The Best American Poetry

Goodbye, Frankie Manning (1914-2009)

Now they're really swinging in heaven.

"The Rest is Noise" [by Truck Darling]

THE REST IS NOISE
“When you’re black & blue it’s time to take a holiday.”
for Darragh Park

Hey little flutter in mon coeur, I stand alone
in some grief-sponged shadow & nap in the halfway
Hamptons house of a phantom loving embrace.
I want to be an anime andro-angel, to go on
as a balmy robot would be indelicate I’m thinking.
I am not a reformer but I am not allied with pain anymore.
I am a str8 boi in the arts who has discovered & admitted
I cannot control who loves me & who never will.
I have learned I must live without this *love* 
to avoid bruising everyone I touch. I will live on
whey protein & great masterful music is the plan.
A H2O-draftsman of faint lawns turned me on
to Rufskin jeans with the cheeks cut out
& The Band & the safety fail of leaving
milkweed to freeze with 2 serious ladies out back.
This dreamy blade eats only carbs & lives alone
on iced ginger beer, urging me to close my eyes
during a “time out” & float into a sour-milk classroom 
under the hirsute anthems of Giacento Scelsi.
Aw, shucks, dearheart, you know I’d love to but I’m just
listening on a 4th grade level these dayz

-- Truck Darling

"LO Hearts GK" (by Laura Orem)

I am going to admit something here on BAP today - I have had an enormous crush on Gene Krupa, the jazz drummer, pretty much all my life. The fact that he died when I was 11 really doesn't enter into it. I love watching clips of him playing - he seems to be having so much fun -- and I love listening to his fabulously energetic and inventive drum solos. Besides, I think he was really cute. Really cute - especially when that lock of black hair would fall across his forehead when he got rocking.

 

Krupa wasn't just a glamour-boy - he essentially invented the drum solo as an integral part of a musical number, rather than drums just providing background percussive rhythm. Generations of drummers who came after him, including Buddy Rich, have acknowledged their debt to his innovative playing.

Krupa's most well-known number is probably "Sing Sing Sing," which he recorded with Benny Goodman's band in 1937. The number is an astonishing 8 minutes and 40 seconds long - and Krupa plays full-speed ahead through the whole song.

In this clip, you can see Krupa's joyous energy - this piece features Krupa's own band (I'm not sure of the date). 

Finally - here's a clip from the 1941 movie "Ball of Fire," starring Barbara Stanwyck (who knew she could sing?) and Gary Cooper, in which Krupa proves that he could even make matchsticks swing.

Okay, I realize this is a lot of clips, but as I said, I heart GK. Big sigh!

"Basic Zoology" [by Kate Angus]

BASIC ZOOLOGY

Soon I will stop wanting things.
According to the Buddhists,
this is good -- not quite nirvana
but on the path, almost
a place to nap, close
to a patch of clover.
For most other major world religions also,
this is right, although
I should still want God.
I am not sure what the Zoroastrians say
because my Internet access is down
and, religiously speaking, I was raised
in a forest by wolves. Wolves

do not want anything; they only need,
which is different. They require teeth
to sunder skin from flesh and gnaw
on sharp sticks of bone.
They need the long flutes
of their throats that lead
to their gullets; also pink tongues
to lap rainwater from ditches. Being concerned neither
with the lustrousness of their fur
nor the smallness of their souls, they mate
only to propagate the species.
On some nights, they sing

under the white hole
of the moon, behind which
is God’s terrible blankness.

-- Kate Angus

Scratch 'n Sniff Kobe-Seoul Extravaganza! {Loren Goodman}

Salad, rakkyo, chicken curry -- perfect!

My camera couldn't quite capture the aromatic steam.

There are so many good curry places in Kobe, both Indian-style and Japanese-style.
The best curry in Kobe may be found here:

Whenever I go back to Kobe, I want to eat: udon, yakiniku, curry, waffles. 
This time I had the curry and waffles.

