The Best American Poetry

From the Archives: The terrifying poetry of ping-pong (by Mitch Sisskind)

No Olympic sport is more maddening than ping-pong (I refuse to call it "table tennis.") The way the ball will just nick the corner of the table can drive anyone mad -- especially poets, who are sensitive people by nature.

Kenneth Koch was probably one of the best ping-pong playing poets ever. Had there been an Olympic event combining the two disciplines, I'm certain Koch would have taken home the gold medal. I'm also certain he would have loved the challenge of playing ping-pong while reciting improvised sonnets, or whatever. Well, we will see that in the Upper World!

But Koch was not beyond criticism as a ping-pong player. I'm still kicking myself that I did not actually see the match, but I recall speaking with David Shapiro shortly after he had played Koch in the basement of the now-disappeared Ferris Booth Hall at Columbia. Koch had won the game, but David felt -- and I'm sure he was correct about this -- that Koch had, um, bent the rules a little. Specifically, it was my impression that Koch had tried to create distractions while the ball was in David's court, and I recall David using the term "flapping ostrich."

In Koch's defense, he very often acted like a flapping ostrich -- so should he be expected to stop acting like one when he played ping-pong? We'll have to leave that question to a higher authority. Actually, I believe Koch was also a pitcher on his high school baseball team (Walnut Hills HS, in Cincinnati) and I'm sure his wind-up was a sight to behold. In any case, I happen to believe that Koch was the greatest poet of the New York school, and I'm absolutely certain that he was the best ping-pong player. (But there were probably some good players among the Beats.)

Here is a video of an intense ping-pong match. Don't try this in your rumpus room.

(Ed note:  A version of this post originally appeared on Wednesday, August 13, 2008)

Live from London! Limbering Up: John Keats as Handball Olympian by Lytton Smith

“This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would […]”

Danny Boyle’s artificial rain cloud has given the rest of the troposphere an idea or two, and our late-arriving British summer is being edged aside by short showers which drum down on the Copper Box, a matchbox-shaped red-brown building on the south edge of theOlympic Park. As poet and Trappist monk Thomas Merton knew, the rain is a rumormonger, “all the speech pouring down.” We’ve experienced enough Wimbledons on this island to know “it will talk as long as it wants, this rain.” We’re used to listening.

Right now, this rain is talking about events inside the Copper Box, where Iceland’s men’s Handball team (silver medallists in Beijing) has just scored against Argentina. It’s one of those spectacular, made-for-replay Olympic moments where, without warning, something extraordinary happens. #18, Robert Gunnarsson darts into the inner D, the area patrolled by the goalkeeper. A team-mate’s wayward lobbed pass drifts beyond the heads of two Argentine defenders, bobbles awkwardly. Diving forward, at full stretch, headed away from the goal, level to the floor, Gunnarsson grasps the ball and flings it behind him, back over his shoulder, past the helpless, unsighted ’keeper, into the bottom corner of the net. No one saw it coming, least of all the Argentinians, and that’s why the rain’s telling it to the rooftops. Game on.

Continue reading . . .

Headfirst Into The Air (by Laura Orem)

The Olympics are here again, and I can’t rally up much interest. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I keep finding out who won and who lost each event before it’s broadcast (thanks a lot, New York Times). Maybe it’s because, as I’ve written before, there are no characters anymore; everyone is slick, smooth, and tediously decorous. No real drama, not even in the athletic performances, which are uniformly excellent and hinge on the tiniest millisecond.

I used to love to watch the swimming and diving events. I love to swim, even though I’m neither fast nor elegant in form. As for diving, it’s always been a mystery to me how you get good at it without breaking your neck. In fact, I will agree that, even now, of all the summer Olympic sports, diving provides the most suspense, because even a gold-medal diver can misstep or over-rotate, so you catch your breath until she safely slices into the water.

I learned to swim at age five in the Officers Club Pool at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. EA is notorious for two things: LSD experiments on soldiers in the 1960s, and a stockpile of deadly chemical weapons dating back to World War I that they finally disposed of only about ten years ago. My father was a civilian employee who worked on post. We lived in a development a few miles outside the gate, but as a little girl I spent a large chunk of my time on the post grounds themselves.

When I was a kid, no one talked about the tripped-out soldiers or the weapons stockpile; I’m not sure how much of it was publically known in the late sixties. There were “deadly force” areas tucked into remote corners, but they were largely invisible and you had actively go find them. For me, the post was a wonderful place, with shady, tree-lined streets, and deer so tame they’d walk right up to your parked car. There was a riding stable with horses you could pet, and a small airfield where, each 4^th of July, the Rec. folks put on a carnival complete with pony rides, a tiny ferris wheel with four cars, and about twenty-five ramshackle booths. You bought a bunch of tickets for five cents apiece, then you made your rounds. There was Pitch-Til-U-Win, where, if your aim was good and you were lucky, you could win yourself a small pink plastic poodle with sparkling blue eyes, and even if you weren’t, you’d at least end up with a Hawaiian lei made of paper flowers. There was the Wheel-of-Fortune, where if you were very very lucky, you could walk off with a stuffed dog with vinyl ears, and the Pick-a-Duck game, where you could win a straw hat. There was the Spin-Art booth, where you poured primary-colored tempera paint out of Tupperware ketchup bottles onto a piece of spinning cardboard and got your own work of art to hang up on your wall. The air was redolent with sizzling hot dogs (for the kids) and pit-beef sandwiches (for the grownups), and for dessert you had your choice of snowballs or cotton candy. Then, as darkness fell, your dad got the blanket from the car, and the whole family, smelling now of OFF bug spray, headed down to the grass field by the runway to swat mosquitoes and watch the fireworks.

