The Best American Poetry

State of the Franco [by Amy Lawless]

This week, New York Magazine published a list of actor-writer-film director-producer-painter James Franco’s favorite poems.

“It has been found again.
 What ? - Eternity.
 It is the sea fled away
 With the sun.”

         --Arthur Rimbaud

 I can remain silent no longer. What stirs my heart is what stirs my heart. While any attention to poetry is necessary and good and a long time a-comin', James Franco is making us look bad, my dear human race.  And poetry is not the virgin sitting hopeful in the corner.

It used to be that each man and woman did one thing apiece. Joseph was a carpenter. Left Eye does the rapping. Chili and T Boz do the singing. A guy named Mungo was a rapist. The world made sense. Each person's task was performed with love and affection or anger [Mungo]. But then there are the exceptions: Lynne Cheney, Leonardo Da Vinci. The Renaissance Man, The Renaissance woman. Sure, it can be argued that the female sex is itself Renaissance, able more easily to multi-task than those with dicks, but that's not my point.  

There are certain professions we can digest as fitting alongside another. "A poet who teaches" tilts the scales of many poetry magazine biographies. "Car mechanic-racer." "Actress-singer"  “Yoga instructor-vegan chef!”  These dualities make us nod and smile. We get it.  We live in a monotheistic society. One nation under God -- singular. Hell even the Christian God supposedly divides his duties into three so he won’t appear to be too overloaded with work.

But hey, wait, aren't our celebrities sorta/kinda also our national gods and demigods? Don't Americans look toward Jennifer Aniston still to find out whether it's OK and how to suck at romantic relationships? And don't we still check in with Britney on occasion to make sure how not to do our hair? Isn’t the whole point of Alec Baldwin’s brother Daniel to be fatter and in AA?  And so, another profession emerges "singer and mentally ill person" or "actor and philanderer." And what about those fascinating to watch because they are so grand and even talented: Lady Gaga, Oprah: the "singer-activist"  and "talk show host-humanitarian."

It’s exciting when someone steps and walks freely outside of their comfort zone and succeeds.  But James Franco, isn’t there a limit?  I don’t write this as a “hater” or “player hater” or to diminish Franco in any way.  I’m just shocked. They call him an endless hyphenate and you know what, America?  He’s making us look bad.

Here: look at me.  I’m a poet who teaches.  It makes sense.  This is what writers do.  Other writers do it. 

Here’s an entirely inappropriate and illogical analogy that will prove my point.  Look below at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

 

Well obviously, James Franco sates all of these needs.  James Franco invented this triangle.  Are you hungry?  Try some Franco!  Feeling unsafe?  Try Franco as a personal bodyguard.  Feel unloved?  Pop in Milk!  What a doll!  Don’t feel high off all that weed? Smoke this weed that Franco says he doesn’t smoke. Need some recognition? Oh – watch this film or read this story. Franco made them and they’ll make you feel like you’re part of something.  

Ha ha funny. I know that made no sense and was off topic, but I couldn’t resist. And besides, I’m a teacher who writes and there are a few things that I’m not terrible at like camel posture in yoga…..and making coffee….and ….uh…….

In May of this year I was on my way to Amherst, Massachusetts from New York for my little sister Carol’s college graduation. I took Amtrak. Amtrak is way overpriced, but it’s also convenient. I boarded the train and considered sitting next to one woman but she had a dog as I had planned on staring off into space uninterrupted for like four hours so I sat two seats back. Onto the train comes James Franco (not kidding) with his girlfriend. He lifts a smile and suddenly the woman with the dog moved back a seat [smiling like a fool as if she’d been foolish to consider that she and her dog should be afforded their own seat] and he and his girlfriend were now safely stationed within my purview until they got off in Springfield, Massachusetts.   