Take a whiff of these waffles:

Broke is the New Black [by Denise Duhamel]

A friend of a friend recently coined the term “the privileged poor,” for those who have learned to live well on less.  Our group includes teachers, free-lance writers, editors, temps, the underemployed artist underclass.  We are used to getting a bargain, shopping at thrift stores, and, in retrospect, had the traits of “recessionistas” before the recession hit.  Wiktionary (we’re not in the “real” dictionaries yet) defines the recessionista as “a person who is able to stick to a tight budget while still managing to dress stylishly.”  Recessionistas, I imagine, also like to have a good time—otherwise why bother dressing well?  On my recent trip to New York, to give a reading on Staten Island, I learned that even the members of the frugal artist class, the girl-gang with whom I run, have tightened their belts—the ones they’ve found at Salvation Army.  Any nervousness I had about over-spending in NY “to keep up with the Janes” was quickly erased.  I flew into NYC on a free frequent flier ticket, took the AirTrain from Newark ($15) and only spent $6 on a Metrocard my whole trip.

I stayed with a friend for the first two nights —a fellow recessionista who cooked amazing omelets rather than order takeout, as we did on my visits in the past. She found us a $42 (less than what it would cost me had I taken a cab from Newark) hour-long massage in the east village. Recessionistas still like to treat themselves, if possible. And our “massage” was really “body work” as the women who work in the storefront aren’t licensed. There was no face-cradle, just a paper towel over the sheet. There were no showers, no coat hangers or hooks for your clothes, no private rooms—just curtains between massage tables. But the women who worked there were strong and amazing and walked on our backs. It was the best “body work” I ever had.

Later that night we went to see another friend in Brooklyn who had just furnished her stylish apartment with furniture she’d bought on Craigslist. We supplied ice cream, wine, and flowers. She made us a salad with tuna and green beans and vinaigrette. It was delicious—and cost barely anything compared to a restaurant.

The Staten Island reading was hosted by a most glamorous recessionista who treated me to Starbucks, then bought us water (for the reading) at the gas station next door, avoiding the overpriced ethos water at Starbucks. The recessionistas I know do what they can to help the poor—and many a recessionista I know give to charities, donate their time and used items to various organizations. The recessionistas I know are aware of their “privilege” and know they are not truly “poor,” as so many in our country and in the world are. But they may not fully trust the impact they can make buying overpriced ethos water.

The next day I went to the movies—no matinee prices, I’m afraid, in Manhattan —with another friend. Pre-recession I might have splurged on a fountain drink—just for the ice. This time I smuggled in diet

Monday @ KGB: George Green & Billy Collins

The KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series

Hosted by Laura Cronk, Megin Jimenez & Michael Quattrone

Presents . . .

George Green & Billy Collins

Monday, April 27 @ 7:30 PM

Admission is FREE

George Green is a native of western Pennsylvania, who has lived for thirty years in a rent-stabilized apartment in the East Village.  His work has appeared in various journals and in the anthologies Poetry 180; 180 More Poems; The Best American Poetry 2005; and The Best American Poetry 2006. He has poems in the forthcoming Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, and in Bright Wings, a Columbia anthology of bird poems illustrated by David Sibley.   

Billy Collins is the author of eight books of poetry including Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems, Nine Horses, Picnic, Lightning, and Sailing Alone Around the Room.  A Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY), he served as United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003 and New York State Poet Laureate 2004-2006.

For the complete KGB spring lineup, click here.

KGB Bar: 85 East 4th Street (btwn. Bowery & 2nd Ave) NYC 10003

The KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series

Hosted by Laura Cronk, Megin Jimenez & Michael Quattrone

Presents . . .

George Green & Billy Collins

Monday, April 27 @ 7:30 PM

Admission is FREE

George Green is a native of western Pennsylvania, who has lived for thirty years in a rent-stabilized apartment in the East Village.  His work has appeared in various journals and in the anthologies Poetry 180; 180 More Poems; The Best American Poetry 2005; and The Best American Poetry 2006. He has poems in the forthcoming Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, and in Bright Wings, a Columbia anthology of bird poems illustrated by David Sibley.   

