So the London Review of Books comes in the mail and you turn immediately to the page that would be the inside back flap if the LRB were a book rather than a tabloid-shaped effort at an intellectual broadside.
The inside back cover has the classifieds and the LRB has the world's finest personals. The first each week is from an outfit that calls itself Infidelities and boasts that it is not only discreet but "bespoke" -- "A personal professional bespoke individual service," a phrase with as many adjectives as a poem by Robert Lowell, and which provides new eviudence of the astonishing rise of "bespoke" as a word of choice.
But the week's best personal is a little further down in the list: << Aspiring priest seeks guardian temptress for daily confession in Gothic music hall. [email protected] >>
It could be a coded message directed to a Guardian reporter with a liking for Gothic architecture from a witty sonneteer, the author of a book on Augustine's Confessions, who played Sky Masterson in a college production of Guys and Dolls. Or maybe not. Try reading Donne's "The Extasie" or "The Sun Rising" with this advert in your brain. -- DL
It is impossible to translate; we are always translating:
Alone at a café table set on uneasy cobble under some broad-leaved tree, I wait for my lunch and enjoy a breeze. At last. At last a breeze, at last a moment to consider the past several days, the rush and press of them, memories already shifting into an unsorted memory I will call “Lisbon” before long. 10 days in and I too have shifted, easily navigating tram, metro, train and the often steep, slick cobble underfoot as I follow the Disquiet schedule of lectures, readings, workshops and events around the city, Lisbon built like San Francisco upon hills along a waterfront. What I have learned: to move slow in the afternoon(now), how to count change(or be short-changed), how to say “no Portuguese,” passably.
It’s the time in a trip you begin to think, “I could stay,” your other life for the moment the memory. Traveling, like a translation of experience from one life to another, is itself a “placeless place” you may begin to feel at home in.
Translation, the movement of meaning from one language to another, is the topic of many discussions here where a number Luso(Portuguese)-American writers work alongside the general diversity of north American participants. Each guest writer, scholar, or cultural leader—and the list is formidable—has touched on this paradox that lies at the heart of all human communication. As the world renowned fiction writer António Lobo Antunes said last evening through headphones and the voice of a translator(!), “Translation is the black and white version of a color photo.” Or, as Paula Rejo, a magical realist painter puts it, “You always see the light reflected.” Or in the words of Jacinto Lucas Pires, another fiction writer, “Translation is a shadow language.”
Language itself, our method of connecting thought to thought, can be experienced as a sort of floating space between people, a space that we try and inhabit together.
Well, let’s have a poem then, this by Nuno Júdice.
LISBON LIGHT
The light crossing the room between
the two windows is always the same, although
on one side it’s west - where the sun is now - and on
the other it’s east - where the sun has already been. In the room
west and east meet, and it is this light
that makes my gaze uncertain for not knowing
which hour held the first light. Then I look at the thread
of light stretched between both windows, as if
it had no beginning and no end; and
I start pulling it inwards into
the room, winding it up, as if I could
use it to tie up both ends
of the day into midday, and let the time be
stopped between two windows, west
and east, until the thread
unwinds, and everything
begins all over again.
Nuno Júdice from A Matéria do Poema, 2008 Translation by Ana Hudson, 2009
Centro Nacional de Cultura, a historical literary foundation and primary sponsor of Disquiet, has an excellent website to introduce you to more of Nuno’s work as well as that of other Portuguese poets in translation, Poems from the Portuguese.
What? Music too? I have spoiled you. Here, fadista Camané gives an introduction in his native tongue just to give you a sense of that, too.
Let’s begin with oral poetry, which I ended the last blog post on, because I neglected to note that the cowboy poets have nothing on the Basques who sell tickets in the tens of thousands for their oral poetry competition, broadcast on national television, to name the Bertsolari Txapelketa, the national championship of bertsolaritza, a complicated Basque oral tradition of improvisational poetry that’s composed on the stage to compete in an appropriate melody constructed by the poets, three cycles (or sequences of bertsos) of poems that respond dramatically to the challenges posed by the emcees. And let’s not forget the Tibetan epic King Gesar, perhaps the longest epic poem ever conceived, whose many “incarnations span the Tibetan and Mongolian languages, Buddhist and non-Buddhist paradigms, verse and prose, and oral and written forms of composition… No “complete” version of King Gesar has ever been recorded.” Nothing totalizing exists but luckily we can still hear parts of it today.
