The Best American Poetry

Brian Clements Presents a Poem by Jack Myers

Arf

Dogs give commands to me in one syllable,
the same one again and again.
I speak back in polysyllabics
above my one great bark.

It's like my dreams falling all night
in technicolor splendor. I can't remember what.
When I open my eyes and look back
I'm just grateful I fit my body through
this space as big as a bark.

And the conversations I have with myself each day...
They're like those silver balls on poles
across which gags of burnt electricity arc.
And I'm laid out below, inert,
until my head smokes and I stagger off
with a grunt-thought, cough-out, my smashed send-off.

The same thing happened to my friend Larry
who claims he never woke up at birth.
So for $45 the holistic doctor placed a
bouillon cube on his forehead and a lump
of cheese over his heart, and Larry woke up
and coughed and coughed in dog language
and we knew to bring him water. It was a miracle!
Only we're not sure what.

I imagine that's why we have the public flasher
who is able to prepare us
for the right moment on some random day
when he'll drop the blinding light of his body
down in front of us: "Bark!"
He makes us feel exact.

My intuition tells me yes
even a stone can bark.
Only the sound it makes is millions of years long
and I'm standing in the silence and dark
between its two great phonemes of need,
going to sleep, waking up, going to sleep.

In last week’s post I mentioned Jack Myers, a greatly underappreciated poet who published over a dozen books and taught for many years at SMU and in the Vermont College MFA program. Jack passed away about a year ago. He was one of the first poets, to my mind, who mastered the post-confessional/conversational/serious-by-way-of-humor mode that many other poets subsequently have become much more famous than Jack for writing. This poem is from Jack’s National Poetry Series-winning book As Long as You’re Happy (Graywolf, 1986). Seamus Heaney, in selecting the book, called Jack’s poems “stylish in their pretence of being without style, wise in their pretence of just fooling around”; exactly so.

Magritte (& Van der Weyden?)

For fifteen points, compare Rene Magritte's 1952 painting "Personal Values" (shown here) with Roger Van der Weyden's fifteenth-century Annunciation.

You can cheat by visiting this site and see what Janet Stiles Tyson wrote on this very question in 2005.

-- DL

Poetry in the dystopia [Katy Evans-Bush]

Photograph by David Secombe, via Esoteric London

Hello, Best American Poetry World! I guest-blogged here a couple of years ago and am delighted to be asked back.

Last time I spent my week developing a little theme about a particular strain of "formalist" (though we don't really call it that here) poetry in England that emanates, if you trace it back, from the old vaudeville-style (for want of a better comparison) music hall tradition. That was fun, and included some YouTube work, and  amusing photos.

This time I was thinking about micro-reviews of some UK poets, and I still plan to do that; but I see that Todd Swift has pipped me to the post with an excellently comprehensive roundup of some current poets over here. So I'm going to go straight in on an up note, spreading cheer around me like a veritable Jonny Appleseed.

The big news in the UK right now is a cataclysmic government spending review, announced last Wednesday, which stripmines the UK's public purse of over 20% - the biggest cuts since 1918. That's the umbrella figure; the details are just too horrifying to go into, whether or not you agree that radical action was necessary to deal with the (banker-induced) deficit. Even PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the gigantic corporate consultancy firm, predicts a possible million jobs lost. (And England is smaller than New England.) So it's very scary, and that's before you talk about the services that will be cut. But I'm not here to talk politics. What I want to do - or have to do, really - is to ruminate on how, in a daily, practical way, poetry (and one's almost mystical belief in its power) will coalesce in this brave new world.

Katy Evans-Bush Guest Blogger October 24-30

This week we welcome back Katy Evans-Bush as our guest blogger.  Katy s the author of Me and the Dead (Salt, 2008) and a pamphlet, Oscar & Henry (Rack Press, 2010), which traces the interwoven stories of Oscar Wilde and Henry James, with a nod to the later Modernists. Her next collection, Egg Printing Explained, is due out from Salt in spring 2011. She is the new editor of the online literary magazine Horizon Review, writes the blog Baroque in Hackney, and tutors for the Poetry School in London. 