Billy Collins is the author of eight books of poetry including Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems, Nine Horses, Picnic, Lightning, and Sailing Alone Around the Room.  A Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY), he served as United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003 and New York State Poet Laureate 2004-2006.

For the complete KGB spring lineup, click here.

KGB Bar: 85 East 4th Street (btwn. Bowery & 2nd Ave) NYC 10003

Hosted by Laura Cronk, Megin Jimenez & Michael Quattrone

Presents . . .

George Green & Billy Collins

Monday, April 27 @ 7:30 PM

Admission is FREE

George Green is a native of western Pennsylvania, who has lived for thirty years in a rent-stabilized apartment in the East Village.  His work has appeared in various journals and in the anthologies Poetry 180; 180 More Poems; The Best American Poetry 2005; and The Best American Poetry 2006. He has poems in the forthcoming Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, and in Bright Wings, a Columbia anthology of bird poems illustrated by David Sibley.   

Billy Collins is the author of eight books of poetry including Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems, Nine Horses, Picnic, Lightning, and Sailing Alone Around the Room.  A Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY), he served as United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003 and New York State Poet Laureate 2004-2006.

For the complete KGB spring lineup, click here.

George Green is a native of western Pennsylvania, who has lived for thirty years in a rent-stabilized apartment in the East Village.  His work has appeared in various journals and in the anthologies Poetry 180; 180 More Poems; The Best American Poetry 2005; and The Best American Poetry 2006. He has poems in the forthcoming Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, and in Bright Wings, a Columbia anthology of bird poems illustrated by David Sibley.   

Billy Collins is the author of eight books of poetry including Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems, Nine Horses, Picnic, Lightning, and Sailing Alone Around the Room.  A Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY), he served as United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003 and New York State Poet Laureate 2004-2006.

For the complete KGB spring lineup, click here.

Loren Goodman, Guest Blogger April 26-May 2

 This week we welcome Loren Goodman as our guest blogger.  Loren is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and English Literature at Yonsei University/Underwood International College in Seoul, Korea.

His first book of poems, Famous Americans, was selected by W.S. Merwin for the 2002 Yale Series of Younger Poets. His chapbook Suppository Writing (2008) is available from The Chuckwagon. Welcome, Loren

If you have landed here looking for information about missing poet Craig Arnold, you can read early posts from Jill Alexander Essbaum here,  here and here. Scroll down for her more recent updates.  We will post the lastest information as it becomes available.  -- sdh

Book Sale! {Loren Goodman}

If you haven't forgotten, April is poetry month!

In celebration, I stumble on a local book sale near my Alma Mater.

You never know what used books you'll find over here. When I ask
if they have any English books, I am directed down long hallways
to a few stacks of high piled boxes. Yee-haw!

Here's what I find. I choose each book with a friend in mind:

 

These are going out to Pirooz tomorrow. Got three copies -- one for Aram and one for me. 

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

ALICIA SUSKIN OSTRIKER

“Alicia was one of the first poets I recruited for the Pitt Poetry Series and we’ve been together for many books. I think of her as a life-giving poet, one of the best writing now in this country.”
—Ed Ochester

The Dogs at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz

As if there could be a world
Of absolute innocence
In which we forget ourselves

The owners throw sticks
And half-bald tennis balls
Toward the surf

And the happy dogs leap after them
As if catapulted—

Black dogs, tan dogs,
Tubes of glorious muscle—
Pursuing pleasure
More than obedience
They race, skid to a halt in the wet sand,
Sometimes they’ll plunge straight into
The foaming breakers

Like diving birds, letting the green turbulence
Toss them, until they snap and sink

Teeth into floating wood
Then bound back to their owners
Shining wet, with passionate speed
For nothing,
For absolutely nothing but joy.

"The Dogs at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz” from American Poetry Now
(ed. Ed Ochester) $27.95 • 408 pp.