Sharon Dolin: Holiness in Toulouse

I spent the day in Toulouse, which meant there was only so much I could see. Kind of like life. After talking briefly to a couple in Auvillar, Gerhard, originally from Germany, and Marie-Josef, from France, about their project of creating a memorial to the 4 families who were deported to Auschwitz from Auvillar, I had a bit of an edge—more so than usual—when Gerhard described to me that even during the first crusade, in 1095, the French made a decision to lengthen their route to Jerusalem by first going through the area where I am to kill whatever Jews they could find.

Saint Sernin

So here I was setting out and though I always intend to do otherwise, the churches do have a way of drawing me in. First was Saint Sernin, where I stumbled upon a funeral in progress, which meant I got to hear the mournful strains of the organ and to see the priest in his royal purple robe in procession with the mourners. Then a brief visit to the archaeological museum next door. Once there were figures of pagan gods and heroes, I felt a lot more at home.

Hercules and the Erymanthian Boar (4th Labor)

Venus & child (not unlike Madonna & child)

The highlight of the day was the Black Madonna in the Eglise Dourade: a church built over a pagan church.

No one can give a good answer as to why there are black madonnas, but there was a level of devoutness that I witnessed in the women (the black madonna protects pregnant women and mothers in particular) praying to her. She had an aura of mystery and serenity. And when I glanced across at the chapel on the other side, a strange ray of light coming through the stained glass fell on the afternoon wall, making an impressionist painting far superior to anything I had seen in the Capitol buidling earlier that day.

I failed miserably at getting a look inside a synagogue. I was told by phone that everyone was going on vacation. So as I ran to the train station, I snapped a quick picture of the facade of this newish-looking, nondescript synagogue.

Synagogue Palaprat (near the train station)

The hour grows late. I'll save for tomorrow the place that inspired hushed resonance to rival that of any house of worship. (Hint: Think literature.)

Olympics 2012: Liam and Meghan O'Rourke (author and former gymnast) exchange thoughts on Olympics highlights and heartbreak

from Meghan O'Rourke:

I confess that my Irish heart got quite sentimental and soggy when I saw Kieran Behan step on to the floor on Saturday in his leprechaun-green athletic gear. (That part was unfortunate.) Not only is he Irish—Kieran!—but he has overcome enormous adversity to be at the Olympics. And like a true Irishman, he has demonstrated Olympian stubbornness. When he was 10, he found a tumor the size of a golf ball on his leg; the doctors botched the surgery and left him with “permanent” nerve damage. But he learned to walk again — and began training, only to suffer a freak accident: brain damage after hitting his head in a routine fall. Hours and hours of rehab. It only went on from there: first the torn ACL in one knee, then the other; a broken arm; financial straits (he ended up sweeping the gym he trained in); and now a rotator cuff injury. Yet there he was, walking out on the floor mat along with all the other Olympians.

Continue reading . . .

Monday Cartoon by Nin Andrews

For more of Nin's cartoons go here.

Olympics 2012: Lynn Melnick n Synchronized Swimming and Paisley Rekdal on Archery

(Ed note:  For the next couple of weeks we'll be bringing you the Los Angeles Review of Books coverage of the 2012 Olympics)

On Archery by Paisley Rekdal

FIRST, WE MUST CONSIDER the draw.

This is the amount of weight an archer pulls when drawing a bow: 50 pounds is the average draw for the male Olympian; 20 pounds the average for the female. With a recurve (the Olympic bow of choice), weight increases as the bow is drawn, stopping at its peak weight: imagine, if you will, the strength required to draw, steady, then focus your arrow with 50 pounds of tension weighing on a single arm, all in the hopes of hitting a target at 70 meters in less than 40 seconds. Like many of the Olympics’ less visually spectacular sports (curling comes to mind, though the Norwegian team’s harlequin pants certainly made an impression), archery’s drama is internal; but for those who have ever practiced it, as I have, watching archery reminds us that, while a feat of both instinct and psychology, it is most importantly a sport of stamina. The draw never changes, but your ability to pull efficiently does, and the tendency of your arrow to wobble — a weakness inherent to every shot due to the arrow’s torque — will only increase as you fatigue, even with the aid of a stabilizer. Without training, the draw weight will exhaust you after a few shots. Your target focus will slide, your bowstring fingers callous like a guitar player’s. Most painfully, the tender inner forearm of the hand that grips your bow belly will burn with welts that the bowstring, having released the arrow at 150 miles per hour, raises at it snaps against your exposed flesh like a wet whipcord of Kevlar. Instinctively, you’ll flinch at each release, ruining your shot. You will have to learn to wear an arm and chest guard.