Welcome back, Katy.

In other news . . . 

Congratulations, David, on winning the ASCAP Deems Taylor award for A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs. Details here. 

This Just In . . . David Lehman, take a bow!

Congratulations go out to David Lehman for being chosen as a winner of the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers Deems Taylor Award for A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Nextbook/Schocken). ASCAP presents the Deems Taylor Awards annually to celebrate excellence in music writing by American authors and journalists.  

ASCAP established the Awards in 1967 to honor the distinguished career of composer/critic/commentator Deems Taylor, who died in 1966.  The list of award recipients includes some of our most accomplished writers.  A Fine Romance will be honored at a ceremony on December 9th, 2010.  Congratulations, David! You deserve it! 

And speaking of A Fine Romance:  If you're in Boston, Mass on Saturday, November 6, 2010, you can join David Lehman fresh from sold-out performances in New York and London, as he leads a musical tour through the lives of legendary Jewish songwriters and composers.  Drawing from Lehman's book A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, The Boston Musical Theater, directed by Charlotte Kaufman, will perform the classic songs of Irving Berlin, the Gershwin brothers, Rodgers and Hart, Harold Arlen and others who taught Broadway to sing and Hollywood to dance. The performers include vocalists Mara Bonde, David Ripley, Tynan Davis, and Christopher King accompanied by Keala Kaumaheiwa on bass, Bertram Lehmann on drums, and music arranger Dan Loschen on piano

The historic Paramount Theater Main Stage
559 Washington St.
Boston, MA, 02111(617) 824-8000 

8:00 PM

TKTS on sale now: $45 - $65 - $180. 

Find out more about the venue here. 

-- sdh

Two Takes on Torah - Rachel Barenblat

Now the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at his tent’s front door
In the heat of the day. He looked up, and saw three men near him that were not there before.
When he saw them, he ran from the door of his tent to greet them, and he bowed to the ground.
He said, "My lords, pray, if I’ve found favor with you, do not pass by this servant you’ve found.
Pray let water be fetched, just a little, then wash your feet and recline under the tree;
Let me fetch you a morsel of bread to refresh your hearts, then go on with your journey..."

Those are the first few lines of this week's Torah portion, Vayera (Genesis 18), rendered in verse by Seth Brown, who's written a version (not a translation, but a rendering) of the entire Five Books of Moses in rhyming heptameter.

His rendering is called From God to Verse, and it's either chutzpahdik, impressive, or completely insane. Seth isn't a religious guy, but at this point I suspect he knows the Torah better than any of the rest of my secular friends. (He'd have to, in order to do this kind of work.)

I'll admit it, I love this project for its sheer nuttiness. And because I think it's a respectful yet quirky recasting of the Torah text. But I also love it because it feels to me like a sign of the tremendous richness of scripture.

My next book (due in early 2011) will be a collection of Torah poems, many of which appeared in early draft form at Velveteen Rabbi. (You can find them linked here.) My poems and Seth's have very little in common, stylistically, but they arise out of the exact same material. And that fascinates me.

It's a little bit like the way that Shakespeare's plays have sparked renderings as diverse as Kiss Me, Kate and Ten Things I Hate About You. It's not just that these foundational texts are deep, though they are; I think it's also that they're beloved, and have been so deeply-loved for so long. We can't help wanting to respond to them with our own creativity, our own transformative works which take them in new directions.

Ultimately I suspect that our transformative works say as much about us as they do about the sources from which they ostensibly spring. Seth writes Torah poems which are witty and literary and a little bit over-the-top because he is all of those things. (I'll leave it to readers and reviewers to figure out how to describe my Torah poems when that collection comes out.) And on that note: shabbat shalom, dear Best American Poetry readers!