It's Ella (1917- 1996) 's Birthday

It's April 25, which makes it Ella Fitzgerald's
92nd birthday not that you need an excuse
to play her Gershwin and Berlin songbooks
it's a lovely day today and whatever you've got
to do she'd be so happy to be doing it with you
in her solitude she sings or she's undecided now
at the Savoy or swinging with Louis at the Savoy
or mentioning Louis and Bobby Darren
in "Mack the Knife" she's always
in the mood for love and always walking
on Dorothy's side of the sunny boulevard
of broken dreams with two outs in the ninth
the Mets a strike away from a 8-2 victory over
hapless Washington (first in war, first in peace,
and last in the National League) I wish they
 were still called the Senators let's create
a playlist okay we'll play "Love Walked In" and then
"I Gotta Right to See the Blues" music Harold Arlen
lyrics Ted Koehler who wrote "All I see /
for me / is misery" his best line in my opinion
as Louis sings it or Ella right now

-- DL

A Last Ramble and Farewell [Merle Bachman]

--Washed up on the shore of a weekend.  On my island bed, I survey the waves of light on the rooftop opposite my room (that tree taken down a few days ago has left a gap, and light's rushed in to fill it).
I'm content to be on this island for a while.
My cat has picked a spot in the sun, and it's amusing, because it's so bright she has to squint to see, but she doesn't move.  (The proverbial cat!  the proverbial sun!).
Last night I didn't write, not due to laziness but fatigue (and the need to give myself a 'day' off).
Today's my final post for you, and I'm thinking But I didn't write

--about the post-modern poetic elegy (Kristin Prevallet's I, Afterlife:  Essay in Mourning Time, Essay Press 2007;  Akilah Oliver's A Toast in the House of Friends, Coffeehouse Press 2009:  both driven by personal losses, startling, in very different tones of language, a performance of detachment [Prevallet] "vs" Oliver's raw ritual emotion)

--about the Scottish Poetry Library (its motto, by leaves we live, its modest, peaceful building a raft downstream from the tourist frenzy of High Street, Edinburgh; over 30,000 "items of poetry" including an assortment of contemporary Scottish poetry, "unrivalled" in the nation [to quote their delightful newsletter, which seems to be issued quarterly] )

--about "Yiddishland" as a place of origin and return, existing at the stretch of a book and in the imagination (did you know that Yiddish poets internationally in the 'teens and '20s of the last century felt engaged and challenged by modernism?  and, rising to the challenge, published their own manifestoes, their  "little magazines" reflecting the energies of rival factions?) (If you didn't--and you'd like to know more:  shameless shill! -- take a look at my book Recovering 'Yiddishland,' published by Syracuse last year.)

Mikhl Likht translated into Yiddish poems by Ezra Pound, W. C. Williams, Gertrude Stein... (and many more).  --I didn't write enough about Likht. 
So, I hope you'll want to read about him. 
--But the most important source, for me, of modern Yiddish poetry translated into English (and the

"Because They Say What You Own Defines You" [by Kate Angus]

BECAUSE THEY SAY WHAT YOU OWN DEFINES YOU

O lip gloss, cherry
(as teenage crush convertibles parked
on the flat gray riverbed

of suburban driveways); three pens;
and solitary notebook, blue -- you
are the contents of the cave

I carry with me. Ginger
candies spice the breath; mascara
that paints my lashes

into small black fences swinging open, shut; tiny mirror
(reflective porthole where I regard no ocean other

than my entirely unblue eyes); book
I'm reading; wallet; cellphone; keys:
you are what I think I need. Black

strap across my shoulder,
brown weight banging
at my back -- when I unsnap

you, is it my hand or another's
reaching in?