Now to change tracks completely, I need begin by confessing to being a detail in a recent piece in the AWP Writer’s Chronicle by poet and SUNY Nassauprofessor Pramila Venkateswaran about Recent Trends in South Asian American Poetry. This admission prefaces my response to it, so let me be the first to acknowledge the taint in my lenses, if it exists, since no poet likes to be told they have a most successful poem or that they have written an academic’s volume when it’s clear they haven’t been very deeply investigated or even fully read. Made aware of this possible defensive posture, I’m actively working against it, I promise you, because there’s much in Venktaswaran’s readings of Meena Alexander and particularly Reetika Vazirani to admire. Having co-edited Reetika Vazirani’s posthumous book Radha Sayswith Leslie McGrath, and having helped publish it for Drunken Boat, I was pleased to see this perceptive reading of her earlier work: “She [Vazirani] goes beyond the immigrant tale to delve into the language that embodies the fragmentation of the exile. Multiple voices, broken lines of conversation—almost like long distance conversations that are cut off when phone lines go dead – mix of languages, quotes from letters and from the past that reappear, and observations in the present tense make her poems dynamic and ever-shifting.” That’s a deft embodiment of the form of World Hotel, an impulse towards verbal fracture and white space that would grow ever more extreme in her last collection.
However my main problem with the essay is that there’s nothing recent about it. It’s a roundup of the usual suspects who constituted and indeed broke necessary ground for a generation of South Asian poets over two decades ago. A.K. Ramanujan, Chitra Divakaruni, Meena Alexander, Reetika Vazirani, and Agha Shahid Ali, Vijay Seshadri thrown in as the conceptual bracket, someone who has “distanced himself from the immigrant theme,” as if that’s unanticipated or that Seshadri should have felt such compulsory obligation. They are all iconic poets - two of whom have tragically passed on - but if they’re said to constitute “recent trends,” then break out the fat shoelaces (foot fetishists beware)
Oh yes, yes my friends. There's happiness at Yale every summer -- an entire course on happiness taught by Professor Lawrence Vogel, a professor of philosophy at Connecticut College. Larry's one of the best lecturers I've ever known, and he kindly invites me to speak to his students about the subject of happiness from the point of view of poetry.
This year I'll be talking about the Ericksonian psychosocial stages across the lifespan and how they're reflected in the poetry of Carl Sandburg, Jane Kenyon, Czeslaw Milosz, Jane Hirshfield....and some of my own work.
The class is free and open to the public. It meets tomorrow morning (Wednesday, June 29th) in room 209 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall, on the old campus of Yale University. Here is a link to the campus map:
The class is small and consists of a great group of students both international and American. I'm a believer in interaction and questions, so if you're within thinking distance of New Haven tomorrow morning, and want a little mind-massage, come!
If you went “beyond the pleasure principle,” where would you be going, and with whom? (a) the Italian Renaissance with Vasari (b) the Spanish Inquisition with Loyola (c) the French Revolution with Saint-Just (d) the Trojan War with Ares or Poseidon (e) the American century with Henry Ford
Extra credit:
1. Name the dudes above. Who is the third who sits always by their side? II. Although the question just asked has no correct answer, Freud liked to ask it because (1) By these means he would be able to tell the sheep from the wolf (2) He felt that the only one thing that was inevitable besides death and taxes was history (3) He felt that those who didn't know their history were doomed to repeat it. (4) He believed that history to the defated may say Alas but cannot help or pardon. (5) He and Wittgentstein spent hours analyzing the remark they overheard from a disgruntled student: "History is a waste of time." -- DL
One of the more intriguing aspects of being in Wyoming for this Easterner has been exposure to cowboy culture. Parts of the West retain in their vast spaces a tunnel to the past of the land and thanks to some locals, I was given clues on how to distinguish between genuine and poseur cowboys. For one thing, a real cowboy never enters an establishment with a cowboy hat on his head. Also, he when he takes his hat off, he places it with the hole to the sky, so as not to let the luck fall out. Indeed real cowboys have their own list of etiquette, which includes never turning your horse's tail to a cow, never touching another person's tack and - rather obviously - keeping the branding to your own cattle. Other famous codes include Gene Autry's earnest wisdom ("The cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man or take unfair advantage") and the genius comic epigrams of Will Rogers who has a few of my favorite bits of advice: The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back in your pocket; Never kick a cow chip on a hot day; and of course, if you're riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.