At some point Franco got out of his chair and headed to the loo with a copy of Robert Hass’ Human Wishes, a book I adore.  Here’s a photo of me in reaction to this happening:

<Thought bubble over my head.> Wow. What poem does James Franco like the best?  Should I have knocked on the bathroom door? My fist was clenched but I didn't move, so we may never know.  But just like a high school crush, I reread Human Wishes in the following weeks and decided without question that James Franco and I would obviously have the same favorite poem: Paschal Lamb.  RIGHT?  I even wrote a whole poem after the line “The vice president started to cry” to commemorate this feeling. Surely the concept of the sacrificial lamb would appeal to anyone in a position of societal authority. 2 cute 4 words. 

We poets are not desperate people who should just be thankful that poetry or a few poems are given just an itsy bitsy weensy bit of attention.  American Poetry is not the shy virgin in the corner.  And yet…

[This] one can’t help looking up some poems that James Franco recommends. He’s so cute.  He’s flipping it. Don’t you see, America?  He isn’t doing the expected thing that young male writers are doing.  His young American writer correlate is sitting on a filthy couch in Williamsburg high off his ass in disbelief that he’s not famous already.  His correlate, America, has had his stories rejected from magazines that Esquire readers have never even heard of.  His correlate, America, has paid some ridiculous amount of money on an MFA.   His correlate, America, is broke and disenfranchised.  And no, his correlate isn’t as cute. 

But that’s not important.  Here’s what’s important. Imagine you and I are sitting on barstools beside one another with Franco’s picks in front of us.  Are these the new poems that you’re reading right now?  No. These  are the safe picks.  Are they on the cutting edge of what so many writers are doing now? Of course not.  As a writer, aren't you just as informed by the poems of your peers and friends?  It is wonderful that Franco chose three O’Hara poems.  And wonderful for many reasons, the least of which is this quote when considered in parallel to the fact that Kerouac and Ginsberg (who Franco just played in a movie) were friends:

Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.
O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac.

But what do I know? 

I acknowledge that I am giving James Franco an amount of credit as a part of the conversation of American letters. People used to shit on Bono for his ceaseless media whoring, but you know what? AIDS in Africa is a problem and the guy was using his authority for good.  And who am I to shit on Franco for being a part of the conversation?  Plus, like I said a few times already, he’s eternally cute. 

Addendum:

I'm in the woods far away from New York Magazine.  Far away from the movie theater and the magazine rack. To my left are four writers  tinker words, sip coffee.  I like this kind of influence better.

This Just In . . . David Lehman Kicks Off the Jewish Manuscript Project

Ken Gordon, Editor of JBooks, posts this letter on the JBooks website: 

September 23, 2010

Dear Readers,

This issue, the multifaceted David Lehman kicks off our new Jewish Manuscript Project--in which we peek at the creative process of our best authors--by walking us through the various stages of his "Poem in the Prophetic Mode." Observe closely as it evolves from a scratched out rough draft, to a word-processed revision, to final publication in The Atlantic.

Lehman has long been a poet unafraid to bring readers his unfiltered stuff. In The Daily Mirror, he published two year's worth of spontaneous daily verse. To get even closer to his process, watch his real-time QuickMuse improvisations, which found their way into his latest published volume, Yeshiva Boys. Book trailer here.

You might also be interested the Musical Lehman. He is something of an authority on Jewish-American songwriters: so much so that he wrote a Jewish Encounters book on the topic. Here's a list of Lehman's top-ten Jewish-American standards, for those of you who still care about standards...

Perhaps you'd like to meet David Lehman, the editor. As the curator of the Best American Poetry Series, he has made himself into one of the more influential people in the poetry world.

I hope you've enjoyed our brief introduction to this tireless poet, prose writer, and editor. In the New Year, let's all strive to be more Lehmanesque in our literary lives.

Happy reading,

Ken Gordon

Editor, JBooks.com

-- sdh

Live from the New School: The Best American Poetry 2010, Elaine Equi, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Amy Glynn Greacen

Listen to Thomas Sayers Ellis and Lynn Emanuel here.

-- sdh

Even the Turtle Sometimes Sunbathes [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Darling Bleaders,

This hardbacked landfish was taking in the rays at Prospect Park, proving that even those with a shell and a reason to hide don't always do it.