-- Kate Angus

"Gossip" [by Nin Andrews]

Gossip
or the Parable for the Homosexual Man

My father loved gossip and defended it all the time. It’s where the truth always lies, and vice versa, he liked to say. And besides, history and religion are mostly gossip, written by nitwits to cover up important truths. So my father was always rewriting the past, or telling another version of what once was, way back when. Martin Luther, he liked to tell his peacenik Lutheran friends, should be remembered for inciting hatred of the Jews. (It’s true: Luther encouraged the burning of Jewish synagogues, homes and prayer books.) Theologians are always flawed, he would add. Which is why he liked Descartes, who didn’t doubt that he doubted, and concluded, I think therefore I am. Je pense donc je suis. Cogito ergo sum. Like Aristotle, he was sure reason was a gift, as was wonder. Though Descartes, according to my father, kicked dogs. And Aristotle preferred shellfish to women. Like Jesus, Aristotle was probably homosexual. If you actually read the New Testament, which few Christians do, alas, you’d realize how little Jesus liked the ladies. Instead he preferred finding heaven on earth with his twelve men, and was, of course, crucified in the end. The Christ story does make a good parable for the homosexual man.

-- Nin Andrews

Em-bodying Poetry [Merle Bachman]

Lately, I've been thinking about bodies.  --No, that doesn't mean firm bodies, attractive ones (bodies that make you look over your shoulder or keep you up at night in the dark) but--  more in line with Thoreau's mangled speech when he was heading up Mt Ktaadn, "Earth... made out of Chaos and Old Night... not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland [but] ... Matter, vast, terrific."  The awe he felt to be treading such stuff (him, a low-lands man, whose Walden kept him alone but not lonely, whose surrounding Nature was friendly and sweet) transfuses this often-marked passage:

"What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star's surface, some hard matter in its home!  I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound had become so strange to me.  I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,--that my body might,--but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them... Talk of mysteries!  Think of our life in nature,--daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,--rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks!  the solid earth!  the actual world!  the common sense!  Contact!  Contact!  Who are we?  where are we?"

Best and Worst of the Week: "The New Yorker"

From The New Yorker of April 27, 2009

Best sentence of the week:

<<Nearly everything Poe wrote, including the spooky stories for which he is best remembered, has this virtuosic, showy, lilting, and slightly wilting quality, like a peony just past bloom.>>

from "The Humbug" by Jill Lepore

Reasons: the serial adjectives, the rhyme, and the simile

*

Worst of the week:

<< Just because the anonymous Euro-techno group Eiffel 65 was on the charts for only one stretch in 2000 does not mean that its mission was not accomplished. >>

from "Ladies Wild" by Sasha Frere-Jones

Reasons: the double negative and the trivial nature of the observation

Readers are encouraged to submit their own nominees for best and worst sentence of the week.

Darragh Park's Cover for Marc Cohen's "On Maplewood time"

ON MAPLEWOOD TIME by Marc Cohen Publisher (The Groundwater Press, Hudson, New York)

 "I won't pretend that the trees were rooted in the air, goes a line in Marc Cohen's 12 Ton Bridge. Had he said the trees were rooted in the air, and left it at that, it might be a fragment n one of his more gnomic, almost mosaiclike earlier poems. Here, the implied branches and the roots underground conjure an image of his thoughts, dividing and reaching out into his past. As he drives, what he sees and what he remembers become vivid emblems of a way leading to the heritage/ of a love on the brink of sanity and why truth is so good. But its emblems also are the poem: a dune road/ in a village in America and the Ponquogue Bridge sheer as a stocking this morning.

"My particular favorite is the title poem, On Maplewood Time. But poems don't need prefaces: poems need to be read. So after some hard thinking, all I have to say about it is, read and enjoy: which is what I want to say about all of these poems, so fresh and new."

 -- James Schuyler

Happy birthday, MC.

Dostoevski predicts end of World War I!

Dostoevski's natal chart reveals him to be a Scorpio with Sagittarius rising. This is scary enough, but his moon is in Gemini, so watch out! Born on November 11, 1821, in Moscow, Dostoesvki suffered from epilelptic fits (see The Idiot) but did well in his examinations though he loathed mathematics. On this date (April 23) in 1849, Dostoevski was arrested for belonging to a group of crazy liberal loudmouth intellectuals. He was sent to Siberia. sentenced to be executed, and faced a firing squad in the freezing rain. But it turned out to be a mock execution and Dostoevski went back to his cell the shape and size of a coffin convinced that it is better and wiser to be a saintly fool in Siberia than to pimp in St. Petersburg. Released in 1854, he wrote "Crime and Punishment" in a hurry because he needed the money to cover his gambling debts. He was a compulsive gambler.

