The Best American Poetry

The Trouble Clef – Moment in Time [by Lera Auerbach]

I am drawing happy little people of many colors. They are dancing next to a brown house with a small window. Above the house the sun and the moon are side by side with light blue clouds and big stars. Smoke rises from the house's chimney to the sun – evidently Alichka's cake for the little people is baking. There is grass around the house. I carefully draw each blade of grass. Among the blades of grass there are flowers of many colors, like the people, and big, like the stars. The people are dancing and laughing.

I am sitting in a chair with my legs tucked under me. On the wall there is an enormous magnetic chessboard with a game in progress. My brother Igor sits for days on end at the large table opposite the chessboard as he prepares to enter the university in impregnable Moscow. My nanny, Marianna, sits on a stool in the kitchen and knits little rugs out of old rags. I can hear her talking in Polish to the cat Kos, her only listener –she's sharing memories of her youth. She's wearing a black apron, tied in a knot in the back, which I always untie, after choosing just the right moment, and then duck the inevitable slaps. I am drawing little people of many colors and I am smiling. My little people are the happiest people on earth. They are dancing and also smiling from ear to ear – the happiest smiles. The sun is yellow (the yellow color of a newly born chick), the moon is light blue, the dancing people are happy and from the chimney the aroma of Alichka's cake drifts toward the sun. The big stars are reflected in the flowers in the yard in front of the house.

  Listen: What is Music?  [From Songs for Children by Lera Auerbach]

I run to show my drawing to Mama. "Mama, look!" After taking a look at the drawing, Mama asks, "Why are they fighting?" "Who?" I ask, not understanding. "The people. Aren't they fighting? And why do they have such angry faces? And look, the house is leaning, it's going to collapse. And then you can't have the sun and moon in the sky at the same time." "Those aren't angry faces, they aren't fighting, but exactly the opposite, and the house isn't falling down, but is flying, and the moon married the sun and now they can live together in the sky!" I'm practically crying."Oh, so that's the way it is... Well, then I understand," Mama agrees to make me feel better, after seeing how distraught I am. But that doesn't work with me. How could it be that Mama thinks that my happy, dancing little people are fighting? I look at my drawing and it seems wonderful to me, more wonderful than ever before: yellow sun, blue moon, stars, flowers and happy little people. But a shadow of doubt has crept into my heart.

I forget about the drawing, but several days later I come across it when I'm leafing through my album. The little people with the monstrous gashes of their mouths that run from ear to ear, grimaces of either anger or disappointment, have frozen in awkward poses – they're fighting or arguing. The brown house is at a slant – it's going to collapse on them at any moment. The column of black smoke from the chimney is propped against the sun. The thorny grass is like needles between which the varicolored smudges are supposed to be flowers. In the sky hangs an absolutely incongruous light blue plate, apparently the moon, and big, sharply pointed flourishes represent the stars. 

I study the drawing with horror. Where has the world of wonderful, dancing little people with the happy smiles gone? These grotesque monsters don't have anything to do with it. Nevertheless, this was my drawing. What has happened? I cry inconsolably, my tears run on the paper in varicolored smudges, and the world of happy little people that has nothing at all in common with my picture floats away on the river of losses to the shores of memory in order to be saved by memory in the primordial world.

Only children are given to cry over true tragedy and to know bliss.
 

View: Children Drawings of the Spanish Civil War 

__________

Brain-teaser [Day 1] Answer:    
 

Brain-teaser [Day 2]: What do these ten words have in common? 
cookie • cosmic • cues • moose • mummy

muse • quick • squeaky  • wages • yes

The Ancient Use of Stone: Ray DiPalma’s Words & Pictures (Terence Winch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ray DiPalma told me something recently, over the phone, that he repeats in this book—that his “intention is always to write something, not necessarily to write about something.” He delivers on that intention in this imposing new collection from Otis Books, the very busy imprint of Otis College of Art and Design in L.A.

 

 

 

DiPalma scatters clues throughout the book, hinting at what this writing is all about, the most revealing being:

 

Cunning

Magnanimous evasions and strategies meticulously violated,
Forgotten conflicts, maxims, wily distractions, sonorities,
Logical starting points, garbled melodies, dissemblings,
Perpetual adjustments, baffling embraces, panaceas, trills,
Recapitulations, subverted calibrations, drifting rhythms,
Aimless tracings, slogans, requisite materials, hybrids, puzzles,
Penalties, nuances, seductive myths, targets, elegant solutions,
Adornments, disparate etymologies, routines, cavalier methods,
Complex interpretations, jargons, weird polarities, chosen dialects,
Melancholias, bravura caprices, abbreviations, masquerades

 

 

The subtitle of this collection is Journals and Daybooks 1998--2008, and the journal-day book framework really allows DiPalma to showcase the astounding eclecticism and erudition he brings to his work. A meticulous attention to language has always been central to DiPalma’s writing, and a macaronic spirit inhabits The Ancient Use of Stone (no surprise, really: he has corrected my Latin—with which, like most one-time Catholic schoolboys, I have a fading familiarity—and I know Ray’s first language was Italian). 