And who doesn't have a reason to hide? After all, a book is hidebound and will join you in your nook so you can go all solitary without having to hear your head's regular din of mad opinion.

This Sunday was packed with the public book and bookish and the arts of the hood. We Atlantic Anticked. Stumped for the kid's school. Went to an excellent talk by Douglas Rushkoff at the Dumbo Arts Festival. You should check out his new book Program or Be Programed. Look also at how the book is being made and sold. Books were such turtles when I first met them, always pretty much the same box and the same sell. Now they are a lot of animals and you can no longer know them by their tortoiseshell.

Tonight, in class, we are going to talk about Nietzsche, The Gay Science. I more often assign Human All Too Human, but was moved to this one this time by the rest of the reading list's sense of memory and history. Consider this:

Every great human being exerts a retroactive force: for his sake all of history is placed in the balance again, and a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their hiding places--into his sunshine. There is no way of telling what may yet become part of history. Perhaps the past is still essentially undiscovered! So many retroactive forces are still needed!

I don't exactly care about the "great human" bing thing. The claim works fine if you start it with the notion that Everything and Everyone exerts a retroactive force. By who they are to everyone else, and by their experience of the world, everyone changes the world (by influence and in interpretation). The particular way they are makes everything that has come before have a slightly new meaning: A million odd things in history were in a sense leading up to you. That is their new meaning, a meaning due to you. You come along and make a mint selling chewable gums and some other historical ruminant entrepreneur, freshening breath for a price, forgotten these two thousand years, but real, becomes perforce your forerunner. You got functions you don't know about, and even your funk has functions.

There are reasons this matters, to do with why you matter, and others, too, not least that such meditations take one's mind off one's money and one's money off one's mind. (I wanna be billionaire so frikken bad.)

I hope you are all doing well or at least not giving up entirely. Back to school can be a brute, even from a distance. Take deep breaths, forge ahead with resolution. If the days are overwhelming and your report all a muddle of fatigue, consider hoping for one very lovely moment in any day and if you get it, gilt a frame around it, get one of those museum wall lights and set your chair before it, find a cat to pet, click its pause like a remote control and idle away an evening time-slot, perhaps between Jeopardy and primetime. Don't kill yourself and I shall return to encourage you again.

Love,

Jennifer

Live from the New School: The Best American Poetry 2010, Thomas Sayers Ellis and Lynn Emanuel

Listen to Mark Bibbins and Peter Davis here.

--sdh

Quote of the Day II

Ken Tucker's review of "Howl" and Jon Hamm's appearance on Craig Ferguson remind me of this passage from Wislawa Szymborska's 1996 Nobel lecture:

It's not accidental that film biographies of great scientists and artists are produced in droves.  The more ambitious directors seek to reproduce convincingly the creative process that led to important scientific discoveries or the emergence of a masterpiece . . . Films about painters can be spectacular, as they go about recreating every stage of a famous painting's evolution, from the first penciled line to the final brush-stroke. Music swells in films about composers: the first bars of the melody that rings in the musician's ears finally emerge as a mature work in symphonic form. Of course this is all quite naive and doesn't explain the strange mental state popularly known as inspiration, but at least there's something to look at and listen to.

But poets are the worst. Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic. Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines only to cross out one of them fifteen minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens ... Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?

-- sdh

Quote of the Day

“When you make movies about poetry, generally they backup wheelbarrows full of money for you."

'Mad Men' star Jon Hamm, on making "Howl."  (the Craig Ferguson show, 9/23/2010) 

-- sdh

Live from the New School: The Best American Poetry 2010, Mark Bibbins and Peter Davis

Listen to Amy Gerstler and Sandra Beasley here.

