The Best American Poetry

Molly P's Coda to This Week's CanAm Blog: Stephanie Bolster on The Best

To find the last words for the Canadian-American exchange we've been having this week,  I quote Stephanie Bolster, the intrepid first editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008.

Though a reader of the Best American annuals, I’ve always balked at “best.” I don’t have the same “best” from year to year, perhaps not even from morning to night within a single day. As I read 2008’s possible contenders – each on several occasions, to increase a poem’s chances of striking me in a receptive moment – what was I looking for? 

First: good writing. Awkward or rote syntax; familiar expressions, images, and locutions; or random lineation, ruled a poem out. A meaningfully rebellious and distinctive syntax or a deliberately dissonant music often ruled it in.

Second: depth and challenge, be that emotional or intellectual. If additional readings failed to yield new insights and appreciations, but, rather, dulled the flash I’d sensed the first time around, the poem lost its post-it note.

Finally, and inseparably from the first two criteria: an interesting, even strange sensibility or imagination.  . . . I sought poems that excited and surprised me, that felt (boldly or quietly) necessary, often urgent. I sought poems serious and poems frivolous (though seriously frivolous). . . . I was without doubt a tougher critic than if I’d been reading fewer poems, but asking myself whether I could confidently put my name behind a particular choice forced me to be discerning.

In the end, the best is what you feel you can put your own name to -- that's what Stephanie Bolster did, and I am grateful.

It's been a joy to write this blog, to talk to all of you--and, importantly for me, to listen.  Many thanks to Stacey Harwood who added the photos to these posts, especially David Hockney's swimming pool and Mrs. Delany.  Now I'm going to take a nice dive back into the 18th century.

Warmest wishes,
Molly

Film Still Series - Intimacies #7 [by Bill Hayward]

From the forthcoming film by Bill Hayward, Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Produced by Bill Hayward and Anna Elman.

See more of Bill Hayward's work here.

Molly Peacock Adds Caribbean to Canadian & American, plus a PS

After an unexpected day off from this blog because of my secret life as a biographer of Mrs. Mary Delany (1700-1788, left) the remarkable flower collage artist, I return for the Poetry Weekend Blog with this post and an orchardful of thanks for all those who have hurled themselves with such passion into the Canadian-American-British poetry discussion, particularly Zach Wells, the editor of Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets.  Now it's time to bring in the Caribbean, and today's poem does just that.  On my blog break I attended one of the programs at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City where I am a Fellow this year, not thinking that that the prose writers Maryse Condé and Elizabeth Nunez, both born in the Caribbean, would lead me back to our discussions.  But Maryse Condé refused, à la Zach Wells and a bit like the grandfather in Joy Russell's poem below,  to generalize about what a Caribbean, particularly a French Caribbean writer is. 

While Condé was thoroughly uninterested in linking writers with nations,  Elizabeth Nunez found it irresistible to relate place and customs to a writer. I'm with Nunez, obviously;  I find it irresistible, but I also find it ineffable.  Characteristics I feel are solid start evaporating in my very hands.  Joy Russell also seems driven to make these cultural connections, and she makes them solid by inserting history, and family history, into her poem that was chosen for Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008.  Russell  depends on metaphor to carry this poem, especially "the city soot, a new glove for the body."  Thinking of verbal comparisons such as that "new glove" prompts me to remind Americans that Canadians rarely use the "melting pot" metaphor, where all cultures merge, then cool into a monolith.  Instead, Canadians use the "mosaic" metaphor:  the cultural mosaic, each piece grouted into the landscape so to speak, shining side by side.

Russell says of  her poem "On King George's Crowning" that "it is part of a poetry manuscript whose eyes and ears fall on Vancouver, London and Belize, their bodies of water and connection to Empire."  The Georges, particularly King George III, have their impact on our Canadian-American discussion, because George III was one of the supervising figures in the late 18th century revolution that created our two countries, and the reaper / raper of the treasure of the Caribbean.  He was also, I have to admit, a big admirer of the flower collages of Mrs. Delany, to whom I am devoting myself this year. What goes around comes around, in this blog, anyway. 

After Joy Russell's tercets is a PS I hope you'll read.