Anthologies and Anecdotes - David Lehman and Bill Henderson join Julie Sheehan

(Left to right) Bill Henderson, Julie Sheehan, and David Lehman

To a packed house of aspiring writers and members of the Stonybrook MFA program community in Southampton, David Lehman and Bill Henderson shared stories about their experiences as creators of successful anthologies. Henderson has been at the helm of the Pushcart Prize annual for 35 years, while Lehman began the Best American Poetry series in 22 years ago. Poet Julie Sheehan, who teaches in the Stonybrook MFA program, moderated the discussion.  Although the anthologies differ in many particulars, Lehman and Henderson agree that their success is due in large measure to the vitality of the work that is featured in each year's volume.  "The writing keeps getting better and better," said Henderson, who relies on nominations made by the editors of little magazines and small book presses. For the Pushcart volume, Henderson picks the prose, while a changing roster of poets picks the poetry. Henderson and Lehman agreed that among the more satisfying features  of their work is the discovery of work by writers they haven't heard of, in publications they've never before seen. "That is a happy moment," Lehman said. The audience asked questions about subjects ranging from the fate of high literature in the Internet era to the process of securing permissions for an anthology, Favorite Q & A of the night:  "What do you say to the person who corners you at a party and asks, 'why isn't my poetry in your book this year?'" Henderson's answer: "Because you're a lousy poet." 
David Lehman with poets Susan Baran (center) and Marc Cohen.

-- sdh

LeBron James Poetry Contest [by Emma Trelles]

 
"He does it better with grace..." : Bill Shakespeare weighs in on LeBron James

At first, there was a little hometown poetry contest, sponsored by the Miami Herald and WLRN. Just a bit of wordplay to salute LeBron's arrival to the Miami Heat. Six lines, any style, no fees and no limits to how often aspiring or practiced scribes could enter. Quicker than a Hardaway crossover, NBC, USA Today, The Plain Dealer  (Ohio's largest newspaper), The Basketball Jones, and even The New Yorker   - in next week's Talk of the Town -  are reporting on the challenge. Here are the rules:

-The poem must commemorate the arrival of LeBron James to Miami.
-The poem can utilize any form but cannot exceed six lines (LeBron’s jersey is No. 6).
-No limit to the number of poems you can submit.
-The entry must be received by Friday, October 22 at 6 p.m.

Born in the brain of Dan Grech, a radio news director and producer at WLRN, the contest has received more than 500 entries since lunchtime today, and they keep coming in from all over the country. Six finalists will be selected by P. Scott Cunningham, a poet and director of the O' Miami poetry festival, which will debut next April and hopes to make poetry as ubiquitous in South Florida as coconut palms and gridlock.

"I'm very much into the idea of occasional and doggerel poetry," Cunningham told me via email. "I actually have a poem about Heat Center Zydrunas Ilgauskas published in a journal, in addition to an interview about why writing poems about basketball is legit.    

Here's a pseudo-cento Cunningham penned in under a minute:

They shall be telling this with a sigh  

somewhere ages and ages hence 

two roads diverged on ESPN 

and Lebron took the one more traveled by — 

rush hour on the 826.

 

Think you can do better? Enter here.

Remember, the deadline is Oct. 22, 6 p.m.

The winner will receive two Heat tickets and the chance to read the winning poem at the finale of  O'Miami: A Contemporary Poetry Festival, held at the New World Symphony Campus on Miami Beach.

(photo: Robert Frost, objecting and aghast) 

Sitting in the darkness waiting for something to burst - Rachel Barenblat

In my post about Dave Bonta's poems a few days ago I mentioned Qarrtsiluni, the literary journal which Bonta co-edits (with Beth Adams of The Cassandra Pages.)  The journal's name comes from an Iñupiaq word which means "sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst." I think Qarrtsiluni is one of the best journals on the internet, not only because it makes good use of the unique opportunities afforded by its medium (daily posts, podcasts of every poem, moving images) but also because the writing is so top-notch. (Full disclosure: I guest-edited the Opening in the Body issue with Teju Cole a few years ago, which was a joy.)

One of Qarrtsiluni's recent issues was an issue dedicated to chapbook contest finalists, 2010 -- poems lifted out of the manuscripts which were finalists in the magazine's second annual chapbook contest. The winning chapbook this year is Watermark by Clayton T. Michaels, which is available both in print and in electronic versions, and it's excellent. (The winner of the first chapbook context, Pamela Johnson Parker's A Walk Through the Memory Palace, was also terrific.)