But what I didn't fully realize until my trip out West was how popular poetry is to these ranchmen. And in case, it's hard to discern, here's a poseur cowboy:
Cowboy poetry in America dates back to the time of the long-distance cattle drives from Texas to Kansas that followed the Civil War, as a kind of entertainment and diversion for lonely trailhands and itinerant cattle-herders gathered around a fire. You can read a good history of the movement in this essay by Rod Miller in RATTLE and Western and Cowboy Poetry at the Bar-D Ranch is clearly the Dial of the movement, including a Lariat Laureate, gatherings and festivals and a rural library project where you can suggest libraries, particularly those serving ranching communities. From the looks of it, cowboy poetry is one of the healthiest segments of contemporary poetry, with it's own raging debate between the formalists and the free versers.
Jim Valvis is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist who lives in Issaquah WA. His poetry is finely crafted, keenly observed, and often laugh-out-loud funny. There is an integrity in his work that, coupled with his 5-star writing chops, is deeply moving. His poems are smart, but never smart-aleck; personal but never self-absorbed; witty, but never flippant. I love his work and was very proud to publish his poem, "The Extension" , in the most recent issue of Praxilla (click and read it, hurry hurry - it kicks ass!). You can find his work in many journals, both online and in print, including A Handful of Dust, Boston Literary Magazine, Gargoyle, Crab Creek Review, and many, many others. His first full-length collection, How To Say Good-bye, is scheduled for publication in September by Aortic Books. I can't wait.
In the meantime, here is one of Jim's poems. It originally appeared in the now-defunct Wormwood Review in about 1994.
The Disease
"I smack," she said, "the oriole riding the rodeo of disinfected dreams."
"Huh?" I said.
"But lately the pontification of the shedding serpent slips into perfection."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I said.
"It's poetry," she said.
"Well," I said, "cover your mouth, goddammit. I can't miss any more days at work."
On Saturday, I posted about the birds that reside in the trees near our Ithaca home. While writing the piece, I discovered the Cornell Macaulay Library archive of bird sounds, which helped me find which birds made what sounds. Last night, at dusk, I turned up the volume on my laptop speakers and played the cardinal songs over and over again to see what would happen. As one might have predicted, the cardinals emerged from the trees and swooped toward me, circled around, bobbed and weaved, and retreated. This continued until it struck me that I might be messing up their biorhythms or mating habits so I stopped, but not before I caught the confused male, above, on the telephone wire.
The big Cub Scout Jamboree – Must be summer of ’55 or ’56 -- Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Cub Scouts from across the city, And near the end a kid I don’t Know approaches me, he says, ‘You mouth off to your parents?’ Puzzled but intrigued by his question I say ‘Not that much’ – and now it is he That seems puzzled, as with evident Concern he asks, ‘Why not? Look, ‘There is my father in an undershirt ‘And green janitor pants.’ And he yells, ‘Hey stupid! Dad! Hey numb nuts!’
Hi all - glad to be the guest blogger for this week and in fact writing this first entry on the last day of the Jackson Hole Writers Conference where I was poetry faculty for the last few days. Beyond the cowboys, the Teton Mountains and the wandering pronghorn elk, there was also a lot of writing and talk about writing taking place. Yesterday I was the leader of one of these sessions with poet Laurie Kutchins and our subject was Uprising: the Role of Poetry in Revolution.
We began the session by sharing the good news that after 80 days in prison, Chinese dissident artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei had been freed. Unfortunately he refused to speak publically and shut down his Twitter account. Mr. Ai is the son of the famous modern Chinese poet Ai Qing, who like his son was an outspoken critic of the regime. As a result, he spent time interned in labor camps and was censored by the authorities. It's with bated breath we wait to hear Mr. Ai speak openly and freely again. As he famously carved on one of his artworks, "Without freedom of speech there is no modern world, just the barbaric one."