 

 

 

[photo: DiPalma in the '70s]

 

 

 

 

Forest and Cave

The book is an album
not a final set of solutions

The real discoveries
Are to be found elsewhere

What the book exhibits
Are the ways to them 

The collection is filled with incisive quotes from a huge cast of thinkers and writers (Breton: “Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known”; “Raids are our agriculture”—Bedouin Proverb), wry autobiographical complaints and comments (“Short noon walk for Georgie. Encounter no unpleasant dogs—unlike earlier this morning when the 3 vicious dogs from two doors west showed up in the park. Exchange of words with the dogs’ owner. More than a few profanities”), lists of neologisms (among my favorites: gratiturd, improversion, neolurkism, nocturinal), and more than forty of his collages:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[left: part of  p. 85]

“Fuck the posthumous! We want to sit down, eat, and drink sometime today!,” DiPalma proclaims.  And I won’t argue with that.  I’m hungry.

 “Keep commentary to a minimum,” he admonishes elsewhere, and thus I will stop here.

Patricia Carlin presents a poem by Carl Phillips

Today I’m posting “Beautiful Dreamer” by Carl Phillips (Barrow Street, Summer 2005).  In the post-Thanksgiving lull there’s space to meditate on the poem, which does its own share of meditating.

Beautiful Dreamer

Here, the Missouri meets the Mississippi.  Two rivers:
one--in these parts, that’s called a marriage.  Sanctuary
makes the birds come closer, maybe -- don’t mistake
that for trust, when it’s only birds, egrets lately, the one
that hasn’t budged all day despite our shouting little
stasis-bird, fly, repeatedly at it; and the rest meanwhile

lifting their ghost majority suddenly up elsewhere, as if
with a shared indifference to chance and its convergences—
so ceremonial, all those wings departing, it can almost
look like privilege . . .

                                        This life, it’s one slow business of
erosion, he said softly.  What a thing to say.  The rivers
run like refrains from one of those hymns that both resist
and envy a bit the recklessness that any good spiritual
will sometimes give in to—Mine hour of bliss cometh
swift upon me, swift and silver, run the rivers, beside
the green ambivalence of trees that, by contrast, keep

going nowhere: cypress trees, the catalpa, its seedpods
hanging like shadow-icicles, they half-decorate, half
litter the light around them with punctuation that can
seem superfluous—and yet shadowless, what would
the light have done, for definition?  What did you think:
suffering

              ends here?  Or should?  Your wishes rise, take
their places in a line long and frangible, the line in turn
shifts like the particular oblivion that doomed cattle
equal—have always equaled.  You’d better wish again.

-- Carl Phillips

I admire the poem’s yoking of cool reflection to passages of extreme lyric beauty.  I’m also attracted to this poem’s discontinuities.  It moves between what is interior (emotion, meditation), and what is outside of human wishes and desires.  In the opening line, for example, there’s a seemingly objective description of a natural feature: “Here, the Missouri meets the Mississippi.”  But then description moves towards something less objective, more emotionally evocative.  “Two rivers: one” suggests human union.  The word “marriage” intensifies the suggestion that we’re dealing with human union, which the words “sanctuary”, “trust”, and “bliss” reinforce.  Yet the landscape and its creatures are also literal.  There are two rivers; and there are egrets, even though they lift up like a “ghost majority.”

The poem develops by way of metaphor; and throughout, it flirts with metaphor’s power to smooth out unbridgeable difference.  But ultimately, it resists that power.  Through the alchemy of metaphor the poem keeps almost making meanings; but it and we are balked in attempts to put the parts together in any finally neat or smooth way.

In the last section wishes rise like the egrets that lifted up in the poem’s opening stanza.  The line they rise in is “long and frangible,” and it “in turn / shifts like the particular oblivion that doomed cattle equal.”  One metaphor slips into another, like the flowing silver river; but all, like the “stasis-bird”, like the “green ambivalence of trees”, ”keep going nowhere.”  The world is not made in the shape of human desire.  “You’d better wish again.”

-- Patricia Carlin

The Trouble Clef - Notes of a Wandering Musician [by Lera Auerbach]

It is an honor for me to be writing for the Best American Poetry blog. When Stacey asked me last week if I would write this blog in spite of everything else that is going on in my life – I said – absolutely! Yet I felt overwhelmed –there is so much I wish to write about, how will I know what to choose, what to concentrate on, what may interest the readers of the BAP? I live the life of a touring musician, constantly changing countries, cities, rushing from a rehearsal to a concert. A few weeks ago, my apartment in New York, which has been my only sense of home in an already groundless life, had an electrical fire and burned down, destroying in the flames the remains of the past, letters, manuscripts, photographs and a very large library from Russia which was started by my grandparents, ruining beyond repair my beloved concert grand Steinway and crumbling any sense of security.