Mad Men Last Night (Spoiler Alert)

I rooted for the Jets to good effect
though I had to switch channels
when the score was 14-0
to learn that Don would tell
his secret to Fay after G-men
visit Betty on a routine security
check and the week's anxiety
is diminished only temporarily
when the two tickets for the
Beatles at Shea Stadium
on 15 August 1965
make him a hero again to
daughter Sally, who is just
like Don in crucial ways, and
meanwhile Joan (or her fictitious
daughter) has an abortion
and Roger loses the Lucky
account and Pete has to
give up the aviation account
and Pryce's girlfriend is
a black Playboy bunny and (listen
do you want to know a secret)
his father is a monstrous brute
so I found out only later that
the Jets won the Mets beat
the Phillies and the Yanks smote
the Red Sox at the last possible
moment, proving God exists
-- DL

"Friends in Hell" [by John Tranter]

(After Baudelaire)

When Hemingway finally dropped off the twig,
his carcass wrecked by drink and other problems,
he stepped into the boat and flipped Charon a tip
and sat in the back with a flask of Cuban rum.

Exposing their breasts and their naked flanks
would-be actresses twisted and writhed, still
hopeful of a role, apart from the casting couch,
and moans and whimpers followed them.

Kissinger, in the flickering dark, was demanding
the fame due to him; Nixon buttonholed the dead,
groaning on the shore, pointing out to them
the journalists who had hunted him from office.

Pale with grief, Marilyn, dazed and skeletal,
clung to her treacherous President, once her lover,
and begged of him a final, parting smile
as kind and sweet as his initial promises.

Stein – erect, dressed in black – stood
like a statue at the helm, her eyes fixed on
the bow cutting the black tide, but Hemingway
stared at the wake disappearing into the dark.

-- John Tranter

On Being a Late Bloomer by Tess Callahan

Just came across this inspiring post by friend and novelist Tess Callahan. About finding an early draft of April & Oliver, her wonderful novel that was published last year, she writes: "I am not exaggerating when I tell you that it was awful – not because it did not have potential, but because it was unfinished, doughy in the center, the third draft of a work that needed two more . . . " Read the full post here.

-- sdh

Live from the New School: The Best American Poetry 2010, Amy Gerstler, Sandra Beasley.

Listen to David Lehman's introduction here.

-- sdh

Monday @ KGB: Nicole Cooley & Philip Schultz

Join us for a spectacular night of poetry! The prolific New York poet (by way of New Orleans) Nicole Cooley will read with Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Schultz. 

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans. In 2010, she will publish two books of poetry, Breach, to be published by LSU Press in April 2010, which focuses on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and Milk Dress, co-winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award, to appear with Alice James Books in November. She has published two other books of poems and a novel. She has been awarded the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a "Discovery"/Nation Award, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. She directs the new MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College-City University of New York where she is a professor of English. 

Philip Schultz is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Failure as well as the National Book Award nominee Like Wings. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he is also the founder of the Writers Studio in New York.

The Monday night Poetry reading series at KGB is hosted by Laura Cronk, Megin Jimenez & Michael Quattrone, and was founded by David Lehman and Star Black. 

Readings begin at 7:30 pm. Admission is FREE

For the complete season line-up, click here.

KGB Bar ● 85 East 4th Street ● New York, NY 10003 ● Phone: 212-505-3360 ● KgbBar.com 

How Rich (A Visit to Mr. Howard)

Yesterday I had the chance to visit with Richard Howard, guest editor of The Best American Poetry 1995 and frequent contributor to our pages (left, pictured during the launch reading for the 2008 edition of the anthology; the picture on the right below is from last year's launch). I'm no stranger to apartment 5X, but every time I come I find something new and delightful on the walls or shelves, or maybe it was there all along and only now am I noticing it. Yesterday a beautiful painting by Marsha Recknagel caught my eye and I admired a set of paintings by Howie Michaels arranged vertically on the two sides of the portal separating the dining and sleeping areas of the spacious loft apartment. Richard has framed two little water colors that I made for him and he grinned from ear to ear directing me to them.