Keeping him in mind, we read one of the foremost Misty poets, Bei Dao and his poem "Wintering" in a translation by Tao Naikan and Simon Patton. The poem begins:
Waking up: the northern pine forest— The urgent drum beats of the earth The alcohol of sunlights stored in the tree trunks Is stirring the ice of darkness As the heart and the wolf pack howl to each other
As poet Michael Palmer has said about his work, "Bei Dao has followed a path of resistance that abjures overt political rhetoric while simultaneously keeping faith with his passionate belief in social reform and freedom of the creative imagination." We get that sense in this poem, which is rich in imagery of the natural world, seeded with the poignancy of its decline. One of the members of the workshop wondered if Bei Dao might have been familiar with Sylvia Plath's poem "Wintering" (I think not), which has a similar mood, "This is the room I have never been in/ This is the room I could never breathe in/ The black bunched in there like a bat."
This week we welcome Ravi Shankar as our guest blogger. Ravi is Executive Director and founding editor of Drunken Boat and Associate Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University. He is the author or editor of seven books and chapbooks of poetry, including Deepening Groove , the 2010 National Poetry Review Prize winner and W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond called a "beautiful achievement for world literature" by Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, appeared in the New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on NPR & the BBC, and currently teaches in Fairfield University's MFA Program and in the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong .
In other news:
We're also pleased to welcome back Sally Ashton, who is in Lisbon right now, teaching at a new International Literary Program from June 19th-July 2nd and traveling with her winemaker husband around Portugal through July 12. Sally will post a few times a week about her adventures. In addition to her many accomplishments, Sally was recently named poet laureate of Santa Clara County. Read about her appointment here.
Charlie Harper: Mystery of the Missing Migrants, 1990.
David and I are in Ithaca, in New York's Finger Lakes region, for most of the summer. I tend to be an early riser (the residual effect of having worked an 8-5 job for so many years) and I like to take my coffee to the front porch to watch the squirrels gamboling in the trees and listen to the birds. The first song is the haunting cry of the Mourning Dove joined later by the Scarlet Tanager and the "call and response" of the Northern Cardinal. If I look closely (squint really, as I don't wear my glasses in the morning) I can spot the male's red plumage in a tree across the street. Once in a while the sound of beating wings announces a hummingbird in the quince bush. Last to join in is a woodpecker (a rather threatening sound, to my ears). By nine thirty or so, all is quiet but for the trucks and cars zooming by on Route 79.
(ed note: I thought of this poem last night, the minute the NYS Senate passed the marriage equality act. "The Old Place" was a bar in Greenwich Village. I'm so glad that NYS stepped up! -- sdh)
Frank O'Hara, "At the Old Place"
Joe is restless and so am I, so restless.
Button's buddy lips frame "L G T TH O P?"
across the bar. "Yes!" I cry, for dancing's
my soul delight. (Feet! Feet!) "Come on!"
Through the streets we skip like swallows.
Howard malingers. (Come on, Howard.) Ashes
malingers. (Come on, J.A.) Dick malingers.
(Come on, Dick.) Alvin darts ahead. (Wait up,
Alvin.) Jack, Earl, and Someone don't come.
Down the dark stairs drifts the steaming cha-
cha-cha. Through the urine and smoke we charge
to the floor. Wrapped in Ashes' arms I glide.
(It's heaven!) Button lindys with me. (It's
heaven!) Joe's two-steps, too, are incredible,
and then a fast rhumba with Alvin, like skipping
on toothpicks. And the interminable intermissions,
we have them. Jack, Earl and Someone drift
guiltily in. "I knew they were gay
the minute I laid eyes on them!" screams John.
How ashamed they are of us! we hope.
I love you you know that right you know I love you right you know I love you I love you you’re pretty you know that I love you right you’re so beautiful you know that I love you so much I love you you’re my good girl you’re my good girl you’re my pretty girl my good girl right who’s your daddy you love your daddy don’t you you like daddy’s cock don’t you who’s daddy’s little slut who’s my little pretty slut you want this cock don’t you you love this cock don’t you you know that I love that pussy right such a pretty little girl such a pretty little pussy you know I love that pretty whore ass don’t you you know I love that mouth on me don’t you know I love to fuck that little pussy right you know that I love you you know that you’re pretty right.
"If you let me not know everything, I will show you..."
My whole life I have had a thing for olives. I love them. I want them. I would eat them morning, noon, and night if I could. Olives are my alpha and my omega. They are my Mecca, my Nirvana, my home. I love their slick, salty, slippery-ness. I prefer Kalamata, but I can do green, black, big, small, spicy, and garlic-stuffed. I’m flexible. I love that you put them in your mouth, carefully remove the succulent fruit, and then slide the pit back out through your lips. Eating olives is a total-immersion experience, one best enjoyed on a summer night with a good friend and a nice bottle of Shiraz on the patio. (Is that anything like Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the knife?) I’m just curious.