The week of this blog I will travel from Toronto, where I was for the world premiere of my new ballet with Aszure Barton and the National Ballet of Canada, to New York for chamber music rehearsals, to Boston for a concert of my music. Not the best surroundings to collect one's thoughts. Yet one can never depend on the best surroundings and there are always plenty of excuses not to write, so I will simply address this week some of the thoughts and subjects that move me most, share some of my passions and obsessions as well as random moments – the  frozen moments in Time which create the material of our memories.  I thought to call my blog residency this week The Trouble Clef - Notes of a Wandering Musician, as I think it summarizes well the disjointed voices of my hours.

 

Listen: Postlude [by Lera Auerbach]

"My life is a dialogue with Time," I wrote in 1991 in one of the poems. This line became the title of my book of poetry, published in Russia in 1993. Later it became the title of an orchestral work. My fascination, even obsession with Time, dates back as long as I remember myself.

Time is not a river, and it certainly does not flow in one direction. According to the laws of any well-structured composition, be it a short story, a symphony, a building, or a human life, the beginning apriori encompasses the end, and the end already contains the beginning.

Time has many faces. One face is the clock. Since childhood, I've been terrified by the lines of the clock. In my child's imagination I pictured time as a monster that eats up our lives; every second is one more bite, every second brings death closer. The other face of time is Time with a capital "T"; the word that means so many different things to each person; the word, together with a few other words such as Love, God, Fate, that is unable to really express what it means, and yet there is no other or better way to open a door to its meaning.

When did Time start? We may guess when the counting of time started in human history, but we do not know when Time itself started. Perhaps, Time was born when the Universe was created. But still – what was before? If Time and the Universe were born it means they are living creatures as any one of us, and therefore are also finite. And if Time was always there and always will be there, then it is of a very different nature than we may imagine. And, at last, perhaps Time (and Space) only exist in our Universe; and outside of it, in other forms of reality, neither Time nor Space exist at all.

Time is what allows our past and future to intersect in the present moment and, thus, creates every single point of our existence. Perhaps Time exists. Perhaps it doesn't. In any case, it affects us. It makes us aware of Death. Death makes us aware of Life. Time makes us alive. 

Read: Nobel Prize Authors on Time
 

In my constant search for answers, I once asked an old Rabbi, “What is Time? How does one create Time? (Oh, the same segment of a minute can be so short or so long, depending on circumstances — haven't you noticed)?” The Rabbi thought for a while. Then he answered, "Time is action. The way to create Time is to fill it with action. It is like the relationship between a metronome and music: the same beat can fit one note or many. The more you do, the more time you create." I think the Rabbi was right, but I also think that sometimes staying still and observing or contemplating in silence may be the greatest action. 

Time reminds us of Death, of a finite point in Life when you no longer are. When I was very young, my nanny used to take me to the cemetery ‘to have some fresh air’. Daily, we would come to the city's cemetery to visit and to take care of her own grave. Yes, she had had her grave ever since the death of her husband, where, next to his stone plate, was hers with her name inscribed. She would take care of both gravestones and of the flowers and trees that grew around them. It wasn't a somber or sad activity. It was part of life, it was peaceful, and for me, it was my playground. Russian cemeteries are so beautiful — very green and full of trees, flowers, birds, stones, statues, poetic verses, memories, history… This is perhaps why my first song, which I wrote at the age of four, was about Death and Time.

...In the darkness, in childhood, lying at night with eyes wide open and listening to the ticking of the clock on the wall. Second followed by second – and I knew for certain that those seconds would never return – they sank into oblivion.

Later this terror intensified and at age twelve I would stop the pendulum on the wall clock, I would remove it, I'd banish the clock from the room, but all the same at night rang out: tick-tock, tick-tock – that was my heart beating. And I had neither the strength nor the will to tear it from my breast.

From early childhood, from the age of six, the fear of Time passing. Not just passing, but slipping away. Almost physically, visibly seeping through my fingers. This terrifying and inevitable feeling poisoned all my childhood and youth. And every day was a challenge to my invisible and indifferent rival. A successful day is like recaptured territory, a respite, a truce until the following day. And the despair and terror during the lost day. Life is an attempt to swim out of the sucking whirlpool, where Time bears our days. Because of this all my poems written as a child are variations on the theme of the passing day and interminable epitaphs on Time.

In my early infancy, before the age of six, this was not the case. The "Apple of Knowledge" had not yet been plucked (by whom and when?). The days were as long as eternity, and the clock was an empty knick-knack on the wall.

Interminable illnesses that were transformed into dreams, and dreams that flowed into days, and days into illnesses.

The world was wise and clear. It became overgrown, like seaweed, with fantasies and dream visions, but nevertheless it preserved some part of its original harmonious foundations. And the boundary between existence and nonexistence was fragile. The latter was too recent and close, the former too amorphous.

My Teachers, (Oh, I had marvelous invincible Teachers; in infancy while I hid in the wardrobe that smelled of mothballs, I would talk to them at length and there was nothing more fascinating than those conversations), my Teachers would tell me about how the world was organized. And these stories were as far away from that which I later learned by rote from textbooks and found in books, as that blessed time is far from me now.