But the poems in the contest finalists issue give a sense for how difficult it must have been to choose Michaels' manuscript, because it was in pretty remarkable company. One of my favorite poems in the issue is Feeding the invisible cat by Janet McMann:

Pink Sky Tonight and Emily Dickinson [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

 

Dearest Bleaders,

How are you? Like most bloggers or writers of anything but letters, I don't know who's reading me, but I sort of pretend I do, starting from anyone who has ever written a comment or told me they read these posts, and radiating out into the social known and unknown, in pulses of possibility. Which is to say that when I ask How you are, I am somehow actually asking, and I hope you are well.

I'm the usual, which is a brutal combination of very well and awful, of which I hear there is a lot going around. Frankly, I hope you are doing better, but I'm not too bad, possibly improving.

What if you struggle and it isn't easy and it hasn't been? It seems so strange to choose to hide the strain, but it isn't exactly a choice. Tonight in my Poets and Philosophy class we are going to talk about Emily Dickinson for two and a half hours and I am always delighted to do so. She makes me something, lifts my something. Happy and spirits.

I'm looking forward to talking about the one that starts "I measure every grief I meet," as I've been thinking about it a lot lately. First though, let's look at this odd little thing:

A wounded deer leaps highest,

I've heard the hunter tell;

'Tis but the ecstasy of death,

And then the brake is still.

 

The smitten rock that gushes,
The trampled steel that springs:
A cheek is always redder
Just where the hectic stings!

Mirth is mail of anguish,
In which its cautious arm
Lest anybody spy the blood
And, "you're hurt" exclaim

I say it's odd because I'm not crazy about the middle stanza and can't help but flinch when the poem's final rhythm hinges on the rhyming of "cautious arm" with "hurt exclaim." But I like "mirth is a mail of anguish" very much.

Here's her deeper poem on the hiding and knowing of pain and its consolations.

I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled--
Some thousands--on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,--
Death is but one and comes but once
And only nails the eyes.

There's grief of want, and grief of cold,--
A sort they call 'despair,'
There's banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.

And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross
Of those that stand alone
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.

One of the million things I cherish about this poem is the "piercing comfort it affords" to try to know and bear, for a moment, in contemplation, the burdens of others, and to thereby be less alone, suffering, and less absorbed by one's own suffering. "There's grief of want and grief of cold" and "a sort they call despair," and there's being separate from what your heart knows as home, right there in front of you but no longer yours -- "banishment from native eyes in sight of native air."

I love too that those "that stand alone" though they yet stand alone, are not singular, but are many, and therefor are not alone. The crackle of being alone in such good company is why this poem starts little brushfires on the red, Martian deserts of the heart.

To read more interviews between the voices in my head in the museum of my muse, see here.

To look at my books, see these.

To see a Radio Freethinker write-up of that LA conference on Secular Humanism I took part in a few weeks ago, see there.

I had a great time at the New School reading last night, thanks to everyone who showed up. It was really great to see so many friends. Thanks to David Lehman for the invitation and the great job moderating.

Well friends, bleaders, poets, and other travelers in the realms of gold, you know what I am going to say. Which is bear up! Courage. I speak especially to those standing alone in impossible inner situations, feeling the cool autumn air press down from outer space and trying not to name the chill too often, or too well. The advice is small and simple. Don't fall in the well. It is not your fault and you are doing fine. Rake a leaf a day and call it lucky.

Don't kill yourself and I shall return to encourage you again.

Love, 

Jennifer

ps. Here's me against tonight's pink sky, taken by John, just for you.

Music for fall - Rachel Barenblat

As soon as autumn weather settles in, I find myself tuning my iPod in the car to Värttinä. There's something about their tight (and sometimes dissonant) harmonies and their often-complex rhythms (who else writes songs in 15/8 time?) which calls to me during the cold months. Probably my favorite of their songs at this time of year is "Tuulen Tunto," which is in my favorite meter of all (6/8, which rolls like the perpetual-motion machine of the ocean) and which is melancholy and sweet.