On King George's Crowning

On King George's crowning, the interviewee
said they all got sweets and little goodies, and when
they come by boat, some come as stowaways.  Once

they collect money for this woman's fare.  Others
come, a fiver tight in their pockets, like my grandfather
when he escaped from the belly of the crown and never

spoke of it again.  Others not bring overcoat--
no one told them how air moves vampires through
bone, erases memory matter.  Some dress in suits

tropical style, as the ship moved its shaky
hand over the old surface of the sea  They arrive,
say 'I born Jamaican, I die Jamaican,' take a bite

of the sweet, hand to mouth, take the test
of motherland's history--bitter--replied, when asked if
they spoke the Queen's English;  Enoch Powell's rivers

of blood forming a new oxygen, scarlet-marked
as they sliced through London fog;  iris recording
life, how it is:  Houses of Parliament, Big Ben

in the grey dank; a room, a galvanized tub to wash, emerge
baptized;  the city soot, a new glove for the body; the signs
reading no Irish or blacks or dogs, not wanted but

take your money, just the same.  Some, some,
carry hope like luggage, others not so sure-footed, others
not so childlike in believing all what this mother have to say.

Some bring formal names, leave pet ones behind,
whisper night bougainvillea.  How this country
cold, cold, cold through and through and no hot tea

enough to warm you, or hand friendly enough to pry
open the dark days, bring morning brightness.  Some come,
stay, patience worn thin like paper, hearts

tough as old bread, and letters back home with every
copper earned from the Double Decker, brow wipe
of the sick, hammer of nail into two by four--if they

lets you, if you not too dark for their liking.
Some, some, come long way, did bite
of the sweet.  Motherless mother's milk.

Ol' Englan'
cryin' crocodile tear
for her lost chil'ren.

Joy Russell

from The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008
Stephanie Bolster, Editor;  published by Tightrope Books

PS
I just want to  thank fellow poet and Best American blogger James Cummins, for bringing humor to these posts.  Do Canadian's have a funny bone?  You bet, but not when we're duking it out about poetry, so thank you Jimmy C!                                                                    

"Ad" by [Nin Andrews]

Ad

Are you, too, looking for something
new in your life?
Something that's more you?
Do you want that special something
that protects you from the influx
of unwanted news, loneliness, despair,
inexplicable blues?
That let's you feel as if you were outside
in the summer air, strolling down the sidewalk
or sandy beach feeling nothing but the wind
in your hair?  No chafing at your soul
or pinching at your wrists
and waist, no endless lists
of reminders and regrets,
no unsettling fears of, oh shit,
or what's next
or fuck this?

How about a nice pair of drawstring pants?

-- Nin Andrews

A few spring titles (by David Yezzi)

A quick glance at some forthcoming titles for spring (from the few book catalogs I had to hand):

 

February

MERCURY DRESSING by J. D. McClatchy (Knopf)

March

CONTINUUM by Nina Cassian (Norton)

COLLECTED POEMS by C. P. Cavafy, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn (Knopf)

THE UNFINISHED POEMS by C. P. Cavafy, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn (Knopf)

SHUT UP, YOU’RE FINE! by Andrew Hudgins (Viking)

SELECTED POEMS by Geoffrey Hill (Yale)

THOUSANDS OF BROADWAYS by Robert Pinsky ( Chicago)

April

POEMS 1959-2009 by Frederick Seidel (FSG)

SELECTED POEMS by Thom Gunn (FSG)

THE BEST OF IT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Kay Ryan (Grove Press)

May

TO BE READ IN 500 YEARS by Albert Goldbarth (Graywolf)

THE KITCHEN SINK: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, 1972-2007 by Albert Goldbarth (Graywolf)

"Love Poem" [by Ernest Hilbert]

Love Poem

My love, we know how species run extinct,
And greenest plants grow to fossils in time,
Mountains go molten and run to the sea,
That our careful ideas, all we think,
Will be forgotten, that continents climb
And drop, shift away, collide endlessly;
My love, we know the universe must bend
Until it ends, entropy will labor
Until all is cold and flat, that stars close
Across icy gulfs, suns crash. All things end.
Do not wish our love could last forever,
Or grieve that it is one more thing we lose,
Only that we drive through the dark weather,
Through the gray, through night, and end together.