Stars, leaves and music, the smells and sensations of past lives and all their accumulated experience found a place in their stories; they cast a spell over me and turned into dreams, and dreams into illnesses and again that fine thread separating me from my recent nonexistence quavered and broke. With age these conversations with my Teachers (with an ever-increasing and obvious switch in favor of existence) became more and more rare... It was a peculiar loss of ability to comprehend their voices. Or rather not even their voices, but feelings, since we communicated without the aid of words (words do not help, words separate, and any act of speech is nothing more than a translation from the original). But they are some place close by, my guardian angels. I know that. And Time, awful Time, nonexistent Time will not overpower us!

___________

Brain-teaser [Day 1]: Can you draw a line through each one of these dots, without lifting your pencil, and by drawing only 4 lines? (This means that you can make only 3 turns.)  You also can only go once through each dot...

Lera Auerbach, Guest Blogger Nov 29 - Dec 5

This week we welcome Lera Auerbach as our guest blogger. Lera is among the most widely performed composers of her generation.  She has composed major works for orchestra, ballet, chamber ensemble, chorus, and opera, and is a concert pianist and award-winning poet. Her new ballet, “The Little Mermaid,” will receive its American premiere in 2010 by the San Francisco Ballet. Lera is writing an opera based on her stage play “Gogol” for Vienna’s Theater an der Wien for premiere in 2011, and will be composer-in-residence with the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra the same year.
     In May 2009, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. presented a composer portrait of Auerbach, and during the summer she was honored with composer portraits and premieres at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland and the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. She was a featured poet at the 2009 West Cork Literary Festival in Ireland. Lera was named Poet of the Year by the International Pushkin Society in 1997 at the age of 23, and in 2007 was named a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum. Find out more about Lera Auerbach here. Welcome, Lera.

-- sdh

Hovering at All Times at the Threshold of Transformation [by Martha Silano]

In the new issue of AGNI, editor Sven Birkerts contemplates the Heidegerian-ish question: What is writing? Birkerts steps right in and breaks it down:

Writing is . . . “very little actual writing.”

Indeed.

For instance.

The day job.

Tracking down my marriage license because I can’t find our 2008 tax return. I need one or the other to prove that my betrothed is indeed my domestic partner. Otherwise, in 30 days he will be axed from my Washington State Health Care Authority insurance plan. (I am not even sure our marriage license got filed. Why? Because the guy who officiated our wedding was "ordained" via the Internet when the Internet was, well, a kind of sketchy operation held together by a bunch of prayer flags. Oh, and our officiant (officiator?) wasn’t exactly known for his secretarial skills. So, what happens if I have no license and can’t find the tax return? I guess that’s when I get to call the Health Care Authority and listen to the options, then hit 0 and pray I can talk to a person who understands that we do plan on spending the rest of our lives together, but we’re just not very good with filing. One thing's for certain, however. While I am on hold, I will not be writing.)

Cricket procurement, dispensation, and corpse removal.

Ditto for the “pinkies “ (very small mice).

Goldfish bowl cleaning.

Shuttling children to and from all order of Spanish and art classes, chess, swim lessons, soccer games and practices, birthday parties, dental and medical appointments (in other words, standard fare).

Life’s non-negotiables, including sleep, eat, Facebook, email, bi-weekly chat with folks, traffic, laundry, and looking all over the house for my car keys and cell phone.

Which leaves about, if lucky, half an hour per day (on average) for the act of doing what I am called on in this life to do, though most of that time is taken up with editing what’s already been written or venting long-hand in a journal (which I’ve been doing since I was 9), researching, blogging, & reviewing.

Thank God, as Birkerts asserts, “a writer doesn’t have to be sitting at his [sic] desk at all to be considered ‘in the act’.” What a relief to know that when I’m not writing I’m “inwardly shifting and shaping experience that eventually calls work forth.” I, lucky thing, unlike the poor sot who isn’t a writer, am “living liminally, hovering at all times at the threshold of transformation.” Thank God thinking about writing is enough!

"One Twisting Leaf" [by Jim Dolot]

One Twisting Leaf Left

Despite the wind, none of the other leaves is twisting.
This one small leaf spins at the end of its branch
Just outside the window,
A visual least cone.
You’d think it would sever its own stem
In that rotation, furious enough, compared to the other stillnesses
To look self-caused.

It’s incomprehensible
How, after thousands of turns,
It hasn’t spun itself free,
Or, by another logic, how it perpetuates its freedom
To stay on.

Let it be now, even after weeks.
If it makes us uneasy, that may be its purpose.
Demonstrableness is difficult to picture.
The leaf that spins and never breaks the thread
Of its attachment to the tree its scroll.

-- Jim Dolot

Your Brain on Turkey & Fixings [by Martha Silano]

How does your brain function the day after a holiday focused around eating and drinking? My brain does not function well, but despite this I am still managing to, though barely able to sit up, have quite a bit on my mind on this day that’s come to be known as Black Friday.