Continue reading . . .

Sharon Dolin, Guest Blogger

We're pleased that Sharon Dolin will continue posting from southwest France where she is artist in residence at Le Moulin a Nef.  Sharon is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Whirlwind (due out this fall from the University of Pittsburgh Press) and Burn and Dodge  (Pittsburgh, 2008). As well as poetry, Sharon is at work on a book of aphoristic sequences, several of which have appeared or are forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Hotel Amerika, Denver Quarterly, The American Poet, Salamander, and The Kenyon Review Online.  She has poems forthcoming in Poetry along with a Q&A in December. Currently, she teaches at Poets House and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and directs The Center for Book Arts Annual Letterpress Poetry Competition.  Sharon blogs over at Whirlwind.

 Bienvenue, Sharon.

In other news . . .

We're in full Olympic swing here and are thrilled to be collaborating with Gabrielle Calvocoressi and her Olympic team of poet/sports reporters over at the Los Angeles Review of Books.  You'll find our Olympic coverage here, and daily posts at the LARB here. 

Jill Allyn Rosser presents a poem by Steven Cramer

The following poem by Steven Cramer first appeared in New Ohio Review 6, Fall 2009.

 - - - - - - -

                    Bad

 It got bad; pretty bad; then not
so bad; very bad; then back to bad.
Jesus, let’s let things not get even worse. 

A weird fall. Nearly ninety
one day, leaf mold making our house
all red eyes and throats.  Don’t think 

about Thanksgiving, but hope
for a decent Halloween.  Everywhere
gas-powered leaf-blowers growling— 

Christ, let’s let things not get even worse.

 

- - - - - - - -

The first stanza demonstrates what I feel to be the semicolon’s natural tendency to drain drama out of any expression. The semicolon always seems to need a lift, maybe a cup of coffee, or Zoloft.  Whatever the mood may be, a semicolon stunts it, patiently, by increments.  It's so drably un-final, just an incomplete full stop without any conviction. It tells you something more needs to be said, but not urgently.  Just wait; there’s more; I’ll get there, it seems to say. Maybe I’ve changed my mind, it dithers. Enough of my antipathy toward a perfectly useful punctuation mark, but you must admit that first stanza’s failed efforts at precision feel dispirited, as though the speaker is so worn out by the relentless nuances of badness (“not so bad” is as good as it gets) that he can’t muster the energy to come up with another negative word.  And of course we expect something momentous: genocide, icecaps melting, famine…   Whereas the only example revealed to the reader is a few bad cases of hayfever.  I like being surprised by the mundanity of the condition that worsens.  Surely that’s not the only “it” referred to earlier? Maybe; maybe not; but the other accruing bads are probably just as pedestrian.  It’s the accumulation without full respite that overwhelms.

   The increasing intensity (however wan, however enervated) of the speaker’s dread is marked by the progression of “Jesus” in the third line to “Christ” in the final line, as we move from the figure as man to the figure as deity.  Are both names taken in vain? I don’t think so – there’s palpable, prayerful misery behind each utterance, reinforced by the faintly biblical echo in the use of “let” in both lines.  Then there’s the lovely low parade of growling w’s in the penultimate line that helps to augur the apparently inevitable worse.  But the clincher that makes this poem memorable for me is Cramer’s exquisite syntax in “let’s let things not get even worse” as opposed to the more idiomatic “let’s not let things get even worse.”  The latter suggests we have agency; whereas the poem’s syntax reminds us that we have little if any control; all we can do is let things happen and hope for, well – not the worst. Maybe we can’t fully engage in true Thanksgiving, but at least we can have a decent Halloween, scaring ourselves with things that are more dreadful even than our semicoloned lives.

   Is this a downer of a poem?  Not to my mind: its playfully hyperbolized teeth-gritting has a tonic effect.  The tone attained here, in a very short space, reminds me somewhat of Samuel Beckett; of Steven Wright; of Eeyore on a good day. 

   Steven Cramer is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent being Goodbye to the Orchard (Sarabande, 2004).  He directs the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Lesley University.

   See you next week, which let’s let be better!  --JAR

Sports Desk (Olympic Edition): In Praise of The Things I Don't Know [Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

Today, after a few hours of watching Olympic archery and beach volleyball I made my way to Abbott Kinney Blvd. in Venice, got a really perfect iced green tea at Intelligensia Coffee and felt genuinely happy to be alive. That’s surprising in some ways since over the course of the last few weeks I’ve lost my apartment, watched my laptop die not once but twice and moved more deeply into my research for a book of prose I’m writing that focuses on my mother’s suicide and the general and uncomfortable question (for me, anyway) of why she killed herself and why I, seemingly, will not. Suffice to say it’s been a pretty brutal few weeks.