Originally in The New York Sun

-– Ernest Hilbert

Le jour de gloire est arrivé! (by Mitch Sisskind)

A few months ago, when I began thinking about joining a military organization, I undertook some serious youtube research to find the outfit that was right for me. At this point I've pretty much settled on the French Foreign Legion. There are several reasons for this, all of which are documented in the video below.

First, the diversity of the Legion really appeals to me. The Foreign Legion is called "foreign" not because it's stationed outside France, but because it's made up of foreigners who are willing to be used as cannon fodder without endangering French citizens. Whatever. The result is a genuinely multi-cultural group of guys. No girls yet, but that could change. Also, maybe not that many Jews -- yet.

Second, the type of rifle used by the Legion -- with the magazine behind the trigger housing -- is called a bullpup, and i love the word bullpup. Just being in an army where you can say "bullpup" all day would be great.

Third, there's something inherently humorous about the French language when used in a military context -- although this may be less true for people who actually understand French. (You have to know French after one year in the Legion or they kick you out.)

Also, singing is tremendously important in the Legion. Youi don't have to sing well but you do have to sing. They have a peculiar style of marching: slower than most armies, and with singing.

Finally, after watching lots of military training videos, the Foreign Legion seems to be the only army in which the instructors actually do some of the exercises along with the trainees -- pushups and so forth. And you can't help but like Sergeant (?) Lopez in this video. He's only in his 40s and he's been in the Legion for about 25 years. It must have something good or he probably would have gotten out. He doesn't seem stupid.

Like most men, I want to suffer, I want to be miserable, and I refuse to enter old age without satisfying these authentic needs. "Alons, enfants de la patrie..." This is the first part of a multi-clip series on a six-week jungle training exercise. If you like it -- and what's not to like? -- you can find the rest on youtube.

Molly Peacock Introduces the Mighty Website RPO

Rather than throwing more names of Canadian poets at American readers, I'm going to let you in on the mighty website that is a fabulous cache of poetry and commentary on poetry, Representative Poetry on Line.  RPO, the brainchild of Ian Lancashire, began as a teaching tool at the University of Toronto and has expanded, expounding on and exemplifying poetry, exonerating some poets, and exhilarating most of its visitors. It is a site that researchers visit as well as poets, professors, students, and casual readers  looking for a great Valentine.   Experts, students, old fans and newbies to poetry can all find something to dig into at RPO.   It is not a superficial site, or a even a particularly glamourous one, but it runs very deep as well as broad. I'm going to refer you to the Canadian Poets page.

And I'm also going to refer you to the threads from earlier posts, since I'll be spending intermittent moments for the rest of today replying to the likes of Zach Wells, Craig Poile, James Arthur et. al.  This blog has sparked a fray!  And I better get back into it. 

Incidentally, here's what Ken Babstock says about Hunter Deary, from yesterday's post:  ". .  . but was Hunter Deary herself who appeared, in the way fiction writers are heard to talk of their characters; like they'd stepped out of the shadows whole, historicized, and speaking like no one but themselves." 

All the best to all the readers of this blog,

Molly

John Updike at 40 (by Jenny Factor)

Four weeks from tonight, if I catapult over some few tiny remaining hurdles (two short reports, an interview, and a scary party—in fact, even if I don’t jump the hurdles), one way or the other, I will turn 40. Forty years old—neither wise nor ready—but at least, I’ve learned to laugh more of the time.

The year my father turned 40, I was 16 years old. I wrote John Updike a fan letter—not on my own behalf, but on his. 

“My father reads your books,” I told him. “My father—who incidentally is, like you, a Harvard man—reads your books and thinks about them and takes them apart and shares them with me. And what I think he’d like best of all for his fortieth birthday would be for you to send him—well, even just your signature.”

I was a high-school sophomore or junior—and my father knew his Updike: The Centaur, The Rabbits, several volumes of short-stories. At the time, I could rattle the books off in order. It was only 1985—there were still a manageable number.

I’d take them down from the locked bookshelf one-by-one with his blessing, and read them for insight…into people, into grown men, into the funny, sentimental, brilliant and complex man my father was (and is). I read them to learn the enemy, boys, and the chess board—people, adults, interactions, the tension of wanting freedom, of wanting connection, of never holding onto one’s own wants quite long enough. I read them to learn the Road.