Interestingly enough, one of my first poems to receive public recognition beyond my immediate circle of family and friends is a poem ostensibly about olives. Called “Planting a Memory,” it is dedicated to my son, Owen, (the same one-and-only son you met earlier this week; the son who can hear God farting). That son.
In the poem, I am determined to introduce him into my cult of olives by packing a small bag of Kalamatas for a picnic lunch that we will eat together on the train between Chicago and Milwaukee. I want him to know this special pleasure, “olives on the train."
Our own special comfort food, tumbling down the Greek and Italian branches of our family tree; little dark nuggets of love.
It is my attempt at a life lesson, a gift: teaching him to be attuned to olives for the future potential they hold as a good aphrodisiac for a certain kind of woman—one not unlike his mother. Whoa! Who let Herr Doktor Freud in here? Out, out damn Oedipal complex!
You were saying something about olives… Have I told you yet about tapenade?
Actually, what I want to talk about is how we create our own reality, for ourselves and those we nurture. It is the small and seemingly insignificant things that can have the greatest impact. It is not the size of the gift, it is the attitude with which it is given.
My best friend since fifth grade, Carolyn, was in her mid-twenties and a single mom living in Chicago with almost no money circa 1985. Doing the laundry with her toddler, Jason, became a weekly ritual. She writes:
The laundromat was only a couple of blocks from the apartment in Rogers Park. I would load all of our laundry into one of my dad’s old army duffle bags, tuck a paperback copy of Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson into my coat pocket and off we’d go. Jason loved the video game machine there. He didn’t know that you needed a quarter to make it “work.” He just liked the visuals and punching the buttons and “playing.” And we always read about Harold’s adventures while waiting for the clothes to dry. I love the theme of “creating your own reality” in that book and I think that hearing it so often imprinted the notion in Jason’s mind. We definitely made the best of a tough situation. Our funky apartment right by the El tracks had the perfect view for a little boy who loved trains. Who needs a train set when the real deal goes past your window every few minutes? – Carolyn Graham Tsuneta
Jason is a grown man now with a beautiful wife, an incredible daughter, and another baby on the way. He is a musician, songwriter, and the leader of the band, Mosley Wotta, as in “mostly water,” as in, our bodies are mostly water, (with, as we now know, a little bit of stardust mixed in for ballast). He once told Carolyn in more recent years that some of his best childhood memories were those Saturday afternoons spent in the laundromat with Harold, the video machine, the smell of freshly washed clothes, the tumbling of dryer drums, and his mom. Here is the Jason of today performing his song “Boom for Real.”
Meanwhile, as I am writing this text, my own son has been in and out of the dining room where I am working on my laptop. It is late. He is taking a break from guitar jamming and he is hungry. I suggest he make a sandwich. He would like me to do it, but I think he needs to learn how to get and make his own food. A guy should know how to make a sandwich. Besides I’m right in the middle of writing.
“Mom,” he says. “Are you a Beverly Hills chihuahua?” (Where does he get this stuff?) “Yes, of course I am.” “Are you a Grace Poupon?” He is annoyed because the only kind of mustard we have is French’s. “No, I am not a Grace Poupon. I’m not even a Grey Poupon. What are you?” But now, he is biting into his sandwich and he is not listening to me. He retires to his room with his self-made snack, content with his creation.
Since, in this life, you are going to have to make your own reality--you might as well make one that pleases you. Like making your own sandwich, you have to start from what ingredients you already have and move forward from there. You might want different bread, fresher lettuce, or hotter horseradish sauce. You might have to go to the market or the garden to find what you need. In life, when you want a nicer view out your window or a fast-moving train to a new locale, bring out your purple crayon and lay down the lines that will make your “dream reality sandwich” something you can sink your teeth into. Then when the whistle blows, grab a bag of olives (little dark nuggets of love) and prepare to jump.
All you have to ask is how high?
"throw your mona hands up, Lisa..." -- Mosley Wotta
****
Well, it has been a fantastic week. Ciao for now, my friends. Thank you, Stacey, for inviting me here. Thank you all for reading. - lbv
I wake up to the sound of clattering dishes coming through the open window of the room where I’m staying, the hostel’s kitchen crew getting ready for the morning rush of hungry travelers, some in for a night or two, many, like myself, part of the Disquiet program and staying for 2 weeks. The motors of morning—birds, blowers, a shower running, the air conditioner’s hum, a church bell tracking time—all familiar by now, even the filtered light that manages to slide between buildings to begin the day.