 

I think I feel so great because of the Olympics. I’ve got to say I love all of it, starting with the trials and continuing right onto the opening ceremonies last night. I gather a lot of folks didn’t like the Opening Ceremonies but I thought the James Bond bit was funny and the fireworks were great. And how can you not love all those athletes smiling and taking photos and marching alongside their teams of 200 or 20 or 2? I love that there’s an Independent Olympic Athlete’s delegation for athletes like South Sudanese runner Guor Marial, who can’t run for South Sudan because the newly formed country doesn’t have an Olympic body and will not run under the flag of Sudan because as says, "My family lost 28 members in the war with Sudan. Millions of my people were killed by Sudan forces. I can only forgive, but I cannot honor and glorify a country that killed my people." I love that every single Olympic team has at least one woman athlete (a first) and that, for the first time, the American team has more women than men. And I love Caster Semenya’s raised fist as she walked into the stadium holding her flag.

Which is to say, I love that tremendous joy and unspeakable tragedy can live in the same body and in the same moment of time. When it’s packaged by the media this balance can be destroyed and come off as melodrama. But one can simply go back to the athletes themselves as they do what they do best and find all of these seemingly opposing forces working themselves into something extraordinary. Take gymnast John Orozco, who I really don’t know much about. I learned about him during the months leading up to the games. One Saturday I was having some trouble getting out of my pajamas to go to the coffee shop and write. I may have been having some trouble doing a number of things related to going outdoors. I turned on the television in hopes of finding some baseball or bull riding. I wanted to watch someone do something super hard and make it look effortless. And I wanted to watch closely enough that I could begin to see the decisions they were making that made it look so much easier than it was. It calms me to do that. I thought it might get me up and out the door. Neither sport was on and didn’t want to see some comedy or light movie so I looked at the guide and saw the men’s gymnastic trials were on. Though it may have been a competition leading up to the trials. As I’ve said, I was and am new to gymnastics and the world of the trials. I didn’t really care. I pulled the blanket over myself and started watching.

And there was John Orozco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the course of the afternoon I found out John Orozco is from the Bronx.  His father suffered a major stroke, which forced him to retire from his job at the sanitation department. His mother suffers from lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and, according to her son, is in pain all the time, which did not keep her from driving the hour round trip most days of the week to get him to gymnastics practice. Terrible things. Things you don’t recover from. I listened to the commentators at the same time that I watched John Orozco do the most remarkable things with his body. I watched him get very still and then burst into motion. What struck me was that the beauty of what he was doing didn’t undo any of the darkness of the story. The things that were broken would stay broken and the beauty and achievement would live alongside it. And together they would make a young man’s life. I decided I’d make sure to watch him during the Olympics because he had a lot to teach me about what it is to be an adult. And I did get up and go to the coffee shop, which oddly enough I almost omitted from this piece because it sounds sort of clichéd but like most clichés it’s actually true.

Over the next two weeks I’ll be wearing various hats here at Sports Desk. I’ll be writing short bits about the Olympics at the end of each day and I’ll be thinking about the sorts of things I want to talk about as I return to this space on a monthly basis after a long time away. I’ll also be featuring a great project I’m working on as the Poetry Editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books. Because I’ve been looking forward to the Olympics and thinking about all the things I don’t know, I thought I’d ask some amazing poets and poet-critics to help me make sense of the balance of formal rigor and unabashed optimism that it takes to be an Olympian and a poet. The Best American Poetry is our partner in this project and will be featuring all the essays published at LARB. And we'll be having Olympic adventures at Sports Desk as well. And the team can keep growing, so lend me your voice.

 

When the team from Great Britain entered the stadium David Bowie’s, “Heroes” started to play. I’ve had that song in my head for weeks, though I’m not sure I really know what the term means. I look forward to trying to find out. I think it’s going to take a whole team.

Sharon Dolin: Paint My Village

one of the painters in the painting competition whose muse (a grey parrot) is sitting in a tree nearby

Village life has its advantages. You stroll around on market days and everyone knows your favorite chevre, your passion for lemon cookies. And then there are events that seem to capture the attention of the entire village (try that in New York!). As I write this, there are painters spread out all over the town of Auvillar, painting landscapes. This annual event, "Paint My Village," which apparently happens in different places in France, is a competition, in which painters at 3 levels: amateur, professional, and children, compete for a prize over the course of a 3-day weekend of painting. With my fellow artist Aurelien and Yona, we strolled around yesterday to see what the painters were up to.

another painter in a small public garden

Tonight, we all signed up for the paella dinner, which will be served in the town square around the famous Halle aux Graines.

19th century hall where grain was sold

My favorite artist (the one who stole my heart) is this five-year-old below:

What may be hard to see is that he has used the grains themselves in his painting. I'm betting on him to win a prize. We find out tomorrow at 5 who the winners are.

 

We Can Be Heroes: LARB Poetry at the 2012 Summer Games by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

(Ed. note:  Los Angeles Review of Books poetry editor Gabrielle Calvocoressi has invited a team of poets to cover the 2012 London Summer Olympics.  If you land here first, you'll get a taste of what's to come with an opportunity to head over to LARB for the rest.  It's going to be an exciting way to experience the games. Who better to write about sports, athleticism, competition, than poets?)