The punchline of this story is that John Updike wrote back! 

Haiku Exchange # 9 [Shapiro and Lehman]

An Old Dispute;  I agree (and disagree)
Date:    1/27/2003 8:25:35 PM Eastern Standard Time   
   
Well, David Lehman,
it's an old dispute between
Li Po -- Tu Fu--  Scene:

O Tu Fu says Li
you're suffering poetry--
My kind just flies high--

Ben Jonson wanted Bard
to blot more. Now you know I'm
not hair on his beard--

Dave, I'm just playing...
Some think it close to praying.
It's all just saying...

No one hates typos
More than I do, but we'll clean
Them later (and schmooze). --  [DS, 1 / 27 / 03]

Back from Detroit

Detroit's a riot --
or was in '67.
What were you doing?

I was waking at
six and carrying mail in
Harlem and the Heights.

Days of ‘67.
What changed was the rate of change.
You said: read Rimbaud.

I joined the Poem
Team. You were on it, as were
Mitch, Les, Chuck, Hilton.

We gave readings at
women's colleges such as
Sadie Lou and Vassar.

Mitch Sisskind read "A
Mean Teacher" and re-met his
wife of the future.

Enough of those days.
I wish not for the snows of
yesterday but now.

The snow is coming
fast and white, covering the
balsams and cedars.   [DL, 1 / 27 / 03]

I muse and ignore the news but can’t elude the weather

Maybe all teachers
are mean, I thought, but now you
know I snow so slow.

Just one thing is real.
Snow. The sooner you know this,
The easier life.

And by snow I mean
Snow. So much pain in your mind
or mine: we need snow.

Ah, my friend, may this
day bring you an hour of clear
vision and no thought.  [–- DL, 1 / 29 / 03]

    Each month a fatal new form? Thanks, etc. Thanks    
Date:    1/29/2003 5:20:44 PM Eastern Standard Time

My best lecture was
"Snow in Art and Litera-
ture" post real snow-storm!

Maybe we should write
each month in new forms: couplets
for Feb in droplets!

aphorisms: March
villanelle for long April'
May is all prose (lit)

June for happy songs;
letters during summer's wrongs;
and for spoon and tongs?

all Fall prose Rimbauds;
while some desire more "Sri Lankas"**          **new form where you ferment  
                                                                    nouns in  names from maps of In-
we'd return: tankas                                        dian sub-continent

Christmas ices streams –
(sweet permissive month of dreams--)
we'll do ANYTHING!     [DS, 1 / 29 / 03]

"The Singles Scene" [by Ernest Hilbert]

The Singles Scene

As a girl, she had an odd assortment
Of dolls, all missing their partners and mates:
Cher with no Sonny, two Charlie’s Angels.
Her strange daydreams all centered on absent
Friends, a Ken doll, spiffed up, who never dates,
And a bionic woman who settles
For nights alone; Luke who misses Leia,
Donny who pines for his lost Marie,
While Ace Frehley, with no band, goes solo.
Glinda the Good Witch has been stood up. A
Worthless complement, she’s sorry to see
The single wrestler, who never felt so low,
Not worth much without an adversary,
Sad as a graveyard on a summer day.

Originally in The New York Sun

-– Ernest Hilbert

Old Man Winter [Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Have we considered that Shakespeare’s sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” was written for a winter’s day?  It depends what one calls lovely and what kind of temperament you woke up hoping for.  (For which you came up hoping.)  I’d like to have a responsive reading where every time I end my sentence with a preposition, the audience has to say the clause back to me, with all its tits in the right bra cup this time.  What are you waiting for now?  (For what now am I waiting?)   Sometimes the world arranges itself in Suessian piles, sometimes you have to help it along.  I can put up with anything but panic.  (Panic is what up with which is all you claim you cannot put.)  Clouds, calm down!!  Frozen nowhere is not just Superman’s lair of choice.  It is a privilege to be hiding in the end of January with you.  What do we weigh down today to keep from disappearing?  We weigh down the river today to keep from disappearing.  Do, I'd say.  He'd say, "Every fair from fair sometime declines, by chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed."  Because he knew how to talk to a ghostbuster of a girl like me.