What I’ve had the most difficulty becoming familiar with is the Portuguese language, one by sound frequently compared to Russian. Having studied Spanish many years, I expected to find a familiar latinate I’ve encountered in Italian and French, languages I can roughly navigate via phrasebook, careful listening, and the kindness of native speakers. However, Portugal’s early global dominance allowed the language to develop with exotic influence from Moors, Africa, Brazil, China, Japan. Vowels bend and disappear, r’s hover somewhere between palate and throat, and the unpredictable s slides and unexpectedly shifts to my best-phonetic-attempt-while-sipping-beer-at a street café might be pronounced “zgh.” (maybe “shz?”). But, I’ve managed the basics, ordering coffee and pasteis de nata, Lisbon’s national, irresistible pastry.
But back to sounds. Besides leading a workshop, I’m here to discover as much as I can about one of Portugal’s voices, its literature, especially its poetry. Can you quickly name a famous Portuguese poet besides Fernando Pessoa? I would like to introduce you to another national treasure, the revered poet, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen….simply called Sophia. Yes, Portugal is a country which embraces poetry and poets. Read more about Sophia here, including more poems. Here’s one I’m fond of.
FURIES
Banished from sin and the sacred Now they inhabit the humble intimacy Of daily life. They are The leaky faucet the late bus The soup that boils over The lost pen the vacuum that doesn’t vacuum The taxi that doesn’t come the mislaid receipt Shoving pushing waiting Bureaucratic madness
Without shouting or staring Without bristly serpent hair With the meticulous hands of the day-to-day They undo us
They’re the peculiar wonder of the modern world Faceless and maskless Nameless and breathless The thousand-headed hydras of efficiency gone haywire
They no longer pursue desecrators and parricides They prefer innocent victims Who did nothing to provoke them Thanks to them the day loses its smooth expanses Its juice of ripe fruits Its fragrance of flowers Its high-sea passion And time is transformed Into toil and the rush Against time
~Sophia
I have been saddened to discover that much of Portuguese literature remains untranslated, and I will continue to introduce you to a few more poets that I discover over the next days.
Okay? A bit more music to go out on. The sounds of fado, another national treasure, the music of Lisbon played in streets and cafés as well as on professional stages. Here is Ana Moura, a popular performer.
Tonight, I’ll attend a tribute another poet who has had exposure in the US, including a recent tribute held in NYC at Poet’s House, Alberto de Lacerda. Wait for it….
...the answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin' in the wind. – B. Dylan
I don’t know about you, but I am of the opinion that we are getting close to the end of our proverbial rope with things like religion, politics, and the economy. I don’t know how to fight the good fight any more. In fact, I don’t want to fight. I want to love things, love people, love the earth. That is so darn naïve of me, isn’t it? It is so flippin’ sixties. Make love not war and all that crap.
Yeah, well, guess what? I was born in 1960, so I am a child of the 60s. I recently heard the “evolutionary evangelist,” Michael Dowd (Thank God for Evolution) speak on his theory of reality, biological history, and the evolvement of human nature. One of the things he talked about is how a child’s reality is shaped by whatever steady diet she is fed. Makes perfect sense to me. When I was growing up, my reality was listening to Walter Cronkite every evening on the six o’clock news report the body count for that day. I saw both my parents deeply saddened by this. They taught me that war is wrong and that people had to learn to live in peace. “C’mon people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together try to love one another right now.”
Dowd’s basic premise is that as we all become more conscious, we will start to see ourselves as the earth becoming more conscious of itself. We are like a collective immune system, and we will naturally work to right things in the system because it is to our (and everyone else’s) benefit to do so. We R the Universe. The Universe is us.
If you lived through Woodstock, no matter how young you were, you can't possibly forget Joni Mitchell's admonition that lines up really well with current theories in astrophysics: “We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” I never went to Yasgur's farm, but I sure feel like I did. (Sidenote: it was seeing Woodstock at a drive-in movie theater in 1960-whatever with my parents that I got to hear a certain "bad word" for the very first time: Gimme an F...Gimme a U....aw, you know the rest.)