Image: "Alternate Olympics 2012 Logo"

TO SAY I AM LOUSY at sports is an understatement. Given the chance, I would pick myself last for my own baseball, handball or volleyball team. And yet, I love to watch athletics more than almost anything, and I find this to be true with many poets I know. Contrary to popular belief, poets are some of the most avid sports fans around. I’ve wondered about it for a long time and I’ve decided that there’s no better time or place to consider the question of what draws poets to sports than the 2012 Summer Games. Starting with the opening ceremonies on July 27^th some of the most interesting poets and poet-critics in the country (and a few from the UK) will talk about sports and poetry — what it is to do something really well and what it is to risk failure on the world’s largest stage. We’ll hear about archery and synchronized swimming, boxing and basketball. We’ll have coverage of what we’ll be calling “The Ghost Sports,” the sports that used to be in the Olympics and aren’t any more, because I suppose I can understand why we don’t play baseball at the Games but I am bamboozled by the fact that we don’t play cricket.

Continue reading here.

KELWYN SOLE AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY by John Hennessy

This fall, issue #4 of The Common (see yesterday’s post) will include a ninety-page anthology of contemporary Anglophone poetry from South Africa guest-edited by Kelwyn Sole, the first such collection to be printed in the U. S. since Denis Hirson’s The Lava of This Land appeared nearly twenty years ago. (A couple of years ago the excellent online magazine Big Bridge did its own feature of fiction and poetry from South Africa, I should note.) Sole has gathered 24 poets ranging in age from the first generation born after the National Party came to power (1948) to those born near the end of Apartheid (1994), from the internationally established to the absolutely emerging—at least one of whom has yet to publish a full length collection.  (For a complete list leaked early, please see the end of this post.)

Kelwyn Sole’s own new collection of poems, Absent Tongues, his sixth, has just been published in South Africa by Hands-On Books.  What I admire most about this excellent book is Sole’s ability to balance political content with love poetry, urban immediacy with the nearly pastoral.  As Rustum Kozain cogently puts it: Sole’s “political poems refute any notion that political art can never be art. His insights draw us into the heartlessness of our new political masters, the confused brutality behind the murder of poor immigrants, and of a hovering ‘sadness at what might have been/ had we more courage/ had we searched/ further than our skins our pockets.’” Sole’s poetry, Kozain affirms, functions as South Africa’s “national conscience.”

Here are two poems from ABSENT TONGUES by Kelwyn Sole:

Not a poem on behalf of the poor

1

The poor are lighter
than a fish-head bone:
and their words, seeming
at times guttural and heavy
in their throats as stones,
blow away on a first breeze
untroubling as dandelions.

The protocols of the rich
fatten, and promise one day
to absolve them also.
It never happens. So
they endure, dazzled
by the hope of a beauty
they think others have,
their feet at the point
of an abyss with no step,
no mirror, just knowledge
of their falling.
Snagged between horizons
and billboards
                       spoken to
by those enormous beings
painted in two dimensions
with arms that terminate
in soap or handshakes
who point the way

in lieu of the tame human
parings of the State who
keep their gatherings
inside closed rooms
                                - those
who perorate, or legislate,
or write on others’ behalf -
in all the places where the poor
never themselves set down
their bums or thumbprints.

2

In a world of money
no one needs to recognise
the palm
not held out
because it keeps
its dignity and purpose:

and, bereft of the function
of pity they provide
for those with wealth,
the final task of the poor
is an expectation
to stay unnoticed:
to remain grateful,
to cause no trouble.

The poor, in fact,
are allowed to provide
no answers of their own:
because, if they do,
their answers finally
are to those questions
those who possess,
or squander life
on power, do not
want to hear.

GRAZING ON THE COMMON: A SENSE OF PLACE IN POETRY by John Hennessy

     There’s a new print and online journal that I hope you’ve heard of: The Common, based at the Frost Library of Amherst College and run by folks from that institution as well as a couple of us from the University of Massachusetts on the other side of town. Recently we celebrated our first year of publication with a fund-raising party in New York hosted by warm-hearted, wide-ranging author Ted Conover (The Routes of Man, Newjack, Coyotes, and others, ). The party featured Stephen O’Connor reading from his story in issue #3 as well as two sets by The Dog House Band, a literary super-group composed of critics and writers: James Wood (who is on our editorial board), Wyatt Mason, David Gates, Sven Birkerts, and others. There were celebrity sightings in the audience as well; I can verify one—whom I won’t name—because I made the mistake of stepping on her foot. Not the first time I’ve klutzed it on that scale—but the last celeb, Brooke Shields, was much more gracious when I sunk her canoe; in fact, she even smiled at me. This time I got a look that performed laser surgery on my small intestine. Sorry, X!

    At The Common we purport to be interested in “A Modern Sense of Place.” When asked, I explain as poetry editor I’m more excited by work that does something surprising when it comes to place—and the poem itself may be the site in question—than I am by simple landscapes or seascapes, but I’ll consider strong work of any sort, and I like having my notion of what a poem is stretched. See from our new issue, # 3, for example, Angela Veronica Wong’s hilarious “Dear Johnny, In Your Last Letter,” part of a series, Denis Hirson’s  “A Story with a Crack in It,” Jock Doubleday’s “Meeting Julie Christie at the Flower Booth at the Sunday Ojai Farmers’ Market…” or Norman Lock’s witty and very dark “Alphabet” poems, all of which complicate distinctions between narrative and lyric, elude boundaries between poetry and prose.