First and foremost, I am thinking about a holiday focused around eating and drinking (is there a U.S. holiday not focused around massive amounts of consumption?). 

Not to say that other societies don’t have their eating and drinking extravaganzas. For instance, I thought Ramadan was a one-month fast-o-rama -(dana) until one of my Eng 101 students recently explained to me that most Muslims actually gain weight during Ramadan. Why? Because while the daylight hours are a vast and solemn culinary void, once dusk hits it’s chow time.

What’s on the menu? After savoring a single date, it’s time to tuck into a bowl of thick, sweet or savory soup (halim in Pakistan, India, and Iran; kashka in Iraq and Turkey). Between gulping down that broth-y wonder and dawn’s early light there’s Tunisian lamb with saffron, stews of all sorts (lamb and eggplant, chicken and pomegranate, and beef lentil, to name a few), Arab pancakes, sweet rice pudding with saffron, and encouragement to eat one’s weight in dried fruits and nuts marinated in sugar and rosewater, the better to stave off hunger pangs the following day.

Starve/gorge/starve/gorge/starve gorge: this goes on for 30 days. How could one not have to loosen one’s belt at least one notch after a month of being deprived all day and then welcomed to a table of delectable goodness?

However, this new-found knowledge that Muslims enjoy supping as grandly as your average Texan is not leading me to dismiss the spiritually empty way many, many Westerners “do” holidays. I’m not saying all Westerners, but I’m thinking of the 25 percent who reportedly hit the Black Friday sales between 5 am and noon today. What do I have against them? Well, individually, probably nothing at all. I mean, if Bekka needs a Mac for college, then by golly Bekka should drive down to Tigard, Oregon (tax free Oregon) on Thanksgiving night and sleep in the parking lot till the Mac Store’s doors fling open at 5 am. She should save hundreds of dollars on a big-ticket item she otherwise could not afford. Go, Bekka! Really. But nearly 100 million other Americans also getting up early and hightailing it to the Target or Toys-r-Us or WalMart at the crack of dawn? That’s when I start to wonder what kind of a culture I live in.

During Ramadan, practicing Muslims wake up and return to the table just before sunrise to down a hearty bean soup meant, along with the dried fruits and nuts, to sustain them till the rager continues when the sun next slips below the horizon. Meanwhile, on Thanksgiving night, Westerners stumble into bed after the second or third round of dessert and a nightcap. But while both Muslim and Westerner might need to down a couple of Alka-Seltzers during the night, when the sunlight glints off a Muslim’s frying pan it’s time to pray for guidance and ask for forgiveness; it’s time to fast yet another day for the sake of God and for purification.

But what time is it for Westerners? Time to hit Hickory Farms! Okay, you might argue, many Americans are living on tight budgets but still want to exchange Christmas gifts. Why not take advantage of door-busting markdowns? I get it; I get it, yes. And it’s good for the economy. I just can’t help but feel we made a fatal error somewhere along the way. I’m not preaching some sort of back to the good old days—not that at all—but that perhaps the day after Thanksgiving should be more than a day of mall worship. Why not make it a day of service? A day to (on the way to the mall?) drop a bag of canned goods at the local food bank? I know I can do this myself and keep it quiet, but I wouldn’t mind having the President remind its citizens that the Friday after Thanksgiving might be a good day to, along with perhaps procuring Aunt Cindy the newest watchamacallit for her gizmo, take some time for introspection, maybe even for reminding folks that giving thanks shouldn’t be a once-a-year occurrence.

Anti-Confessional

What it was like, I don't recall, or care to;

believe me, you should be grateful I spare you.

Lines, November 2009 (by Mitch Sisskind)

 1.

Against all advice he opened 

A children’s furniture business;

He sold cribs, bassinettes, premium

Items such as car-shaped beds.

It was 1950. Ben Crane, Morrie Bayless,

None of them saw the bright future

For children’s furniture in the dawning

Baby boom. They said he was crazy,

But weathering the storm of expenses

That accompanies the start of a business

He began to make a very good living

And there came a night at Fritzl’s

When, having ordered finnan haddie,

He declared, ‘They said I was crazy

‘But I was crazy like a fox! Like a fox

‘I was crazy! In what manner of speaking

‘Was I crazy? Fox-like! Like a fox!

‘The craziness of the proverbial fox,

‘That was the type of my craziness.’

His name, by the way, was Leo Horwich.

 

2.

Against the prevailing winds, challenging

The conventional wisdom, he foresaw

The growth of orthodontia and financed

The construction of dental office buildings

In suburbs that, like mushrooms, sprang

Up overnight when the expressway

Opened in 1951. The truth was there

To see – for Ben Crane, for Morrie Bayless –

But only he saw the truth. Ben Crane

Smirked at him and Morrie Bayless joked

At his expense. But there came a night

At the Town & Country when he ordered

Finnan haddie and said, ‘They laughed

‘At me but now it is my turn to laugh.