What the hell does all this have to do with poetry you may ask? Well, first of all, I told you at the beginning of the week that I might try to tell you how poetry changed my life. I decided I can’t do that justice in seven blog posts or less. But let me just say, in my late 40s when I finally started to pay attention to the voices inside my head, poetry woke me up to myself and helped me get more in line with ME and what I am here for: to help people through expression: mine and theirs. Me=We.
I am 110% positive that it is not the politicians or the scientists who will save the planet. I mean, they will, but they will only do it when they do it with the sensitivity and wisdom of the poets. Only when each person becomes aware of their poet-nature will we begin to swing the critical mass away from hate and mistrust to love and compassion. We need the words of the elders, the lovers, the men in prison, the enlightened, and the dispossessed. We need them all.
So, go write some poetry. Teach someone else to write some poetry. Share what you have written, and not just through the time-honored, traditional channels. Leave a poem in the subway. Hand a poem to a stranger. Recite a poem to your co-workers at lunchtime. The time has come for a bold, new naïveté. We can be smart, but if our smartness destroys us, then it was freakin’ stupid, wasn’t’ it?
Let’s be smart in a new way, in a poetry way. Here is my “How Poetry Will Change the World” primer to inspire you to action:
Louder Than A Bomb This award-winning documentary from directors Greg Jacobs and John Siskel tells the story of four Chicago high school poetry teams as they prepare for and compete in the world's largest youth slam. Rob Thomas of The Capital Times says, “Louder Than a Bomb ignites the power of poetry.”
Poems About Wisconsin Protests Throughout the continuing turmoil in the state of Wisconsin, the editors of Verse Wisconsin stepped forward to create a forum inviting all sides in the question to converse through poetry, prose, songs, and visual art. You can read a story about the project on the Poetry Foundation blog and visit Verse Wisconsin on Facebook.
100,000 Poets for Change On September 24, 2011, poets all over the world will participate in a global poetry experience. Events are being planned in 135 cities in the U.S.A. and seventy countries around the world. Follow on Facebook or check the blog to see all the locations and learn what is being done. In Sheboygan, we’ll be at Paradigm Coffee and Music, reading and Skyping. Come see us! Check the link above to plan an event in your own city.
“Writing a poem does not change the world. Learning about new people and understanding new people and really feeling inspired by people who are very different than you…I would like to say that’s changing the world, and if not, then it's definitely coming much, much closer.” -- Adam Gottlieb, Louder Than a Bomb
I know, I’m not saying anything new here and I know that some people will find me a bit daft. But, you know what? I'm a child of the sixties. So give me a fucking break.
You've stuck it out with me a long time on this post. If you have just four more minutes, please watch this "voice-enhanced" presentation, and take joy in knowing that we all come from the same cosmic dandruff.
Today’s post is for my niece, Ella, who turned seven yesterday, and her mother and father who made her. All photos are courtesy of Stephan Mazurek.
Dear Ella,
You are a girl of immense imagination and potential. You are the exact image and temperment of your mother when she was your age. I remember when your mom was about six or seven, she would walk up to strangers in the park and say things like, “when I was thirty-one and married, I lived in a mansion with all my horses.” I was very shy and I did not understand where she came up with these incredible tales. While I daydreamed in the corner, she was the outgoing one, the actress, the stage director. She always had some kind of elaborate play going on: dolls lined up with scarves on the living room floor, a magic show involving bowls of water and disappearing string, costumed adventures played out under the dining room table. I must admit, I admired her chutzpah.
I have seen you play in a similar way. Here is a picture your dad took of you that he captioned: January 30 2011. Laura Ingalls Wilder dreams of her prairie from the comfort of her hallway. When I watch you play, I see you demonstrate a kind of total world-immersion that is amazing to behold. You remind me that as children, we have this ability to allow ourselves to be absorbed into play. Then we "grow up" and forget how to do that. How short-sighted of us! We so-called adults need to remember that one can have a job, pay the rent, care for a family, and still not lose touch with life's magic. Poetry, like play, reminds us not to leave our playful spirits behind.
I also appreciate your passion for all things you see, hear, touch, smell, and taste, as well as your deep friendships. Here is one: January 24 2011. A study in pink or Hot chocolate, two spoons. Here is a transcript of a conversation you had with your friend in the coffee shop: Inga: Will you ever drink coffee? Ella: Yes I will. It smells so good. Inga: I won't. I don't like what it does to grown ups’ teeth. Ella: Does what? Inga: Makes them yellow. I want white teeth. Ella: But it smells so good.