    By the same token, I hope that when contributors receive their copies of the journal, they’re surprised to see the company they’re among: hopefully the party will be a success, and people will leave with brand new friends, but there are bound to be arguments, and that strapping youngster reciting whole pages from Absalom, Absalom! in the corner is a skilled bouncer. In any case, my highest expectations are for the readers: I hope they’ll go everywhere with us, if not with unmitigated delight, then at least with unwavering interest. I even expect them to appreciate poetry written in forms—both “traditional” and for the nonce.

From issue #3, co-written by Amy Lawless and Angela Veronica Wong:

It can feel amazing to be targeted by a narcissist

Let’s just see if it fits, and your voice blurred, your hand brushing away mine, me laughing because seriously who says that? I flashed out of my body picturing you saying this to other girls, and laughed again. Those are words that can only be said late at night in an outer borough, while Manhattan glitters in rows of mocking unison from over the bridge. Those are the moments when I think how did I get here followed shortly by okay whatever, like now, sitting in the park, watching couples strolling hand-in-hand. Once I made you cupcakes. In the morning before I left, I arranged them on a plate and left them on your kitchen table. Don’t worry, you weren’t the first one I’ve done that for. I’ll just think of the whole thing as a stretching exercise.

 

2 from ALPHABETS OF DESIRE & SORROW:

A Book of Imaginary Colophons by Norman Lock

 
 ALPHABET OF SCRATCHES

At St. Mary Bethlehem (which the world calls Bedlam),

Jeremy Watt, shut up for insanity, discovered in a maze of

scratches scribed by others’ lunatic hands an alphabet with

which he might invoke things not apparent to the eye.  So it

was that on a late November afternoon while winter

rehearsed in the soot and shadows of the ward, Watt

alchemized the asylum into a Moorfields mews where – in a

fusty upper-storey room – his wife, who had denounced

him to the magistrate, was partnered in adultery with a pie

man.  Uttering an uncouth scratch of noise (unintelligible to

the madhouse staff), Watt slaughtered her remorselessly

with an airy dagger – a perfect telepathic murder for which the

pie man was condemned and hung.

 

ALPHABET OF TORMENT  

Fluent in the languages of unnatural death, Luis Boscán set

down on thick paper the confessions of the Spanish

damned while, outside the cruel chamber furnished

ingeniously with instruments of torment, the fountains of

Seville produced liquid acanthus leaves to the sound of

castanets.  Had he been otherwise than agony’s faithful

amanuensis in the service of the auto de fé, he might have

written liras to the woman in the silk bazaar (the whiteness

and elegance of whose neck reminded him of a swan’s)

with a calligraphy derived from limpid columns of water.

  But the Latin’s stern characters – barbed and black – with

which he compiled for the Inquisition its savage history had

murdered all desire, as light pulsing in veins of water might

grow dark with the soot of the dead. 

 

    My approach to editing poetry for The Common has been centered on inclusion and variety: I’d like to include work in English and in translation from all over the world and all over the US, by writers from as many different places as possible. I hope the poetry will be as varied in style as it is by region or place. And to give you some idea of the variety of place, our first couple of issues include poems from and about the Philippines, Cambodia, Russia, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ireland, India, Kenya, Tasmania, Cambridge, MA, Hull, England, Chicago, Jerusalem, Amsterdam, Baltimore, San Francisco, New Jersey, Carnegie Hall, Honor Moore’s fantastic bedroom (I’d love to print Honor Moore’s beautiful poem “Song” here, but it will be in the next edition of Best American Poetry and I don’t want to steal that thunder), the Georgia coastline, and many other places.

    The subject of the first poem in the first issue, “Ferdinandea,” by Maria Terrone, is the mysterious submerged volcanic island in the sea off Agrigento, Sicily, which re-appeared briefly in 1831—just long enough to be claimed by four different countries. Luckily it was overtaken by the sea again within six months, averting a four-way war between Britain, Spain, France, and the King of Naples.

Sharon Dolin: Color, Scent, and Exile

Birthday Macarons from Le Varens de Gens, neighboring town

This was my birthday present from Cheryl and John, who hosted a fabulous birthday dinner party for me in the garden here. It's a feast of colors and flavors, as is my stay here. Cheryl Fortier is the Director of Moulin a Nef, the artist colony where I'm staying.

artisanal soap shop in town

One of the four artists staying here left today, so it was a little bit sad. In the morning, I walked into town with Yona Harvey, the other American poet in residence here, and we stopped in the soap shop, where the proprietor makes all the soaps as well as eau de toilette, with every possible scent. I bought the violet one because it smelled just like the candies of my youth that my son now also likes.

Here are the four of us: Aurelien Morrisse (French painter), Michelle Acuff (sculptor, visual artist, who left today), Yona Harvey (American poet), and moi (NY poet who would rather use color than words). I am hoping, perhaps, in a later post to talk about their work.