From analyzing Dostoevski's astrological profile, you can safely arrive at several conclusions. His favorite songs would have been "I Fall in Love Too Easily" (Sinatra version 1940s) and "He's a Rebel" (rock song from early 1960s). The prophetic nature of his writings, including "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Notes from Underground," doom him to be a Cassandra without honor in his native land. Yet his fame eclipses that of all other Russian authors with one exception. His chart predicts him to die in his sixtieth year, and this indeed he did on February 9, 1881.

Dostoevski's birth pattern -- a full house, with only one empty chamber -- is replicated exactly on the second day of August 1914. Had this fact been understood correctly, World War I might have been averted! The celestial mechanics of Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto intimate that Dostoevski would die on the same day as the end of the war, and indeed, the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, which would have been the novelist's ninety-seventh birthday. But it t would have come more than four years earlier if in the prison of his days the free man had learned to praise. The German minister smoked a Turkish cigarette in a jade holder. "Nothing ever happens in Brussels," he shrugged.

On that day, in graveyards in the Ukraine and Byelorussia, in Latvia and Estonia, school children in tatters stood shouting, "Hooray for the Karamazovs!"

For Dusty's natal chart, go here

-- DL

Darragh Park's Cover for Marc Cohen's "Mecox Road"

MECOX ROAD by Marc Cohen
Cover design and art by Darragh Park
The Groundwater Press, New York

<< Cohen's poetry is a kind of highly polished, metaphysical poetry (but firmly rooted in the realities of present-day urban existence). I think his is a unique voice which sounds like nobody else's, except perhaps the quieter lyrical poems of Hart Crane -- one of the high points in twentieth-century poetry and a path which, curiously, few poets have chosen to follow. Whether or not Cohen has done so, his poetry hungers after the sublime in the same way Crane's does, without making any concessions to the ancillary graces and seductions of poetic language, yet achieving them almost fortuitously, through his intense concentration on the task at hand -- the making of the poem. >> -John Ashbery

Breathing Space [by Merle Bachman]

My dove is home, her breast is warm, my dove is home....  A song by Neko Case, ricocheting around my head.  Lots of references to tornadoes on her new album; fortunately, the weather here has been anything but tornadic (although some men took down a sick tree that bordered the drive next to my building.  Recent winds had cracked-off one too many of its scrawny limbs.  --They wore matching green hard hats, and the word "Green Haven" was painted in large letters on their truck-crane, as if all that green would get them into Heaven despite their line of work.
(And of course, today was Earth Day!)
--One of them got hoisted up into the high branches, so he could start lopping them off with his handy little chain saw. 
It must be hard taking down a tree, any tree.  You have to trust in not falling.  Plus, the saw must be heavy, as you aim its whirrrrrr into the solid wood before you.

The chain-saw noise made it hard to think about anything, except getting away.
Tornadic.
By the time I got home from school, there was an uneven stump, cut low to the ground, and a desultory pile of sawdust next to it. 
I wondered what the neighboring trees were thinking...

*

Tonight's writing will be brief.  It's mid-week, after all; a breathing space feels necessary. 
Plus, I'm getting ready for a reading from my "Diorama" book on Sunday, at the local indie book store.
You know the feeling:  nervous that no one will come; equally nervous that everyone will come.
It's like giving a party at which you are the main course, no--the dessert, the chocolate cake, the baked Alaska.  (I've never eaten the latter--but I've always loved the name).
Tonight is for distraction.
--A friend of mind just called me from Denver, where he had walked the streets to air himself out a bit after a difficult exam he'd taken.
He said he'd been looking for distraction, but maybe that's just another word for meditating on something a little outside your usual frame.