Richard is finishing a sequence of poems situated in the Park School, the experimental school in Cleveland where he was educated. The book will be called Progressive Education. The last poem in the sequence will bear the title "Farewell to the Fifth Grade," I love that title. The poem that Richard recited for me yesterday is his most recent: "E Pluribus Unum." It is in the form of a group poem -- written collaboratively by the class's thirteen precocious students -- and is dedicated to their teacher, who has the unlikely name of Miss Husband. "We wondered what her name would be if she got married," Richard remarked. The memory gave him pleasure.

The poem is splendid and will appear soon in Parnassus magazine. Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, the poet reminds us, was originally entitled Alice 's Adventures Underground. The poem's climax occurs when the author of the Alice books conjectures that the works were "really about malice."

With his customary enthusiasm, Richard is teaching a course -- at Columbia's School of the Arts -- that pairs the Alice books with J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan as, respectively, the major Victorian and major Edwardian childhood fantasies. "Peter Pan's enemy is Huck Finn, whose attitude toward life is not refusing to grow up," Richard says. A course with Richard on such and related fictions (L.Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz, for instance): I wonder if the Columbia kids realize how lucky they are.

And the next time I teach Graham Greene's "Under the Garden," a particular favorite of mine, I will remember to pair it with the Alice books, and I'll remember that the idea occurred to me while I was visiting Richard on an exceptionally hot Saturday afternoon in September. -- DL

Bob Bowen Memorial Concert-Monday, September 27

Earlier this month we shared with you the sad news of Bob Bowen's death.  We've been in touch with Amy Lemmon, who was married to Bob and who is the mother to their children Stella and Bobby.  Bob's friends and colleagues will hold a concert in his memory tomorrow night, 5:30 - 10:00 pm at the Irondale Theater 85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn NY.  We hope to see you there.
A couple of weeks ago our friend Jerry Williams sent along this photo of Bob (right, on bass), rehearsing with Jerry (vocals) and Paul Lunker (guitar) for an AWP event.  What a treat that must have been!  -- sdh

Live from New York, The Best American Poetry 2010.

Check back daily for a new video of the Best American Poetry 2010 launch reading at the New School. Filmed on September 23, 2010.

-- sdh

Reb Livingston Presents a Poem by Bruce Covey

The Difference Between Toggle Bolts & Molly Screws

It's like the atlantic around here—jittery &
Full of waves, a desperate need for a horizontal
& vertical juxtaposition, a corner, a vantage point
A start. And if that weren't enough, this device

I found to fasten, without a clear understanding
Of what in the hell needs fastening. Except,
I do this: press gently through your center
Nestling, mixing into your microcosmic control,

Until its wings finally cross the cusp, detach,
Unfold again on the opposite side, drawing me
As close to you as relative density might allow,
Clinging from the rear of your ribcage

And imprinting according to this grid:
Every minus to crease a plus, every plus
To upend a many a minus. There's a message
Nestled in between us like a traffic signal

Composed of half a dozen buttons & a rook:
"Declining to hear the city's solving tools,
They, in a methodical approach to the construction
Of peculiar fields & frames, dusting full force, yield

Two outcomes, Phoenix on the left, trajectory
From concept to completion on the other,
Redirected to circles, one in my very backyard,
The other spread along every sort of continent."

The process of the phonologically sequenced paper,
Or your physical form, a thirdness, where order
The first, trace to follow up your spine & amidst
Your hair an intended & immediate kiss

Second & nonrepresentative because
The moment this is, it is, and then one more

* * *

Bruce Covey is the author of Glass Is Really a Liquid (No Tell Books, 2010) and Elapsing Speedway Organism (No Tell Books, 2006).  No Tell Motel first published this poem in September 2007.  Bruce wrote, "I believe these poems are reaching, attempting to celebrate the mysterious & magnificent something that's always beyond one's extended & stretching fingers. The space between what's "true" & what might have been. . . "The Different Between Toggle Bolts and Molly Screws" came from a challenge to write a poem centered around a piece of hardware."