‘Who’s laughing now? I’m laughing

‘All the way to the bank! It’s my turn

‘To laugh, and I’m laughing all the way

‘To the bank! All the way to the bank

‘I am laughing! To the bank! To the bank!’

His name, by the way, was Arnold Felsenfeld.

 

3.

What in life is more agreeable than

To proclaim, ‘They said I was crazy

But I was crazy like a fox’? When does

The old world seem quite so frolicsome

As at the moment a man says,

‘I laughed all the way to the bank’?

It’s sad how, in our era of diminished
Opportunity, children’s furniture stores

Exist in more-than-sufficient numbers,

And enough dental office buildings have

Already been built. Oh, very well! Not crazy

Like a fox nor laughing to the bank, I pin

My hopes on these (what shall I call them?)

Lines! Mock on, heirs of the late Ben Crane

And the late Morrie Bayless. Waiter,

I’ll have the finnan haddie if you please!

And by the way my name is Julius Jaffe.

Or perhaps my name is Lenore M. Kadison.

 

Bukowski's Creed

so you want to be a writer?        

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.

unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in
you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

-- Charles Bukowski

Venerdì Nero (?) [by Moira Egan]

That floating, tooth-shaped thing and the wiggle beneath it are murmurations of starlings. Yes, that really is the collective noun for starlings: nice, isn't it? There was a beautiful photo essay about Rome's starlings in the NYT a couple of years ago that's well worth checking out: go here.

Of course, we don't have "Black Friday" in Rome, since we don't have Thanksgiving, but I thought I'd post some pictures that feature black in honor of the day. I'm not going shopping, no. Are you?

But we did have Thanksgiving dinner. Did you see that New Yorker essay about expat Thanksgivings? (Very funny, all too true, but I think I want to introduce Jane Kramer to our butchers.) One serious advantage to living abroad, though, is that you can decide on Wednesday to have Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday (we just sorta forgot it was coming up, being really busy lately, and not being bombarded by images of turkeys and pilgrims, etc.) but we said, Hey, yeah, let's do it.

[Vegetarians might want to skip the first paragraph after the jump.]

The Meaning of "It"

All poetry is personal.  All poetry is experimental poetry.  All experiments are failed experiments.  The experiment was a success but the surgeon died. All confessional poetry is admissible, the doctor said. The lawyer said he was losing his patience. The defense maintained that it is admissible as evidence but not as sex. The jury debated the meaning of "it." The philosopher debated the meaning of it. The judge threw out the confession, saying confessions are invariably exaggerated. All exaggerations are true. No evidence is confessional. Poetry is evidence of sex. Sex is exaggeration. Confession is to sex as belching is to a fine meal in a friendly home when you are two middle-aged couples who have forgotten their lines. No evidence is required. Sex is not evidence. All sex is personal. All politics is impersonal. Sex is impersonal politics. I'm confessin' that I love you. Do you [word or words missing here] love me too?

-- DL

"We Gather Together"

Here's a lovely version of the old Dutch Thanksgiving hymn, played by the North Guildford Congregational Church Bell Choir.

Happy Thanksgiving

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Guess the year.  (How about those hats!)

-- sdh

Poem for Thanksgiving

HUNGER
(by Samik)

    Eskimo

You, stranger, who only see us happy and free of care,
If you knew the horrors we often have to live through
you would understand our love of eating and singing and dancing.
There is not one among us
who hasn’t lived through a winter of bad hunting
when many people starved to death.
We are never surprised to hear
that someone has died of starvation – we are used to it.
And they are not to blame: Sickness comes,
or bad weather ruins hunting,
as when a blizzard of snow hides the breathing holes.

I once saw a wise old man hang himself
because he was starving to death
and preferred to die in his own way.
But before he died he filled his mouth with seal bones,
for that way he was sure to get plenty of meat
in the land of the dead.

Once during the winter famine
a woman gave birth to a child
while people lay round about her dying of hunger.
What could the baby want with life here on earth?
And how could it live when its mother herself
was dried up with starvation?
So she strangled it and let it freeze.
And later on ate it to keep alive—
Then a seal was caught and the famine was over,
so the mother survived.
But from that time on she was paralyzed
because she had eaten part of herself.

This is what can happen to people.
We have gone through it ourselves
And know what one may come to, so we do not judge them.
And how would anyone who has eaten his fill and is well
be able to understand the madness of hunger?

We only know that we all want so much to live!

Happy Thanksgiving [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

 

Dear Bleaders,

Happy Thanksgiving!  I'm sorry I've missed a few weeks posts.  I'd explain how sometimes even just a once a week blog can be too challenging to manage without some breaks, but I figure most of you have blogs of your own and know about such things as well as I.  In my case, and perhaps many other cases, maybe even the whole crate, I have things to say, I just find myself not saying them.  The mind, I am reminded, will go on forever, but the body sometimes goes and lies down.