Dave Bonta's utilitarian odes - Rachel Barenblat

Dave Bonta is prolix. He posts a lot of poems to his blog, Via Negativa. (Here's one from this week: October dusk.) He also podcasts. And he's author of the recently-published Odes to Tools (Phoenicia Publishing, 2010), a chapbook of poems which speak to, and for, the contents of his workshop. Here's one of those odes:

Ode to a Socket Wrench

Better than all power tools
is the socket wrench:

its accommodating nature
its chrome-plated steel
its handling of torque.

It can make a complete revolution
from the smallest arc

& as if time could turn
in either direction
with the click of a lever

the past screwed down
the future loose

a spring-loaded finger
clicks against
the gearwheel’s teeth.

Don Draper Fan Club Rankings [by Jane Mahlzeit]

Jane Mahlzeit of Duke University has released the unofficial tally of Don Draper Fan Club members ranking the ladies with whom Don has enjoyed conjugal relations in descending order of fugworthiness:

Megan
Rachel Menkin the Jewish heiress (Bloomingdale's?)
Suzanne Farrell (the schoolteacher not the dancer)
Dr. Miller
Betty (January Jones)
the bohemian painter who becomes a smack addict
the blonde rich girl in the back of the cab
the prostitute who knew what he wanted
the prostitute who cost $30 when Lane Pryce and Don were alone at Xmas
the comedian's wife
the secretary who quit

Note: Joan, Peggy, and Lois are not eligible as neither one of them has slept with DD (yet). 

GREIL MARCUS AND DYLAN (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

What is this gold?

This is Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus Writings 1968-2010 (PublicAffairs), a just-published treasure trove of the author's indispensable riffs on America's enigmatic musical legend. As the most interesting writer about Bob Dylan, Marcus is brutally honest, often with a trenchant wit, capable of seeing connections invisible to everyone else, and brimming with unpredictable passion. And doesn't that description fit Dylan himself? Maybe that's why Marcus is such a perfect Dylan audience.

The book opens in the summer of 1963 with Marcus in a New Jersey field eager to hear Joan Baez and surprised when she introduces a friend, a "scruffy looking guy with a a guitar" whose name Marcus didn't catch. After the show, Marcus found the young Bob Dylan crouching behind the tent trying to light a cigarette. Marcus tried to offer praise, but Dylan would have none of it. And so it began, Greil Marcus' quest to look at Bob Dylan and see how America was reflected in him and how his reflection changed America. It is a long, dazzling journey. It includes the notorious four word opening line of Marcus' 1970 review of Dylan's album Self Portrait, a review that was a succinct declaration of independence from uncritical Dylan adoration. There's a 1979 review of Slow Train Coming about Dylan's embrace of a version of fundamentalist Christianity Marcus calls "southern Californian suburban." Marcus' brilliant take in the review titled "Amazing Chutzpah" is that this kind of religious conversion seems like one more stop on Dylan's restless journey but that such a conversion can end a quest for answers by seeming, falsely, to settle every question. Over and over in this book, Marcus looks at Dylan and uses the singer to offer bulletins from the front lines of American culture. There are great essays on "the myth of the open road," the location of Desolation Row, and much else. I particularly liked Marcus' recounting his visit to Hibbing High School and Dylan's famed English teacher, the late and wonderful B.J. Rolfzen. And then there's "High Water Everywhere," Marcus' response to the September 11th attacks. The "article" is a jarring collection of quotations that, taken together, provides a penetrating look into the American soul. The book concludes on election night 2008 in Minneapolis.

It is difficult to convey the energy of Marcus writing style. I think of it as linguistic pointillism, with Marcus' precise and daring dots of Dylan's career ultimately forming a larger image, a picture of a very strange landscape called America. Whatever Marcus' style is called, it is riveting. Readers won't always agree with him. Indeed, that's the fun. He's so engaging you want to enter the debate.