Bloof Books Tour: Philadelphia, City of Poetry <3 (Shanna Compton)

We're in the home stretch for the book tour--with zero speeding tickets, since that sheriff in OH let us off with a warning. For the last three nights I've slept in my own bed, but hustled to evening events in Philly, Ewing, NYC. Our approach from Baltimore to Philly marked a sort of homecoming for me, even though I don't actually live there, but 45 minutes away. These folks always make me feel at home.

[Cont'd from previous post:] Baltimore was less eventful than DC, and we can just leave it at that. I'm behind on these reports as it is! On to Philly, where Debrah Morkun has been hosting the New Philadelphia Poets series for the past three years. Philly has a lively and friendly poetry scene--with tons of enviable energy!--so be sure to browse the links in the sidebar there at NPP to meet some of the poets.

The 2-hour drive was easy that day--for me and Pete, anyway. (Jen had to take a bus down from NYC, which reportedly smelled.) So, fresher than usual, we hung out at Fergie's Pub upstairs with CAConrad, Ryan Eckes, Nicole Steinberg (newly transplanted), Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz and Shappy (also newly transplanted), and other friends, then read our poems along with Nicholas A. DeBoer (pictured left).

After the reading, we talked Nicholas into an interview, asking more about his own work and the activities of his press (with J. Townsend), con/crescent. Turns out Nicholas is also recently relocated to Philly; hmm, I'm sensing a trend! Here's what we learned:

'Howl' and James Franco: A brief review

Newsweek has already hailed Howl as "a great film," which is exactly what it is not. Now, a great performance -- that's more like it. James Franco (above, right) captures the Allen Ginsberg we hear in our heads and know in our bones. The actor lowers or raises his diaphragm and pitch to achieve Ginsberg's soul-vibrating chant-recitations of the movie's title poem. Franco never once relies on his own crinkly-eyed smile to charm or wink at his audience. Instead, he looks at the camera with Ginsberg's cock-eyed, moist deadpan, or reproduces the Elated Allen Grin -- an ear-to-ear face-splitter that can vanish in an instant.

Howl is a sentimental disappointment whenever Franco isn't front-and-center. Filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman can justify the animation sequences by Eric Drooker by saying that Ginsberg himself collaborated with Drooker, but that doesn't make the cartoon sequences any less maudlin.

As for the restaging of the Howl obscenity trial, Jon Hamm and David Strathairn give good, understated performances in search of dramatic reinforcement: They're reduced to reciting court transcript, staged with all the immobility of a grade-school pageant.

No, at bottom, Howl will survive most usefully when some adroit techno-lit-phile inevitably recuts the film as a YouTube video consisting solely of Franco's recitation of "Howl." Maybe with a split-screen of Ginsberg own readings. "Great YouTube video" doesn't have the same ring as "great film" (yet). But it's truer to the spirit of both Ginsberg's great poem and Franco's great homage to it.

--Ken Tucker

"Fare Thee Well...Wait, Did I Get To Mention UFOs?" - John Findura

So here it is, the last day of my week as guest blogger. I’d like to think that I have somehow, in some small way, made the world a better place. Or at the very least, that I haven’t embarrassed my very gracious hosts, Stacey Harwood and David Lehman, who I thank very, very much for giving me the opportunity to talk about weird things.

I was nervous at first that I wouldn’t have enough to write about, but I now realize that I have greatly underestimated my vast stores of useless knowledge and could have continued writing for months on end. Some of the things that I didn’t get around to:

 

The Gaslight Anthem: What a great band. They’re from New Jersey and feel to me like a cross between Springsteen and Social Distortion, but better. That’s right, I said “better.” I had the chance to see them live and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. Make sure you check them out (I recommend their 2^nd album, The ’59 Sound).

 

Hunting for Bigfoot: We didn’t want to “hunt” him, just find him. My friend Steve called me in the middle of the night once and talked to me for 2 hours about this great plan he had to head out to Washington State and find the elusive Sasquatch. The next day I was greatly dismayed to learn that he had a 105° fever and had been hallucinating the night before. He remembered none of the conversation and, in fact, possessed none of the Bigfoot hunting tools we required.