The Homekid and the Prodigal: Molly Peacock on CanBrit and AmCan Poems

    It strikes me that there can be an unabashedly strong link between Canadian poetry and the muscular vigor of certain British poets.  Think Simon Armitage.  I see this in a number of the poems in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008, particularly in the work of Ken Babstock, with its consonants and metrical quick-step. I see it as well in Carmine Starnino's poem "Squash Rackets" with his homage to Christopher Smart's "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry."  (Starnino's poem begins with these echoing lines, pumped up for the squash court:  "For they know us by their grip and the swordmanship/ of our swing.  For they are chrome lariats/ always bellowing, "here I come to save the day!"/ For they love, whenever possible, the crosscourt smash/and channel our inner thug for that grunting drive."

    If you compare a Canadian to a Brit, they aren't so squeamish as an American might become.  Is it because the Queen is on a Canadian five dollar bill?  There are no one dollar bills;  they're coins (and they have her Majesty's image on them, too).  Or it is because the essential historical difference between English-speaking Canada and English-speaking America is that the American descends culturally from people who broke away from England while the Canadian descends culturally from the people who didn't want to rupture that tie?  It's the difference between the sibling who strikes off for parts unknown and the sibling who stays home with mom and pop.  They both grown up, of course.  They both grow into their wisdom.  But from what different directions . . .

    Check out Ken Babstock's poem, which Stephanie Bolster, the Editor for The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 called "quirky, wacky, noisy, dense and disjunctive," which Bolster, incidentally, attributes "perhaps  . . . [to] an influence of work from south of the border."  Well you never know about influences, do you?  Here's the Canadian poem, caught in our own editorial crossfire  of reasons why something is Canadian and something is the best.  (Not to mention that the homekid never compares well to the prodigal.)

PS

Here is A.F. Moritz's clue to what's going in his ekphrastic poem, "Odds and Ends," posted yesterday.  And to further edify American readers, the painter Emily Carr is an icon in Canada, our Georgia O'Keefe.

"Odds and Ends" describes a painting by Emily Carr in the city art gallery of Victoria, and, more particularly, the experience in which my viewing of the painting was set.  Leaving the gallery, I walked through the surrounding neighborhoods, thinking to come out soon on the ocean, but it turned out to be a long walk on a hot humid day:  I'd misunderstood my map.  And in a front yard I saw a rhododendron petal . . . "

HUNTER DEARY AND HOSPITAL WING

Hunter Deary emits noises like peach pits;
    dry scrotal humming that punctuates fits.
When a hip comes loose it comes loose
    before breakfast and she pops it back

in with a winch, a rock, a clean tube and a sock.
    Ask Hunter Deary what the microbes
are for.  Ask Hunter Deary what the library's
    for.  Ask Hunter Deary what agent con-

tested her birthright, her being out late, her
    transmission on broadband at night.
The men in the neon X.  The hole in the
    plastic.  The ppb.  The stitches.  The snug.

The snug.  The stitches.  The parts per billion.
    Hospital Wing sings to his children.
Children of blood lung.
Children of static.
    Hospital Wing sings to his children.
The snug.  The stitches.  The parts per billion.

Hunter Deary has clicked on the task pane
    reads there what they cut from the thought:
a topographical map of the region, a vein
    darkening wetlands, strung north through

some temperate zone.  Hunter Deary left gas
    in a bird's nest, bags under bypasses,
phenobarbital in the mud of the Don.  Hunter
    Deary in traction.  Hunter Deary in Huntsville.

She's counting down days to a hearing;  fed
    on black pumpkin, on cheese string, on
marrow sucked through wing of an auk. Ages
    in ice bubble.  Calving.  The fake vermilion.

Calving.  The ages in bubbles.  The fake vermilion.
    Hospital Wing sings to his children.
Children born sexless and cleansed.
Leaded gametes in frog ponds.
    Hospital Wing sings to his children.
Calving.  The ages in bubbles.  The fake vermilion.

Ken Babstock

from  The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008
published by Tightrope Books

"White Noise" [by Ernest Hilbert]

White Noise

The past does not fade, nor does it decline;
It merely grows louder, slightly, tone by tone,
Until its vast din is blank as silence.
The grand chords boom on for some time:
Caesar and Charlemagne, Curie, Capone—
Centuries will mute their once crucial sense.
My songs are lost, as all will be at last,
Unremembered as a minor fiefdom,
Its peasants who tilled fields and died in wars.
As we gain the crest, what we lose goes fast.
Goals fray into ragged, rebellious outcomes,
Announced by anonymous ambassadors.
The roar of dates and battles grows louder,
Drowns all who care, and all who do not care.

