Call Home (NYQ Books, 2012), The Silence in an Empty House (NYQ Books, 2013) and Writing Poetry to Save Your Life: How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories (MiroLand, Guernica, 2013). With her daughter, Jennifer, she is co-editor of four anthologies.

Tommy Stella is a writer who earned his MA in English from Binghamton University. His recent comic book, I Think It Will Be Okay, is available to read on his website. He is a writer for Need2Know, Daily Pnut, Headlines and Heroes, and The Lunch Read. He also does book PR at Wunderkind PR and is the assistant to author Charles Soule.

Colleen Curry is a New York-based writer as well as a self-taught designer and artist. She is a graduate of Binghamton University.

Dante Di Stefano is the author of two poetry collections: Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016) and Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, 2019). Along with María Isabel Alvarez, he is the co-editor of Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump's America (NYQ Books, 2018). All proceeds from this anthology go directly to the National Immigration Law Center.

 

"The Day Was a Bargain" [by Ron Horning]

No matter how happy or comfortable I think I am in room 111,
reading Flowers by the window, Playback stretched out in bed,
or seated at the desk, near the ashtray on which a Lucky burns,
typing notes from the steno pad that could lead to more poems,

eventually I have to get out. My idea of hell is too much heaven
(an idea I wouldn’t defend, though I also don’t care what X said)
so out I go, to Washington Square Park, maybe, for a few turns
around the outer edge of a greener world, near church and signs,

or, further out, the Art Institute, or down to Market by Chinatown,
or even, if I really want to walk, all the way to Golden Gate Park,
or, to cross the Bay, the foot of Broadway for Berkeley by thumb.

Speeding over the Bay Bridge can by itself erase the deepest frown
and the driver’s almost certain to suggest a joint. I’m home by dark
and, having bowled up in a VW on the way back, pleasantly numb.