It's also the 56th anniversary of the day Nasser took control of the Suez Canal, which began the Suez Canal Crisis, which led to the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt, not least of whom was Edmond Jabes, beloved poet/philosopher, who moved to Paris. Would he have become the writer he became had he remained in Egypt? Would the taste of exile be so palpable in his work?

Color, eau de toilette, and exile. These are the three moods of the day.

I suppose I came here because even these brief sojourns elsewhere are the way I, like many artists, can, in a self-imposed exile, receive the word in the desert. For Jabes, the Jew was the quintessential outsider, the "foreigner of foreigners."

at the base of the clock tower in Auvillar, in homage to Marcabrun

Auvillar is the birthplace of Marcabrun, a troubadour poet born around 1100, who is famous for writing a song that was used as inspiration during the Crusades, in which Jews as well as Moslems were massacred.

So my stay here continues to be rife with contradiction. As it turns out, the Garonne may be off-limits for swimming because of all the pesticide run-off. To be continued . . .

Don Share, the Antidote to SCRIPTORCONVENTUSPHOBIA by John Hennessy

There ought to be a name for it, the apprehension we feel before meeting for the first time a poet or writer whose work we’ve long known and loved—what if the wit who’s soothed our deepest anxieties or kept us up laughing all night turns out to be a joyless curmudgeon, a strident piss-ant, in person? Or what if they’re great to everyone else, but they just don’t like you? There should be a term derived from Greek or Latin for this fear: poetametus, maybe, or scriptorconventusphobia. There’s even a kind of event-planner’s shit-list of authors—an informal collection kept up by word of mouth, from reading to reading, of writers who are notorious for their shocking rudeness, bad behavior—people that you only invite to your campus, conference, library, or book store if you’re feeling brave. (You know who/what I mean.)

Earlier this week I wrote about how I learned this anxiety the hard way, by dating the daughter of my then-favorite poet. Today, though, I’d like to turn to Don Share, a poet whose work I’d known and long admired before we met, and who, in person, turned out to be true to his words: funny, generous, witty, well read, well spoken, able to engage virtually anyone in a sincere exchange.  Don Share may be the nicest guy in poetry—just ask anyone who’s met him or worked with him as an editor. He’s been around in that capacity for years, logging time as poetry editor at Partisan Review, Literary Imagination, and Harvard Review before becoming senior editor at Poetry in 2008.

Don taught me long ago that editors who write poetry can have it rough: just think of all the people—many of them first-rate poets—you’ve said no to. How excited to read your book are they going to be, and if they do, in what spirit will they read it? I suggest you read Share’s new book, Wishbone, just out from Black Sparrow, with an open mind, sense of humor near to hand. The mixed presence of the elegiac and the comic, in evidence in his new poems, may well be Share’s trademark and unifies the poems of his fine breakout book, Squandermania (2007, Salt Books).

Squandermania has three epigraphs by Isaac Singer, references to Samuel Beckett, Paul Tillich, William James, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, even Gary Becker’s Rotten Kid Theorem, and it’s eponymous poem is subtitled “Falling Asleep Over Delmore Schwarz”; as these allusions suggest, the mood here is equal parts terror and redemptive—or at least extenuating—comedy. “Meaning,” the second poem in the book, begins, “It don’t mean a thing/ if it don’t mean a thing,” and this warning note to self launches Share’s attempt to make meaning or sense—and, alternately, to challenge meaning, risk non-sense—of language, family life, and the politics of a dishonest government perpetually bringing the world to war.

Share is equally adept at the long free-verse poem, the jeremiad, the sonnet, mock-heroic couplets, puns, and epigrams. His lyric hero hasn’t followed Philip Larkin’s commandment in “This Be the Verse” (“They fuck you up, your mum and dad”): he has become a father, and now he faces the consequences. “On Court St. I am innocent/ on Highland I take the high road/ on Ames I am aimless again”—all life and all landmarks have become “alike as eternity!” The book progresses backward in time, with Share implicitly comparing his experience as a father and husband to the experience of his parents, the mode of family life in his childhood to his present family life. “Honi soit…” offers a surprising response to his father’s use of corporal punishment and complicates one of the book’s central questions: can we escape the routines and mistakes of our parents, and, better, do we even want to?

My Mistress' Ipad is Nothing Like the Sun (by Laura Orem)

So you're sitting in an airport, waiting for your flight and jonesing for some poetry. Guess what - there's an app for that! Touch Press has announced Shakespeare's Sonnets for Ipad. At $13.99, it's expensive, but worth it. The app includes performances of all 154 sonnets, facsimiles of the original text, notes, and commentary, along with other gadgets and functions. In other words, hours of fun for the poetry-minded.

Here's a sample: Patrick Stewart reading Sonnet 29 ("When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes").

 

 

The sonnets are read by David Tennant, Kim Cattrall, and Jemma Redgrave, among others. My only gripe with this app is that the wonderful Stephen Fry only reads one selection: Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). Here it is:

 

This is not Touch Press' first foray into poetry. They previously released an app for The Waste Land.

 

Sharon Dolin: Jabes and Water

La Garonne

 

Water

 

Before, there is water.

After, there is water.

during, always during.

 

—Lake water?

—River water?

—Sea water?

 

Never water over water

Never water for water;

 

but water where there is no longer water;

water in the dead memory of water.