Since it is the day before Thanksgiving I thought I'd share a poem I wrote about the day after Thanksgiving.  I posted it last year with some commentary, so I'll just give the poem here.  It is a somewhat light piece, having been commissioned by the New York Times.

Black Friday Reverie                                               

Thanksgiving was my birthday this year
and I find two holidays in one is not
efficient.  In fact, barely anything gets 
done; neither the bird nor the passage 
of the year is digested.  Luckily, Black 
Friday offers new pleasures while remaining
a stolen day; a day after.  There is shopping,
the streets, or the hilarious malls, but I will 
stay home with the leftovers and use

the time to rethink, turkey leg in hand like
a king.  Pumpkin pie, solid soup of
pummeled end-of-summer. Chestnuts and 
sausage chunks from stuffing plucked 
regally, like an ape leisurely denuding 
a blueberry bush of its fruit.  Maybe I mean 
Cleopatra’s teeth accepting red grapes from
a solicitous lunk of nubility.  Same image. 
The hand feeds, the mouth gets fed.  You

too?  Mother ate turkey in the maternity? 
Imagine, you not-born in late Novembers, 
if every few years a bird adjoined your 
candles. Think, too, who comes to eat 
that bird.  Those whose faces look like
yours; those nearly-yous and knew you 
whens; those have your same ill eases.  
How’s the sciatica?  Fine, how’s yours? 
The world is old.  Cleopatra might

have liked Black Friday.  It’s as engaging 
as a barge with a fast gold sofa.  She also 
might have liked aging. At least preferred 
it to the asp.  Yellow leaf patterned 
sunlight dazzles the wall with its dapple.
It’s all happening now, as I write. This is
journalism.  No part of the memoir 
is untrue.  Though I probably will
go to the mall, if everyone else goes.

----

I hope you have a wonderful holiday this year.  I hope you enjoy seeing the family or avoiding doing so.  Either, if done properly, will entail a measure of guilt -- but offset the bitter with some pie and get through it.  There will likely be at least three moments of joy -- keep your eyes open for them and make a note for later redemption.   May I also suggest reading or rereading the lovely post by Laura Orem (it is here on this site, just a few posts down, but I figured I'd link anyway) which includes a sweet killer of a poem by Eleanor Lerman, called "Starfish."  It gave me pause, and if you are anything like me, you could use some.

Well that's about it, but will you forgive the honey if I tell you I am thankful for you?  I am.  Thank you.

Eat well and if they drive you insane, just say "My poet told me not to listen to you" and then keep eating.

Love,

Jennifer

ps the turkey above is a real one, mounted on a board and for sale at the flea market under the Bridge on weekends in Brooklyn.  Gruesome aint it?  wink.  Also wrote a new post at Dear Fonzie.

The Best Line in the Book

I've just finished reading P. D. James's Talking About Detective Fiction (Knopf). The best sentence in the book is the one in which she defines the England in which she grew up, "an ordered society in which virtue  was regarded as normal, crime an aberration":
<<
As I was born in 1920, it was an England I knew, a cohesive world, overwhelmingly white and united by a common belief in a religious and moral code based on the Judeo-Christian inheritance -- even if this belief was not invariably reflected in practice -- and buttressed by social and political institutions  which, although they might be criticized, attracted general allegiance, and were accepted as necessary to the well-being of the state: the monarchy, the Empire, the Church, the criminal justice system, the City, the ancient universities.
>>
DL

Mark Bibbins On Where Poems Start & Backing Away from the Stinky Dead Beast aka Confessional Narrative [by Martha Silano]

I'm drawn to Mark Bibbins' work because he is not a confessional poet, and also because linear narratives do not seem to be exceedingly important to him. He is, of course, not the first contemporary poet to move away from confessional narrative, but what stands out about Bibbins' work (at least for me) are three things: his attention to and aptitude with sound/rhyme, his use of word play, and the unexpected forms his poems take. Here the author answers questions about his new book, The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon 2009).

MS: You state in your 2009 BAP contributor note that “Concerning the Land to the South of Our Neighbors to the North” gained its foothold when the final line of the poem (“Connecticut! We’re sawing you in half.”) popped into your head.  Is it common for you to get first (or last) lines in your head, triggers that coalesce into poems? Or do poems come to you elsewise?

MB: For me a poem starts with a phrase or a sentence that arrives, usually without warning or preparation, then the rest grows around that. Some wind up as titles, others beginnings or endings; most change their minds and move around as it’s coming together.  I certainly wouldn’t have sat down to write a poem “about” America, as my level of ambition is pretty low. I prefer to let something besides that direct a poem toward or around its subject(s).

MS: Speaking of “Concerning the Land . . .,” it’s a wonderful poem on the first go, but, at least for me,  it only gets better with each re-reading. Can you share a bit about the making of this poem? Did the Necco wafers and New Jersey’s queer shoulder come quickly to you, or did it take several throws to get each state just right? Also, how conscious were you that each state’s stanza is gazelle-ishly distinct? Did anyone read a rough draft, and if so were there any suggestions for revision?