Besides providing insight into your sense of smell, you clearly have your priorities straight. This image caught by your dad reminds me of the importance of friendship as we grow. Don't ever give up on your friends. Even when you don't always see eye-to-eye with each other, true friends challenge, enhance, and support your creativity. That is how you know the person is a friend.
I want to jot down for you a few things that you have said over time that have struck me. Keep these things in mind. I think they will serve you well some day. I know they already have served me. When I sit down to write a poem, I try to look at whatever I am looking at with your same fresh, exuberant glasses.
One Thanksiving, just after we’d said grace, you sat tall in your chair and suddenly blurted out: Who likes elephants, raise your hand!
Another time, you pulled me toward the bathroom where your tub was being filled, offering me this intriguing invitation: Let’s go to my water factory.
Or, once, getting ready for sleep, you said: Lisa, maybe my bed could be a computer.
Why didn’t I think of that?
I want to end this with a little something you wrote at the beginning of this year:
January 14 2011 Ella, my 6-year-old, learning how to write and trying on what she's reading
My dear Ella, may your way always be big with adventure and excitement. May you find the poetry of your life as you play and grow. And, someday, preferably when we can be together with your amazing mom, and my amazing mom--four girlfriends, we'd be--let's go someplace and have a cup of really good coffee. Love, Lisa
Married! More pictures here. NYT announcement here. ( Ed. note: Doug wrote to me about Stacie Turner's photographs: "I like her subject line. In fact, the minister said something more thrilling even than that. "Let no person and no LAW put asunder." Although you can't see it in the photos, we were standing in front of a window that depicts Thomas Hooker, founder of Connecticut. He's the one who said "As God gave us liberty, let us take it." So I guess we were standing in the right place." - sdh)
From "Dining out wth Doug and Frank" by James Schuyler: II
Now it's tomorrow, as usual. Turned out that Doug (Douglas Crase, the poet) had to work (he makes his bread writing speeches): thirty pages explaining why Eastman Kodak's semi-slump (?) is just what the stockholders ordered. He looked glum, and declined a drink. By the by did you know that John Ashbery's grandfather was offered an investment-in when George Eastman founded his great corporation? He turned it down. Eastman Kodak will survive. "Yes" and where would our John be now? I can't imagine him any different than he is, a problem which does not arise, so I went with Frank (the poet, he makes his dough as a librarian, botanical librarian at Rutgers and as a worker he's a beaver: up at 5:30, home after 7, but over striped bass he said he had begun to see the unwisdom of his ways and next week will revert to the seven-hour day for which he's paid. Good. Time and energy to write. Poetry takes it out of you, or you have to have a surge to bring to it. Words. So useful and pleasant) to dine at McFeely's at West 23rd and Eleventh Avenue by the West River, which is the right name for the Hudson when it bifurcates from the East River to create Manhattan "an isle of joy." Take my word for it, don't (shall I tell you about my friend who effectively threw himself under a train in the Times Square station? No. Too tender to touch. In fact, at the moment I've blocked out his name. No I haven't: Peter Kemeny, gifted and tormented fat man) listen to anyone else.
I arrived in Lisbon Saturday by airship—the jet—a kind of airborne floating space, “a non-place going places,” a placeless place that is at once threshold and destination, neither “here” nor yet “there,” time traveling between zones, continents, and consciousness, across 5600 miles and hours that expanded, contracted. I flew,
to “—Lisbon, the Tagus, and the rest— A useless onlooker of you and of myself, A foreigner here like everywhere else, —” Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Disquieted, I came to Disquiet: Dzanc Books International Literary Program, a brand new, two week literary and cultural conference held in Lisbon, where I will teach and be taught, engage with the heritage of Portuguese literature, contemporary writers, and the rich and vibrant Portuguese culture.
I will bring highlights, hoping to prove a more useful onlooker than the native son Pessoa, above, suggests. It has taken these few days to disembark from traveling’s “non-place,” but I feel on terra firma today and look forward to bringing news of Lisbon to you. But now, “The morning unfurls itself upon the city,” and I’m off to find breakfast before my workshop begins. How about a little music to go out on.
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later to the greatness of Teddy Wilson "After You've Gone" on the piano in the corner of the bedroom as I enter in the dark