Originally in American Literary Review

-– Ernest Hilbert

"Thinking about George" [for George Schneeman, 1934-2009: by Tom Clark]

Thinking About George
for George Schneeman 1934-2009

Thinking about George in
January in California
The sinking sun lights a few late
Streamers of cloud with faint blooms
Like the distant inklings of
All one remembers

Under the bare plum tree
A white cat sleeps on a chair
And squirrels chitter in the ivy
Audible for once in the vacuum
Created by traffic's absence
All one remembers

Returns in a moment and
George is present in the mind
And we are alive in the light moving
Into the darkness of all that is lost
To fill the emptiness of the day with
All one remembers

-- Tom Clark

Perfection Wasted by John Updike

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market —
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

Love Sonnet by John Updike [by Moira Egan]

Love Sonnet

In Love's rubber armor I come to you;

                                                       b

                                                  oo

                                                        b.

                                                c,

                                                   d

                                                   c

                                                   d:

                                                e

                                               f--

                                                  e

                                                    f.

                                                       g

                                                    g.

[R.I.P.]

An Updike Poem (by Laura Orem)

Like many of you, I've taught John Updike's "A & P," that little fiction masterpiece of Americana, in Introduction to Literature courses. Students seem to like it -- Sammy, the protagonist, is about their age, and the story is deeply textured by the detritus of the everyday; also, students are relieved to read something light on symbolism and heavy on teenage girls in bathing suits, particularly if they've just read something like, say, "A Rose for Emily," that taxes both their analytical skills and their video-game-trained patience.

Updike's poetry is often seen as secondary to his fiction, and I'm not going to mount an extensive discussion of its relative worth to the Rabbit novels. But this often-anthologized poem is a wonderful thing as Updike weaves a tapestry of meaning out of juxtaposing the quotidian and poetic, reality and dreams. It can hold its own with any of Updike's prose. It's a damn fine poem.

Ex-Basketball Player

by John Updike

Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,

Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off

Before it has a chance to go two blocks,

At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth’s Garage

Is on the corner facing west, and there,

Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.

Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps—

Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,

Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.

One’s nostrils are two S’s, and his eyes

An E and O. And one is squat, without

A head at all—more of a football type.

Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.

He was good: in fact, the best. In ’46

He bucketed three hundred ninety points,

A county record still. The ball loved Flick.

I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty

In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.

He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,

Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,

As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,

But most of us remember anyway.

His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.

It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though.

Off work, he hangs around Mae’s Luncheonette.

Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,

Smokes those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates.

Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods

Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers

Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.



John Updike making apples fly.

John Updike 1932-2009

 We have just learned that John Updike has died at the age of 76. 
Of John Updike, David Lehman has this to say:  "He excelled at every genre. He exemplified a true man of letters in the classic sense.  Though greatly admired and recognized the world over, he was sometimes taken for granted, as monuments are.  He may have been the best book reviewer in America; he was undoubtedly one of the two supreme novelists of our day; his poetry, essays, art criticism, and occasional writings reveal a solid professionalism and are always a delight to read.  Even his detractors will acknowledge that he wrote like an angel and that at his best -- in the Rabbit novels, the Bech stories, and other fictions -- he made a magnificent and lasting contribution to American literature. I can think of no one I would recommend more heartily for aspiring writers to read in order to learn the nuts and bolts of the craft. He was a sweet man, with a modest demeanor. At the PEN Congress in New York City in January 1986, which I covered for Newsweek, lots of writers were grandstanding about American foreign policy and the like. Updike was asked to make a comment about his native land.  He paused for a beat then said that he wanted to single out the humble blue postal box that one used to find on almost every street-corner, because it symbolized, in a very practical way, our freedom to communicate and exchange our thoughts and ideas -- and also because he associated it with the arrival of good news." 

We invite you to post your favorite encounters with John Updike, whether on the page or in person.  We are deeply saddened by the news of his death.

Nice Weather We're Having - Kenneth Koch at Columbia University

-- sdh