MB: A handful of states came during a train ride through the Nutmeg State, and I picked up again after returning home a few days later—it happened quickly, and the conceit really hustled it along. I like hearing of odd events and foods and landmarks that places are “known for.” It’s preposterous and sweet, sometimes creepy. Also arbitrary, which is why I felt entitled to fabricate, and why it didn’t always matter what information was attached to which state (New Jersey and Ginsberg being, as they so often are, exceptions).

Nobody saw a draft of it. The wonderful Danielle Pafunda had offered to consider something of mine for La Petite Zine, which she was coediting, and I’m grateful for her consideration. I usually don’t show poems to anyone until I feel I’ve finished writing and revising them, which isn’t to imply that I haven’t been given good advice in the past. Nor do I mean to separate the processes of writing and revision.

MS: The Dance of No Hard Feelings is a delightful read, mainly because of its striking use of language (“ice javelins our throats”), its word play (we fly [fly] / will fly / should fly /will have flown / are flying apart”), and its gritty/urban walking-around-on-a-golf-course feel. There’s so much fire and ice in this book—boiling seas and firey angels; snow and ice and freezing. Is the world going to end in fire or in ice?

MB: Right now I suspect it will end in paperwork. That, or water—abundance and/or lack thereof. But the earth won't be ending. It will be editing.


MS: In these poems you seem to continually resist and give into narrative, into a speaker with a past, present and future. What’s your relationship with narrative poetry? Is the confessional poem, or the I poem in general, an old, hairy, dead beast to back away from as quickly as possible?

MB: A quick look at my bookshelves reveals very little narrative or confessional poetry, assuming I understand what you mean by those terms—is “The Day Lady Died” narrative poetry? an I poem? I like it when poems surprise me, and a lot of what falls into the above categories doesn’t do that, mainly because of the style in which they’re executed, not their content. As old as this debate is, it seems the dead beast isn’t going anywhere; that doesn’t mean I want to hover over it, sniffing it and describing the stink.

MS: Explain your use of brackets.

MB: Phantom opportunities.

MS: I enjoyed “Forcefield”—it’s hard to write about breaking up, and you do it well here ([no succor / no syntax / no sleep]. I have to be honest, though: I don’t think I would have enjoyed an entire book of these space-ful, language-y-conscious type poems. A few good ones of this ilk, okay, I’m fine with that. And yet, you seem comfy wearing many different aesthetic hats. Incidentally, are you and Ashbery tight? Which poets have influenced you the most?

MB: I wouldn't want a whole book of those either—thanks? To me they seem less about breaking up than enacting or embodying a kind of brokenness. I have no idea who or what's influenced me the most; there are so many people and things, and I don’t like to rank them, but I enjoy Gertrude Stein and My Bloody Valentine a great deal (whenever I’m asked that question, I can’t help naming bands). John Ashbery’s writing has amazed me for many years, and I’m happy to call him a friend.

MS: How did LIT magazine come about? Do you enjoy that part of being a poet? Who reads the slush pile? Does being an editor hinder or help your own writing?

MS: We hatched it when I was a student at The New School; the faculty and administration were very supportive in getting it going. We drummed up work for the first two issues mostly by solicitation, and my tenure as poetry editor officially ended before there was much of a slush pile. Current graduate students and the alumni who serve as editors now read the submissions, and I remain safely “at large.” My editorial experiences have mostly been helpful, although I edited fiction reviews at a magazine for a couple of years, which wasn’t.  
 

MS: Finally, the $10,000 question: How did you go from being a kid in love with words (correct me if I’m wrong on that) to Best American Poet? What’s the recipe for best-ness?

MB: You’re certainly not wrong, although a lot of the time I still feel like a kid (not always a great thing). Not following recipes has informed both my successes and failures. Sorry if that’s a $10 answer. Do you need change?

Ed note:  Read another interview with Mark Bibbins here.  Find a schedule of his upcoming readings here.

Overheard on the Elevator 11/24/09 8:30 a.m.

He (to nobody in particular):  They’re all a bunch of clowns.  Did you listen to the news?  I can’t believe what they do.  Crooks.  They’re crooks.  We should get rid of all of them, I tell you.  We’d be better off. Health care.  Sure.  That’ll be the day.  And how about that trial?  Right up the block.  Do you know what it’s going to be like? A  circus.  You think we’re late to work now? Wait till the trial begins. We’ll never get here.  Not that that would bother me.  Still, what were they thinking?  Clowns.  Or worse.  I would use stronger language if there were no ladies present.  And this is going to be some winter.   I don’t even read the paper anymore. It makes me sick.  Of course nobody reads anymore so I guess I’m no different.  But this craziness has to end.  We never should have gone in there in the first place.  If they asked me.

She (about to exit):  Why don’t you shut up for once?  You think you could do a better job?  Give it a try and then complain.

He (after door closes):  Geez. What’s her problem?  I’m just saying. . .

 

-- sdh