 

—Edmond Jabes

 

Twenty years ago, in a Paris bookshop, I picked up a little book by Edmond Jabes called La Memoire et La Main and proceeded to translate it on small pieces of tracing paper I interleaved in the book. Then, nothing. Before coming to France, I thought to have a look through my book shelves at the few French books I owned and came upon this book once more and thought to bring it to France to work on. But the book struck me as too fragile, so I scanned it in to my computer and left the physical copy home. Twice. Now those scanned copies hover somewhere in iCloud, or iTunes, unreachable by me. Sounds very Jabesian. The Book, the absence of the book, its silence.

 

The translation above, is taken from the one I did 20 years ago. Cleaned up as I could, with no access to the original French and given the still very limited French I have acquired.

 

I wanted this poem here on this day, because today is my birthday and, like Jabes, I am of the desert always in search of water. The photo above is of the Garonne River, right down the street from me, supposedly very dangerous and therefore unswimmable. Every time I asked someone, I heard a different story. Oh, a family of 4 drowned several years ago, pulled down by the algae. Algae?!!!! Oh, the currents can suddenly become very swift and drag you off. . .

 

Oh. So for several days I was frightened off and biked to the local pool of screaming kids and no real lap lane.

 

But yesterday, along with 2 other artists, I braved the river. It was like a mucky pond, lots of large weeds, but swimmable (supposedly upstream from the nuke plant) and, if not delightful, certainly far more satisfying than the French pool.

 

So, as is my birthday custom, I intend to dip myself (a mikveh, ritual immersion of sorts) in the Garonne this afternoon at precisely 3:13pm, the moment of my birth, despite the time zone difference . . .

 

Let's assume I'll survive to tell the tale tomorrow of the birthday dinner tonight.

I DATED MY FAVORITE POET’S DAUGHTER, AND OTHER BUM TRIPS by John Hennessy

I wasn’t planning to make it to Princeton for my 25^th reunion this year. It looked like no friends were going, but all the usual preppy suspects had registered early. Did I really want to pay two thousand dollars to lodge my family for a weekend among the hordes of Reagan Youth, especially now they’d gone smug with middle age? At the last minute I got an invite to crash at a big house in town with a few of my old buddies, one of whom has never left. “You don’t even have to officially register or go to the tents,” Ted said, “just hang out at Terrace.”

At Princeton, they don’t like to feed you in the dining halls after sophomore year, so most students join an “eating club.” My club was Terrace, a run-down Tudor mansion originally built for president Woodrow Wilson, literally and figuratively around the corner from all of the other clubs. It was the first to do away with “bicker,” a selection process similar to fraternity rush, the first to open its doors to everyone—Catholics, Jews, women, gays, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, scholarship kids. I was led there by a tall, skinny, blue-haired guy with a chain in his nose at the end of an otherwise miserable Freshman Week, and for the next four years I left only to go to classes, the library, and occasionally to sleep; in our day it was a refuge for the few punks, hippies, out-GLBT community members, and anyone else who didn’t belong on campus. 

The plan to spend reunions at Terrace had just one catch: Dead Head Night. Terrace was going to be jammed on Saturday. Phil Lesh, the band’s bass player, was playing a concert of Grateful Dead songs there with his touring group, which included two of his sons, one of whom was a graduating Terrace Club member.  No offense to those folks, but talk about bringing up a slew of bad memories:

Jerry Garcia

 

The last time I saw the Dead—as a tourist among my more dedicated Terrace brethren—I had a bum trip. Of course. My style was club music, the earliest days of acid house. After stuffing myself full of a variety of groceries I’ve subsequently cut from my diet, all I could think was, “Whoa, this is a religious cult. And like my own religious cult, Roman Catholicism, this one is focused on a living man. Jerry Garcia. How bizarre.” At the exit signs, backlit people danced in that herky-jerky, wrist-flapping Dead Head way. Steal your face. The hirsute guy in front of me was picking splinters from his beard. His hands left angry little dove-trails. I tried closing my eyes. But as I was peaking (troughing), all I could think was, “These people worship Jerry Garcia. Unlike Jesus, Jerry can’t bank on rising again. What the hell are they going to do when he dies?” The whole concert was ruined for me: these poor misguided Dead Heads, worshipping a mortal. Who would console them in the future?

For that matter, who was going to console me? I needed to be talked down. After the show I went looking for my girlfriend, Maud Kinnell, whose father, Galway, had until that day been my favorite living poet, my

This just in . . . Bill Hayward in Psychology Tomorrow Magazine

 The brilliant photographer, choreographer, and fillmaker Bill Hayward, has just been featured in the most recent issue of  Psychology Tomorrow Magazine.

Click over to find three pieces on or by Bill:  you'll find stunning photos and video from his the human bible project, a profile of Bill, and a short film by Bill on the painter Jim Peters.

Bill's work is at once intimate and daring.  He doesn't just film or photograph his subjects, he engages them in an ongoing collaboration that yields stunning, revealing results.  We have more of Bill's work here, but for the latest, be sure to take a look at Psychology Tomorrow Magazine.

-- sdh