Greil Marcus is justifiably noted for a string of terrific books, especially about American music. This anthology, vital for every Dylan fan and for those who wish to understand the last forty years of American culture, provides powerful support to those arguing for Marcus' place as the preeminent cultural critic of the country.

Motherhood poems - Rachel Barenblat

The first poems I read after my son was born were by Heid E. Erdrich (sister to the novelist Louise.) My friend Tisha Turk (author of Getting Out Alive) sent me a copy of Erdrich's The Mother's Tongue with a note advising me that if my poetry-reading time were limited, I should start with the third section of the book, a series of poems about motherhood under the section heading "Milk sour."

My memories of those early weeks of motherhood are pretty blurry now, thanks in no small part to sleep deprivation (sleeping in 40-minute increments does really weird things to the body, as do postpartum hormones) but I remember reading Erdrich's poems. I read them one and two at a time, with the baby rocked to a precarious state of sleep on my chest or my shoulder, and I boggled to think that this overwhelming and exhausting experience was obviously intimately familiar to someone else.

During the pregnancy, I remember making a list of poets who were also mothers. Alicia Ostriker (Mother/Child Coda.) Sylvia Plath (Metaphors -- "I'm a riddle in nine syllables...") Naomi Shihab Nye (Eye Test.) I'm not sure I realized it at that moment, but it seems to me now that I wanted proof that it was possible to be a good poet and a good mother at the same time. I didn't know Erdrich's work then. I'm glad I do now.

Latino Poets Stake their Claim in American Letters [by Emma Trelles]

There is always a destination, by Miami-based painter John Sanchez.

 In Handling Destiny, his third book of poems, Adrian Castro examines the Yoruba idea that the course of a life is pre-determined, and only through faith is one able to fulfill it.

"One's destiny is completely personal,'' Castro says from his yellow-painted bungalow in Shenandoah, where he grows the backyard sage and star apple he uses in his practice as an Ifa priest and, also, in his poems.

"In the dream I would wash this stone with herbs. . . ., " he writes in a a title poem that travels between the geographies of mountain and shore as it considers the divine act of writing.  "Now I'd have to memorize these marks / make words then articulate them. . . . ''

 

For two decades the Cuban-Dominican Castro has forged a distinct lexicon in poems that meld Caribbean and West African cultures. Shango, the Yoruban deity of thunder and fire, is as likely to flash across his stanzas as is a bright calabash or a bundle of sugar cane.

 

Read the rest of this story online at the Miami Herald



Read mini reviews of poetry books by Adrian Castro, Francisco Aragon, Brenda Cardenas, Suzanne Frischkorn, and John Murillo here.

Obsessions - Rachel Barenblat

Hello all! It's good to be back.

This week you'll be getting a grab-bag of posts about some of my current obsessions -- some poems and poets among them.

Of course, any list of interests is necessarily an act of self-editing. A list of things which I love but won't be writing about (at least not here!) would naturally include -- though not be limited to -- the following:

Fringe (and how John Noble blows my mind on a weekly basis); Argentinian wine; the Jewish art of midrash and by extension the pop culture art of fanfiction; Tex-Mex, especially Tex-Mex Sunday brunch (and the challenges in long-distance duplication thereof -- see also: "Diaspora Texan"); the smell of woodsmoke; Malagasy music; Hasidic texts about obscure holidays; watching my ten-month-old son flirt with a goatee'd teenaged boy at a diner this morning and wondering what kind of teenager he will become; windowsills lined with cobalt glass; laying tefillin; polar exploration (see also: my adventures on a glacier just before I discovered I was pregnant); Lapsang Souchong tea and its cousin Russian Caravan; our new red tagine which is just waiting for its first taste of preserved lemon; the incredible luxury of sleeping through the night; glimpsing a ribbon of road through rust-colored autumn trees.

What are you not writing about tonight?

To Donald Keene

To Donald Keene

To Donald Keene we
owe much of what we know of
Japan's verse and prose.

In shadow of rising sun
stood the lean tree unobserved.

Then Keene could be heard
in accents lucid and keen
rendering the scene

and the bare branch of winter
burst into cherry blossom.

-- DL

Rachel Barenblat, Guest Blogger October 17-23

This week we welcome Rachel Barenblat as our guest blogger.  Rachel is a student in the ALEPH rabbinic program (though not for much longer; she will be ordained a rabbi in January of 2011) and holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Author of four chapbooks of poems (among them chaplainbook, a collection of hospital chaplaincy poems, Laupe House Press 2006, and Through, a self-published collection of miscarriage poems, 2009) she looks forward to the publication of her first book-length collection in 2011. Her poems have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Since 2003 she's been blogging as The Velveteen Rabbi. She is a contributing editor at Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, though hasn't contributed much of late, thanks to the newest addition to her family, young master Drew Zuckerman, who was born last November.

Welcome, Rachel.

-- sdh

Brian Clements Presents a Poem by Charles Kesler

A Traveling Monk Observes

 

I have noticed in my travels that people do not put Kleenex out for guests. They do not even put out trash cans to put the Kleenex in that they do not put out. I have noticed in my travels that people do not put towels in their restrooms for their guests to wipe their hands on after they wash their hands. I have spent much time meditating on why this is so while I have waited for my hands to dry, usually in a dog paddling or bicycle tire pumping manner. I confess I sometimes discretely use their decorative towels to wipe my hands on, but I always feel guilty and end up rolling around on the floor asking the host to please forgive me. About half of the hosts do forgive me and the other half usually include the shell in the scrambled eggs they cook for me at breakfast. I crunch and smile and determine to mend my ways, but decorative towels loved this much make me want to puke on them; I don’t like to get sick so I’ll just go on meditating while my hands dry. I have noticed in my travels that people do not put a lamp near enough to the guest bed if at all. Aha I see now. I do not need a Kleenex, a trash can, a hand towel, or a lamp because I am a Traveling Monk and I meditate, I meditate, I meditate, and I meditate in the dark.

 __________

 

If you live in New York or San Francisco or Chicago or the Twin Cities, you may not realize that in much of the rest of the country poetry is a traveling monk of sorts, scrounging to find a home where it is welcome. Many towns have a resident community poetry group or two, and those little groups of poets (who usually pride themselves on not being academics) are largely responsible for providing the life force of poetry outside colleges and universities in this country. My hometown has the Wednesday Night Poetry Series, which has been booted out of a couple of coffee shops recently for being a bit too rowdy, for (gasp!) selling books of poetry without sharing a cut with the building owner, and for not generating the proper level of coffee sales. Apparently the musical acts still hosted at those venues inspire far greater desire for caffeine than did the poets. The WNPS now meets in a local community center, which is probably its proper home.

 

My former home city, Dallas, has a burgeoning literary scene that now boasts many venues for poetry and poets’ groups such as the Dallas Poets Community (despite the almost universal death, as in most cities, of the independent bookstores like Patty Turner’s Shakespeare Books that once were the de facto home of such groups). The current health of poetry in Dallas is due in part to the leadership of the late Jack Myers, Thea Temple, and the late Robert Trammell and the non-profit organizations they spawned—The Writer’s Garret and Wordspace (both of which have received crucial support from John and Marquetta Herring at Paperbacks Plus). Those organizations have added to the cultural life of the city, but the smaller, ad hoc subgroups and the individual poets wandering the streets in search of poetic sustenance deserve credit as well.

 

Charles Kesler (author of The Book of Willie) is one of the many poets who has helped to keep poetry thriving in Dallas—they are far too many to list but I especially remember Christopher Soden, Tim Cloward, Joe Ahearn (now in Austin), Jeff Davis (now in upstate NY), Fran Carris, Michael Puttonen, Michael Helsem, Patty Turner, Mary Anne Redmond, Renee Rossi, Rauan Klassnik (now in Mexico), Shin Yu Pai (now at Hendrix College in AR), Ray Bianchi (now in Chicago). My apologies to the many other poets in Dallas I have not mentioned here.

 

“A Traveling Monk” originally appeared in Sentence 3 and is reprinted in An Introduction to the Prose Poem.